I'm running two versions: 85.0.1 and 87.0a1 and haven't seen it on either. On the other hand, I had configured my new tabs to be entirely blank, so maybe if you'd like to try the same we could find out if this removes their ads?
Why can we have the whole galaxy of free software with the various distributions and desktop environments and entire kernel ecosystems and device drivers free of this kind of monetization yet somehow this is impossible with browsers?
I don't think twice about using Debian, Freebsd, Openbsd, or Openwrt.
What the hell is going on with Mozilla and Firefox?
The consumer marketshare of desktop Linux/BSD and its ecosystem is tiny, something like 2% AFAIK. Mozilla is probably not happy for Firefox to occupy a similar browser marketshare, that would likely mean the end of Mozilla's influence on web standards.
A lot of the remaining OSS ecosystem benefits corporate software development and is already supported by corporate backers.
Browsers scope is so huge(and none of them is sufficiently modular). FOSS Software of that size and scope is usually require at the minimum donation from companies use it.
Because developers need to be paid for their time and there isn’t enough charity in the world to pay them without advertising, nor is the general public willing to pay $10 for an ad-free Firefox. I probably prefer this compared to Mozilla’s deal with Google to be the default search engine- sponsored tiles can go to a variety of sites, but the search engine deal pushed even more market share to a single player.
Mozilla is getting hundreds of millions of dollars to set Google as the default search engine. You can change that in 10 seconds.
How are these stupid additions better for anyone? Consumers find them more annoying and they probably don't result in any significant month for Mozilla.
Anyway, we need another open source browser, one that is controlled by the community and not some SV company.
You can also turn off sponsored tiles, so this isn’t different in that respect.
Plus, while Mozilla the corporation is technically a for profit entity, they operate under the direction of the not for profit Mozilla Foundation. They are already the best choice for a browser that is free from an SV company’s influence. But they do have to pay their employees and keep the lights on. How are they supposed to pay for things if they don’t do stuff like this? At least they are honest about which things they are making money from.
Turn off telemetry. Set search to DDG. Set "Do Not Track" always on. Get rid of the Mozilla start page. Disable any suggestions for Top Sites or other junk like "Snippets".
That's just as I type, with no thought. There are myriad tweaks in about:config that I've promised myself I'll remember over the years since Phoenix.
My favourite browser is adversarial because they need millions of dollars to write a piece of software which shows text and pictures from a network connection in the intended place on a screen.
Why is this so complicated and expensive? What has the Internet become?
> Turn off telemetry. Set search to DDG. Set "Do Not Track" always on. Get rid of the Mozilla start page. Disable any suggestions for Top Sites or other junk like "Snippets".
I just login to my Mozilla account, and move buttons on the UI around (for some reason that's the one thing that isn't synced).
> Why is this so complicated and expensive?
In the older days, people were willing to give up more for their faiths, their drives. You could make this choice and essentially live a life of service if you wanted.
> What has the Internet become?
It's still an open network and there is nothing stopping you really from doing your own thing on it.
The only one of those that's plausibly "adversarial" is telemetry (and I strongly disagree about that). The rest are just settings for which you don't want the defaults
Mozilla is directly competing with Google - probably the most powerful tech company in the world. Google could kill them in a heartbeat, but they keep them around to avoid antitrust issues. If that ever changes and Mozilla doesn't have any other sources of income to fall back on, they can't possibly survive that.
> and there isn’t enough charity in the world to pay them without advertising
And yet the KDE team was able to build the best browser in the world (Konqueror) while being funded only by charity and charity-like governmental development grants.
Except they don't build the engine. They used to, many many years ago, when the web was much simpler and everyone and their dog could build their own engine. These days, that is no longer the case.
So even if Konqueror is still "the best browser in the world", that is meaningless to this discussion. Building the chrome around an existing engine is almost trivial compared to developing a 100% independent browser engine.
As I acknowledged. But what they did originally is only a fraction of what's required for a browser these days. Saying "KDE did it" today is like saying "look, the Wright brothers built a plane! You can, too!".
Back then, the web was simpler and so we had many different engines. Today, we really only have two. All other attempts have failed - even Microsoft couldn't compete. The only reason Mozilla is still going is because of their head start and Google money. If Apple hadn't picked up KHTML and turned it into WebKit and Google developed their own thing, KHTML would be even more dead than Gecko is today.
> the web was simpler and so we had many different engines
I would argue it was more complex, trying to get something moderately advanced to render the same between many browsers became a massive chore compared to today.
It was harder to code for, sure, but looking at the standards, there were far fewer things a browser vendor needed to implement, so the complexity of the technology involved was lower.
It's the same situation as RISC vs CISC - for a programer, CISC is "easier" to write for (== it does more work for you), but for a chip designer, RISC is much simpler to design and implement.
Apple contributing to webkit is largely what drove the web to its current place as a complex application runtime. That's how we got the canvas element for example.
I desperately need a browser extension that automatically disables the latest shenanigans from my browser vendor.
Something like ublock with an open list maintained by the community. That way, I won't need to keep up with the latest crazy ideas Mozilla suits come up with to earn 0.01% more while annoying 99% of their costumers.
On the business model: are we in a situation where advertisers get to choose to pay to have their ads specifically in firefox, but users can’t donate for firefox directly ?
I feel like with this initiative they can set a price for a user’s attention. One could hope the user also gets the option to pay it upfront and opt out.
it could be that advertising revenue from displaying in the tiles is something that is recurring and known in advance. Donations can dry up instantly, and there's no obligation to continue - thus a less secure source of revenue.
I don't think it is, unless that's a recent change? It uses webkit, which is the continuation of the same engine it's always used (and was originally written by the KDE team).
Which browser are you switching to? I think many people on here, like me, think the options are Chrome, Firefox, Safari, and Chrome derivatives. There was a recent hullabaloo about Chromium packagers throwing in the towel with Google deprecating a bunch of Google features from Chromium, suggesting that using a Chrome derivative may not be the strongest choice, but I'm still curious as to where you're heading.
I'm trying out FOSS browser from Fdroid. Its based on webview, but very minimalist. I don't use any Google services, so I don't mind about Chromium browsers being cut off from those. I just want a lightweight browser with a good privacy policy, adblocking and no obnoxious corporate intrusions :) FOSS browser is on Github.
Presumably you're fine with tracking adverts all over the web then? God forbid Mozilla try to make some money (to pay their developers, not for profit) whilst preserving your privacy.
FOSS blocks ads and third-party cookies by default, all cookies can be blocked. If you really want to go minimalist, try links running in Termux on your phone. I have nothing against Mozilla making money to pay their developers (or for profit). However, as the user of their products I obviously have the right to decide when the experience of using their products has become so annoying that I choose something else.
Any of these people have to reconcile how much the average person are willing to pay for a currently free service or product. And judging by the lack of uptake and quality of paid alternatives, I'm thinking it's not enough, and by not enough people.
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[ 3.8 ms ] story [ 108 ms ] threadI'm running two versions: 85.0.1 and 87.0a1 and haven't seen it on either. On the other hand, I had configured my new tabs to be entirely blank, so maybe if you'd like to try the same we could find out if this removes their ads?
Why can't there be a browser that is just... a browser?
* Eat the costs because you're so wealthy you don't care (Apple, Google)
* Use the work of those who ate the costs (Waterfox, Icecat, Edge, Firefox-Fork-Of-The-Month-Whose-Only-Purpose-Is-To-Shit-On-Firefox-Lol-Palemoon)
* Find a way to actually make money (Firefox, Brave)
Needless to say, you entire lifeline being depending on Google when you're Firefox is horribly bad.
Maybe web technologies have gotten too complicated. Maybe they need to be replaced with something that does not cost hundreds of millions to support?
Why can we have the whole galaxy of free software with the various distributions and desktop environments and entire kernel ecosystems and device drivers free of this kind of monetization yet somehow this is impossible with browsers?
I don't think twice about using Debian, Freebsd, Openbsd, or Openwrt.
What the hell is going on with Mozilla and Firefox?
A lot of the remaining OSS ecosystem benefits corporate software development and is already supported by corporate backers.
Many of these ‘forks’ emerged because of the Firefox trademark policy which prevented distributions from packaging Firefox under that name.
How are these stupid additions better for anyone? Consumers find them more annoying and they probably don't result in any significant month for Mozilla.
Anyway, we need another open source browser, one that is controlled by the community and not some SV company.
Plus, while Mozilla the corporation is technically a for profit entity, they operate under the direction of the not for profit Mozilla Foundation. They are already the best choice for a browser that is free from an SV company’s influence. But they do have to pay their employees and keep the lights on. How are they supposed to pay for things if they don’t do stuff like this? At least they are honest about which things they are making money from.
The point is, I should not need to keep a close eye on Mozilla and disable stuff regularly. I should not need to fight my browser.
That is a bit hyperbolic. You see a feature in the browser you don't like, you can turn it off. Not really a 'close eye' issue to me.
> I should not need to fight my browser.
This also is hyperbolic, switching a single option is fighting with a browser?
Turn off telemetry. Set search to DDG. Set "Do Not Track" always on. Get rid of the Mozilla start page. Disable any suggestions for Top Sites or other junk like "Snippets".
That's just as I type, with no thought. There are myriad tweaks in about:config that I've promised myself I'll remember over the years since Phoenix.
My favourite browser is adversarial because they need millions of dollars to write a piece of software which shows text and pictures from a network connection in the intended place on a screen.
Why is this so complicated and expensive? What has the Internet become?
Turn it off and start over. This one is broken.
I just login to my Mozilla account, and move buttons on the UI around (for some reason that's the one thing that isn't synced).
> Why is this so complicated and expensive?
In the older days, people were willing to give up more for their faiths, their drives. You could make this choice and essentially live a life of service if you wanted.
> What has the Internet become?
It's still an open network and there is nothing stopping you really from doing your own thing on it.
And yet the KDE team was able to build the best browser in the world (Konqueror) while being funded only by charity and charity-like governmental development grants.
So even if Konqueror is still "the best browser in the world", that is meaningless to this discussion. Building the chrome around an existing engine is almost trivial compared to developing a 100% independent browser engine.
Back then, the web was simpler and so we had many different engines. Today, we really only have two. All other attempts have failed - even Microsoft couldn't compete. The only reason Mozilla is still going is because of their head start and Google money. If Apple hadn't picked up KHTML and turned it into WebKit and Google developed their own thing, KHTML would be even more dead than Gecko is today.
I would argue it was more complex, trying to get something moderately advanced to render the same between many browsers became a massive chore compared to today.
It's the same situation as RISC vs CISC - for a programer, CISC is "easier" to write for (== it does more work for you), but for a chip designer, RISC is much simpler to design and implement.
Something like ublock with an open list maintained by the community. That way, I won't need to keep up with the latest crazy ideas Mozilla suits come up with to earn 0.01% more while annoying 99% of their costumers.
I feel like with this initiative they can set a price for a user’s attention. One could hope the user also gets the option to pay it upfront and opt out.
I do for other open sourcy services (Bitwarden etc), there wouldn't be a huge public for that, but it doesn't need to either I think.
This is cutting out the middleman.
That is saying they are okay with status quo. Otherwise they would have already quit.