Comment by anon1385 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by anon1385 | Hacker News Reader

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>This is very similar to what we do with the search box: we choose Google as the default because we think they're the best default for the users, not because they got to us first or paid us the most

Is there a public record of this discussion? I'm kind of curious if anybody brought up the idea that not having your searches tracked by an ad network would be best for the users. Unfortunately that leads to the conclusion that the default search should be DDG (or similar) and I doubt they could afford to pay you enough to keep Mozilla running. Call me cynical but I'm not sure I believe that anybody in the room was going to take that suggestion seriously when it meant their paycheque was on the line.

I can accept the argument that Google is a better search engine right now so the tracking is 'worth it' for most users (although that does seem to conflict heavily with Principle 4 of the Mozilla Manifesto: Individuals’ security and privacy on the Internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional). What happens if DGG catches up enough to be functionally equivalent for most people? Do Mozilla engineers collectively fall on their swords and lose their jobs to improve the privacy of the internet for most users? Or do we have to engage in 'lesser of two evils' style mental gymnastics about the world being better if Firefox is well funded?

So my statement was a bit too short and not quite accurate. For a reference, the closest thing I could find within 10 minutes was this mailing list thread: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/flhYG39Oc...

It starts off specifically about the removal of Yandex as the default for the Russian localization of Firefox, but touches on the greater question of why Google vs anyone else given our differences on tracking users and such. For context, the Harvey mentioned is Harvey Anderson, who was Senior VP of Business and Legal Affairs at the time.

My personal summary would be something like this: Mozilla has a mission defined in the manifesto. We have a ton of projects that are supported by the funding provided by Google and other search engines. There are several factors being balanced in the choice of search engine: usefulness to users, respectfulness of user privacy, and sustainability of the project, to name a few.

JohnTHaller's got it right: Sure, we could switch to DDG and max out the respectfulness of user privacy aspect. In return, the usefulness to users goes down[1], and the sustainability plummets. We'd be sticking perfectly to our ideals, but shooting ourselves in the foot (assuming we want to continue doing all the different projects we do).

In choosing Google, the leadership of the project decided that Google as search provided offered the best balance of usefulness, respectfulness, and sustainability. You can argue that they're really bad at respecting user privacy[2], but they'd argue all the alternatives offer an even worse balance. They think that we can provide a greater net good to the world by going with Google than we can by going with DDG or someone else.

Mozilla tends to favor pragmatism, IMO, and sometimes that means focusing on sustainability (a nice word for making money to pay for our other activities). Hence why we considered directory tiles, among other ideas, so that we can pay the bills and keep making the web better.

(I'm intentionally ignoring side-arguments like "Why does Mozilla need so _much_ money?" or "Why do VPs get to make decisions without consulting the community" because one comment isn't enough to address a complex topic like this :D)

[1] IMO, I find DDG's results to be worse than Google's, and although I'm fine with that in return for their other great features, not all users are.

[2] And I'd mildly agree, not being super-knowledgeable about the specifics personally.

I had a discussion about this with someone on the Mozilla IRC, and the argument seems to be that users still have the option to add DDG on their own, so it's not being treated as optional. Users still have the option of switching.

I'm not a big fan of this argument, and I argued that DDG, or another privacy conscious search engine (though DDG is the best I've used), would be very much in line with Mozilla goals. I'm sure many users are still unaware of Google's practices (whether those practices are inherently harmful or not), and exposing DDG as a search option would be a means of raising awareness.

I don't quite understand the rationale behind it.

Quite simply, Mozilla would go bankrupt trying to run on DDG's available revenue share.

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