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Comment by godelski | Hacker News Reader

> Its existence signifies that something fundamentally is wrong with Firefox and where Mozilla spends its resources.

Why? I don't understand this. Mozilla needs to make money somehow. Unfortunately we don't live in a post scarcity world where programmers just contribute to OSS because they enjoy it and want to make the world better. Currently they do it because of those things AND because they need an income. Unfortunately things still cost money. (I think this answers your last few questions as well too)

> If it is so unpopular, how come Firefox hasn’t axed it?

I think this is sampling and internal bias. Have you seen the numbers of clicks? I haven't. But I rather like pocket.

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While Mozilla has to beg for scraps we're all being sold up the river.

How? Personally I'd rather be shown an ad (sponsored stories) than have my data taken.

They are allowed to make good products too you know. If Pocket is the best they got then they deserve go to zero.

If they have a product so polarising then maybe it shouldn’t be bundled as bloat to the browser.

verroq -- can you tell me which browser you use that doesn't suffer from any feature you don't like? Or is it a philosophical problem where a non-profit adding a small feature to raise revenue means it should be abandoned and died, but if a for profit company building a browser can incorporate all manner of devious and privacy harming features but that is acceptable because you expect so little from for-profit companies?

Being a non-profit doesn’t give them a pass on making bad products. Being open source doesn’t give a free pass on bad products. If they choose a unsustainable business model, where making profit ruins their product, then they created this problem themselves.

I run Chromium, it probably spies on me, but it doesn’t do it in my face, and it doesn’t pretend otherwise.

When I run Firefox, they say they care, but they shamelessly bundle that crapware. Makes me wonder if another day after another Firefox update they’ll add Pocket 2.0 without me knowing.

It’s the same issue I have with Brave as well, I cannot stand the BAT integration.

Your arguments are so full of holes I don't even know where to start. Pocket is fully documented and very easy to turn off. That's all I'm going to reply to you on this. Good grief.

I guess the difference is you value things vastly differently. This feature, which doesn't spy on you and takes epsilon resources if not used and can be disabled with two clicks "ruins their product", makes firefox a "bad product", and this feature is "shameless crapware." But chrome spying on you apologetically is acceptable.

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