That sounds like a bad idea - how would the browser know the tracking token is a tracking token and not just a token? And wouldn't redirecting away from AMP be taking away control from the user?
As extensions those are fine, as core browser features, they sound a bit iffy.
So is downloading amp pages in the background and bloating your phone by default though (chrome). I think something like that should be turned on by default but toggleable. It's a sensible option for a privacy focused browser.
AMP is just an ordinary page on google domain. If you're going to hard-code some anti-Google behaviour in Firefox, it means to start a war against Google. Not the wisest decision when Google is the main revenue source for Firefox AFAIK.
Given Google's reach, not the wisest decision for any browser maker.
Google being the main revenue source for Firefox is often cited and is true, but if you look at Brave, its competition, what they do is to block a publisher's ads, replacing them with their own, being essentially racketeering and I'm surprised how they weren't declared illegal already.
Fact of the matter is, if people don't pay money for browser licenses, and they don't, and if ads don't fund those browsers, and they currently do, then alternatives to Chrome cannot exist, if not funded by another mega corporation that can burn money just so Google can't be the only player, like what Apple does.
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But back to decision making — we are talking about AMP pages being served by searching on Google.com, because that's the major source of these links.
Given the search engine is Google's property and not some public utility, they can destroy any browser maker if they wanted to.
Speaking of which, if you're so bothered with Google.com serving AMP pages, well, why not choose an alternative instead?
Brave just has adblock by default with an opt-in system for ads based on notifications. It isn't replacing the ads on the page. Not sure how you see that as racketeering, it's a completely different system.
But it does replace the ads on the page, because those ads they serve are related to the pages you visit and that the system is "opt-in" is irrelevant, because that's their business model.
It's racketeering because they piggyback on publishers for serving their ads contextually, while not allowing publishers to run their own ads, forcing publishers to join if they want any revenue from Brave users. Brave wants to be a gate keeper, coercing publishers in the process.
Again, I don't see how this isn't illegal. It's one thing to be a non-profit browser extension developed by a community on GitHub, it's quite another to do build ad blocking products for profit, because the later is clearly copyright infringement at the very least.
Right, forgot about that. It only makes my point stronger though.
Given Google's reach with their search engine, with YouTube, with Gmail, starting a war with Google would be a death sentence for a browser maker, no matter the supposed source of funding, which is basically ads across the board anyway, an industry also controlled by Google and Facebook.
AMP breaks down some fundmental things about the internet. Obviously tracking tokens could be changed over time, but there's a blacklist in the popular Privacy Badger extension. Firefox's privacy protection features have varying levels of opt-in-ness, so I don't see why if pulling in Disconnects blacklist for one thing is okay, but tokens not. I'm fine with an extension too, but right now only one extension is whitelisted for the new Firefox on Android.
Historically extensions have moved faster than the companies.
Also I highly doubt Google will ever change the utm parameter name. There’s thousands of JS libraries that extract it and use it for various additional analytics, hosted blog/wordpress hackery. and e-commerce/payment plugins that inject it across iframes and other stuff.
Plus tons of server side apps that pattern match on utm_ or simply injects them into urls and views.
It’d be a nightmare for tons of businesses which have complicated setups which reuse or inject the token for conversion tracking alone, not including all the other stuff.
Don't think of it that way. Think of it as cookie/token spam. Just like email spam, we'll have to employ various tactics in order to fight back. Heuristics, known bad-player Databases, punishment and domain-blocking, etc. How likely is it that any mail server will deny mails coming from facebook.com? The ability to "send" your browser tokens should be something that requires a reputation that the various entities/domains have to earn and retain. And if Facebook decides to abuse it, then their domain will start breaking because they rely on cookies.
As extensions those are fine, as core browser features, they sound a bit iffy.