Proposed contractual remedies in United States v. Google threaten vital role of independent browsers | The Mozilla Blog
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Giving people the ability to shape the internet and their experiences on it is at the heart of Mozilla’s manifesto. This includes empowering people to ch
  • placatedmayhem@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2·
    3 hours ago

    I feel that Mozilla is making the case for the exact remedies being discussed. If they didn’t have financial entanglements with Google, they might still make the same choice, to offer Google Search as the default. However, substantial sums of money are at play. That, coupled with a lack of upfront choice for users (e.g., a first-run pick list), undermines Mozilla’s entire position here. It’s hard to believe they would be advocating to keep Google Search as the default if those large sums of money weren’t at stake.

    It is also disingenuous at best to equate choices being present elsewhere (search bar drop down) with the default choice when a user hits the enter key. That part bothered me quite a bit.

    I’m a daily Firefox user since before it’s 1.0 release, outside of some limited attempts with Chrome and Safari over a decade ago. Mozilla’s choices recently, including this defense of Google, have made me begin considering alternative browsers, even though there are so few user-respecting ones.

    • Lvxferre@mander.xyzEnglish
      1·
      2 hours ago

      Mozilla’s choices recently, including this defense of Google, have made me begin considering alternative browsers, even though there are so few user-respecting ones.

      That shows well what I said in my own comment, that Mozilla doesn’t know for whom it wants to be. It doesn’t know if it wants to be for long-date users, like you and me; or for a new target audience; or for its own shareholders; or for advertisers; or for Google. So it sends mixed signals in all directions, and pisses off all of them.

      I’m also considering to drop Firefox. Similar reasons.

  • Lvxferre@mander.xyzEnglish
    3·
    3 hours ago

    No, Mozilla, it doesn’t threaten independent browsers; it threatens yours alone. Because of your stupid decision of relying on Google to finance yourself, while bleeding users because you don’t know what or for whom you want to be.

    And now, all according to Google’s plan, you’ve became its lapdog (lap fox?) barking at the ones trying to rein on your master. Much like a caramel dog barking at the cops after its owner gets handcuffed.

    Rather than a world where market share […] beyond.

    Nice corpo babble but without specific suggestions it’s the same as used toilet paper.

    We’re going to see more pages in the Book of Mozilla.

    EDIT: browsers are currently such a convoluted and complex mess that almost nobody can reasonably start a new one from the scratch, and that prevents any sort of real competition. While this is not addressed, killing Google is like taking an aspirin, it’ll get rid of the headache for two hours and the problem is still there.

    I wonder if browsers couldn’t become something more modular, with different groups being able to code different parts of it, without too much fuss.