Bye Firefox.
Edit: "We promise to put you first and never sell your personal data. What else do you want for the Web?" -- https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512
Don't collect my personal data.
Edit: "We promise to put you first and never sell your personal data. What else do you want for the Web?" -- https://twitter.com/firefox/status/461550580729536512
Don't collect my personal data.
Oh wait...
Ok, serious mode. For years people have been complaining that Mozilla is too dependent on funding from Google. This is a way for Mozilla to fund itself without depending on Google. But that's not good either?
Maybe Mozilla should start nagging people for donations, Wikipedia-style? But that's not good either: lots of people complain about Wikipedia's yearly "begging" and say they would prefer to see ads instead.
What would you have them do?
Indeed, it's not a binary decision, there are other ways than just sell you user's data.
For starter, Google (and now Yahoo) were giving hundreds of millions every year. What did Mozilla do with that?
And still easily the slowest.
And still, $30,000,000 for administrative cost? $45,000,000 for marketing? (never saw any ads for firefox, did you? I have no idea what they spent so much money on)
https://static.mozilla.com/moco/en-US/pdf/Mozilla_Audited_Fi...
It isn't hugely informative, but I would guess that the $9 million in office leases mentioned towards the end is categorized as an administrative cost.
[1] http://stupidhackathon.github.io/
The tiles are grouped based on multiple servers, so the fact that your browser requested a specific tile doesn't directly tell them which site you actually visited.
Their last blog entry is from 18 May: https://blog.mozilla.org/
Edit: they have a different blog here that mentions it: https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/
Why is it so hard to understand that leaking any bits not necessary for the retrieval and presentation of the link I clicked on is absolutely unacceptable? Anything that sends data that could not be learned form the server logs is spyware and will be treated as such.
Some companies like to claim that this spying is necessary because the data is useful. I'm sure it is, just like I'm sure a thief find the goods they stole to be useful. For similar reasons claims - like your explanation of this firefox misfeature - relating to the amount of bits leaked are not actualy a defense.
Personally I don't mind. I love Firefox and the work they've done all these years and if that's the only way to keep them afloat then so be it. I just hope the implementation won't be too intrusive.
But if the offering is from a not for profit company, a charity, or volunteers building something open source for their enjoyment and to contribute to the community, then you are not the product.
As for Mozilla, I'll leave you to make up your mind. I tend to agree with you and I love Mozilla too (but hope that Iceweasel doesn't have this :)
Let's take a look at two contrasting open source projects: Ruby and the V8 Javascript interpreter. Ruby is dog slow in comparison to V8. They both languages are extremely dynamic and present similar optimization challenges. Why? Because Google has enough cash to hire world-class experts to make V8 fing fast. One of the guys behind V8 has 20 years of experience with writing JITs for dynamic languages. The guy practically invited JITs for dynamic languages, and was also one of the main contributors of the Hotspot JVM JIT.
In contrast, Ruby does not. I met up with a panel of Ruby core developers a couple of months ago. It became extremely clear that Ruby is underfunded. Ruby has maybe 2 full time paid developers. They are skilled, but are nowhere near as skilled as the V8 guy when it comes to optimizing dynamic languages. They also lack funding for infrastructure projects.
Web browsers are one of the most complex pieces of software in human history. Mozilla literally spends millions per year on developing Firefox. Sure, a browser might exist in a completely free, lowly-funded FOSS form. But at what expense? Just look at Ruby vs V8. You can't just hand-wave away the importance of money.