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Firefox Debuts Price Wise, an Experimental Price-Tracking Feature To Help Users Score Top Shopping Deals (venturebeat.com)

Posted by msmash on from the interesting-updates dept.

The Firefox Test Pilot team on Monday rolled out two new experimental features, one of which is aimed to make this year's holiday shopping a bit easier on your wallet. It's called Price Wise, and it's an online shopping comparison tool that lets you add items from across several retailers to a Price Watcher list. From a report: When a price drops, a notification is automatically sent to your browser, and you can click regardless of what web page you are currently on. For now, Price Wise tracks just five retailers -- Amazon, Best Buy, eBay, Walmart, and the Home Depot -- but the company said it's planning on expanding to cover more outlets in the future.

Elsewhere, Mozilla is also rolling out a new feature called Email Tabs as part of its early adopter program. While Mozilla already offers a service for bookmarking content to read later via Pocket, Email Tabs enables users to choose multiple tabs and send links to one or more of them to their Gmail address. There are a number of options here. Users can choose to send links with screenshots, just links, or links with full articles. Price Wise is only available to users in the U.S. for now.

13 of 101 comments (clear)

  1. So they remove features people use... by mr_jrt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    ...for bloat like this? Seriously?

    What the hell is wrong with the Mozilla Foundation? Just focus on making a minimal, high-quality, open source browser. That's it. that's literally all you need to do. That's why we have rich extension mechanisms, right? So people/companies can build and add-on whatever gubbins they like without wasting core resources building and maintaining it.

    I despair sometimes, I really do.

    --
    Boo.
    1. Re:So they remove features people use... by higuita · · Score: 3, Informative

      first this is a test feature!
      second, you need to install it to use it.
      third, RTFA before throwing stones

      This as this is a official firefox add-on instead of community add-on... probably if it works, they could ask money for the shops to be included in the add-on, so everybody win a little

      --
      Higuita
    2. Re:So they remove features people use... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Sure, it's a test feature, that you have to manually install *now*, but what if it goes further? Is this (or are they, if also considering "Email Tabs") something that really needs to be a browser feature rather than a browser extension? I think that's what people are complaining about. Neither are really pertinent to the browser itself, which is what Mozilla should be focused on. (and I would add Thunderbird)

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    3. Re:So they remove features people use... by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 2

      You dropped your tin foil hat

      I'm sure Mozilla will develop a built-in Firefox feature to help me with that, though disabling it may be problematic.

      --
      It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
    4. Re:So they remove features people use... by Luckyo · · Score: 2

      I see your meme and beat you to death with Pocket.

    5. Re:So they remove features people use... by Luckyo · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Pocket shills called. They wanted to remind you that they already used all those lies in the past, and it may be harder to use the same lies now to push for the same agenda.

  2. There's already an extension for this. by idontusenumbers · · Score: 2

    These sorts of sites have existed for decades and there's already an extension for firefox to do this.

    https://addons.mozilla.org/en-...

  3. Why embed this in a browser? by fahrbot-bot · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously. Why does "Price Wise" need to be a browser feature, yet another piece of (unwanted, unneeded) bloat-ware? I can *remotely* imagine a use for the "Email Tabs" thing, but cannot imagine actually ever using it myself. For sure, if these experiments continue on to become full-fledged browser features, they will be two more things I will disable. Thankfully, I have Experiments disabled in FF.

    Dear Mozilla, Concentrate on making a *browser* not a kitchen sink -- we already have Emacs for that.* :-)

    [ * Said as a long, long time Emacs user... ]

    --
    It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
  4. Changing objectives by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Firefox isn't a browser anymore, it's a private brand/company, and should be treated as such.

  5. Development priorities by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    They have three "engineers" (lol) working on pointless fluff intrinsically tied to a Google service, but couldn't spare a single person to maintain the built-in RSS reader, which encourages a decentralized internet and serves users instead of sponsors? Ok then.

  6. Re:3rd party service? by Fly+Swatter · · Score: 2

    Ah, but this probably tracks you tracking the prices. That's data that can be sold!

  7. For those who don't know what Test Pilot is... by Torodung · · Score: 4, Informative

    So many respondents to this article, in their haste to hate on Mozilla, haven't a clue what Test Pilot is. It's a series of experiments, hosted on a web page, that you need an add-on installed just to get access to the experiments. Then you choose which experiments you want as add-ons. Or ignore them. Your choice. Or don't install Test Pilot at all and ignore the whole thing.

    Nobody's bloating up the browser. You'd literally have to install two separate extensions just to get this on your Firefox.

    1. Re:For those who don't know what Test Pilot is... by houghi · · Score: 2

      OK. Ket us look at the test-pilot part. There are people working on it. Meaning they are not working on other things that are actually browser related. This is Firefox thast is working on it. They should be working on things people are asking for.

      Next: if the pilot fails, they would have wasted a lot of time. This might be the best outcome.
      If the pilot is a success, it will be implemented into the browser, the moment they have found a way to commercialize it. (Not that hard)
      That will be a bad thing, because if I look up at the prices of toothpaste, I do not want Amazon and others know that I am doing that. There is a reason I use Duckduck.

      So the best moment to complain about it is before it went into production. As a result of that, there can be three outcomes.
      1) The outcry was large enough, so they stop developing it.
      2) The outcome was good enough as a warning, so they won't ever put it into the default browser
      3) They do not care and put it in anyway.

      Although option 3 is the most likely outcome, we should be at least trying to get option one, in hope to get at least option 2.

      A test pilot is not just the technical part. The backlash must be part of the pilot as well. How is it received? And the answer is "bad" (at leats here).

      --
      Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.