This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://techlore.tv/w/vDgnFB6bSoTqyGa6p3V6hn
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I still love Firefox, but when I saw the title of this post, I smiled. Why integrate Firefox with Gemini, then, and why not also provide the option to integrate with DDG.ai (at least not in the ESR release)?
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I’m worried that Firefox (and its derivatives) would soon be irrelevant in the future, especially as they’re losing users real fast thanks to mishaps
I don’t wanna use Chrome only
I learned so much from this! Very informative guy, great talk overall. I respect the Firefox team for how they operate in these wedged situations between giants. I feel like I understand their decision making a lot better now. And it is quite remarkeble how far they’ve come with staying in the game with Gecko and also being innovative with privacy technologies (past & future).
And also really funny how much I related to those Firefox Windows users that keep having to revert to Firefox after Microsoft messed up the default browser setting. It is sad but true.
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I knew it will be a marketing talk how great Firefox is and such while fully ignoring the things Firefox isn’t private at all and ignoring questionable decisions. To make an example: why is telemetry enabled by default with opt out instead of opt in? Why is Firefox taking privacy not further as LibreWolf is doing, which in 99% of cases do not break any website? There are a lot of features that could be build in by default without any affect on usability. If I try out Firefox compared to LibreWolf fingerprinting, LibreWolf is much closer to TOR, without the downsides of using TOR.
The reality is, while Gecko is a super engine, everything on top is a mix between good and bad decisions. It is still light years ahead of Chrome, but it is not what people would expect from a privacy oriented foundation. Especially the top salary is a very little tiny bit too much (meaning a lot to much), while Mozilla depends so heavily on Google. Some decisions seem to be related to this (no evidence).
But the talk was informative about some other aspects and some I even did not know about. By all my critics I’m still happy that Mozilla and Firefox exists to this date. I just would be happier if they would take privacy more serious.
Something I would have liked to be asked: Why did they drop the Servo project? I’m happy to see how it is going with Linux Foundation, but still curious.
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Trivalent by secureblue team is the most secure browser just saying
It’s really sad that we, as a world, standardized on a system that requires years and millions to implement
You have to modify it that way, though some of the Firefox forks disable telemetry by default, for example. I harden all of the browsers I use to the nines using Anonymous Planet’s thing on it.
Defaults matter for multiple reasons:
- Many people do not change defaults.
- On updates things can change and if defaults are bad, you have to make your research all the time with all programs that have bad defaults and you may do not find everything.
- Mozilla advertises privacy be default and so the defaults should be as private as possible (without breaking the from user perspective wanted website behaviors).
And to make point 2 a bit more clear: Some time ago I realized a new search engine installed be default, I never asked for. It was perplexity AI and it was installed on Firefox and LibreWolf. I was kinda sad that LibreWolf did allow this. But that was not with purpose. Just one day after the issue was opened on git (Codeberg), it got closed with a link to the removal being merged. So even when forks try to remove unwanted things, they first need to discover these themselves. Strong defaults do not even compromise for that short time.
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I don’t use Chrome.
Defaults are allowing espionage, and that’s the point. I always reject defaults, not because I’m a criminal of some sort. Rather, I reject the defaults so I don’t allow myself to be treated like one.
Generally, agree with the principle that privacy compromising stuff should be opt-out. Unless Firefox switched everyone to pplx.ai for search, I am okay with Firefox adding (“installing is probably incorrect use of the term, here) an option for it.
Hm. Interesting. They may have turned ON safer defaults (presumably borrowed from GrapheneOS’ Vanadium?), but that doesn’t make it the “most secure”, not until there’s thorough review and the cybersecurity community’s consensus is built around it.
Yep; reminds me of this essay: New Defaults – Stratechery by Ben Thompson (mirror).
Especially, when you consider that these engs could move to any of the BigLabs to join their respective browser projects right now and make big bucks.
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Yes! I feel like for a long while I overcriticized Firefox for their lack of “good” anti-fingerprinting tech like Tor/Mullvad/Brave browser, and their defaults like having Google search, the sponsored shortcuts on the new tab, the telemetry and all that. (Because for us early adopters/early minority these defaults kinda suck)
But after the interview I felt a bit silly, because they are in fact still the best thing to have ever happened (and is still happening) to the browser industry! And recommending it to others is still way and way better for tech freedom than recommending Google Chrome is.
They still stand their ground with Gecko which is so crucial (and really expensive to develop), while they could make so much more money if they joined the Chromium gang. That would be good business, but against what they stand for.
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There is a difference between opt-out and installing it (the term “install” is fine) on a running system, which is similar to “you made some settings, we change them without asking you”. Also, a “privacy first” browser should be private by default, not private by opting out or private by the right settings.
The issue becomes even more value when you read Wikipedia about CEO salary:
In 2018, Baker received $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla. In 2020, after returning to the position of CEO, Baker’s salary was more than $3 million. In 2021, her salary rose again to more than $5.5 million, and again to over $6.9 million in 2022.
As said earlier, I’m happy that Mozilla and Firefox exists and they are still very important. Compared with Chromium it still shines a bright. But since 2018 the increase of salary became out of scope and with it a lot of strange decisions. The reason why people are looking towards to Ladybird and Servo comes not from nowhere - they see a downwards trend, which hopefully does never cross the red line.
Became out of scope for what? You? It seems like you are arguing for a different north star: personal liking.
I knew this info already, and have used this as reasoning for myself for not liking the company as a whole, and I stand behind that critical opinion. But we need to seperate tool from its creator, because there is good reason to do so.
Why? I am of the strong opinion that recommending Firefox to a Google Chrome user is still the best pro-tech-freedom thing to do. Most people don’t want anything “extreme” or something that is “going all in”. (What seems normal to us might seem extreme to another)
And I think unknowingly, my privacy journey a while back started when I went from Opera GX to Firefox. This wasn’t an intentional privacy choice, I think it was simply because a friend said it was “nice”, and at the time I still used all the big tech products/privacy invasive settings.
But it really was the first step. It was the “gateway”. This is what 95% of people need today. A way in without being repulsed by extremity.
Look, 600,000 Dollar, the amount Mozillas CEO got 2008-2011, is already much higher than most people will earn. Even the government of most countries earn less on the highest income per person. But 2017 they have more than doubled this amount to nearly two and a half million Dollar in just one year and every year later it got increased further. The latest number was 7 million Dollar I found, which is probably even higher to this date. The increase is exponential growing.
And now we look how much Mozilla has improved Firefox over time (since 2017). I get more downgrades in mind than improvements (which also exist) while the market share shrinks. How does the CEO earns that much of an increase? Did the developers get an 1000% increase on their work? Of course not, that stinks! And that not from a Wallstreet company … it is non-profit! People asking themselves “why should I spend money to Mozilla to improve Firefox, if all the donations get into hands of a single person?” (somewhere I read the numbers and those were quiet equal).
Of course we don’t need to take a look to any other popular browser, their companies are all much worse than this, just to make it clear for all that think Mozilla is no valid option anymore. It is the only option if you ask me.
Google is not where I measure Mozilla against. I don’t even expect the CEO to “only” earn 200.000$ or even “only” 1 million. Hell, I wouldn’t even be disappointed if they would have an average improvement on Firefox. Taking away just one million Dollar from CEO to hire developers would be enough to fix all the existing issues and critics and there would even be money left for some additional Gecko-improvements on top.
I don’t expect a perfect browser nor a zero failure CEO. But I expect some basics as telemetry opt-in, asking before adding a new default search engine, expose some privacy settings directly to the settings page (as resist fingerprinting or letter-boxing), even if disabled by default or fixing their UI-bug on little screens (UI flickers heavily on some cases, which other people, including me. work around with many hours of voluntary work). I expect some other changes that do not break any website or usability, but bringing privacy and security further as they promise. As I said, 95% of changes of LibreWolf could be default on Firefox and normal users wouldn’t even see any difference.
I’m pretty sure, the user base would grow again and the reputation would also grow without doubling the marketing costs.
I know, this text sounds very negative and it kinda is. But I also want to make it clear that Firefox is still something I recommend to everyone. The enshitification on Chrome is much worse from what I see and Firefox is still the best option. So please don’t get me wrong. But I also think critic is important, especially on a forum where people care about privacy.
This heavily resonated with me too…good on you for coming forward and sharing why you feel different about things! I know I did too leaving the interview.
I’m not part of either team but i’m fairly certain duck.ai doesn’t have an open API or direct integration with third party services. These other AI models do and are fairly interoperable with different tools. So the only way for this to happen would be if DuckDuckGo and Firefox did a formal partnership + integration together to make it happen. I don’t find this likely given DDG has their own browser where this is a big selling point. We can always just bookmark duck.ai in Firefox though 
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The last time I checked, duck.ai ToS was ominously worded:
I think you are the reason you are so frustrated with Firefox is basically that you are not their target audience. They are working on privacy enhancing technology and they are pushing the industry towards privacy preserving technology, but they are not building a browser for the privacy nerd, like you or me.
They are building a browser for the average Joe, who doesn’t give a f***k about privacy and who is willing to figuratively strip naked for a 10% coupon. Their defaults are compromised / compromises and not too far from “the industry standard“.
You are bringing up LibreWolf as a better alternative. But you don’t realize that LibreWolf is basically the whole technology stack that Mozilla has build, just with defaults geared towards privacy nerds like you and me. The amount of work done by the LibreWolf team as much as it is and as much appreciated as it is, it is nothing compared to the amount of work Mozilla is doing.
So maybe we should stop wanting Firefox to be the browser for the privacy nerd and instead be grateful for what it actually is, a technology stack for easily making browsers for privacy nerds, like LibreWolf, MulvadBrowser and TorBrowser. It also is a great gateway drug for the average Joe for those “true“ privacy oriented browsers.
To me this interview was very enlightening. I also often get caught up in the negativity surrounding Mozilla and what they do with Firefox. It really helps to get a view behind the curtain from time to time and see a bit of the complexity and reality the developers have to navigate and how they do it. - Thanks a lot!
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can second this, Firefox was the first action I took online for making myself more “private”, I would have happily given everything for 20% off ha
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