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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: 5, Insightful) by julian on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:56PM (8 children)

    by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 16 2019, @06:56PM (#830533)

    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.

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  • (Score: 3, Touché) by ikanreed on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:08PM

    by ikanreed (3164) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday April 16 2019, @07:08PM (#830542) Journal

    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)

    by isostatic (365) on Tuesday April 16 2019, @08:03PM (#830571) Journal

    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)

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @09:46PM (#830637)

      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)

        by fido_dogstoyevsky (131) <axehandleNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Tuesday April 16 2019, @10:33PM (#830666)

        LOL that only works with Linux. What if OP uses a real desktop?

        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

          by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 16 2019, @11:51PM (#830717)

          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

          by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 17 2019, @02:50PM (#831054)

          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)

    by jb (338) on Wednesday April 17 2019, @06:24AM (#830870)

    Those choices were made because for the vast majority of users they are the safest defaults

    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

      by julian (6003) Subscriber Badge on Thursday April 18 2019, @05:08AM (#831511)

      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.