Mozilla Is Building Context Graph, a 'Recommender System For the Web' (venturebeat.com)

Mozilla is looking into ways to build a "better forward button" that helps you understand a topic, and find alternative solutions to a problem. On Wednesday, Firefox-maker announced Context Graph, which in addition also allows browsers to offer useful information without demanding input. From a VentureBeat report: Context Graph is a "recommender system for the web" that is supposed to help the company develop an understanding of browser activity at scale. By tapping into what and how people are browsing, Mozilla hopes to unlock "the next generation of web discovery on the internet." Another example is learning how to do something new, like bike repair. Context Graph should be able to help you learn bike repair based on the links others have navigated to when they attempted to learn the same thing. "This should work regardless of whom you're connected to, because your social network shouldn't be a prerequisite for getting the most from the web," Nick Nguyen, Firefox's vice president of product, said.

Comments

It works!

[Anonymous Coward]

The latest beta just sent me to this article so I could get a first post!

Whatever

[sunking2]

Other than tabs, I'm pretty sure I use my web browser almost exactly like I did with Mosaic.

Re:Whatever

[Anonymous Coward]

Is it just me, or does Mozilla look a lot like The Fonz in swim trunks right now?

Best to learn to walk again,

[jenningsthecat]

before they try to run. At one time Mozilla ran like the wind, then they just ran, then they walked, now they're crawling. Trying to run from where they are now, directly to "develop an understanding of browser activity at scale", (whatever the hell that means), would seem to be WAY beyond their current capabilities. Especially when their share of the market is dropping to the point where whatever data they might collect may not be enough to be statistically meaningful...

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[Aighearach]

Their development efforts seen to have turned into 90s microsoft, with just too many developers to actually get anything that works out the door. Most of what they ship now consists of new features that are full of security holes, removal of old features, and constant thrashing of the code that reduces quality and causes things like, "now your configurable toolbars are no longer all configurable; some are, some are not."

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[K. S. Kyosuke]

Seriously? Servo and Rust don't count?

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[Anonymous Coward]

Count as what? More newly minted CS grads reinventing the wheel?

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[Anonymous Coward]

What are those? A programming language invented to solve a non existing problem and a re-invention of a wheel? Why not try to fix the damn bugs in current browser and speed it up some more instead of wasting effort on toy projects.

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[the_Bionic_lemming]

Yeah. I stopped allowing updates a while back.

So sad, it's like watching a good friend douse himself with gas and set himself on fire. I used to cheerlead Firefox, but I am now a bit embarrassed to admit to using it now. And no, I won't use chrome or IE or edge.

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[Aighearach]

What I find weird is this contemporary idea that "updates make you more secure." Well, if security updates were on a different track than features, there would be a good argument for that. But with new bugs and exploits released on a regular basis, this isn't obvious at all. And people will quickly shout the name of a past exploit as a counter-argument, but all that proves is that trust was misplaced to begin with; it isn't as if when those exploits were announced, people who had been updating constantly hadn't already been exposed for years before they found out. If you were trusting the system, then whatever data you trusted it with might have been compromised.

My opinion is that casual trust of computer resources is misplaced. Change is the enemy, because code without non-security-related changes will have increased security over time. Code that experiences constant code-thrash can easily have security go both up and down over time, and it will, and in unpredictable ways.

I just want a decent FLOSS browser that is committed to not adding or modifying features. And then I'll probably be happy to received timely security updates.

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla was infiltrated by the millennial fairies. It's over for them, say goodbye and move on.
 

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[hairyfeet]

If you want to use Gecko use Palemoon, Waterfox, Icedragon, or if you want to go old school Kmeleon, not like you don't have plenty of choices there. If you want to use the Chromium engine there is a ton of those besides Chrome like Opera, SWIron, Comodo Dragon, or you can go with something different like QTWeb which is...well what it sounds like, Webkit with a QT framework.

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[jenningsthecat]

We like to pretend that Mozilla was something more than it was, but the reality is this is what they've always been.

I remember when Mozilla actually took users' desires seriously and used their feedback to help shape the browser. And I remember when they were proud of Add-ons - now they seem to regard them as a millstone around their necks. So no, I don't agree that Mozilla has always been this way.

We'll pull out all the irrational arguments that they've changed, but that's really just a reflection of where we've gone, not where they've gone.

For me, it's probably a reflection of where I haven't gone - namely, to minimalist GUI fads that give me jack shit when it comes to configurability and customization, and to products that are not only aimed at the lowest common denominator, but are purposely designed so they can't be raised above that level.

If it wasn't for Pale Moon, I'd still need Mozilla. And really, I still do need them anyway, because Pale Moon relies on them as an upstream for security updates. For me, there is no substitute for FireFox or a derivative, because of its extensions - especially Tab Mix Plus. And also because of 'about:config' - I have quite a few customizations in there that no other browser developers would even think of making available. I've tried other browsers, and I last less than a day on them. I think that if Mozilla hadn't lost its direction and started jumping on every flavour-of-the-month bandwagon that rolls through town, they'd dominate the browser market now.

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[Blaskowicz]

QTWeb has ended it seems (last release in 2013), maybe what you're looking for is Qupzilla which is maintained and the same idea.

K-meleon is still developed, which I didn't expect. So they made the switch from old school Gecko to tracking Firefox ESR (24, 31, 38)

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[K. S. Kyosuke]

How is Rust not related to fixing bugs (or preventing them in the first place) and Servo not related to speeding things up?

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[K. S. Kyosuke]

I don't know if you've noticed but most large native applications with millions of users are written in this crapfest called C++. Mozilla may be reinventing the wheel as they're working at a better language but the problem is that virtually nobody uses the wheel, everyone uses the crappy C++ sloth-drawn bobsled. So it just might be the right time for the industry to actually start using one of the wheels in existence or to use this new one.

Re:Best to learn to walk again,

[Aighearach]

Web sites loaded faster in the year 2000, even using Sun's Java browser.

New standards have to be added, but why a lot else?

FTFY

[QuietLagoon]

By tapping into what and how people are browsing, Mozilla hopes to unlock "the next generation of data harvesting on the internet."

Re:FTFY

[Anonymous Coward]

Privacy issues aside the main problem I have with tracking this information to "improve" your experience is that it gets in the way.

Google starts to think it knows you and serves up certain results because "it's you", when you run the same query on a totally different engine (like Duck Duck Go) you get a much better result set because it makes no preconceptions about what you were looking for based on past searches / browsing habits / etc

Re:FTFY

[ath1901]

How is this different from a Google search? Google spends a lot of time trying to figure out how sites and searches are related to one another. Mozilla thinks they can do it better because they can "harvest" data directly from the browser? I doubt it. And, that's ignoring the privacy issue of sending my full time stamped browsing history to a private company...

Oh no!

[fustakrakich]

Clippy is back!

Re:Oh no!

[K. S. Kyosuke]

It looks like you're writing a joke referencing Clippy, the notorious Microsoft Office feature. Would you like help?

Has it found them a solution for...

[Anonymous Coward]

overpaid managers/developers making solutions in search of a problem?

Mozilla is pissing away far too much time 'keeping their browser state of the art' and not enough time 'fixing security issues endemic in their browser since time immemorial.'

If the only other Web 2.0 compatible choices weren't based on either Google's fork of Webkit, or Microsoft rendering engines, I'd tell them to get boned.

That said, maybe some of you code-savvy slashdot nerds can put in some hours on netsurf web browser (netsurf-browser.org) and help get it up to minimal feature parity for the majority of common websites, and then work on adding all the security hooks and privacy features to give us a clean codebase open alternative to Mozilla products. It is getting there, but not fast enough to eclipse the rather shitty (and C++ based) alternatives. And bonus: netsurf can run on hardware with less than 128 megs of ram. (It uses around 48 megs for slashdot last time I tried, although with (slightly!) improper rendering due to CSS, lack of javascript and some other items.) Get it over the hump though and embarassing the current generation of browsers is certainly possible. Nevermind the possibility of auditing the code well enough to close many of the security bugs that seem to keep cropping up in Firefox, Chrome, and company.

Go to hell, Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Another useless feature and, most importantly, a privacy nightmare by Mozilla, probably the 100th in the last 2 years.There's no "value added" that will ever persuade me sharing my browsing history with you to let you do your unrequested "suggestions".

GO TO HELL, Mozilla.

Time to look for firefox forks.

I guess I'm old-fashioned

[willoughby]

I hate -*HATE*- having a machine try to read my mind. And a web browser? No, thanks. Just get out of the way & let me do what I want, the way I want.

Re:I guess I'm old-fashioned

[asa]

What if "what I want" is to be able to visit the sites that are linking to a YouTube video I'm watching. Today I can't easily do that because YouTube doesn't want me leaving YouTube.

Re:I guess I'm old-fashioned

[Anonymous Coward]

No one cares, Asa. Fix your shitty browser first.

Re: I guess I'm old-fashioned

[Anonymous Coward]

The browser is for the user, not you. The webmaster's desires are (and should be) completely and utterly irrelevant.

Re:I guess I'm old-fashioned

[Zontar The Mindless]

Hi Asa!

What *I* want is for you guys to stop breaking my UI, my extensions, and my workflow.

I am totally uninterested in how you guys think I should experience the Web. I am interested in getting stuff done.

Start listening to your users again, and stop using us as your friggerty UX guinea pigs already.

Re:I guess I'm old-fashioned

[Anonymous Coward]

If you use extensions like Request Policy, you see that everybody's tracking everybody, all the time. It is somewhat natural that a browser maker, having direct access to the users' browsing habits, wants in on the action, but remember this: We can't do much about the servers tracking us, because there is only one Facebook and one Youtube. We will choose another browser though. You have added far too many privacy-invading features to the browser already, and some of them are well hidden. It takes a lot of effort to make a Firefox profile which doesn't hand the user to the trackers on a silver platter, and even with that effort, I am now at a point where I cannot trust Firefox anymore: Is there something that I overlooked? Probably. Don't put your users in that position. If I can't trust Firefox to protect me, there is no longer a reason to shun certain other browsers. Building user tracking into the browser is unacceptable, even if there is an off switch, and even if it's off by default. Do not put that code into Firefox.

Re: I guess I'm old-fashioned

[gman003]

Then you can go right to hell, and take your shitty site with you.

Re:I guess I'm old-fashioned

[psyclone]

Millennials cannot do that. They don't have the attention span to copy/paste into other tabs and do research. If information doesn't look pretty, they won't touch it.

Re:I guess I'm old-fashioned

[TuringTest]

I hate -*HATE*- having a machine try to read my mind. And a web browser? No, thanks. Just get out of the way & let me do what I want, the way I want.

So you never, ever have used spell checkers, tab autocompletion, search suggestions - or Google's web search, for that matter? Google Search is by definition the #1 "machine that tries to read your mind" in order to show the most relevant pages for a query term.

More tracking/data mining

[Anonymous Coward]

Yet more tracking/data mininig.

Fuck off.

Netscape Navigator has this in 2001

[yppiz]

Netscape Navigator had the What's Related button in 2001.

Sort of an automated ShiftSpace, no?

[Qbertino]

This sound something like a pimped out ShiftSpace. BTW, what happend to that?
I thought that was a pretty neat idea - now it appears all traces of ShiftSpace seem to be lost.

Can I still get ShiftSpace somewhere? Is it a distributed thing or does it rely on servers for it's content?
And how is that with this new Mozilla thing?

Re:Sort of an automated ShiftSpace, no?

[Desler]

https://github.com/ShiftSpace

Re:Memories

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, remember when Mozilla produced a web browser that didn't completely suck donkey balls?

Ah, yes. Yesterday. What a glorious time! It was a lot like today. I suspect it'll be a lot like tomorrow as well...

More seriously, FF is still the exemplar. Chrome is a bloated, slow, memory hog in comparison. It spies on you to boot. None of the other players have a browser worth using. The best you can hope for as a reasonable alternative is an outdated and bug-ridden FF fork like Palemoon.

With Servo ticking along at a nice pace, I expect FF will continue to trounce other browsers well in to the future.

Of course, being the best doesn't always mean that you're particularly good. If that's your position, that FF still sucks even if it is better than the alternatives, I wonder why you're not using your superior intellect to either create the next best browser or working to improve FF.

Re:The Mozilla mascot should be a pig.

[TangoMargarine]

"Voluntarily" resigned. Because there's so much of a practical difference for anybody except his finances.

Re:cynical translation

[CimmerianX]

What makes you think they haven't already