That's fair; the intent was to only change the search setting for users who had not changed their default. I don't know the specifics around that decision, but it seems like a reasonable position; I'm not sure anything further would have been viable. Still, I get how that can seem intrusive, and I apologize for it.
At the time we landed this change, we also tweaked the search box to increase the visibility of alternative engines and make it easier to switch your default. Hopefully that mitigated some of the pain for you.
We're in a weird place. We have to make enough money to fund the engineering that keeps Firefox competitive, but we also have to stay true to our non-profit mission and ownership. Balancing those two interests is difficult, and we're not always going to get it right. For when we don't, I'm sorry.
> We're in a weird place. We have to make enough money to fund the engineering that keeps Firefox competitive, but we also have to stay true to our non-profit mission and ownership. Balancing those two interests is difficult, and we're not always going to get it right. For when we don't, I'm sorry.
That I completely acknowledge and there is absolutely no need for you to apologise, where work is being done mistakes are automatically being made. The people I'm most scared of are those that claim they never make mistakes.
Is there an easy way for users like me to simply pay Mozilla for the product?
I'd much prefer that than being made the subject of a tug-of-war between internet giants.
> Is there an easy way for users like me to simply pay Mozilla for the product? I'd much prefer that than being made the subject of a tug-of-war between internet giants.
You can always donate to the non-profit Mozilla Foundation at https://donate.mozilla.org. They do really important work, and there are legal limits on how much revenue the corporation can send upstream to the foundation.
As far as I know, Firefox only has two points of monetization: the default search engine and sponsored tiles on the new tab page. It takes roughly ~4 clicks to switch to DuckDuckGo and disable the tiles. I don't think just changing those is enough to satisfy folks, but I'm not sure how to draw that line. Basing it strictly on monetization wouldn't exclude things like Pocket, which frustrates a bunch of folks on HN.
Can I ask you to elaborate more (perhaps we should switch to email, or, ironically, Firefox Hello?) on what sorts of decisions bother you, and which are non-issues? It seems like the hot buttons for folks tend to be: Yahoo, Pocket, Hello, Tiles, H.264, and Australis. Am I missing any? What would your paid-for Firefox look like?
At the time we landed this change, we also tweaked the search box to increase the visibility of alternative engines and make it easier to switch your default. Hopefully that mitigated some of the pain for you.
We're in a weird place. We have to make enough money to fund the engineering that keeps Firefox competitive, but we also have to stay true to our non-profit mission and ownership. Balancing those two interests is difficult, and we're not always going to get it right. For when we don't, I'm sorry.