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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:16PM   Printer-friendly
from the it-was-an-accident dept.

Mozilla "Got Outfoxed" by Google – Former VP Accuses Google for Sabotaging Firefox

Former Mozilla VP, Johnathan Nightingale, has called out on Google for what could only be termed as anti-competitive practices. In a Twitter thread on a somewhat unrelated subject, Nightingale said that during his 8 years at Mozilla, Google was the company's biggest partner. "Our revenue share deal on search drove 90% of Mozilla's income," he tweeted.

However, that doesn't mean Google wasn't involved in some underhand practices. "When I started at Mozilla in 2007 there was no Google Chrome and most folks we spoke with inside were Firefox fans," Nightingale wrote. "When chrome launched things got complicated, but not in the way you might expect. They had a competing product now, but they didn't cut ties, break our search deal – nothing like that. In fact, the story we kept hearing was, 'We're on the same side. We want the same things.'"

"I think our friends inside google genuinely believed that. At the individual level, their engineers cared about most of the same things we did. Their product and design folks made many decisions very similarly and we learned from watching each other. But Google as a whole is very different than individual googlers," Nightingale added.

Google Chrome ads started appearing next to Firefox search terms. gmail & gdocs started to experience selective performance issues and bugs on Firefox. Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as "incompatible."

All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course. But we were still a search partner, so we'd say "hey what gives?"

And every time, they'd say, "oops. That was accidental. We'll fix it in the next push in 2 weeks."

Usage share of web browsers.

Previously: After 10 Years with Google, Firefox Switches to Yahoo
Netmarketshare Claims Mozilla Firefox Usage Drops Below Ten Percent
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
Google Denies Altering YouTube Code to Break Microsoft Edge
Microsoft Employee Sparks Outrage by Suggesting Firefox Switch Browser Engine to Chromium

Related: Firefox 29 is a Flop; UI Design Trends Only Getting Worse
Mozilla Teases Chromium-Based Firefox, Then Pulls Back
Can the New Firefox Quantum Regain its Web Browser Market Share?
Firefox 64 Will Remove Support for RSS and Atom Feeds
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS


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  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:16PM (4 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:16PM (#830547)

    https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15062491 [ycombinator.com]
    How quickly we forget that the migration was slow, even uncollaborative. Andso left things behind because there is still no replacements and extension authors gave up in the end.

    That is not what I would call planned, unless the plan is sabotage. A properly planned migration would be having the replacement and then, only then, drop support for the previous thing.

  • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Tuesday April 16 2019, @09:34PM (3 children)

    by vux984 (5045) on Tuesday April 16 2019, @09:34PM (#830629)

    "That is not what I would call planned, unless the plan is sabotage. A properly planned migration would be having the replacement and then, only then, drop support for the previous thing."

    Often you plan to change a thing, knowing full well that some stuff isn't going to work or even be possible anymore. Sometimes you plan to restore the functionality in the future. Sometimes not even that. Sometimes you accept that certain things will simply be lost.

    "A properly planned migration would be having the replacement and then, only then, drop support for the previous thing."

    It's like when they replace a bridge. You _could_ probably get the job done with zero road closures, zero lane closures, by twinning the bridge entirely, buying up neighboring properties, building everything out, resulting in a longer span because your building the replacement in a sub-optimal spot, and so forth. But perhaps that would cost orders of magnitude more than other migration/replacement/upgrade plans - and rules it decisively out as the best plan.

    Sometimes compromises are the best plan.

    And that assumed the existing bridge wasn't crumbling too; if you are migrating from something has security flaws for example, maybe building out a complete replacement first really isn't the best solution; rushing a secure but limited functionality replacement and dealing with the breakage due to the loss of functionality might be the more sensible plan.

    And I'm not saying Mozilla made the best plan. They probably didn't. But like anything else, how many resources are you going to pour into the planning? At some point you'll have spent more time planning the thing, than it would have taken to just do the thing and deal with the gaps in the plan as they arise.

    Perfect is the enemy of good; and you'll never satisfy everyone.

    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:19PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:19PM (#830657)

      Some of us here, are coders ourselves. We know there is NO magic in reimplementing stuff. We know there is NO concrete to pour, NO properties to buy, NO rivers to span, in WRITING THE F*****G CODE.
      Your fairytales are pitiful waste of ASCII.

      • (Score: 2) by vux984 on Wednesday April 17 2019, @04:29AM

        by vux984 (5045) on Wednesday April 17 2019, @04:29AM (#830825)

        Consider you have a feature in Module X, that depends on Module A, and you want to replace it with Module Y that requires a partial rewrite of Module A. Consider also that both X and A have immediately pressing flaws and security issues; and that in the medium term you want to get rid of X completely.

        The solution with least functional impact on the users (aka the best "proper plan" as defined by the poster i originally replied to), is to write Y, and rewrite module A to support Y, while providing all necessary backwards compatibility to support for X. Then deploy and test, and finally remove X. Then modify module A again to remove the legacy support for X.

        The constraint of retaining all necessary back-compat for X substantially increases the time and complexity of rewriting A. It also maximizes the time the security flaws are exploitable. Perhaps some of X's flaws can be mitigated in the meantime, but that requires expending considerable resources on X, which you plan to discard.

        A better path is to create a minimally functional Y that doesn't do everything you want it to do but covers enough to be usable; and make the minimal changes required to A to support it. This will allow you to get the secure replacement in place as quickly and cheaply as possible; admitting that its not a full replacement for X yet. Then phase out X, accepting the breakage caused by Y not being completely functional yet. Then with X gone, complete the partial rewrite of A without having to support X. Then expand Y to its final feature support level.

        This requires fewer developer resources, is completed faster, closes the security holes faster, but causes a planned amount of breakage.

        If you are a coder and can't see the parallels with construction, or the compromises and choices that have to be made then stick with coding and stay away from project management.

    • (Score: 2) by Rich on Wednesday April 17 2019, @12:47PM

      by Rich (945) on Wednesday April 17 2019, @12:47PM (#830984) Journal

      If we're getting into bridge analogies here, it's more like "Yes, yes, we're gonna break that bridge down, just give us the money!" when being offered 20 silverlings from the "Association of Commercial Ferry Operators".