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."
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
Related Stories
Firefox 29 marked the release of the UI overhaul codenamed "Australis" and the jury is back with a verdict: the vast majority of feedback on Firefox Input is negative and traffic to the Classic Theme Restorer add-on has aggressively spiked since Firefox 29 came out on April 29. Considering this is a year and a half after the backlash against the new Windows 8 user interface, it seems that even though the "dumbing down" trends in UI design are infuriating users, they continue to happen. Chrome will soon be hiding URLs, OS X has hidden scroll bars by default, iOS 7 flattened everything, and Windows 8 made scroll bars hard to see. If most users hate these changes, why are they so ubiquitous?
Chris Beard, CEO of the Mozilla Corporation, announced in his blog Wednesday, 11 November 2014, that they were ending their 10-year relationship with Google. As of December, they begin a five-year "strategic partnership" with Yahoo.
For those wondering why the switch, The Verge has an interesting take on it:
In tech, little things can have big consequences — in this case, a tiny search bar. Last night, Firefox made a surprising announcement: after 10 years with Google as its default search engine, it would be handing the tiny search bar over to Yahoo. On the face of it, it's a strange move. If you're looking for almost anything on the internet, Google is a much better way to find it than Yahoo is. But that small search bar isn't just a feature, it's a business. And it’s a business that reveals how Mozilla and Google could increasingly be at odds with each other.
[We touched on this in a recent story about Firefox's expanding search options, but this aspect seems significant enough to merit specific attention. -LaminatorX]
Mozilla has sent mixed signals about the future of the Firefox Web browser:
The head of Mozilla's Firefox browser is looking to the future. And, for the moment at least, it seems to lie in rival Chrome. Senior VP Mark Mayo caused a storm by revealing that the Firefox team is working on a next-generation browser that will run on the same technology as Google's Chrome browser.
"Let's jump right in and say yes, the rumors are true, we're working on browser prototypes that look and feel almost nothing like the current Firefox," Mayo wrote in a blog post. "The premise for these experiments couldn't be simpler: what we need a browser to do for us – both on PCs and mobile devices – has changed a lot since Firefox 1.0, and we're long overdue for some fresh approaches."
The biggest surprise, however, was that the project, named Tofino, will not use Firefox's core technology – Gecko – but will instead plumb for Electron, which is built on the technology behind Google's rival Chrome browser, called Chromium.
However, Mayo updated his post to say that "I should have been clearer that Project Tofino is wholly focused on UX explorations and not the technology platform. We are working with the Platform team on technology platform futures too, and we're excited about the Gecko and Servo-based futures being discussed!" Mozilla's CTO also reaffirmed the company's commitment to the Gecko rendering engine:
Just two days after Mayo broke ranks, Mozilla's CTO jumped up and announced another new project – this one called Positron (geddit?) – which will take the Electron API and "wrap it around Gecko." Or, in other words, make it possible to take Mayo's new, better browser and pull it off Chromium and back into the safe hands of Gecko. And so the status quo seeks to reassert itself.
Also at CNET.
https://amosbbatto.wordpress.com/2017/11/21/mozilla-market-share/
When Firefox was introduced in 2004, it was designed to be a lean and optimized web browser, based on the bloated code from the Mozilla Suite. Between 2004 and 2009, many considered Firefox to be the best web browser, since it was faster, more secure, offered tabbed browsing and was more customizable through extensions than Microsoft's Internet Explorer. When Chrome was introduced in 2008, it took many of Firefox's best ideas and improved on them. Since 2010, Chrome has eaten away at Firefox's market share, relegating Firefox to a tiny niche of free software enthusiasts and tinkerers who like the customization of its XUL extensions.
According to StatCounter, Firefox's market share of web browsers has fallen from 31.8% in December 2009 to just 6.1% today. Firefox can take comfort in the fact that it is now virtually tied with its former arch-nemesis, Internet Explorer and its variants. All of Microsoft's browsers only account for 6.2% of current web browsing according to StatCounter. Microsoft has largely been replaced by Google, whose web browsers now controls 56.5% of the market. Even worse, is the fact that the WebKit engine used by Google now represents over 83% of web browsing, so web sites are increasingly focusing on compatibility with just one web engine. While Google and Apple are more supportive of W3C and open standards than Microsoft was in the late 90s, the web is increasingly being monopolized by one web engine and two companies, whose business models are not always based on the best interests of users or their rights.
Netmarketshare reports that Mozilla Firefox's share of the desktop and notebook computer web browser market has fallen below ten percent.
Firefox had a market share of 12.63% in June 2017 according to Netmarketshare and even managed to rise above the 13% mark in 2017 before its share fell to 9.92% in May 2018.
Google Chrome, Firefox's biggest rival in the browser world, managed to increase its massive lead from 60.08% in June 2017 to 62.85% in May 2018.
Microsoft's Internet Explorer dropped a percent point to 11.82% in May 2018 and Microsoft's Edge browser gained less than 0.50% to 4.26% over the year.
[...] Netmarketshare collects usage stats and does not get "real" numbers from companies like Mozilla, Google or Microsoft. The company monitors the use of browsers on a subset of Internet sites and creates the market share reports using the data it collects.
While that is certainly good enough for trends if the number of monitored user interactions is high enough, it is not completely accurate and real-world values can be different based on a number of factors. While it is unlikely that they differ a lot, it is certainly possible that the share is different to the one reported by the company.
Submitted via IRC for chromas
Protip from Mozilla (and Opera): If you hide a feature then you can say nobody uses it, and then remove it.
When Firefox 64 arrives in December, support for RSS, the once celebrated content syndication scheme, and its sibling, Atom, will be missing.
"After considering the maintenance, performance and security costs of the feed preview and subscription features in Firefox, we've concluded that it is no longer sustainable to keep feed support in the core of the product," said Gijs Kruitbosch, a software engineer who works on Firefox at Mozilla, in a blog post on Thursday.
RSS – which stands for Rich Site Summary, RDF Site Summary, or Really Simple Syndication, as you see fit – is an XML-based format for publishing and subscribing to web content feeds. It dates back to 1999 and for a time was rather popular, but been disappearing from a variety of applications and services since then.
Mozilla appears to have gotten the wrecking ball rolling in 2011 when it removed the RSS button from Firefox. The explanation then was the same as it is now: It's just not very popular.
Among RSS/Atom fans, there's a more sinister explanation: feeds don't mesh well with the internet's data gathering industry because they allow users to consume web content (though usually not the full text of a site's articles) without triggering the dozens or even hundreds of analytics scripts lurking on web pages. Also, companies like Google and Facebook that have their own mechanisms for content aggregation have a disincentive to promote RSS/Atom apps as an alternative.
Microsoft is building a Chromium-powered web browser that will replace Edge on Windows 10
Microsoft's Edge web browser has seen little success since its debut on Windows 10 back in 2015. Built from the ground up with a new rendering engine known as EdgeHTML, Microsoft Edge was designed to be fast, lightweight, and secure, but launched with a plethora of issues which resulted in users rejecting it early on. Edge has since struggled to gain any traction, thanks to its continued instability and lack of mindshare, from users and web developers.
Because of this, I'm told that Microsoft is throwing in the towel with EdgeHTML and is instead building a new web browser powered by Chromium, a rendering engine first popularized by Google's Chrome browser. Codenamed Anaheim, this new web browser for Windows 10 will replace Edge as the default browser on the platform. It's unknown at this time if Anaheim will use the Edge brand or a new brand, or if the user interface between Edge and Anaheim is different. One thing is for sure, however; EdgeHTML in Windows 10's default browser is dead.
Report: Windows Lite is Microsoft's long-awaited answer to Chrome OS
The success of Google's Chromebook hardware and Chrome OS software wasn't an inevitability, but the ease of use they afford ended up allowing Google to carve out a niche in a very crowded PC marketplace. Ever since Chrome OS entered the scene, we've been waiting for Microsoft to come out with its own pared down version of Windows, but its half-hearted attempts (Windows 10 S, Windows RT) have all fallen flat.
Those failures haven't stopped Microsoft though, as Petri on Monday reported that the company is working on "a new version of Windows that may not actually be Windows." Based on the documentation he has seen, Petri's Brad Sams believes that Windows Lite — the new OS — is Microsoft's answer to Chrome OS.
According to Sams, Windows Lite will only run Progressive Web Apps (PWAs) and Universal Windows Platform (UWP) apps, while removing all other functionality. He says that this is the first "truly lightweight version of Windows" – one which won't run in enterprise or small business environments, and may not even be available for purchase on its own. Just like Chrome OS, Windows Lite will have to be pre-installed by an OEM.
Microsoft ChromeOS: It's Linux-Free!
Mozilla's CEO is not enthusiastic about Microsoft's switch to Chromium:
When Microsoft announced that its Edge browser would be revamped using Chromium, the internet's response was generally quite positive. Edge is far from the worst browser on the planet, but it's certainly not what we'd call a fan favorite. As such, even the slightest indication that it could be changed significantly would have been welcome news for many.
However, it would seem that "many" doesn't include one individual in particular: Mozilla CEO Chris Beard. In a blog post published today, titled "Goodbye, EdgeHTML," Beard expressed his frustrations with Microsoft's decision.
"By adopting Chromium, Microsoft hands over control of even more of online life to Google," Beard writes in the post. "This may sound melodramatic, but it's not. The "browser engines" — Chromium from Google and Gecko Quantum from Mozilla — are "inside baseball" pieces of software that actually determine a great deal of what each of us can do online."
Microsoft's switch to Chromium could be a big boon for Google's own implementation.
Google isn't the company that we should have handed the Web over to
Back in 2009, Google introduced SPDY, a proprietary replacement for HTTP that addressed what Google saw as certain performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1. Google wasn't exactly wrong in its assessments, but SPDY was something of a unilateral act, with Google responsible for the design and functionality. SPDY was adopted by other browsers and Web servers over the next few years, and Google's protocol became widespread.
[...] The same story is repeating with HTTP/3. In 2012, Google announced a new experimental protocol, QUIC, intended again to address performance issues with existing HTTP/1.1 and HTTP/2. Google deployed QUIC, and Chrome would use QUIC when communicating with Google properties. Again, QUIC became the basis for IETF's HTTP development, and HTTP/3 uses a derivative of QUIC that's modified from and incompatible with Google's initial work.
It's not just HTTP that Google has repeatedly worked to replace. Google AMP ("Accelerated Mobile Pages") is a cut-down HTML combined with Google-supplied JavaScript designed to make mobile Web content load faster. This year, Google said that it would try to build AMP with Web standards and introduced a new governance model that gave the project much wider industry oversight.
A person claiming to be a former Microsoft Edge developer has written about a tactic Google supposedly used to harm the competing browser's performance:
A person claiming to be a former Edge developer has today described one such action. For no obvious reason, Google changed YouTube to add a hidden, empty HTML element that overlaid each video. This element disabled Edge's fastest, most efficient hardware accelerated video decoding. It hurt Edge's battery-life performance and took it below Chrome's. The change didn't improve Chrome's performance and didn't appear to serve any real purpose; it just hurt Edge, allowing Google to claim that Chrome's battery life was actually superior to Edge's. Microsoft asked Google if the company could remove the element, to no avail.
The latest version of Edge addresses the YouTube issue and reinstated Edge's performance. But when the company talks of having to do extra work to ensure EdgeHTML is compatible with the Web, this is the kind of thing that Microsoft has been forced to do.
See also: Ex Edge developer blames Google tricks in part for move to Chromium
Related: HTTP/2 on its Way In, SPDY on its Way Out
Google Touts QUIC Protocol
Google Attempting to Standardize Features of Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP)
Google AMP Can Go To Hell
The Next Version of HTTP Won't be Using TCP
HTTP/3 Explained: A Work in Progress
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
Google denies altering YouTube code to break Microsoft Edge
A former Microsoft intern has revealed details of a YouTube incident that has convinced some Edge browser engineers that Google added code to purposely break compatibility. In a post on Hacker News, Joshua Bakita, a former software engineering intern at Microsoft, lays out details and claims about an incident earlier this year. Microsoft has since announced the company is moving from the EdgeHTML rendering engine to the open source Chromium project for its Edge browser.
[...] The claims are surprising if they're genuine, and they come months after a Mozilla program manager claimed a separate YouTube redesign made the site "5x slower in Firefox and Edge." That incident led Edge, Safari, and Firefox users to revert to scripts to improve the YouTube experience. Google was also at the center of claims it intentionally blocked access to Google Maps for Windows Phone users years ago.
[...] Google disputes Bakita's claims, and says the YouTube blank div was merely a bug that was fixed after it was reported. "YouTube does not add code designed to defeat optimizations in other browsers, and works quickly to fix bugs when they're discovered," says a YouTube spokesperson in a statement to The Verge. "We regularly engage with other browser vendors through standards bodies, the Web Platform Tests project, the open-source Chromium project and more to improve browser interoperability."
Previously: Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
Microsoft Engineer Causes Online Wrath After Saying Firefox Should Use Chromium
Mozilla should give up on its own browsing engine and switch Firefox to Chromium, a Microsoft engineer said in a series of tweets, as what the company does right now is "building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent."
The message posted by Microsoft Product Manager Kenneth Auchenberg has triggered an almost instant reaction from the user community, with most of the replies pointing out that building alternative products that can compete against Chromium is vital for the health of the browsing ecosystem.
"It's time for @mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5%?" he tweeted.
"I couldn't disagree with you more. It precisely *because* Chromium has such a large marketshare that is vital for Mozilla (or anyone else) to battle for diversity. I'm shocked that you think they're not contributing. "Building a parallel universe"? That *is* the contribution," web developer Jeremy Keith responded.
[...] Auchenberg's message has obviously received more acid replies, including this one criticizing Microsoft's recent browser changes. "Just because your employer gave up on its own people and technology doesn't mean that others should follow," Asa Dotzler tweeted.
Also at ZDNet.
Previously: Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Related: Is Google Using an "Embrace, Extend..." Strategy?
Google Denies Altering YouTube Code to Break Microsoft Edge
Firefox Browser Use Drops As Mozilla's Worst Microsoft Edge Fears Come True
Back in April, we reported that the Edge browser is quickly gaining market share now that Microsoft has transitioned from the EdgeHTML engine to the more widely used Chromium engine (which also underpins Google's Chrome browser). At the time, Edge slipped into the second-place slot for desktop web browsers, with a 7.59 percent share of the market. This dropped Mozilla's Firefox – which has long been the second-place browser behind Chrome – into third place.
Now, at the start of August, we're getting some fresh numbers in for the desktop browser market, and things aren't looking good for Mozilla. Microsoft increased its share of the browser market from 8.07 percent in June to 8.46 percent in July. Likewise, Firefox fell from 7.58 percent to 7.27 percent according to NetMarketShare.
[...] As for Mozilla, the company wasn't too happy when Microsoft first announced that it was going to use Chromium for Edge way back in December 2018. Mozilla's Chris Beard at the time accused Microsoft of "giving up" by abandoning EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium. "Microsoft's decision gives Google more ability to single-handedly decide what possibilities are available to each one of us," said Beard at the time. "We compete with Google because the health of the internet and online life depend on competition and choice."
[...] Microsoft developer Kenneth Auchenberg fought back the following January, writing, "Thought: It's time for Mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent."
Is the browser monoculture inevitable or will Firefox hang in there?
Previously:
Mozilla Teases Chromium-Based Firefox, Then Pulls Back
Firefox Tops Microsoft Browser Market Share for First Time
Netmarketshare Claims Mozilla Firefox Usage Drops Below Ten Percent
Microsoft Intercepting Firefox, Chrome Installation on Windows 10 Insider Build
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Microsoft Employee Sparks Outrage by Suggesting Firefox Switch Browser Engine to Chromium
Mozilla Was "Outfoxed" by Google
Microsoft Edge Shares Privacy-Busting Telemetry, Research Alleges
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Gaaark on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:27PM (3 children)
Sounds like the shite from MS.
--- Please remind me if I haven't been civil to you: I'm channeling MDC. ---Gaaark 2.0 ---
(Score: 5, Insightful) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:22PM
Man, it's almost like it's not the particular profit-motivated megacorporation that's the problem.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:27PM
Well, google IS the new microsoft.
Unfortunately, microsoft is still the old microsoft.
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 2) by PinkyGigglebrain on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:56AM
same thought crossed my mind when I read the summary.
I don't even know what to say about this kind of crap anymore.
"Beware those who would deny you Knowledge, For in their hearts they dream themselves your Master."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:29PM
> …Demo sites would falsely block Firefox as "incompatible."
> All of this is stuff you're allowed to do to compete, of course.
I'm not sure that's the case.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:32PM (8 children)
I'm tired of Mozilla's bullshit. They tied themselves to their advertising slavemaster, reduce browser functionality at each step, made deals with ad and tracking companies, and they whine because they get fucked over later.
What we need is a browser for users not funded by any ad-affiliated assholes, but by us. It should get funding from us, work for us and our interests, and not try to have a gigantic half a billion buck cake from shitty advertisers and claim privacy focus, too, while fucking you over with Pocket, advertising tiles, various test ad and promo programs, forced updates, no Java toggle, less and less usefulness, and kindergarten-level UI for morons.
Mozilla has outlived its usefulness. Why the fuck isn't there a decent privacy/power browser for Linux except small valiant Pale Moon? Zillion Linux distros and we can't have a good team of devs, doing a browser for us? Needs real funding, so that's it. We should fucking pay for it.
But I am not a dev, so shutting up now.
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:10PM (3 children)
It's not a desktop solution, but I use the DDG browser on my phone and I like it. It would be nice to see it for the desktop.
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.duckduckgo.mobile.android&hl=en_US [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @08:25PM
the DDG browser is basically a wrapper around Chrome.
And it handles certain things like popup pages poorly (overwriting the content of the existing tab rather than opening it in a new tab). And the performance is somewhat lacking, perhaps because they are doing some security checking on each HTTP request.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:44PM (1 child)
what... does it do besides search? i have google blocked.
i use ddg for my desktop browser search bar as well as manually going to it for internet searches. for desktop searches, i have been using the built in search features, both gui and command line.. for windows consumer, server, and linux oses...
i have no idea what makes an application necessary for a phone to search the web, or what benefit an external search program could bring to a phone that opening the browser and going to the website doesn't do. unless stuff on the phone gets lost. then i dont know what to ask because I havent had that problem yet
(Score: 2) by hemocyanin on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:25PM
Well, you could follow the link, but it blocks trackers for one. I also can't remember seeing an advertisement while using it even when going to news sites. Obviously it uses DDG as the search engine and helps to reduce google's data collection.
(Score: 2) by RedIsNotGreen on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:37PM (1 child)
If you're willing to deal with a learning curve:
https://www.qutebrowser.org/ [qutebrowser.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:10PM
Qute. It seems to be a keyboard focused wrapper around Qt 5's integrated Blink (Chrome) rendering engine QtWebEngine, or the older QtWebKit but that support is going away.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @09:12PM
Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
Advertisers infiltrated and/or subverted the standard bodies, and started rewriting Web standards to suit themselves. Navigating the purposely tangled web as an outsider has become a tedious chore. FOSS development model does not deal well with chores and tedium; advertising companies can hire developers to churn code despite that. Cue the lock-in; mission accomplished.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:37PM
And didn't improve any during the Mozilla years. Firefox was a 3rd party project, its popularity was in direct opposition to the Mozilla Browser package of the era, and had no XUL... until it became a Mozilla project after they offered the orignal developer a job and handed management of the project over to one of their own team, the originator becoming an underling and then finally quitting/being fired (I forget what happened to him?), either resulting in, or just after the compromising of Firefox's design to become an XUL 'lite' version of Netscape/Mozilla Browser Bundle, being a dog for a year or two until the javascript engine got JIT support (which was the primary reason for the speed being shit on the browser bundle, but the memory bloated happened in both, as can be seen from firefox versions 2.0 to current in the fact that browser versions eventually outstripped the memory requirements of Seamonkey, which is XUL based also, but has more configuration options and the entire browser suite included in less operating memory than firefox uses now, on the exact same gecko/xul rendering platform!)
As others have said, Mozilla deserves to fucking die, but not for a singular reason, but rather the sort of incompetence we normally expect from Microsoft, Google, etc, and the sort of executive salaries we see from the people at the top there (which seem to be inversely proportional to the common sense of the decisions executive staff make, Mozilla's are so high paid they make Marissa Meyer, Satya Nadella, Steve Ballmer, and that last Intel CEO use like paragons of competence, given their earnings to corporate marketshare.)
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:34PM (27 children)
https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html [neocities.org]
(Score: 5, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:03PM (12 children)
Mozilla and Google Block Dissenter Browser Extension [soylentnews.org]
Info that some seem to have forgotten in that story.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Informative) by vux984 on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:41PM (10 children)
"See the slippery slope?"
No. That was NOT a slippery slope. That was a phased deployment of a planned change. It's done on purpose not to 'boil the frog' but so people have time to react and adapt without it being too disruptive.
"Just imagine - one day it might decide to disable your AdBlocks and NoScripts - and there will be nothing you can do whatsoever."
Fork it.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:44PM (3 children)
Been done:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Web_browsers_based_on_Firefox [wikipedia.org]
+1 Gab/Dissenter branded browser, possibly.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:07PM (2 children)
I can already imagine it: it's Firefox with that extension and every logo is a swastika instead of a fox. For freedom or something.
(Score: 1, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:27PM
...then only fascists will have freedom.
And then, universe will implode in a puff of logic.
Or at least, the "not toeing The Party Line is FASCIST!!!111" narrative will.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:47PM
i have a jewish friend who named his daughter gabrielle, or gabi for short. a long time ago. so now, whenever i see gab.ai and the rightwing stuff on it and how 'freedom of speech' tends to mean 'we can be loudmouth jerks like rush limbaugh but without syndication or profits!', i keep thinking the site is a jewish forum and the mental dissonance caused by realizing that uh no its actually not a jewish forum... is very very hard to overcome!!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:16PM (4 children)
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)
"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)
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
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
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".
(Score: 2) by ElizabethGreene on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:50PM
Has anyone thought to ask why they stopped allowing unsigned extensions? Firefox was a wasteland of malicious add-ons. There were active non-hypothetical attacks that stole a bunch of money this way.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:47PM
Which Mozilla is guilty of a lot of bullshit, eliminating the ability to install/run unsigned addons is an untrue one of them.
What they *DID* do is remove the UI ability to enable unsigned addons. The configuration options still exist in all firefox versions from 38 to 61 (I know because I use them regularly for uMatrix and uBlock from github, which is mandatory now for pre-Servo Firefox/Seamonkey versions, since Mozilla deleted all legacy addons from its addon repository.)
Having said that, they have made it so that installing *ANY* unsigned addon is mandatory insecure, because there is no way to whitelist an addon without disabling signing, and I believe whitelist capabilities (if someone has gotten the whitelist working, let me know.) As soon as you restart the browser with signing or whitelisting enabled it disables the plugins you manually installed as unsigned/whitelisted and refuses to allow them to run even though you installed them by hand.
Mozilla has done many retarded things, and while I agree this is one of them, the distinction between eliminating this feature entirely and making it a pain in the ass is important. Most plebs really shouldn't be running unsigned addons. The problem is with Mozilla clearcutting the addon library even before the ESR releases were past their final support dates, leading to many people unable to use addons on versions of the browser that still ran on their platforms. Mozilla has done a lot of other stunts like this with mandatory SSE2 support and disabling ALSA in favor of pulseaudio only in release builds. Both effectively optional features of the browser that could easily have been built as an 'unsupported build for legacy users' but which for arbitrary reasons were not to force us all to not only their latest and greatest browser, but the latest and greatest hardware platform some of us may be unwilling, or unable to afford.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by isostatic on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:15PM (13 children)
My eyes!!
OK, I gave it a go. First complaint: "Mozilla removed the ability to disable JavaScript from the Settings menu"
I type "about:config", and there it is "javascript.enabled"
Next one, extension signing. This appears to be "xpinstall.signatures.required", simply toggle to false.
Perhaps it has a point, but the author isn't making it
(Score: 4, Interesting) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:26PM (12 children)
The concern is that they've built a walled garden but they've generously put a latched gate hidden in a dark corner with a pinky swear promise not to lock it.
The good news is that firefox is open source, and the derivative projects suck much less.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by julian on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:56PM (8 children)
Those choices were made because for the vast majority of users they are the safest defaults and Mozilla has a responsibility to be a good citizen of the Internet--and despite some rather serious missteps in the past I believe they are fundamentally a force for good. No one is perfect.
They give you the option to change these things, and like you said it's still free software. Defaults settings are almost never changed so they need to appropriate for users who are not savvy users of technology. If you're on this website you are probably not that type of person, so you chafe at these roadblocks that keep popping up. But I prefer having to jump through a few hoops to having to fix more computers because Mozilla handed everyone a loaded gun and trusted them not to shoot themselves.
There is nothing wrong with walled gardens as long as you're allowed to leave, and it shouldn't necessarily be easy to find your way out. Firefox is still better than any of its forks; but if you're the sort of person who refuses to run JS in your browser in 2019 and somehow still manages to be a productive user of the Internet then I can understand why you'd disagree.
(Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:08PM
I'm not sure I buy the concept of "productive user of the internet". After all I'm here talking to you instead of talking to my boss about groovy packaging conventions, or whatever my "current strategic business objective" is.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday April 16 2019, @08:03PM (4 children)
Indeed, if the OP was that bothered he could simply use the "Icecat" fork of firefox, which is kept in sync with upstream firefox. It's good enough for Stallman.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @09:46PM (3 children)
LOL that only works with Linux. What if OP uses a real desktop?
(Score: 3, Touché) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:33PM (2 children)
Then the OP is already using Linux, so there's no problem. Your point is...?
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @11:51PM
the point you and isostupid won't get is the oldest one of linux desktop. Defaults means everything for the greater percent of users
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:50PM
wait
Windows 10 is, as stated by microsoft, not a desktop OS. It's the new approach of PC hardware servicing, maintenance, and remote control -- Windows As A Service.
It replaced the desktop OS that Microsoft is famous for. There are no Windows Desktop OSes after 8.1.
The person writing "use a real desktop" must be uninformed. Stating that the OP is already using linux sidesteps the issue of the fact he's actually wrong, because if he accepted the "upgrade", he technically doesn't have a desktop OS anymore.
(Score: 4, Touché) by jb on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:24AM (1 child)
How on earth could anyone regard "allow running arbitrary code from any old untrusted source without asking me first" (i.e. javascript enabled) as the "safest default"?
(Score: 2) by julian on Thursday April 18 2019, @05:08AM
Because turning off JS today is equivalent to simply not using the Internet at all, for most people's needs. It's an unfortunate reality. I wish they'd include something like Ublock Origin with good filter lists by default. Ads are the number 1 way that malicious code gets injected; but I guess Mozilla can't afford to be that disruptive to the likes of Google et al.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Ethanol-fueled on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:32PM (2 children)
Look what those pink-haired faggots at GitHub did to go out of their way to cripple the site for older versions of Firefox in favor of Chrome. Yeah, I know there are other ways to download repos, but it's a big pain in the ass when you're looking spontaneously for a specific niche. "Download" buttons have been a solved problem in web applications for decades now.
It's the same way that guns doesn't get blocked by law, but faggots find more and more ways to make owning them a pain in the ass. Same with being conservative and being on Youtube or Twitter or having a paypal account.
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 16 2019, @11:26PM (1 child)
Do you extract your takes directly from the core of the sun, or do you make them this hot yourself somehow?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:31AM
Pretty sure they came from somewhere a lot colder, slimier, and smellier. And I am mystified as to how he fits them up there next to his enormous swelled head.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @05:36PM (2 children)
Google gave mozilla money to keep it afloat while they developed their own browser. Where is this "outfoxing"?
(Score: 5, Touché) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:30PM
"gave" like it's a generous charity, and not just selling the users(or at least their search) to google, which was convenient because they were a de facto monopoly. Mozilla foundation aren't the losers in this scenario, we are.
(Score: 2) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:38PM
It wasn't "outfoxing", it was "embracing".
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:18PM
Mozilla has swanky digs in the middle of Taibei city in Taiwan, right next to the 101 skyscraper. Why would a "community oriented free software outfit" need to rent space in such an expensive location? Much deadweight in that organization, and obvious that the users are not their customers.
Moving to a fork was the best thing I did for browsing the web.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:35PM
And indeed both wanted dinner. The crucial difference was in who would be whose dinner.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:51PM
more like scroogled.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday April 17 2019, @05:51AM
I'm currently on Firefox but have plenty of experience with Falkon, and even some with the suckless project's Surf, which is autistic as hell but something I could probably grow to like given enough time (already did the XChat - -> IRSSI switch, and this is similar).
There are alternatives. Use them while they still exist (and will still compile).
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @07:15AM (3 children)
Sorry, but Mozilla "outfoxed" itself.
They had a reasonable browser and the target for their browser: power users. So there were things for power users: UI manipulation tools, customization from menus, add-on system with lots of addons and deep theming, possibility to write scripts which makes modern "presentation-pages" usable.
However, they started to go nuts around version 4.0. A huge amount of add-ons have been neglected when the new API came, and to the last moment Mozilla informed that there will be a compatibility or heuristics layer - there was not. The interface based on lots of mouse buttons made FF4 much less usable on touchpad-oriented computers. Fortunately the add-on for restoring missing user buttons came in quite quickly and lasted until Australis.
Next updates made all thing even worse - in fact, I don't ask what features have been added into new versions of Firefox anymore, but what features have been removed. Firefox evolved from Communicator, the "Swiss army knife" for using the Internet, it's not a Director player (like Flash player, but for presentations) for websites. And they decided to shut down almost all power user-oriented features and some other ones like RSS reader because this "so private" browser advocates harvesting of user's e-mails in sites? Or maybe they like to pollute the environment even more and buy a new computer as "lightweight" RSS readers they recommend fill up RAM so 8GB is a must-go?.
The model of shutting down Firefox features is simple: First - offer it as add-on. Then shut the add-on down. When they did it second time, I switched to a fork.
Additionally, Firefox lost its opinion that it's a privacy-focused browser. If a browser makes additional requests without my knowledge and without easy possibility to disable them, it transmits my personal data. With an average profiling database, it's possible to link this into specific profile. The data is my IP address, computer's timings and network timings which can be figured out and some other metadata resulting from WWW operation.
Next, they decided to sell user's DNS queries to quite shady company, which in its history has episode of fighting with net anonymity - Cloudflare. Sabotage of VPN and TOR users is, probably, offered as a service.
Sorry, but they asked for it. They were a really good browser, but now they are just another company which wants to fill its pockets using users' profiling.
I'm not writing what happened between Mozilla Corporation and Mozilla Foundation. Generally who knows it, does not laugh in circus. Maybe it started there, when marketing-oriented people started to decide about software and "Let's make another Chrome" sounded good to them, but I think that the pressure was too high for them and someone else had to be there.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @10:29AM
TOR is now accessed via TorBrowser, not through FFX with a plugin. At least, should be.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @03:42PM (1 child)
i just looked into the 'sell user dns queries' because how the hell would they know what the network card was doing; why isn't the browser waiting for a response?
then i saw--they encrypt the requests and send them to cloudflare--for your privacy and security, you as a user can't even look at what they are now sending to valued 3rd party partners! they totally bypass local hosts and any administrative blocks!! and profit from it!
and now i see dns.google.com and others do it too!
i bet the ability to disable it will be removed in a new version before long.
soon edge, chrome(ium) and firefox all will encrypt lookups and send them to destinations of their own choosing by default. imagine all the iot stuff that can't get blocked soon. alexa in every device.. smart tvs that play ads that you cant block.
the future sucks. for a few years it was cool though. i think i'd rather not have lived in the cool years, because it makes the near term feel so disappointing
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday April 18 2019, @12:43AM
Money ruins everything.
The minute the Web went mainstream, it was just a matter of time until the ripoffs began.
This is how amoral capitalism works.