Introducing Mozilla Firefox optimized for Yahoo | Hacker News Reader

Introducing Mozilla Firefox optimized for Yahoo

downloads.yahoo.com

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WTF! Why is this on the HN first page?!

"Yahoo optimised" = Firefox + yahoo toolbar + yahoo search engine default + other yahoo crap.

And anyway, I like my Firefox "unoptimised", thank you very much.

http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/late...

I like my Firefox "unoptimised", thank you very much.

well, that's one way to be satisfied with modern browsers.

> Sorry, Mozilla Firefox optimized for Yahoo! is not available for your system.

You can compile Firefox for Linux easily, so this shows just how much adware they added.

"Sorry, Mozilla Firefox optimized for Yahoo! is not available for your system." << This is where they already failed.

A nice touch is that the list of supported systems includes "Linux" (which I'm on), but I still get this message. My navigator.platform is "Linux x86_64", not sure how they are misinterpreting that.

Have they removed Linux as being supported? I can't find it on the supported systems page.

Linux doesn't appear in the English version of that page, but it does in the German one that they are serving me (ignoring accept-lang, geolocating my IP, I guess)

Curious. I get redirected to [0] on Debian/Opera, with the following content:

  Entschuldigen Sie, Mozilla Firefox für Yahoo! optimiert ist nicht für Ihr System
  verfügbar.

  Die für Yahoo! optimierte Mozilla Firefox Version ist nur für folgende
  Betriebssysteme verfügbar:
  […]
  Linux

(paraphrasing: Apologies, the version of Mozilla Firefox optimised for Yahoo! is not available for your system. It is only available for the following operating systems: […] Linux […]).

On the other hand, the UK version of that website, [1], doesn’t mention Linux at all:

  Sorry, Mozilla Firefox optimised for Yahoo! is not available for your system.

  The Yahoo! optimised version of Mozilla Firefox is only available for the
  following operating systems:
  Windows XP SP2
  Windows Server 2003
  Windows Vista
  Windows 7
  Windows 8
  Mac OS X 10.6 or later

  See the System Requirements for more details on hardware and software
  requirements and recommendations.

So, two questions:

- Why is the German version apparently available for Linux and the English one isn’t?

- Why don’t you allow me to download the version for OS A from OS B? OS A might not have a browser yet, after all.

- Why are you still using browser sniffing like that in 2013?

[0] http://downloads.yahoo.com/de/firefox/blocked

[1] http://downloads.yahoo.com/uk/firefox/blocked

Anyone capable of downloading a browser for a different OS from what they are running doesn't want to download a browser "optimized" by Yahoo.

The French version[0] mentions Linux. It still says it's not available on my system though, so I wonder how they determined my OS.

I thought the "X11; Linux x86_64" string in my user-agent was obvious enough.

[0] http://downloads.yahoo.com/fr/firefox/blocked

> So, two questions 3 in fact :) But I share 3 questions.

While trying to access it with _Firefox_ on Linux, I also get redirected to a "blocked" page in French which does mention Linux.

But the "system requirement" page does not mention Linux, only Mac and Windows. This page does say the minimal requirements where provided by Mozilla, but Mozilla does provide a Linux version, so that's strange.

Maybe Linux was "just" a translation error or they decided not to support it in the end and forgot to edit the translations ... btw ironically August 25th is the birthday of the first newsgroup post about Linux. Happy Birthday Linux !

So what's this "Optimized for Yahoo" version ?

You are currently using Firefox® version 26 Click the download button if you wish to install Firefox 23

o.o

I feel nostalgia for IE6 toolbars now.

This was the wrong way to integrate Yahoo into Firefox. Firefox should have done it as an "option" rather than Yahoo doing the reverse. They successfully made this version of Firefox feel like a crapware toolbar analog that will sniff my browsing history and add no value to my browsing experience or life. Google, on the other hand, successfully did what Yahoo is trying to do. They released what was perceived to be a new browser: Google Chrome. Few had heard of Chromium before Google massaged the codebase it into Google Chrome, but everybody's heard of Firefox. Yahoo should have developed the Super Awesome Browser 9000 (even if they used a previously unknown browser as a starting point -- Opera doesn't count) instead of just slapping some branding on one of the most popular and famous browsers. Perhaps they also thought piggy backing on the Firefox branding was going to help them; it won't.

I predict this version of Firefox will be adopted by almost nobody, primarily because nobody really cares about Yahoo; their search just isn't up to snuff and their relevance is slowly fading. Yahoo is on borrowed time and they're executing poorly.

Oh, and fuck you Yahoo for not making your crapware available to Linux users.

Partnering with Yahoo (or increasing their partnership) is a potential long-term revenue stream for Mozilla if Google decides to back out of their deal (which, afaik, they show no sign of doing), but I'm not sure bundling the Yahoo toolbar with what would be a good browser is the way to go about that.

System Requirements:

  Windows

    Operating Systems

      Windows XP SP2, Server 2003, Vista, 7 or 8

    Minimum Hardware

      Pentium 4 or newer processor that supports SSE2
      512MB of RAM
      200MB of hard drive space

  Mac

    Operating Systems

      Mac OS X 10.6 or later

    Minimum Hardware

      Macintosh computer with an Intel x86 processor
      512 MB of RAM
      200 MB hard drive space

Sounds like a relic

Is this new? I though they had this for a very long time.

Doesn't like Linux > http://screencloud.net/v/xtbW

It's interesting that they chose to release this with FF 23. In a few weeks, FF 24 will be out which is an ESR. Seems like that would be an easier path to take for something like this since they'd have to deal with a major update every 10 months instead of medium updates every 6 weeks.

Do they mean optimized, literally? or just toolbars, default search engine etc?

and also how does it circumvent google search engine revenue deal with mozilla?

I guess they didn't get the memo about the new Firefox logo.

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