Why Firefox Fights for the Future of the Web (theguardian.com) 57
"Mozilla is no longer fighting for market share of its browser: it is fighting for the future of the web," writes the Guardian, citing Mozilla Project co-founder Mitchell Baker:
Baker's pitch is that only Mozilla is motivated, first and foremost, to make using the web a pleasurable experience. Google's main priority is to funnel user data into the enormous advertising engine that accounts for most of its revenue. Apple's motivation is to ensure that customers continue to buy a new iPhone every couple of years and don't switch to Android...."
Firefox now runs sites such as Facebook in "containers", effectively hiving the social network off into its own little sandboxed world, where it can't see what's happening on other sites. Baker says: "It reduces Facebook's ability to follow you around the web and track you when you're not on Facebook and just living your life...." Mozilla has launched Monitor, a data-breach reporting service; Lockwise, a password manager; and Send, a privacy-focused alternative to services such as WeSendit. It's also beta-testing a VPN (virtual private network) service, which it hopes to market to privacy-conscious users...
Apple's iOS (mobile operating system) is an acknowledged disaster for Mozilla. Safari is the default and, while users can install other browsers, they come doubly hindered: they can never be set as the default, meaning any link clicked in other applications will open in Safari; and they must use Safari's "rendering engine", a technical limitation that means that even the browsers that Firefox does have on the platform are technically just fancy wrappers for Apple's own browser, rather than full versions of the service that Mozilla has built over the decades... "Even if you do download a replacement, iOS drops you back into the default. I don't know why that's acceptable. Every link you open on a phone is the choice of the phone maker, even if you, as a user, want something else."
Summarizing Baker's concerns, the Guardian writes that "It is perfectly possible to build a browser that prevents advertising companies from aggregating user data. But it is unlikely that any browser made by an advertising company would offer such a feature..."
And an activist for the Small Technology Foundation tells them that Google "wants the web to go through Google. It already mostly does: with eyes on 70% to 80% of the web."
Firefox now runs sites such as Facebook in "containers", effectively hiving the social network off into its own little sandboxed world, where it can't see what's happening on other sites. Baker says: "It reduces Facebook's ability to follow you around the web and track you when you're not on Facebook and just living your life...." Mozilla has launched Monitor, a data-breach reporting service; Lockwise, a password manager; and Send, a privacy-focused alternative to services such as WeSendit. It's also beta-testing a VPN (virtual private network) service, which it hopes to market to privacy-conscious users...
Apple's iOS (mobile operating system) is an acknowledged disaster for Mozilla. Safari is the default and, while users can install other browsers, they come doubly hindered: they can never be set as the default, meaning any link clicked in other applications will open in Safari; and they must use Safari's "rendering engine", a technical limitation that means that even the browsers that Firefox does have on the platform are technically just fancy wrappers for Apple's own browser, rather than full versions of the service that Mozilla has built over the decades... "Even if you do download a replacement, iOS drops you back into the default. I don't know why that's acceptable. Every link you open on a phone is the choice of the phone maker, even if you, as a user, want something else."
Summarizing Baker's concerns, the Guardian writes that "It is perfectly possible to build a browser that prevents advertising companies from aggregating user data. But it is unlikely that any browser made by an advertising company would offer such a feature..."
And an activist for the Small Technology Foundation tells them that Google "wants the web to go through Google. It already mostly does: with eyes on 70% to 80% of the web."
Re:Overlooked the obvious... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
That's because anonymous comments have no value.
Re: Mod parent down - #gamergate troll. (Score:1)
Classic SJW approach to suppress the truth. Wouldn't want people to be informed and draw their own conclusions.
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You don't have any serious alternatives so the SJW crawling on the backs of others are in a position of power. Plug your ears and ignore the PC babies but you've got to support the project they hijacked. It's better than the alternative. Maybe they will grow up or people will work to weaken their grip.
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Re: Overlooked the obvious... (Score:1)
https://www.breitbart.com/tech... [breitbart.com]
Brave is a new browser that aims to âoefix the Web.â How? By blocking everything except the content you explicitly want. That means no ads, no cookies, nothing that you havenâ(TM)t personally requested from the Internet.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
I don't care about the users, I just look at the product. Firefox is objectively inferior to Vivaldi, which is my browser of choice. The fact that Firefox still crashes regularly is just pathetic.
Your experience is not everyone's. Vivaldi crashes and hogs memory on my system far more than Firefox and Firefox is rock solid here.
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Apple killed Safari for me (Score:5, Insightful)
Ever since they crippled extensions in the recent versions of Safari ( like uBlock Origin), it’s been basically dead to me.
If you can’t run uBlock Origin, you’re not a real browser.
Re: Apple killed Safari for me (Score:1)
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I wish there was a decent way to run uBlock Origin on Android. There are some Chrome based browsers like Brave that support it, but they all have other issues. Firefox has performance problems too, and critically layout issues that make many sites unusable.
The future of the web is mobile devices as much as desktop. That's the battleground where Firefox could win because everyone else sucks and their major competitor, Chrome, has decided not to support extensions at all.
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I wish there was a decent way to run uBlock Origin on Android. There are some Chrome based browsers like Brave that support it, but they all have other issues. Firefox has performance problems too, and critically layout issues that make many sites unusable.
The future of the web is mobile devices as much as desktop. That's the battleground where Firefox could win because everyone else sucks and their major competitor, Chrome, has decided not to support extensions at all.
I'm running uBlock Origin in android...no idea why you think you can't.
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Which browser?
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As I mentioned Firefox has two issues, one fatal. Try opening Slashdot in desktop mode in Firefox. On a phone with a decent screen the text is unreadable. Far too small. Firefox doesn't seem to be DPI aware.
The other issue is performance. It's not great but I can live with it.
When's the trailer coming out? (Score:3)
Why Firefox Fights for the Future of the Web
Sounds like a plot for a movie. I half expected TFS to start with, "In a World ... where the Internet is dangerous and most browsers aren't your friend, one stands up to protect the innocent and fights for the future of the Web ..."
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Firefox failed to take Chrome seriously (Score:4, Interesting)
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My big fear is Firefox will just adopt blink instead of maintaining engine diversity
Gecko isn't going anywhere as far as anyone working on Firefox is concerned.
We already lost extension diversity
The eff are you going on about? Firefox's WebExtensions are like Blink Extensions in that you have access objects in browser.* and some of chrome.* namespace is implemented, but the permission API, the manifest format, the parts of browser.* that you are allowed to access are different between the different browsers. But don't be confused here. Just because the API namespace is similar does not mean that the actual implementation
Firefox fights for the future of the web (Score:2)
until they go broke.
Re: (Score:2)
They spent $20M on Pocket. They are drowning in so much cash that they have it to waste, while browser bugs go unfixed... in some cases for years.
Re:Firefox fights for the future of the web (Score:5, Insightful)
That's as maybe *now*. But most of Mozilla's financing comes from deals with big dataraping corporations (Google, Yahoo, Yandex). If they go around declaring they're fighting the good fight against their patrons - essentially biting the hands that feed them - how long is it gonna last do you think?
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If they go around declaring they're fighting the good fight against their patrons - essentially biting the hands that feed them - how long is it gonna last do you think?
So they've shit on the users who wanted a light and fast browser, and now they're shitting on their sponsors. Sounds like a lot of shit to me.
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It isn't. Their primary income today is about setting default search engine to [local non-google variant], for which these search engine companies pay them.
Most people tend to forget that outside english-speaking world, many regions have their own search engines that work better than google for their specific linguistic searches.
Just a nitpick (Score:3)
"Safari is the default and, while users can install other browsers, they come doubly hindered: they can never be set as the default, meaning any link clicked in other applications will open in Safari; and they must use Safari's "rendering engine", a technical limitation that means that even the browsers that Firefox does have on the platform are technically just fancy wrappers for Apple's own browser, rather than full versions of the service that Mozilla has built over the decades..."
This depends on the "other applications". If you control both iOS applications, for example, like Google does with Gmail and Chrome - the iOS Gmail client can open its links in iOS Chrome rather than Safari. So if Mozilla made an iOS mail client they could give the user a choice to have any links open in iOS Firefox.
However that is definitely sub-optimal, and in any case (as the summary notes) the rendering engine itself is still Apple's - regardless of the browser name.
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However that is definitely sub-optimal, and in any case (as the summary notes) the rendering engine itself is still Apple's - regardless of the browser name.
This still sounds way more nefarious than the stuff Microsoft got hit with in the Antitrust suits. How is Apple immune?
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Apple is far from a monopoly on either computers (macOS vs Windows) or mobile devices (iOS vs Android).
Re: Just a nitpick (Score:2)
A company needn't be a monopoly to engage in anti-competitive behavior.
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Re: Just a nitpick (Score:2)
"It's legal to be anti-competitve as long as you give the regulator a suitcase full of cash in a dark parking lot."
FTFY
Mozilla Diversity (Score:3)
The summary doesn't bring up Brave, which is trying to do just this. While browser rendering engine diversity is important in forcing the use of web standards, Mozilla is correct in that steps to reduce tracking and enhance privacy when faced with 3rd-party tracking and complex data mining (including canvas fingerprinting) CAN be implemented at the browser level. Mozilla's former CEO who was kicked out for falling on the wrong side SJW issues has been taking steps to do just that.
Frankly, I trust Brave's level of privacy filtration layered on top of Chromium more than I do Firefox's at the moment. I would advise them to try to match that level of effort and restricting what sites can read to accomplish their fingerprinting, and leave off the "fighting for the future" rhetoric as such -- other orgs within the social, technical, and political words are better positioned to take on Big Tech more holistically.
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Brave has been doing a great job with privacy as well as decently set defaults out of the box. I can have my parents use it because it doesn't take much to explain other than the shields. With Firefox, they may run into web compatibility issues and go back to Chrome, negating the privacy protections in the first place.
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Which web compatibility issues do you have in mind?
ridiculous (Score:3, Informative)
Re: ridiculous (Score:2)
Yup. Mozilla is the "non-profit" face of Big Brother Google. Their SF office is even in the same building as Google's SF office.
Monoculture (Score:5, Informative)
>"Baker's pitch is that only Mozilla is motivated, first and foremost, to make using the web a pleasurable experience."
Which means, that Mozilla makes the only browser that isn't evil, because now all other modern, multiplatform browsers are Chrom* (Google).
Since Firefox is now the only non-Google option for all Linux, BSD, Android, and MS-Windows users, I hope they continue to do the "right thing" or we all lost.
>"Apple's iOS (mobile operating system) is an acknowledged disaster for Mozilla. Safari is the default and, while users can install other browsers, they come doubly hindered: they can never be set as the default, meaning any link clicked in other applications will open in Safari; and they must use Safari's "rendering engine"
What a nasty move on Apple's part. It means it is also a disaster for IOS users, who have zero choice. At least on MacOS you can still load Firefox. For now.
>"tells them that Google "wants the web to go through Google. It already mostly does: with eyes on 70% to 80% of the web."
If you value the web at all, I strongly recommend you use Firefox and try to convince your friends/family/co-workers to do the same. Every site you visit using Firefox is your vote that you don't want a single corporation controlling the web. It is not a difficult choice, especially with the new era of Internet Explorer upon us.
web standards (Score:5, Interesting)
Netscape, the ancient progenitor of Mozilla, was destroyed because MS convinced everyone that the browser was an application front end, and that user could not deal with variations in the interface. So IE provided a consistent look and feel as long as you were using a PC with a relatively large screen and cycles and energy to waste of the useless overhead.
IE and MS were defeated by the mobile market that demanded that we return to the standards of HTML, which were device independent. HTML did not specify how something looked, only that is was a header, a title, or content. By building and focusing on standards for everyone, in this case CSS, we achieved a internet that was not controlled by MS. By building a web that was standards based, we achieve a internet not controlled by Flash or GIF.
Right now Google is pushing Chrome hard, and what will save us is that both Google and Facebook are pushing hard to control user data(an article stated that Facebook made around $130 per user in data mining). Facebook wants to lock down user to it's interface, Google to it's interface, but for Facebook to succeed it has to have a open web browser with limited user ability to block tracking, while Google wants everyone to use it's browser that will block everyone other than Goolge and the people who pay Google.
It is unclear where MS is going to be in all this, but we have seen that MS its aligning itself with Google and presumable an engine that favors the developer of the web browser over third party, which is what MS has always done. They did their best to push standards that broke the web for everyone except users of their software. Apple is going to do what apple does, and the best that can be said is they do not appear to be greedy about limited user data to Apple., They limit the users ability to stay private, thus preventing the false sense of security that MS and Google provide that since the only people who can collect you data is Google and MS you are safe.
But through this all, Mozilla and it predecessors hav been the ones to focus on standards that keep the web open, because that is their business model, such as it is.
Re: web standards (Score:2)
"Faceboot made around $130 per user from data rape"
FTFY
Good (Score:2)
Rough road for Firefox (Score:1)
Ever since Firefox began messing with their UI, following Chrome's development cycle, and nuked their extension ecosystem (which some things have yet to be reimplemented, resulting in some cross-browser add-ons having features that work in Chrome but NOT Firefox), they have just lost so much market share. I'm sure Google pushing Chrome hard and the skyrocketing of mobile didn't do Mozilla any favors either.
I've tried to go back to Firefox, but the scrolling does not adhere to native OS scrolling behavior, m
Well if they would follow their own advice (Score:3)
they would stop preparing to run all of their DNS queries through Cloudflare. They would also use their influence at the W3C to stop insanely bad developments like Webassembly, HTTP/2, HTTP/3 or DRM from gaining that much traction.
The problem is that unfortunately Mozilla has always been one of the core contributors to making technologies so insanely complex that we are now left with only 3 browser engines with that number slowly even going down. This is not a healthy situation, and since browser manufacturers are interested in keeping the oligopoly, and web designers have no clue what they are doing, I don't see any way out of this.
The web is dead, it is now the time to work on alternatives.
Re: Well if they would follow their own advice (Score:2)
iCab on OSX? (Score:2)
I abandoned Apple quite long ago now (for Debian), but as far as I remember, there still is the iCab browser, the one that invented ad filtering 10 years before Firefox, and that runs a fully independent renderer.
Mac people, and ipad users too, you may runit or not, but you definitely have the choice.
Too bad for me, iCab is mac-only. I would pay LOTS for its porting to Linux...
bullshit spin (Score:2)
They got hit with a pretty annoying exploit from ad servers and now they are all like "oh we are fighting for the future" instead of "trying to get our shit together"
Sometimes less is more. (Score:3)
They can still make their big-boy browsers too, but I'd like to not be involved in their corporate (and sometimes political) chess matches.