What kills me is when people say they use Chrome cause they don't trust Mozilla cause they embedded Pocket, but like Chrome is literally shoved with a million Google bits, even Chromium (the open source variant of Google Chrome which is the proprietary variant almost everyone installs) has Google crapware at a much larger scale. Mozilla's Firefox still feels like the lesser of the two evils.
Edit: Added clarification about Chromium in case someone doesn't know the difference between Chromium (open source) vs Google Chrome (proprietary).
Here is the worst possible case scenario that is really happening with Chrome:
If I want to use a Google Property with Chrome (just tested with Google Search Console) I MUST be "signed into" Chrome with the same Google Account as I want use to access the service.
I am not "signed into" Chrome with a google account and I log into that service using the login process IN the web page I become automatically "signed into" Chrome.
Chrome just peeks throught the veil and I am now logged into my browser. Talk about overstepping boundaries.
So, I don't want to have my browser sessions associated to my google account so I "Sign Out" of the browser. BOOM! Logged out of the service as well.
This is a very sad day for the state of a free and open internet.
It's a great browser, even faster than Chromium. I especially appreciate that they offer 32 bit versions for download which run on my old Linux machines just by unpacking the ZIP to some directory.
Well i think Mozilla made very clear in the past that they did all they can to avoid Pocket to be evasive, and they made it to respect your privacy, in case you choose to use it. Of course you can always turn it off on your Firefox and never come across it again.
Why do you think it has to offer suggestions? Reading List didn't. The equivalents in other browsers don't. Suggestions could be a separate opt in feature.
Pocket's Article View is optional. Firefox has Reader View built in. Special handling for top sites could be built in. Special handling for any site could use a protocol designed for privacy like malware protection does.
>you can always turn it off on your Firefox and never come across it again //
Are you aware that they reenabled it for users who had removed it (and of course made it a non-removable plugin in the first place), not sure if you were being sarcastic?
I still don't understand what Mozilla got out of forcing Pocket on people.
Somehow I feel like they could have avoided a lot of the backlash by renaming Pocket to Firefox Pocket (and thus being part of the Firefox Lockwise, Firefox Send, Firefox Sync etc suite). Instead of being / feeling like it’s own separate entity, it would have felt like an integral part of Firefox and thus enjoying the same privacy commitments.
Even though I have Pocket disabled I don’t see much of a problem with it being in the browser. Isn’t it the same concept as Safari’s Reading List?
It's just a plugin. They could have put it in the store, put a message in the update info "try pocket, we'd like to ram it down your throat but someone here with sense suggested we could give you control over your browser". Ta-da.
No need to put it into people's toolbars, pretend it's integral then put it back in people's toolbars when they remove it.
It's just disdain for users and the exact sort of heavy handed tactics I use FOSS to avoid.
Same thing with changing start pages, just leave it alone - suggest new defaults on update and allow people to subscribe to adverts if they want them.
yeah that would be a good a idea i think the logical reason i can find for them to not do it was that Pocket was an independent business where probably Mozilla does not even own completely. Also by keeping them independent makes it easier to sell in the future.
Sadly I had hopes for ChromeOS but I'm more saddened nothing like ChromeOS has popped up.
If Mozilla teamed up with someone like Ubuntu to produce a viable alternative I'd buy into it fairly quickly honestly.
In the meantime I'm considering an iPad Pro as a "Laptop" alternative and as a way to offload apps from my phone so my phone is just that, a phone with nothing but maybe the work apps on it and texting stuff. I don't want social media in my pocket anymore.
Edit: On another note, maybe if we see more ARM laptops it may be worthwhile for a new Netbook / ARM focused distro to crop up. One thing that kills me about Chromebooks is paying a thousand dollars for decent specs but I could pay the same amount and real a laptop with a real OS on it. The main selling factor with ChromeOS for me though has always been their security model.
> If Mozilla teamed up with someone like Ubuntu to produce a viable alternative I'd buy into it fairly quickly honestly.
The thing about that it is that it has really very little to do with Mozilla. ChromeOS is only that because a) ChromeOS and Chrome are both made by Google (there is no "teaming up"), and b) Google's incentive is for everything to be using their services in their browser.
But putting everything in the browser is not generally desirable in its own right. An interesting competitor would have a browser, but it would just be another application. And there have been several attempts at making security-first operating systems, from various Linux distros to OpenBSD, but none of them have Google's resources. And that isn't really a problem Mozilla can solve at this point either.
I would be fine if not everything is in the browser honestly. However the number of packages should be a slim amount to mimic how minimalist Chromebooks can be closely.
Putting everything in the browser doesn't buy you anything unless your goal is to put everything into your web services. Meanwhile it incurs a lot of costs because browsers are designed for client-server, which in Google's case was the point, but in a user-focused device it's a liability. You saddle yourself with javascript instead of better languages, you end up having to reimplement things like local storage and data transfer between applications, a lot of interesting applications will need access to lower level networking than browsers normally provide (e.g. ICMP, UDP, multicast) or some other access to hardware (e.g. access to USB devices).
Why build a second operating system inside the browser instead of just using the original operating system?
I'd be surprised if "people who know what telemetry is" and "people who choose to use ChromeOS" have much overlap.
I don't mean that as a dig on ChromeOS - personally I think its evolved into a pretty decent product for certain use cases. You can even use Firefox if you're so inclined.
So Firefox should aim to only be marginally better than Chrome, degrading itself along the way?
Firefox: 'I know we used to do cool stuff but Google rips it's users a new one on the regular so we need to be more shitty too, what're they going to do leave and use Chrome, lolz' /probably
Thing is, Google doesn't try to sell itself otherwise. Mozilla talks a good game about privacy and users-first, but then it goes and does things like Pocket, Mr. Robot, etc. that make it clear it is all just marketing.
Edit: Uh, my memory was faulty on this one. See below.
Mozilla replaced a feature that was end to end encrypted with one that sent private data to a third party for data mining.
They denied getting paid for the integration. That was technically true. They eventually admitted they got paid for referrals.
They bought the company in 2017 and promised to release the source code. They still haven't.
The Pocket website says "as a member of the Firefox family, privacy is paramount."[1] The first part is misleading and the second part is simply false.
The whole Pocket affair reeked of “Valley connections” and corruption, and resulted in a net loss of privacy for Firefox users compared to what was there before. I use Firefox and will likely never stop using it, but that and FFOS, I felt, were signs that MoCo was being run like “just another company” rather than something that should have a strong moral and ethical compass.
Edit: Added clarification about Chromium in case someone doesn't know the difference between Chromium (open source) vs Google Chrome (proprietary).