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... pretty disappointing that they didn't vet their partner more thoroughly

Kinda like partnering with Google while promoting Firefox as the "privacy browser".




I assume you're referring to the default search engine deal? What influence does that have on Firefox's privacy features? How does it make Firefox not a "privacy browser"?


> What influence does that have on Firefox's privacy?

Don't you mean on your, the user's, privacy?


Well, more like "Firefox's privacy features". I'll edit to clarify.


Kinda skews their incentives heavily when that deal represents a large chunk of their revenue


Why would it? Harvesting data is not even Google's entire revenue, and Google would be phenomenally stupid to mess with Firefox, because if that would get out it's major anti-trust headaches waiting to happen.

What specifically did this influence, or is likely to be influenced? What specifically is made worse by this?

There's always these vague accusations, but never any specifics.


By default, Firefox makes it real easy to uniquely identify and track you, refuses to block ads and apparently, don't care much about marketshare. Wonder why?

Details are readily available if you know how to search.


Any browser makes it easy to track you because that's how the web works and it's hard to fully prevent without significantly affecting compatibility and/or feature set. Firefox does have some "Enhanced Tracking Protection" features for this though. And (extensively) changing the content of webpages by default would be inappropriate for a mainstream browser; it's not their job to curate what you see, and this includes ads (for starters, it's not so easy to even classify what an "ad" is).

These are just more vague accusations, and just as unencumbered by any evidence as your previous vague accusations were.


> it's not their job to curate what you see

In this case why does the browser have a pop-up blocker? Or why does it warn about potentially malicious websites (via SafeBrowsing)?

If it's not their job to curate what you see then it should show you the raw unfiltered badness of the web and let you deal with it yourself.


What a boring "gotcha". By that measure a browser should also allow any HTTPS certificate, self-signed or expired, and any other invalid certificate, and allow unrestricted unlimited access to all storage and all features. Oh no, that would be idiotic... Just as silly as conflating not implementing a technical feature or basic safety protections with "curation".

Hey your email provider also shouldn't do curation either, then why does it have a spam filter?!?! Checkmate atheists!


I'm curious about where you draw the line between basic safety features/spam filtering and "curation" and the reasons behind that.

Ad blockers just use a list of known malicious URLs/domains/CSS selectors and use that to block/hide elements.

This is identical to Safe Browsing (preventing loading of known malicious domains) which you seem to be fine with and don't see as "curation".


Go here and see for yourself: https://coveryourtracks.eff.org


And that is because of Googles influence on Firefox, how?

You are not engaging with anything I said. I asked for evidence of Google's control over Firefox beyond "they have a search engine deal", and you seem unwilling or unable to provide it. Therefore I can only assume it does not exist and are simply making spurious claims for which no evidence exists.


Almost all their revenue comes from Goggle and you demand evidence that this influences them? How could it do otherwise?

The lack of default privacy and ad blocking in Firefox is the evidence.

The fact that Google continues to pay even as Firefox marketshare shrinks to irrelevance is evidence.

The more pertinent question for potential users is evidence that it does not influence tbem. By any reasonable measure, default Firefox is not "the privacy browser".




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