Mozilla removes telemetry service Adjust from mobile Firefox versions

https://www.techzine.eu/news/privacy-compliance/123726/mozilla-removes-telemetry-service-adjust-from-mobile-firefox-versions/

by ReadCarlBarks • 2 years ago

43 32 2 years ago

techzine.eu

WD-422• 2 years ago

Lots of movement around Firefox lately.

The possibility of the google money going away as a result of the antitrust ruling must be really shaking them to the core over at Mozilla.

JumpCrisscross• 2 years ago

possibility of the google money going away

That Mozilla seems to actually give a shit about something for the first time in decades speaks volumes to how anticompetitive that deal was.

stavros3• 2 years ago

I'm out of the loop here, can someone explain?

mozempthrowaway2• 2 years ago

Without that deal, there wouldn’t be a Firefox. If/when it’s gone, there’s no one capable/willing to fund Mozilla to that amount.

Really there’s only 1 other company who can throw that level of money at us and it’s Microsoft. Without Google bidding up the price, doubtful they would pay as much for Bing to be the default search and it’s not like Firefox users would welcome that change.

Free software doesn’t work for long without some sort of corporate sponsorship at some point, and it’s not in anyone’s interest to fund it at this point. (And don’t say “the EU should” most Europeans are not clamoring for their governments to spend money on an American browser company with web compatibility issues that no one tests against)

Vinnl2• 2 years ago

Mozilla watcher Sören Hentzschel points out [1] that the release notes do not indicate that this service collects data. This means that end users were not aware that the service was forwarding data to Mozilla, which is remarkable for a browser provider that claims to value (data) privacy.

I don't think the second sentence can/should be inferred from the first. Just the fact that the removal isn't called out in the release notes, doesn't mean that users weren't informed about it when it was present.

There's probably something to be said about whether it was mentioned clearly enough (and on whether it should have been present in the first place), but the release notes of a future version is not where I'd expect to find information about data collection.

(I work for Mozilla, but not on Firefox and wasn't involved with this.)

[1] https://www.soeren-hentzschel.at/firefox-android/mozilla-ent...

onli• 2 years ago

It's a complete mistranslation of what Sören wrote. He just noted the missing change log entry, as you said.

debacle• 2 years ago

Every large non-profit in the tech/software space eventually becomes a non-profit that happens to do software, rather than a software organization incorporated as a non-profit. Wikimedia, Mozilla, Canonical, etc.

Vinnl2• 2 years ago

I don't think Canonical ever was a non-profit.

rvz• 2 years ago

So Firefox had spyware all this time in their iOS and Android apps? Not a surprise here despite them being 80% dependent on Google's money, they could not help introduce spyware in their browser and preach 'privacy-first'.

They were never a 'privacy-first browser' after taking Google's money and refusing to remove their dependence from them.

seba_dos1• 2 years ago

Of course they were never a 'privacy-first browser', it was always clear for anyone who paid attention. They just looked around one day, noticed that every single competitor was atrocious at privacy when compared with Firefox and incorporated that into their marketing messaging and further development plans - which only happened fairly recently.

jlarocco2• 2 years ago

It’s really disappointing that they even had this, and is a perfect example of Mozilla selling out users to Google, as if it weren’t obvious before.

Really no reason to use Firefox over Chromium or Safari as far as I can see.

I’ve had good luck with Orion on mobile.

ensignavenger2• 2 years ago

I use Firefox primarily to support an independent rendering engine. I also like the extensions offered by Firefox more than any other browser. But I would love to see a better managed, user focused fork of it. Time will tell, but for now I am using Firefox until a better alternative comes along.

mozempthrowaway2• 2 years ago

The rendering engine portion of the whole Firefox vs Chrome debate gets way more attention than it should. It’s really not that important. Someone could fork any piece of the chromium project and have an “independent rendering engine/browser” without all the problems gecko has from a decade of little market share and under investment. Google nor Mozilla make money from their rendering engines as is evidenced by their ability to make money on iOS.

Also, the rendering engine isn’t the way Google is being anticompetitive or violating users privacy, just like no one is really that worried that Google, Facebook, and MS are some of the largest contributors to the Linux kernel. People use a chromium based browser because chromium is better. Google gets people to use Chrome, and gets their data through the code they add on top. Overall though, Google has not been a bad steward of Blink.

nonbarx• 2 years ago

(2024) Question: Is it "true" that company's may use a link-shortener-service and within a link they send you, hiding their ruling that you have automatically accepted their tracking-"cookie-policy" (for example in agreeing their TOS before)?

Sry, non native english speaker... regards

montroser• 2 years ago

Speaking of mobile Firefox, they're pursuing this abomination of a UI update for Android too: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/updates-to-androi...

techjamie• 2 years ago

Personally, I'll judge how worried they are about money by how much the CEO's pay changes. Constantly acting like they're about to be on the rocks when their CEO is taking home almost $7m in compensation per year is laughable, especially considering they made less than $1m for much of Mozilla's lifetime, and their raise to $2m made headlines not that many years ago.

anotherhue• 2 years ago

And they fired the engineers who were actually working on the product. $7m is a nice product team that many startups would kill for.

Fire the CEO. Drop all but 2/3 products. Get off the pot.

snapplebobapple• 2 years ago

I really wish librewolf would make a version of the firefox beta android apk...

Mozilla removes telemetry service Adjust from mobile Firefox versions

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