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Comment by abdulmuhaimin | Hacker News Reader

I dont envy Mozilla. The demographic that they're targeting are really hard to please.

You're probably right but, as a member of that demographic:

- I use Firefox, and have done continuously for a long time. I don't intend to switch to anything else, despite being very unhappy with the experience in many ways, as I consider it to be the "least worst"

- I genuinely believe there are very easily achievable low-hanging fruit that Mozilla could implement that would at least please a large swathe of their target demographic. Namely, not talking about privacy and then slapping Google tracking into everything they do. I understand that there's a revenue stream there, and a balance to be met between economic survival and ideal conditions, but this particilar issue is a deal tipped too far towards defying the point of the exercise.

Perhaps I'm in a bubble and this is just my "single issue", but shouting about privacy and sending all that data about their users to Google seems a fairly large deal to me.

> ...and then slapping Google tracking into everything they do...

Huh, I must have missed that - if true, this is a huge breach of trust for me. Do you have a link?

Until it's provided I would assume that it's a gross misrepresentation/exaggeration.

Other than putting Google Analytics on all Mozilla properties as sibling commenters have already mentioned (link to info on that here [0]), there is also the following:

- as I mentioned in another comment, Firefox Preview comes with Google as a default search engine (not a huge issue) and with "search suggestions" enabled by default (which sends everything you ever type to Google).

- Even if you disable search suggestions (or change provider), Firefox has a built-in feature called "Google Safe Browsing" which collates every URL you visit and sends bulk reports to Google. This feature is only disable-able via the "here be dragons" about:config area.

- then there's Google Location Services, which sends your WiFi router SSID, SSIDs of routers in range, and hardware details, to Google. This is less clear cut as Mozilla's use of this service has been on-off over time, and varies per device. See[1]

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/privacy/websites/

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1512161

This amounts to far less than "slapping Google tracking into everything they do", which reasonable people would interpret to include just using the browser. Reasonable people also understand that performing Google searches sends data to Google.

Safe Browsing DOES NOT reveal URLs to Google. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Safe_Browsing#Privacy and read the protocol spec or Firefox source code if you doubt this.

> Google Location Services, which sends your WiFi router SSID, SSIDs of routers in range, and hardware details, to Google. This is less clear cut as Mozilla's use of this service has been on-off over time, and varies per device.

Mozilla has made a significant investment to try to get away from this by building the Mozilla Location Service. In the meantime it's a straight tradeoff between quality of user experience and information leakage. Experience shows that degrading the user experience for some invisible and small privacy benefit is not a winning strategy.

Safe Browsing doesn't report plaintext urls to Google. See https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Safe_Browsing and the more precisely the Update API it's using from https://developers.google.com/safe-browsing/v4/

"One of the most persistent misunderstandings about Safe Browsing is the idea that the browser needs to send all visited URLs to Google in order to verify whether or not they are safe."

https://feeding.cloud.geek.nz/posts/how-safe-browsing-works-...

> Firefox has a built-in feature called "Google Safe Browsing" which collates every URL you visit and sends bulk reports to Google. This feature is only disable-able via the "here be dragons" about:config area.

Is this not 'about:preferences' -> Privacy & Security -> Block dangerous and deceptive content ?

Safe Browsing in Firefox is nothing more than a flat list of malware-laden sites your browser downloads. It compares your current site against the list to warn you if a match occurs. It does nothing else whatsoever. Even the most basic search of technical details would show that. Firefox code is also open to be read.

Thanks for the clarification - this is all acceptable in my eyes then. Of course I never use Google Search (prefer Qwant, StartPage and DDG) and location services are never running in my browser. Safe Browsing - I prefer not to have it enabled, but it's not such a risk if it is.

This is quite a different thing from using Chrome(-ish browsers) with the "phone home".

Exactly.

This is what it comes down to: I still use Firefox confidently despite being aware of these issues, as I'm aware they're still very minor compared to running Chrome, or even any other Google-engine-based project.

It's still however worthwhile probing these issues. They're still far from ideal, even if they're preferable as a "least worst" option.

They do use Google Analytics on their websites but they do have a contract with Google that explicitly states that Google cannot use any of that data for tracking ever for any reason at all. Would make Mozilla rich if Google violated that.

E.g. this issue about Google Analytics on about:addons https://github.com/mozilla/addons-frontend/issues/2785

I'm with you on this one. I don't think mozilla is as privacy oriented as HN would make you think.

* They pushed ad/extension for a TV show to everyone

* They silently served modified installers to a small subset of users downloading firefox which sent all browsing data to a 3rd party by default.

* Disabling experiments used for pushing the mr robot ad does not disable "normandy" - which is practically the same thing and they used to push new certificates once their old ones expired and broke addons recently. This feature is hidden in advanced settings.

And then as you say, using google analytics everywhere (giving google data), painting google indirectly as evil while having it as a default engine and collecting google money.

> I don't think mozilla is as privacy oriented as HN would make you think.

> * They pushed ad/extension for a TV show to everyone

I assume you're talking about the "mr robot" thing here as well. One can accuse it of being many things, but it wasn't a privacy violation, as no data was sent (or planned to be sent) to anybody, either to Mozilla or any third-party. (It was silly, an abuse of studies, a source of worry for those who monitor their list of add-ons for suspicious items, and a strategic error.)

I'm not sure I agree. I think everything users want is achievable. The current Firefox allows addons and ad blocking via addons. The Fenix update improves speed and adds some new features. Both the current and the new undermine Blink dominance and serve to support a more diverse, collaborative open Internet. All of these things are attainable in one browser, and I think that would satisfy most users.

Hard to please but influential.

Among that group are sysadmins, webmasters and people who get called by friend or family members for anything tech-related.

If they do things right, like they did when IE was dominant, these guys will definitely give back.

Loyal. Savvy. Influential. And a userbase that speaks out to get a better product; I'd prefer a loyal userbase that provides feedback about what they care about than a fickle one that doesn't.

I've used since v0.4.

As it should be. If you swallow every bone you are thrown you end up with bullshit like chrome's adblocker crippling served with a fake performance concern sauce.

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