What the flying fuck, Mozilla???? You build your brand around privacy and freedom from tracking, then you pull a stunt like this? Are you guys trying to fail?
I was literally today getting ramped up to switch to Firefox. Now I have to be on a constant lookout for stuff like this?
I think this may actually do enough damage to kill Firefox. And for what? Better search? Firefox is a browser, not Google/Bing/DDG/whatever.
Honestly, if you guys wanted to know where to find good porn on the internet, why didn’t you just ask?
This is much like how Mozilla completely broke the security of its Sync protocol: sure, they thought about it and had what they believed to be convincing reasons, but they were still completely wrong. Why Mozilla why?
As opposed to, "automatically log me in and sync everything without asking" (I use Sync; you have to explicitly enable it and choose what to sync).
> There’s no compromise path with the crypto
I hope you aren't really promising that your crypto has no weaknesses and never will.
The road to hell is paved with good intentions.
Yeah, and then they summarize it as "We want to provide recommendations from new and diverse places, make space for innovation in discovery and navigation, and above all build experiences our users love." If there are all these deep thoughts and reasons, where are they? "You had to be there" is all we get? Because until the fruit of those thousands of hours of discussion are shared, mentioning that it took all these people all this time doesn't exactly make it better. I'm sure there are also people who discussed thousands of hours over the artistic merits of "Basic Instinct", but I'm still going with Bill Hicks' take on it.
Just accept that Mozilla lost something in the eyes of many today it will not get back. I'll still use Firefox, even like I might still buy things I need at a shop after the shopkeeper I genuinely respected dropped a racist slur or something. Get in, grab things, pay, get out. No attachment, no relationship.
> absolutely and wholeheartedly in service of improving the experience of all users.
Intended to be in service, maybe. In service of all users, no. I've know Firefox since 2000 and use it as main browser since Opera went to crap. For all intents and purposes, I am a user. Wholeheartedly on your behalf doesn't fit with how much it is in actual service of actual me.
If you ask random FF users what top 5 things they would like to see in FF, how often do suggestions in the address bar come up? Why not use the search bar for that? Have you ever worked in customer service? An address bar not being a pure address bar is one of the major Verschlimmbesserungen (a supposed improvement that just makes things worse) I can think of. (Though in CS it was never was bad when trying to help my mother before we started using Teamviewer. But man, the pain that caused. And I can't think of one moment of joy it caused to make up for that.)
You know why cars don't just have four lights indicating standstill, moving slowly, moving fast and moving too fast? Because we take that stuff seriously. As opposed to browsers and operating systems and other things that are regressing. And while plenty of car accidents happen, any random fool and their brother can use a car like virtuoso in comparison to how many people still just stumble through the web, on a machine where they stumble through icons and windows. There are reasons for that, and the time will come when just turning the back on all of it, making a CPU with some tape and boogers and writing applications for that will be more efficient (not to mention fun) than a lifetime in the coming artificial womb keeping people in stasis. Sorry for getting all dark on you there, but saying I spent thousands of hours thinking about this would be selling myself short.