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Comment by madeofpalk | Hacker News Reader

I'm not sure what these APIs are exactly and why they're there, but Firefox also does something similar. It has special APIs available only to Mozilla and/or Firefox domains, for things like installing extensions, or helping with first-run experience.

A blog post about it was shared here on Hacker news <12 months ago, but I'm having trouble finding it...

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Hardly the same.

apis are public, documented and the domain allowlist is both included in the UI and about:config (save from android playstore version where they hide everything to make the browser pure garbage for whatever reason)

and I'm pretty sure devs would at least think about adding your domain by default if you ask nicely with a great use case on bugzilla.

What? You think that Mozilla devs would think about adding your domain to the whitelist of domains allowed to install extensions if you just asked nicely? That would be insane from a security perspective.

But that is for websites directly related to operating the browser, whereas chrome is exposing APIs used by unrelated google products such as google meet.

This could possibly also be a violation of anti-trust laws since it is using a monopoly in one market (browsers) to get an advantage in another (video conferencing).

I wrote a post about the UITour parts a long time ago: https://www.mkelly.me/blog/content-uitourjs/

It's pretty standard among browsers. The risk should be about equal to someone spoofing the domains that the browser downloads software updates from, and you can turn it off via prefs if you really don't want it.

A commit to Webkits Quirks.cpp was shared last month [0]. Probably not what you are referring to but has a similar vibe.

[0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40631439

Not really. Browser developers add lots of different website-specific hacks to make sites behave better in their browser. Mozilla actually used to do this a lot, when they were originally the underdog 20+ years ago and were trying to get people to switch to the Mozilla suite (and then Firefox), when the argument against switching was often related to websites not working or rendering properly in Mozilla/Firefox that behaved properly in IE.

(Not that this is not the same thing as a website developer adding browser-specific hacks to make their site behave better/worse in a particular browser.)

Those are APIs related to browser functionality and onboarding. They're not there to advantage one of Mozilla's other product offerings at the expense of similar products offered by other companies.

Yes and they should also be criticized for it. Mozilla isn't exactly known for caring about privacy even if their marketing wants you to believe otherwise.

As for the anti-trust aspect, here the market share matters and Firefox is insignificant in that regard.

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