SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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]
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday November 22 2014, @08:58PM
Two has-beens circling the drain decide to link arms. Will it make any difference? I don't care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 22 2014, @09:25PM
This is the same drain that GNOME went down thanks to GNOME 3, and it's the drain that Debian is now swirling toward.
I think it does matter, even if you don't use Firefox, because whatever major open source projects you hold dear could be following them next.
Awareness must be raised about the danger that hipsters and their ilk pose to software development projects.
(Score: 2) by Justin Case on Saturday November 22 2014, @09:42PM
Believe me I am very aware of the danger. The question is, how do we banish them to another planet?
(Score: 3, Funny) by useless on Sunday November 23 2014, @12:57AM
Then there was a "Catch and Release" [gothamist.com] type program. The problem was they forgot to do the "Release" part outside the city, and just got overrun with them.
Maybe we can work with the Mars One [mars-one.com] project to fill the rockets with PBR, MacBooks, and Rails manuals.
(Score: 2) by cykros on Monday November 24 2014, @03:11PM
It also matters because at this time, while Firefox may be taking a bit of a nosedive, there's not really a serious browser left on the market worth picking. You can have Google's marketpla....err, browser (nevermind the terribly limited extension support by comparison), Apple's security nightmare, or...dear god, IE is actually being taken seriously again these days. Or Opera, I guess, with the other dozen or so users.
At least Debian didn't hold the kind of monopoly on sanity for power users Firefox has held for over a decade now, problems and all. This is not a good state of affairs for the web.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Sunday November 23 2014, @12:17PM
Google circling the drain?? Huh?
"To Einstein, without whose theory this book would not have been possible. Or necessary." Journey to Madness
(Score: 2) by Hairyfeet on Sunday November 23 2014, @12:23PM
Sure it will as it'll boost search results for Bing (since Yahoo's backend is run by MSFT) and IMHO having competition is good, even if its only a duopoly instead of a monopoly. The new CEO has been hinting that they will take over the search backend when the MSFT contract is up so it might become a 3 horse race again which is fine by me.
That said I have moved my customers and myself away from FF after being a VERY loyal FF user since before it was even called FF due to the fact the devs stopped listening to users and made FF into a Chrome wannabe. I went with Comodo Chromium Secure with PaleMoon 64bit for those sites that don't like Chromium and this is the same as what I give my customers who seem to be happy with this setup. I got a LOT of complaints when FF went Chrome ripoff and with PaleMoon having a....well a pre ripoff FF UI it makes the switch that much easier. If the Moz devs would spend less time trying to rip off Google and more time listening to their users they might have a shot at regaining share but as it is now? I predict a falling arrow graph as it slides into obscurity.
From the buzz I'd say PaleMoon is in the best position to take over the top gecko spot,especially now that they have their own UI string, followed by Waterfox a distant second.
ACs are never seen so don't bother. Always ready to show SJWs for the racists they are.