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Mozilla Updates Firefox With Forget Button, DuckDuckGo Search, and Ads
Krystalo writes: In addition to the debut of the Firefox Developer Edition, Mozilla today announced new features for its main Firefox browser. The company is launching a new Forget button in Firefox to help keep your browsing history private, adding DuckDuckGo as a search option, and rolling out its directory tiles advertising experiment.
I sincerely hope this is optional.
Not all of us are willing to accept ads. Especially not from the open source browser which is supposed to help be more private.
Don't worry. There will be a lot more experimentation in ad blocking extensions.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Netscape was dead in 2004. IE was closing in on 90% market share by the end of 2000.
I remember finally making the switch to IE from the Netscape 4.76 series that summer after my friend asked why I didn't use IE and showed me it was better. To be fair, IE had surpassed Netscape at that point. I believe that was IE 5 or 5.5. Prior to that Netscape was better hands down but it stagnated after Netscape 4.
They added two new features:
1. A "Forget" button for your privacy, and
2. Ads, that remember everything forever.
Sounds like a case of giving with one hand, and taking with the other!
Give Pale Moon a try.
Please look into Pale Moon.
Built from Firefox sources, it is the closest thing to the lightweight and flexible browser that Firefox promised to be that I'm aware of.
Linux, Windows, Mac, Android, etc.
Kid-proof tablet..
> What is Firefox thinking?
I suspect they are thinking that it sure was nice to have Google paying them millions of dollars for so long, but with Chrome already having twice as many users, Google won't need to keep doing that. They've built an organization that has expenses in the hundreds of millions. Close to 90% of that is for using Google as the default search. Right now, Google has the power to make the Mozilla foundation vanish. That means, of course, that Google can exercise power over them just by a vague threat, or even simply expressing displeasure with a Mozilla decision.
Each November the foundation releases their financial statement. When preparing this financial statement and the last one, they must have seen that the reliance on Google is a problem. They made some small deals with other companies, like including Bing as an _option_ users can set as their default search, but the other deals don't come close to covering their expenses. So to stop being completely reliant on Google, they need some other revenue stream. Somebody sketched a proposal for how they could run ads in a fairly unobtrusive way, in a way that doesn't seem sneaky or underhanded, and that revenue could cover their expenses.
I don't want ads in my browser. I think clumsily adding ads to Firefox could backfire in a huge way. I also think it would be stupid for the Firefox devs to NOT be looking at clever ways to include fairly acceptable ads, new ideas on how they could generate ad revenue if needed without pissing everyone off.
It CAN be done, and even without being all too clever. Slashdot users are generally less tolerant of ads than the general population, yet there are ads here. We deal with it in one way or another and those ads make money. If Firefox can find some elegant ways to place ads and avoid being dependent on Google, they would be smart to at least have that _plan_ ready in case Google stops paying.
Again, I don't WANT ads in Firefox. I also don't WANT to die, but I do buy life insurance so my family has some protection if that happens.
The former head of Marketing replaced Brendan Eich (who , by contrast, had been a co-founder, former lead architect and CTO) after he was forced out at CEO. Any other questions?
Sure, I mean who cares about the truth as long as we can run around screaming bloody murder and probably soiling ourselves in the process. The "ad tiles" are placed on quick dial instead of empty ones until users get them filled with their browsing history or just drag and dropb pinned stuff from their bookmarks. That's it. But everyone and their dog are starting to whine and threatening to go to Chrome or Pale moon, which is twice as funny as just the wining, because if first browser was built by an advertising company for tracking users and increasing ad efficiency, while the other is nothing but a measely fork, sucking on Firefox codebase and proud of removing a lot of features (websockets anyone? Nah, who needs direct calls from browser, let's all use proprietary Skype), while it is Mozilla that keeps improving JS and HTML rendering engines and yet still keeps all the customizability that was there to begin with.