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Comment by trendia | Hacker News Reader

> Firefox is about letting you control your browser experience

The true history of Pocket suggests otherwise -- in 2015 Mozilla integrated Pocket, which was at that time a private company separate from Mozilla, into Firefox.

Further, when Mozilla first integrated it into Firefox, there was no way to remove it, only hide the icon:

> "This page http://help.getpocket.com/customer/portal/articles/1999137-h.... purports to tell you how to disable Pocket for Firefox, yet all it does is remove the button from the toolbar. Searching "pocket" in about:config reveals numerous preferences that can be edited, including browser.pocket.enabled which remains set to true after following Pocket's instructions."

Only after severe backlash [0] did Mozilla decide the best way to handle it was to purchase Pocket.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9667809

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You can disable Pocket. Once disabled, there is no change in the browsing experience.

> The true history of Pocket suggests otherwise -- in 2015 Mozilla integrated Pocket, which was at that time a private company separate from Mozilla, into Firefox.

What in this true history you cite indicates otherwise?

Please elaborate on how some config settings are altering your browser experience.

It strikes me as intriguing that people think there was ever a "severe backlash" over Pocket, let alone that it was what would have caused Mozilla to buy Pocket. Why would they not have bought it right away if that was the case? For that matter, why would they have bought it at all?

I fear you're vastly overestimating the effects a few people had on Mozilla's decision to experiment with, then buy a company that could help them potentially gain some actual influence over content-makers and the ad industry, and hopefully reduce their utter reliance on Google's money.

At best, the only thing the criticism over Pocket accomplished was to hasten Mozilla's pre-existing desire to develop these kinds of features as (what became) Test Pilot extensions.

If people (and, organizations) are not allowed to learn from their mistakes Big Brother is an even more scary thing for our youth than it already is.

But they don't learn. They keep running head-first into these obvious blunders. Then they write a contrite sounding blog post, change nothing, and do it again a year later.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15931730

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9876016

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12441519

Yes, Mozilla made mistakes (I think you mentioned the biggest ones), but they also did things right. Every of these mistakes was solved. Firefox OS was solved as well; it got us Servo/Quantum. The question is do you forgive their mistakes, or what is your alternative? The most popular browser, Google Chrome, is still worse when it comes to privacy.

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