My default search engine changed after updating Firefox to version 98 | Hacker News Reader

My default search engine changed after updating Firefox to version 98

support.mozilla.org

68 pointsWayToDoor44 comments

From the ashes of the Netscape-source based code rose Phoenix.

From the request by that BIOS-company by the same name rose Firebird

From the request by the makers of the database by the same name rose Firefox

Now, after many years, I'm hoping that from the ashes of the disaster which is the Mitchell Baker misled Mozilla organisation annex political action committee will rise the next iteration of what was destined to be one of the cornerstones of free software, the browser.

Call the thing Ouroboros - the snake that eats its tail in a continuous tale of death and rebirth. Call it Fenghuang is you want to pull in some Chinese mindset. Call it Anastasia, call it Babatunde or Yetunde, call it by any other name which is related to rebirth (which all those names I mentioned do) but for the love of ${deity} get rid of the current Mozilla leadership and correct course to where browsers are supposed to go: installed on user devices. Send Mitchell Baker to pasture without a golden handshake. Do whatever it takes.

Hm, it looks like the ticket under which they added the "Your default search engine has been changed" message is private.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1748923

https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/commit/d28e21ce8c21dd2a...

It is actually interesting to look through the commit messages. What do you have to actually pay to get your domain specially mentioned in an allow list: https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/commit/7b655cecb81e2145...

You don't have to pay anything. You just have to acknowledge that your site might break and won't use any unimplemented functionality because the API that's enabled isn't stable enough to be enabled unconditionally yet. The same kind of thing as Chrome's origin trials.

Huh, I've been looking for the list of current search engines to see which have been removed but it seems these engines are not actually statically defined in the source code but rather the list is loaded remotely. And each search engine is actually a web extension. I did not know that!

Set `devtools.chrome.enabled` to `true` in `about:config` and then Tools -> Browser Tools -> Browser Console and type:

   const { RemoteSettings } = ChromeUtils.import("resource://services-settings/remote-settings.js", {})
   await RemoteSettings("search-config").get()

This looks to be the complete list that gets filtered based on your location, language etc.

> Mozilla was unable to secure formal permission to continue including certain search engines in Firefox. We provided an opportunity to previously-included search engines to sign an agreement and the engines that did not complete the agreement will be removed from Firefox.

Does anyone have a list of the search engines which were removed?

Perhaps some government interference?

They use the term "permission", but since when do you need to get permission to link to a search engine in a piece of software? Is Firefox being legally required to do this, or did they just decide to do it after the engine(s) in question refused to agree to Mozilla's terms?

Honestly, the way I'm reading this is that "they didn't pay us enough to keep them as a first part search engine."

And even if, is that a problem? We can use their browser for free and they do a pretty good job at not tracking anyone for huge money. What’s the problem with them having some income?

It's one thing to just not promote a search engine to your users. That I could understand. It's another thing entirely to intentionally override the user's preference and lie to them about why you're doing it. (Assuming they are actually lying and there isn't some sort of bizarre legal reason why they really do have to do things this way.)

There is none, however there's a problem with not communicating that in plain English, i.e. "we sell the spots on our preferred search engine list to generate revenue, as of now a few companies have not agreed to those terms and are being removed".

For good reasons the general convention is to render sponsorships and ads visible.

I agree that this would have been a better way to frame it, if that is what happened here.

How about listing which fucking search engines are affected?

Guess that'd be too easy for Mozilla.

Especially the last section

> What countries will be affected by this change?

> This change will apply to users in all countries who are using an affected search engine with Mozilla.

Why even bother adding this section? How about you give us a list?

Strange because they even censored the search engine name on the screenshot. I really wonder what these engines were.

Mozilla was unable to secure my formal permission to remove any part of my configuration at first (during an update).

Edit: And it's the browser that you have not to update if you want to keep things working as they used to.

Wait- since when did we need a plug-in/extension to add a default search engine? Did I miss something or is this a new "feature"?

You definitely don't as long as the site supports OpenSearch - the link they supply even mentions this. Maybe the engines that were removed don't support it?

Yeah, it's weird, their linked support article says you can add any website with opensearch but that's not mentioned in this one. I'd be surprised if search engines that were available before this update either didn't support opensearch or broke their Firefox integration so hard that they needed to be removed. The way the article is worded makes me think this is not a technical issue, though.

Came here to comment about the same. It's odd that this KB mentions extensions and not OpenSearch. In fact, extensions are always a worse choice from privacy perspective.

might be related to this: "Mozilla intends to deprecate OpenSearch and eventually remove it from Firefox."

https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2019/10/15/search-engine-add...

I think it's a confusing blog post: https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/deprecation-of-opensearch-xm...

Mozilla, please!

I really, really want to use Firefox but I also want to have a home page on my own hard disc and my own choice of search engine that doesn't get switched out at every upgrade.

Please, do better! I'm this close to giving up on you.

it’s super annoying (this happened to me today again) but it’s not worth switching from Firefox. There’s worse things to be had in the other browsers

When I worked at Mozilla, the official policy was that when the user overrides the default search engine, then that search engine pref is left alone.

(Note that if the user never changed the default, but the default itself changed, for example when Mozilla switched from Google to Yahoo (or vice versa), that was considered to be fair game.)

Whenever this happened while I was there, it was always due to an actual bug. I highly doubt that there is anything nefarious going on here.

This isn't a bug report. It's a Mozilla KB article about why they changed the search engine preference that you made.

I'm glad you're optimistic but I've seen too many nefarious things from Mozilla to be as optimistic as you. Mozilla could have included a copy of the contract that they are trying to get search engines to agree too, but they didn't. So much for transparency.

Did you even read the linked article? Mozilla is dropping some engines from Firefox (presumably because they stopped paying), so they have to change the preference back to the default because the previous value will no longer be valid.

Mozilla has (had?) an agreement with Google to make their search engine the default one in exchange for no less than $400 million/year. The agreement would last until some time in 2023, so (if that's the reason) it could be a decision from Google to stop paying.

https://www.zdnet.com/article/sources-mozilla-extends-its-go...

Google is the only one to be mentioned in the link (in the screenshot), so I doubt Google is the one that left.

> What countries will be affected by this change?

> This change will apply to users in all countries who are using an affected search engine with Mozilla.

What a pointless answer.

Luckily the thumbs down button is very close to this moronic non-answer.

Are there any details on the nature of the agreement? Is it just permission to use trademarks or something?

I doubt a search engine would not want to be included in Firefox if given the option for free, it’s likely that they stopped paying Mozilla.

Given current leadership, Mozilla might have required search engines to agree to a particular political stance or something of that nature.

This is the list of search engines https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/tree/master/browser/com... that Firefox ships with. It's a long list so it's easy to imagine that not all of them completed the agreement.

I think(?) this is what you've wanted to link to: https://github.com/mozilla/gecko-dev/tree/master/browser/com...

Yep, I edited my comment.

I do not see most of these in my system. This is very weird.

'smart' move by some MBA on their exec Team that just maximized their personal bonus. If they want the Google subsidies to keep flowing, while they are loosing users they'd better nudge those remaining users to search engines that pay them. I was morally conflicted for a long time for not using firefox and more recently for not even testing in firefox anymore. But I don't feel that way any more. They are beyond saving. IBM, Mozilla, Oracle, morally equivalent. I mainly use ungoogled chromium and safari. Qutebrowser would become my daily driver whenever they implement extension support. They recently secured some EU funding, so there could be a lot of developments soon.Nyxt looks interesting too.

https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium

https://qutebrowser.org/

https://nyxt.atlas.engineer/

> Qutebrowser would become my daily driver whenever they implement extension support.

If you're thinking of WebExtensions (i.e. Chrome/Firefox/... extensions), that's unlikely to happen without Qt implementing support for it - see the FAQ in https://github.com/qutebrowser/qutebrowser/issues/30 for details.

> They recently secured some EU funding, so there could be a lot of developments soon.

You must be thinking of a different project - though qutebrowser is donation-funded, and I just finished a big chunk of work at the university I'm employed at yesterday. Now I won't do anything there anymore until July or so, so there should be a lot of development in the next couple of months anyways!

This is embarrassing, I confused You with Nyxt. „Nyxt is graciously funded by grants from the European Union Next Generation Internet Initiative. Specifically via the sub-grant providers NLNet and FundingBox.“ I have no idea how much bureaucratic headaches are connected with applying for that kind of funding, but you as the primary maintainer should certainly not spent your time on that. Maybe someone else can look into it, or I can have a look to make up for publicly claiming you had a source of income that you don’t. Sorry again. Personally uBlock origin would be the most pressing extension for me and You do have native adblocking. But for future broad adoption webextensions are absolutely essential. You point out how difficult this is and that full chrome compatibility might be impossible but even partial compatibility excluding UI specific plugins would go a long way.

Is this related to the Linux Mint partnership?

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=4244

I'm specifically wondering if the impacted users are Mint users who had DDG has their default search engine.

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