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Comment by jasonkostempski | Hacker News Reader

What do you think is holding Firefox back from doing the same?

Good question... I often wonder why Mozilla talks so much about privacy and user-rights, but then in reality does so little in Firefox to implement them by technical means. Why isn't their tracking-blocking the best among major browsers? Why is Firefox still so easily fingerprintable, as confirmed by EFF's Panopticlick?

But then again when you know the recent stories like Firefox+Cliqz... it doesn't really leave questions open...

Well, they are transparent about it: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/firefox-cliqz/

I agree that setting default options that respect privacy is good, but I also feel Mozilla has struck the balance between "best customer experience and a revenue stream", plus "informing the customer so they can make decisions".

> but I also feel Mozilla has struck the balance between [...]

My impression is that those who don't care about privacy have already switched to Chrome long ago, and see little reason to go back. And from those who do care, an increasing number (including me) is considering leaving FireFox due decreased trust in Mozilla's self-proclaimed privacy standing. I do wonder which target audience will be left to use FireFox after all then.

I'm not sure what's left after Chrome and FF. Safari if you are on a Mac and IE on Windows (though IE seems imperfect). I suppose you can use a FF derivative like Ice Weasel. For my money, Mozilla is still the best option and with so many free options out there, it's hard to keep up unless you play the game somewhat. Mozilla's most important role is a seat at the web standards table and if they wither on the vine because users jump to Chrome because it "just works", they will lose that seat.

The number of people who care about their privacy in the general population is quite small. We in our tech bubble believe that everybody cares, or should care, but most are satisfied if they find a searched page by entering it “into the Google”.

Those with FF installed it 10y ago when it was sexy, and stuck with it because they are resistant to change.

>What do you think is holding Firefox back from doing the same?

Probably the fact that Google pays them billions of dollars.

> Probably the fact that Google pays them billions of dollars.

Isn't that over? Their default search engine is Yahoo now, IIRC.

Google is now the default search provider in U.S. and Canada.

No, they made a new deal with google and ended theirs with Yahoo late last year.

http://www.zdnet.com/article/googles-back-its-firefoxs-defau...

That’s a good question. I’d assume they have to little of a market share and is too fragile to piss off anybody. But this is just a guess so looking forward to other opinions on this.

Firefox has "Tracking Protection"* setting under "Privacy & Security".

* https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/tracking-protection

Firefox is doing it but as a separate browser for iOS. Wonder why not on desktop yet. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/focus

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