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Mozilla Kills Firefox Aurora Channel, Builds Will Move Directly From Nightly To Beta (venturebeat.com)
Mozilla said today it is killing the Firefox Aurora channel, six years after it was first introduced in April 2011. The move comes as, Aurora failed to live up to the company's expectations as a "first stabilization channel." Moving forward, the absence of Aurora will help the company streamline its browser's release process and bring stable new features to users and developers faster. From a report: The Firefox Aurora channel sat between the Nightly and Beta channels. Until now, Firefox development started with Nightly, which consists of the latest Firefox code packaged up every night for bleeding-edge testers, and was then followed by Aurora, which includes everything that is labeled as "experimental," then Beta, and then finally the release channel for the broader public. Going forward, builds will move from Nightly to Beta to Release. The Firefox Developer Edition, which the company calls "the first browser created specifically for developers," will be based on the Beta channel instead of Aurora. Developer Edition users should keep their existing profile, themes, tools, preferences, and "should not experience any disruption," Mozilla promises.
Mozilla is shrinking, clearly the question becomes where does it place now that Verizon purchased Yahoo and that potentially Firefox cushy deal with Yahoo search will one day go away. I see the writing on the wall and even if you take away the shrinking market share of Firefox. The facts remain that a once viable browser is barely what it once was. Using Firefox in Linux is truly painful anymore, I quickly use it to install Chrome these days. Then I either uninstall Firefox or simply remove the quick launch icon and place it in the doldrums of semi retirement.
Don't delude yourself into thinking that Firefox is any better.
Just look at how much user info Firefox can collect and send to Mozilla and others.
Their page clearly lists various types of identifiers and browsing history that might be sent, including such things as: "IP address", "location", "phone number", "email address", "URLs", "information about visited sites", "terms you type in the Awesome Bar or Search Bar", "website domain", "Google advertising ID", "active URL at time of crash" and "personal information".
In case you don't believe me, let's look at some examples from their page:
"Once per day, Firefox sends the following info to Mozilla when it checks for browser updates: your Firefox version information, language preference, operating system, and version."
"Firefox contacts Mozilla once per day to check for add-on information to check for malicious add-ons. This includes, for example: browser version, OS and version, locale, total number of requests, time of last request, time of day, IP address, and the list of add-ons you have installed."
"Firefox sends Mozilla a monthly request to look up your location at a country level using your IP address."
"Some Mozilla sponsored snippets are interactive and allow you to optionally share your phone number or email address. For example, you can enter your phone number to receive an SMS to install Firefox on Android. Your information is received and handled by our email and mobile marketing vendor."
"This data includes, for example: device hardware, operating system, Firefox version, add-ons (count and type), timing of browser events, rendering, session restores, length of session, how old a profile is, count of crashes, and count of pages."
"Firefox may send metadata, including URLs associated with the downloaded file, to the SafeBrowsing service. "
"Firefox that sends Mozilla usage, performance, and responsiveness statistics about user interface features, memory, and hardware configuration. Your IP address is also collected as a part of a standard web log."
"When Telemetry is enabled, certain short-term experiments may collect information about visited sites."
"Firefox sends to Mozilla data relating to the tiles such as number of clicks, impressions, your IP address, locale information, and tile specific data (e.g., position and size of grid)."
"Firefox sends Mozilla a request once to look up your location at a country level using your IP address."
"Firefox may send the terms you type in the Awesome Bar or Search Bar to your Default Search Engine to retrieve suggestions"
"Firefox may send “Referral Data” such as the website domain"
"Firefox sends Referral Data to our mobile analytics vendor, and also includes a Google advertising ID, IP address, timestamp, country, locale, operating system, and app version."
"Firefox records and sends Referral Data to Mozilla as part of Firefox Health Report. "
"Firefox may use several pieces of data to determine your location, including your operating systems geolocation features, Wi-Fi networks, cell phone towers, or IP address."
"This report contains technical information for us to improve Firefox including why Firefox crashed, the active URL at time of crash, and the state of computer memory during the crash. The crash report we receive may include personal information."
"Firefox sends information to Mozilla, including the list of add-ons you have installed, Firefox version information, and your IP address."
Some people will try to justify this by saying nonsense like "At least they disclose it!" or "At least some of it can be disabled!", but none of that really