The recent events related to FF are not that much of a shift, considering that Google pays $20B per annum to its (technically non-ad tech) partners, then 85% of Mozilla's total revenue comes from its partnership with Google. That ship had sailed long time ago.
https://untested.sonnet.io/Defaults+Matter%2C+Don't+Assume+C...
What they haven't done before is spend a fortune buying up an ad-tech start up. They barely even bother to maintain a pretense that they care about Firefox users. They basically came right out and said "We know that users don't want this, we can't convince them to, so we were right to force it on them by default and just hope most people don't notice and start complaining" (https://cdn.adtidy.org/blog/new/2wffyscreen_mozilla.png?mw=1...)
Fun fact: by subscribing to Pocket, you're directly contributing to Firefox's development.
Mozilla found itself in a situation of damned if they do, damned if they don't. People scream at them for depending on Google, and then they scream at them for trying to diversify their revenue.
Nobody wants to pay for a browser, browsers are essentially incredibly complex nowadays, and I have yet to hear how in the world are browsers supposed to get funding.
And of course they want to cater to advertisers because it is advertising that maintains the open web, and it is advertising that is paying for all browser development, actually, including Safari. And the open web is also dying, because people have been moving to mobile apps, where all pretence that "the user agent must act on your behalf" is gone. In other words, even if you get what you wish for, in a couple of years it may not matter at all.
As someone who worked both on advertiser and publisher sides (incl. content monetisation): advertisers like to say that they support publishers and the open web, but in fact, they are keeping it hostage.
We've had the means/tech to support publishers directly for years (I don't mean crypto). It's in the interest of companies like Google to keep users (and publishers, and brands) in the dark. And one of the issues here is that they have so much impact on the discourse. There are only few places, where I saw more people using ad blockers than the adtech businesses I worked with or at.
> Nobody wants to pay for a browser
True, but I don't think people would have an issue with paying for browsers if they understood the value of it. At this stage, I think the only solution would involve:
1) education 2) regulation/better legislation
People didn't like Pocket as a product. It wasn't as if they just didn't like it because Firdfox wanted to make money out of it.
Sure they should diversify, but with something that isn't otherwise (so) objectionable. Like their VPN, or sponsorship, or just let go of all the upper management.
That's not true. It isn't directly supporting anything except surveillance capitalism. Allowing yourself to be exploited in that way may indirectly support Firefox, but it's not the same thing as direct support.
Firefox users have literally begged Mozilla to let them actually directly support Firefox's development in the form of donations explicitly for that purpose alone, but Mozilla has always refused to allow it.
> Mozilla found itself in a situation of damned if they do, damned if they don't. People scream at them for depending on Google, and then they scream at them for trying to diversify their revenue.
People scream at them when they involve themselves in surveillance capitalism so yeah, spending a ton of money that could have gone into firefox development to instead buy an ad company so they can start spying on us while we use the internet isn't helping.
> Nobody wants to pay for a browser, browsers are essentially incredibly complex nowadays, and I have yet to hear how in the world are browsers supposed to get funding.
Are web browsers more "incredibly complex" than linux? I don't understand how people assume that web browsers are impossible to develop without selling users to the marketing industry while somehow linux and countless other open source projects have never once needed to do that.
Mozilla could at the very least try letting users pay for firefox development like users have been asking them to before they jump to selling firefox users out to the ad industry.
> And of course they want to cater to advertisers because it is advertising that maintains the open web
Advertising doesn't maintain the open web, it poisons it.
> And the open web is also dying, because people have been moving to mobile apps,
That's because many people don't own even computers anymore. Even where computers haven't been entirely replaced by devices that are designed for data collection and mindless content consumption, the cell phone is the computer that people have with them at all times. The dire situation around computing in general wouldn't be so bleak if we could get some decent and affordable mobile devices that weren't designed to spy on us, but I guess you might see it as that spying being what maintains the computer industry.
It might be just me, but I find Pocket quite useful and interesting. That, and syncing user accounts across browsers. It's extremely convenient to just stash a link that you can later open while browsing the web on your browser or sitting at home with another laptop.
I guess you can try to make an argument about that being better served with extensions, but that would be missing the forest for the trees. Meaning, extensions are intended to provide third-partied with a convenient way to add custom features and behavior. That is just wasted effort if it's Firefox wanting to add a feature.
Also, you don't need to use any of that if you don't want to. No one forces you to. At most, it takes a couple of clicks to hide the toolbar button. Is that what you call "downhill"?
Frankly, this blend of criticism sounds like grasping at straws. Some people sound like all they want to do is complain about something, and proceed to work backwards to try to find something anything to complain about. This stance is particularly baffling when taking into consideration how god-awful Chrome and Edge are.
