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Mozilla Responds To Firefox User Backlash Over Pocket Integration 351

An anonymous reader writes: Last week, Mozilla updated Firefox to add Pocket integration — software that lets you save web articles to read later. Over the weekend, some Firefox users began to voice their displeasure over the move on public forums like Bugzilla, Google Groups, and Hacker News. The complaints center around Pocket being a proprietary third-party service, which already exists as an add-on, and is not a required component for a browser. Integrating Pocket directly into Firefox means it cannot be removed, only disabled. In response, Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration and the integration code is open source.
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Mozilla Responds To Firefox User Backlash Over Pocket Integration

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  • so... (Score:4, Interesting)

    by zlives ( 2009072 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:31PM (#49877091)

    ad block and no script baked in next?

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Can't. Google will ban them [techcrunch.com].

      • I believe they removed the Ad Block app because it removed ad from other apps.

        Including ad block in Firefox would only effect Firefox, so it would probably be okay.

        • except Firefox for Android being in the Play store

          • Re:so... (Score:4, Informative)

            by Xenx ( 2211586 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:19PM (#49877583)
            That's not the point. The point is that Google(in theory) will allow an app to block ads that display within itself, but not other apps installed on the device. Thus, an adblocking browser is ok because it only affects the browser itself.
        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          by Anonymous Coward

          I believe they apped the App App app because it apped apps from other apps.

          Apped that for you!

          Apps!

    • Doubtful. They don't pay enough.

      Apparently, the Mozilla foundation is in money trouble. They're baking ads in the new tab page. They switch to Yahoo cause Google won't pay them anymore. They "partner" with Telefonica to add Hello to Firefox, now they're "partners" with Pocket.

      I'm guessing Firefox 39 will add Superfish integration to give me a more personalized web experience and justify it because it's already installed on millions of PC's.

  • Oh mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)

    by blueshift_1 ( 3692407 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:34PM (#49877111)
    ... telling the users what they like. Well done.
    • Re:Oh mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)

      by luvirini ( 753157 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:04PM (#49877415)

      Unfortunately Mozilla has been doing this for quite a while.

      It used to be that firefox was the most userfriendly and at the same time most extendable browser with fairly good stability and fairly high resource use.

      Now it is a lot less userfriendly, though still as extendable with better stability than before and while the resource use has not really changed the other browsers have started using more and more resources so by relative position it is very good in resource use.

      What makes me gringe with each major update of firefox is how it gets more and more annoying to use, that is you need to tweak, install extensions and disable more and more to get it closer to a usable browser.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by aardvarkjoe ( 156801 )

      They're just learning from the developers of Gnome, systemd, and slashcode.

    • Re:Oh mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)

      by ProzacPatient ( 915544 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:26PM (#49877663)

      Why not? It works for Apple.

      On a more serious note I've been a loyal Firefox user for the past 12 years however I'm getting rather upset with the direction it has taken the past couple years, however I don't want to use Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer or Edge (all of which are owned and maintained by large corporations) and since Opera has jumped on the WebKit bandwagon making it a glorified Chrome skin I'm thinking maybe it's time for a new open source browser. The only browser I can think of that isn't tied to some other browser is Konqueror but unfortunately I find KHTML to be somewhat awful and even if it wasn't Konqueror is *nix only.

      tl;dr: Mozilla has become detached from what made early Firefox versions great and it's probably time for them to be replaced.

    • by ConceptJunkie ( 24823 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:29PM (#49877703) Homepage Journal

      Perhaps it's time for a community-driven, open--source reboot that will focus on producing a lean, mean, standards-compliant browser without all the politics and bloat, but which is very flexible and user-configurable.

      Maybe we can call it, "Phoenix".

      • Maybe we can call it, "Phoenix".

        Hm. Well the "phoenix" name in computing is already taken by Phoenix Bios. How about "firebird"?

  • The statement (Score:5, Informative)

    by arielCo ( 995647 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:35PM (#49877127)

    Quoth Mozilla from TFA:

    Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and we’ve seen that users love to save interesting Web content to easily revisit it later, so it was an easy choice to offer Pocket as a service in Firefox and we’ve gotten lots of positive feedback about the integration from users.

    All the code related to this integration within Firefox is open source and Pocket has licensed all the Firefox integration code under the MPLv2 license. On top of that, Pocket asked Mozilla for input on how to improve their policy, based on early comments from Mozillians. After that discussion, Pocket updated their privacy policy in early May to explain more precisely how they handle data. You can read Pocket’s privacy policy here [getpocket.com].

    Directly integrating Pocket into the browser was a choice we made to provide this feature to our users in the best way possible. To disable Pocket, you can remove it from your toolbar or menu. If Pocket is removed from the toolbar or menu, then the feature is effectively disabled, though you can still find it again by accessing it in the Customize Panel. You can find detailed instructions here [mozilla.org].

    The "removal instructions" are just to drag the button out of sight, but the bug report asking for actual removal [mozilla.org], quoth Manish Goregaokar [:manishearth]:

    Pocket is just a bunch of API calls. Firefox UI code is lazy loaded. Put those two together, and yes, Pocket code is effectively "disabled". It will cause no extra baggage until viewed.

    • BUT there is a TON of pocket garbage in " about:config"
      that is SET to ON and true

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by steelfood ( 895457 )

      Which is all good and fine from a technical standpoint. But look at the status bar fiasco. What was their response to that again? Oh, right, it can be brought back via a plugin. So do they want to move features into plugins or integrate plugins into the core code? Which is it, guys?

      It's either blatant hypocrisy or there's some serious cognative dissonance going on inside Mozilla. Yeah, they're probably doing this to make money, but this one move simply invalidates all of their prior excuses for removing fea

      • Couldn't they achieve the same thing by installing the add-on by default and letting you remove it? They went to all that effort to create an add-on framework.

      • by arielCo ( 995647 )

        Remind me, what did we lose along with the status bar? AFAIK everything either pops up as needed or was moved to the menu/toolbars.

        I don't think interface changes or "bloat" are what slows down Firefox's adoption. I've used it since 1.x and I'm actually eager to see the search bar merged with the address bar, since I already do all my searches with engine keywords ("az" for Amazon, "/" for Google, "w" for Wikipedia though it's my default engine, etc...).

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by MobyDisk ( 75490 )

          Please no! Just yesterday I told a client, who uses IE, to go to a URL. They tried it and got a Bing search result. First I thought they used the search bar. But no, it turned out they mistyped something in the address bar, and so it decided "that wasn't a valid URL" and it ran a search instead. It would have been better if it said "server not found" or "hey, you can't have spaces in URLs" or "you forgot the colon after https." But since the default behavior is to run a search, it replaced what they ty

          • by arielCo ( 995647 )

            The malformed URL would've resulted in an error otherwise, with more or less the same result. That's why I leave out the scheme bit and just give them host/path, or mail them the URL. Non-technical users don't care for URLs (or anything with a precise structure), and figuring out how people fail is part of the art of user support (:

            • Re:The statement (Score:5, Insightful)

              by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @02:46PM (#49878405) Homepage

              The malformed URL would've resulted in an error otherwise, with more or less the same result.

              Yes, it would have resulted in an error, which is exactly what I needed. It was not "more or less the same result." It was a completely different result that obfuscated the actual problem. When they got the Bing page, I first had to determine if they typed it into the correct box. Then, I had to determine what they typed in and what was wrong with it. But since it erased what I typed, the user couldn't read back to me what they typed.

              There is a compromise: If it gave them the Bing search result, but didn't change what they entered into the URL bar, and/or echoed back what they typed in, then I would not have lost valuable information.

              I had to include the scheme in this case, and I couldn't mail them the URL because it was the URL to get to their mail. :-) Worse yet, it had a port number.

        • I'm actually eager to see the search bar merged with the address bar, since I already do all my searches with engine keywords ("az" for Amazon, "/" for Google, "w" for Wikipedia though it's my default engine, etc...).

          You may love it, but for others it is absolutely horrendous! The problem arises when you have an intranet, and wish to go to internal websites.

          Having your address bar hijacked into a search bar so [random bunch of scum] can inspect your activity is only mildly intrusive, but getting error 4

    • Re:The statement (Score:5, Informative)

      by MobyDisk ( 75490 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:06PM (#49877447) Homepage

      Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and...

      Let's see if they were right about that. Most popular extensions [mozilla.org]

      Adblock plus: 20 million users
      Video downloadhelper: 5 million users
      Firebug: 2 million users
      .
      .
      .
      Pocket: 257k users

      It is pretty popular. That puts it on Page 4 of the list. [mozilla.org]

      • by arielCo ( 995647 )

        Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and...

        Let's see if they were right about that. Most popular extensions [mozilla.org]

        Adblock plus: 20 million users
        Video downloadhelper: 5 million users
        Firebug: 2 million users
        .
        .
        .
        Pocket: 257k users

        It is pretty popular. That puts it on Page 4 of the list. [mozilla.org]

        To be fair, they didn't say how popular. Maybe they just mean that it has been accepted as opposed to brought out-of-the-blue (it's just above YouTube Unblocker and the Reddit Enhancement Suite), but I get your point - it sounds a bit like marketspeak.

      • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

        by fahrbot-bot ( 874524 )

        Pocket: 257k users

        It is pretty popular. That puts it on Page 4 of the list. [mozilla.org]

        Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if the "popularity" had to do with Pocket being in the stock portfolio of someone at Mozilla - or some other self-serving investment relationship... /cynical

  • Seamonkey (Score:4, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:35PM (#49877129)
    Want FireFox like it was back in the 3.x days? [seamonkey-project.org]
  • by NotInHere ( 3654617 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:36PM (#49877141)

    Ship that by default if you dare!

    • Lol. They'll work themselves out of their own 1% of the market :)

    • It's almost 100 times more popular, in fact.

      The current Mozilla wouldn't dare to do that, but it would not be that different from when they implemented pop-up blocking. That annoyed advertisers, and also had some collateral damage. But it was very much appreciated by users. I think if adblock had been around back when pop-up blocking was invented, it too would have been built into the browser.

  • Sigh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:39PM (#49877165) Homepage Journal

    Obligatory why is all this shit built into Firefox comment here. I don't even want the developer console, on some machines. It's just an annoyance when I accidentally pop it up. Why should I have features that bloat the install if I'm not using them? Make them all extensions. Wasn't that the point of the design? That it's a platform?

  • Mozilla should also integrate facebook, twitter, gmail, yahoo mail, outlook, pandora, itune..... etc. After all we all users like tight integration, don't we? I am sure this partners can provide minimal client side software under MPLv2.

    Seriously, Mozilla should pull this out immediately. It can maintain a site for recommended extensions but should not directly integrate it.

    • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What do you think the *social* options in about:config are about? Guess who "needs" the provided API.

  • by Gordo_1 ( 256312 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:40PM (#49877175)

    Initially thought it was a new mozilla-run service, but when i clicked through to learn more, it was clear that it was a 3rd-party proprietary service. That's when i removed the 'Pocket' icon from the toolbar: Hamburger --> Customize --> drag it down and out. Kind of annoying that the plugin code bloat remains, but guess that's just something I'll live with for now.

    I've been a big user and supporter of Firefox, even through all the performance problems, mis-steps, yahoo search shenanigans, but this is the first time I feel they blatantly went against their philosophy of an open web. Tsk tsk Mozilla.

  • by HannethCom ( 585323 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:40PM (#49877177)
    Firefox was supposed to be a no nonsense browser only. It was supposed to be just a browser with all the "bloat" of the suite cut out. The odd thing is right away the first release of Firefox was a bigger download and took up more memory than Seamonkey. (Windows Platform) Firefox had been changed over to the generic UI framework and was on Gecko Runner. I assumed that these were the reason for the bigger size, but when Seamonkey changed over to these, its memory footprint and download size shrunk.

    As it is Seamonkey download is 31MB and Firefox is 38MB. I personally like the old suite and all its options, but I also like that it feels faster.
  • by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:41PM (#49877183)
    Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • by Anonymous Coward

    This is why Firefox is losing market share. At one time, I could add whatever add-ons I felt was necessary to make Firefox look like what I wanted it to, and/or what I needed. However, for some time, Mozilla has been adopting a kitchen sink approach, where Firefox will have everything, and instead of being a lean browser, will be as bloated as IE.

  • by 93 Escort Wagon ( 326346 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:42PM (#49877215)

    If you do not like what the Mozilla Foundation is doing with Firefox, and they don't seem to care what you think - join the millions of us who've already switched to a different browser.

    I was a loyal Firefox user for many years, but somewhere along the way Mozilla lost its focus. The things I used to need Firefox for (DOM Inspector, JavaScript debugging, Ad Block) are readily available with other browsers. So I bid adieu to their political agendas and bloated infrastructure (seriously - how much money do you need to develop a web browser?) and moved on.

    • how much money do you need to develop a web browser?) and moved on.

      Less than Jimmy Wales needs to run a wiki, at least.

    • by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:11PM (#49877489) Homepage

      Well, what's our options here?

      There's Chrome, which is owned by an advertising company. There's Chromium, which I've never been clear on what it's for. There's Firefox (which we have two stories today about bloat). There's Opera, which is essentially Chrome. Apple abandoned Safari on Windows quite some time ago.

      So, what's left that isn't either a) a marketing/ad platform, or b) full of bloat?

      • Pale Moon is a Firefox fork, and is the closest thing I can find to the old, "good" Firefox. I've used it for almost a year now, and have had zero issues (I'm on Linux mostly, but it has worked flawlessly on my Win machines as well).
      • by MSG ( 12810 )

        I'm not happy about the addition of the Pocket code, but mostly because it's a proprietary service.

        I suspect that if you actually measured disk, network (download), or memory use for the Pocket code, "bloat" claims are going to look wildly exaggerated.

        Pocket aside, Firefox is still my favorite browser, and one of the least bloated available. Compared to Chrome: smaller download, smaller install, uses considerably less RAM when displaying the same set of tabs, faster startup, faster JavaScript, and I can ru

    • There isn't a single good browser any more.

      All the FF forks suck in various ways.

      Seamonkey blows and is under control of Mozilla.

      Chrome is nothing but spyware.

      IE sucks as always doesn't run on anything but Windows. Anyone else remember the Linux IE version, now that was bad!

      Maybe the new browser from the old CEO of Opera won't suck but I am not holding my breath.

      Voting with your feet and moving to a different browser is like voting in an election, all there is on the ballot is various levels of evil and inc

  • Well... (Score:4, Informative)

    by Arkh89 ( 2870391 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:45PM (#49877239)

    Let's see if their "Submit Feedback" add-on works... (menu icon -> question mark icon -> Submit Feedback)

  • How many? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:45PM (#49877241) Homepage

    Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration

    What, they asked like 5 users if they liked it?

    I'm betting more people do not care/do not want it than those who do.

    If I want to save a web page, I'll use a damned bookmark.

    Instead of putting this shit in the browser for the small fraction of people who care, how about we leave it as an add-on and those people who want it can add it themselves.

    Why must Mozilla keep filling up Firefox with shit that most people have no interest in? Stop wasting my fucking memory with crapware I don't need.

    Who the hell is in charge at Mozilla these days? I bunch of guys from marketing?

    I hope someone is going to fork it and throw this crap out so we can have a simple web browser, not some swiss-army knife with crap in it we don't care about.

  • Mozilla is in the pocket of Big Pocket.

  • by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @12:52PM (#49877319)

    ... Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration...

    Maybe Mozilla should stop telling users what they want, and start giving users what they want.

  • by Tester ( 591 )

    There is a precedent with the "Hello" webrtc calling functionality, which also relies on a proprietary service. I wish Mozilla had invested in writing a decent WebRTC server, it's really something that is missing from the WebRTC ecosystem. Currently we only have MCUs (where all the media goes throught the server) and hosted services, but no good P2P WebRTC service.

  • by BitPit1 ( 832373 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:00PM (#49877367)
    Pocket should not be built in to Firefox as it is yet another third party that gets to capture your browser usage. Good old bookmarks have the same function without involving some unknown third party. I do not want the Pocket feature taking up resources on my computer! Leave it as an addon for folks that can't figure out how to use bookmarks.
  • The short version (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:02PM (#49877397)

    >> Users: Quit adding unnecessary crap. Stick to the original mission of "leanest browser available."
    >> Mozilla: F*** you. Here's some bloatware chasing down some rarely used media extensions.
    >> Users: Quit adding unnecessary crap. Stick to the original mission of "leanest browser available."
    >> Mozilla: F*** you. Here's a Mozilla "operating system."
    >> Users: Quit adding unnecessary crap. Stick to the original mission of "leanest browser available."
    >> Mozilla: F*** you. Here are some built-in ads.
    >> Users: Quit adding unnecessary crap. Stick to the original mission of "leanest browser available."
    >> Mozilla: F*** you. Here is some built-in crapware from Pocket.
    >> Users: No, f*** you. We already switched ourselves and everyone we know still running Firefox to Chrome.

    • PaleMoon offers a fork of Firefox without all the recent non-sense. I use it with all the extensions I collected from my days of using Firefox and it does a much better job of living up to Firefox's original goals than Firefox has in the last few years.

  • by itsme1234 ( 199680 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:07PM (#49877455)

    (UN)Suprisingly it also sucks if you WANT pocket and you were registered with them and you have an account and all.
    How? They said FF extension won't be supported anymore because Pocket is already in Firefox. Well, the "integrated" version just sends you to Pocket web page when you want to see what you want to read! It is nothing more, just a bookmark (it even shows under Bookmarks button).

    While the extension would show your reading list directly, you could dismiss pages without going to pocket web page and so on. MUCH BETTER!

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Using Firefox has become like that relationship that used to be perfect and then out of nowhere your partner starts cheating on you and each time swears its going to be the last time.

    And you keep falling for it.

    • For me, installing every new Firefox release starts with a web search for the new Firefox "features" to disable - sigh. (Social, Hello, Pocket, telemetry, health reporting, beacon, etc...)

  • What a waste (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Khyber ( 864651 ) <techkitsune@gmail.com> on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:22PM (#49877621) Homepage Journal

    It's not like bookmarks or Save Page functionality hasn't existed for more than a decade.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:26PM (#49877655)

    They would do an ask slashdot about how they've been treating the browser lately.

  • Isn't that called bookmarks?

  • Bloat Spyware (Score:2, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Chome = Spyware
    Firefox = Bloat

    I'd rather deal with bloat than spyware.

  • by Henriok ( 6762 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @01:57PM (#49877953)
    Hey Mozilla! Why don't you write some open source code that links to other useful proprietary stuff that folks like, like the h264 capabilities that comes installed on most of the plattforms you are deploying on?
  • I use Firefox and have been using Pocket (from a bookmarklet) for ages. So I guess that makes me one of the FF users that likes Pocket. However even I don't think it's in the slightest bit appropriate to integrate the service into the browser.

    As it happens, I have my FF UI so heavily customized (menus and status bars forever, man) that I don't see any visible trace of Pocket and didn't know it had been added in this way until this article popped up.

  • Keep adding some features coming from some pet projects of the most vocal developers that a great part of the user base doesn't care... while products that gets bloated, slower and buggy at every interaction. Somehow this doesn't seem like a good business strategy.

    Personal experience: Changed to Chrome about 3 months ago... since I learned to live with the definitively less advanced tab management, everything has been better. Much faster and less buggy.

  • by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @02:40PM (#49878359)

    1.about: config
    2. Find browser.pocket.enabled preference and change its value to ‘false’.
    3. To remove Reader view, change reader.parse-on-load.enabled preference value to ‘false‘.
    4. Restart the browser to see the changes.

    -S

  • by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Tuesday June 09, 2015 @05:56PM (#49879731)

    >"Mozilla has released a statement saying users like the integration"

    I don't know any such users. In fact, most people I know agree that Mozilla needs to stop this trend of adding things to Firefox; it goes completely contrary to the Firefox mission (or what I thought it used to be, anyway)- to be small, open, cross-platform, and fast.

    So please remove it. And then remove Hello. In fact, remove the developer stuff too (which 99.999% of users never use). Please use Addons/Extensions for these things. And while you are at it- LISTEN TO YOUR USER BASE who want full control over the UI options (Should I mention tabs-on-bottom? Or status panel? Or traditional file menus?). Stop trying to be Chrome!!!

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