Apparently Firefox 57 when it is installed tries to switch the users default search engine to Google.
Whether it asks for user permission to do so, I am not sure.
Do the terms of the deal actually require them to do this?
Apparently Firefox 57 when it is installed tries to switch the users default search engine to Google.
Whether it asks for user permission to do so, I am not sure.
Do the terms of the deal actually require them to do this?
The decision tree is roughly:
1. If the custom engine is one of our default options, keep it.
2. If the custom engine was set by an add-on, keep it.
3. If the custom engine uses HTTPS, prompt the user to actively choose by opening about:searchreset, and do not prompt again after the user has made a choice.
4. If the custom engine uses insecure HTTP, silently reset to the default.
You can open about:searchreset yourself to see what the prompt looks like.
Code at https://dxr.mozilla.org/mozilla-central/rev/a928be5dacc3b544...
Re 4.: Why silently, why not a prompt here?
Firefox sometimes asks me if I want to do a factory reset, clear all my settings and add-ons, "to make the browser faster".
I believe most users will find this question absurd. And Mozilla give it a pretty baity name, too. "Refresh Firefox". What if someone clicks Yes by mistake?
Here are some other HTTPS-enabled search engines to test. If I am not mistaken all have been mentioned on HN in the past.
https://wiby.me
https://gigablast.com
https://mojeek.com
https://unbubble.eu
https://ecosia.org
https://searx.me
https://symbolhound.com
https://findx.comI do not dare going close to mozilla's bugzilla, it has been a waste of my time almost every time and taking abuse and frustration is not exactly an enjoyable experience.
But hey this does not really matter anymore as after over 15 years of supporting mozilla I have had enough of its utter nonsense and have now left firefox with the firm intent to never return and have stopped supporting anything mozilla while actively hoping it will fail and disappear, the sooner, the better.
Way too much disdain for the people using firefox, too much discrepancy between the marketing and the actual thing. Alienating long time supporter one by one is probably not the smartest strategy but hey what do I know, mozilla is making hundred more millions with a fraction of the past user base so they're probably successful by their own metrics.
Sometimes, I've been told the setup I was using wasn't supported, but they'd accept a patch if I was willing to invest some effort in it. I did once, and the patch was indeed accepted.
Obviously, Mozilla cannot support every obscure platform, but then again neither does Chrome. I don't think your expectation match reality if you think that's the case.
To recap the ALSA one, mozilla pretended ALSA had shortcomings it actually does not have (some things about edge cases of netflix and 5.1 audio or something) and it turned out it was Mozilla implementation that was so bad and pretty much abandone that no one at mozilla wanted to work on it. It was taunted at people complaining that for ALSA to stay they should do it themselves or find someone to do it, until someone came forward and offered to do it and suddenly it was too late so it was not happening. The other reason invoked was that a very little number of people did not have libpulse installed which it turned out was false (because most distro disabled mozilla's spying) and irrelevant (libpulse is often pulled as a dependency on ALSA only system). So suddenly it was the fault of distro packagers and people caring about their privacy had it coming because they took the extra step of disabling telemetry (which is not supposed to be enable on release channel anyways).
I supposed those bug reports are still somewhere in bugzilla, if you wanna look for them. The KDE integration one is one of the longstanding open ones, and openSUSE provided a patch for better KDE integration at some point but it was refused for some reason. you can find it on AUR https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/firefox-kde-opensuse/
Even a simple one related to the ALSA debacle was ignored, see they forgot to mention dropping ALSA in the release notes somehow they overlooked this "detail" but they thought to include a warning message with a link to an URL that happen to be broken. A bug report was filed to report this along with the correct URL but the fix that should have taken about a minute to implement had not seen the light of day after two weeks and AFAIK did not happen at all.
I sincerely doubt KDE, debian, arch, ALSA are obscure platforms, and turns out chromium supports alsa (IINM firefox is the only linux browser with a hard dependency on pulseaudio).
To be honest with time I have learned not to expect better of Mozilla or more like to expect mozilla to not deliver on its marketing promises and to dismiss user feedback.
/edit
here's the recent iteration of the KDE integration bug, this one has been opened for 16 years: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=140751
here's the main one for dropping ALSA and making pulseaudio a hard dependency, it got locked and discussion continued on google groups somewhere: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1247056 there are other with several duplicates such as: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345661
I can't find the main broken URL one with the duplicates, but it seems this one is about the same issue and had been marked as solved (Only took 3 months to fix a broken URL which was the only was to get details on why the browser suddenly stopped playing sound): https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1345439
To my knowledge there are many other examples in bugzilla in the last 10 years, maybe I've been unlucky and found myself in the worst of bugzilla making my experience not representative of the actual thing, but from what I gathered around on mozillazine, HN, distro forums and some other places my experience is not out of touch with what others have to say about theirs.
My experience has been, rather, that Mozilla has had one of the most fantastically responsive bug filing systems. Actually getting bugs fixed in a timely manner is a different question, but that's independent of bug tracking systems.
Reporting bugs and HN discussion is obviously not the same, at all. I know how to make bug reports and have not had bad experience like those on mozilla's bugzilla anywhere else, well maybe on gnome bugzilla and occasionally here and there because over 20 years of reporting bugs you are deemed to have the occasional bad experience.
I'm not saying your experience was bad or even close mine, I'm only talking for myself here. Maybe I have been impacted with some of the most controversial bugs and you've not, maybe I'm actually more in a niche segment of the user base than you are.
Anyways thanks for judging and misjudging my person based on assumption, it always nice to be targeted by passive aggressive online message from a random stranger.
The fun part in your comment is that constructive minded people do not expect or ask of bug reporters to offer to maintain something for they understand that reporting bugs is actually very constructive in itself, a helpful and much needed activity. Instead of antagonizing bug reporters try working with them, as "we're both in this working together to improve something for everyone". Assume good faith instead of malice and to understand that this an actual person reporting the bug and cut the patronizing, it will help. If you do not feel capable of doing that, just say nothing it will be more constructive.
The story at the time was that Google walked away from the deal when Mozilla wanted more than they thought their traffic was worth, and now Google is back 2 years before the contract expires makes me wonder if Mozilla was more accurate in the relative value of their ability to generate search traffic. So now I'm curious to see how much Google's traffic acquisition costs have gone up (TAC) with this switch.
[1] https://www.digitalreachagency.com/blog/firefox-deal-boosts-...
[2] https://www.comscore.com/Insights/Rankings/comScore-Releases...
How do you disable the auto update? For now I've manually installed an older compatible version.
Annoying.
Or don't as I'm personally not affected and already have grown a deep mistrust for mozilla.
But honestly, if Google doesn't have it (down below whichever ad-driven first results I have to skip), it's a good bet that I'm not going to find it on other search engines either, unless some specific site indexes its own content better than the search engines do (archive.org comes to mind, for some things).
Of course, this is all colored by my search style and the topics I'm usually looking for information on.
DuckDuckGo is awesome.
!gi google images
!define the free dictionary
!r reddit
There are a lot more, and I find them quite useful.
First apple is a hardware vendor of overpriced gadgets, totally unrelated to google market which is an advertising network.
Second the ship has long sailed on the feud between Google and Facebook, they now have ceased fighting and are each back on focusing on their own thing.
Do you have a recent example of google fighting microsoft ? heck even apple was friend with microsoft behind the scene, the fight was just for show. Remember how bill gates gave money to help apple stay afloat ?
google docs happened a while ago and it's been some time since microsoft has started moving its office suite to the cloud with office365.
Actually microsoft has been moving from the desktop to cloud for a few years now.
Tell that to Tim Cooks high school
https://9to5google.com/2016/06/20/chromebooks-taking-over-ma... At Apple CEO Tim Cook's old high school, they are selling their ...