ungoogled-chromium has absolutely zero telemetry. It's the gold standard for browsers and a rare breath of fresh air in the polluted world of modern software.
Firefox, in contrast, is nowhere close. It includes trackers, "pings", "experiments", ads, sponsored search engines, bundled extensions, and phone-homes. Despire Mozilla's open-source and privacy rhetoric, its level of bundled spyware is not very different from any other commercial software product.
>its level of bundled spyware is not very different from any other commercial software product.
Maybe that is more a sign of how necessary it is, rather than indication that Mozilla is somehow an evil company.
"Phoning home" let's them know which features are being used and need to be maintained, and where the bugs are occurring. Experiments are how Firefox tests improvements in a controlled way. Sponsored search engines are how Firefox can exist at all.
> "Phoning home" let's them know which features are being used and need to be maintained
This is part of the reason modern software is often crap. It gets sanded down to only the most used features, screwing over anyone with a slightly niche use case in the process.
I think Firefox would be more "crap"py if every feature at least one of its users wanted was included. The binary size and startup time would suffer, new feature development would slow to a crawl as every change becomes more difficult, and the interface would be clogged with things I don't want.
I think the situation is more complex than you're asserting. Unless a program has stopped development, it is not a product -- it is an ongoing work that's more akin to a service being provided by the developers. UI changes, bugfixes, refactors, and etc mean that existing features are not zero-cost to the developers. I understand that it's frustrating to lose niche features, but that's a symptom of other complexities, not a cause-free act of foolishness by developers.
I think what parent poster was referring to is not the source of the money but the reason:
Much like Intel has cross-licensed patents with AMD in order to keep their competition viable enough to stave off monopoly and anticompetitive business practices accusations, it could be argued that Google’s promotional search agreements with Mozilla for Firefox are more to Google’s benefit than to Firefox’s.
What does it matter if Google avoided an anti-trust suit?
What matters to me and (I bet) other consumers is that we have a good browser that isn't Chrome. One that tries to keep Chrome honest when it comes to web standards. Consumers actually have increased choice, we're in a better place than we would be if Chrome was a monopoly. If that helps Google avoid anti-trust scrutiny in this area, fine by me.
The comment thread we’re both replying to implied that Firefox couldn’t exist without the Google money, which is disingenuous, because Firefox existed in its various code rebases, and under former Mozilla brand names, long before the Google money came in. Mozilla would have to make some tough choices, but Firefox would be maintained by volunteers independent of Mozilla if necessary. Mozilla isn’t Firefox. Maybe the Google money benefits Mozilla more than Firefox, and more than it benefits Firefox users.
For now, Firefox still has the edge on features which enhance user privacy[1], so I hope to see a project like OP for Firefox and Edge soon. More choices is a good thing.
To me, telemetry is ok. That is, how the software runs, which operations are slow, where crashes or recoverable errors happen. Anonymous technical stuff, preferably in a user-unelectable form.
What I'd be concerned about is personal profiling, knowing which sites I visit, which forms I submit (including web search), etc.
We're talking about telemetry here. Spyware is something different. It is covert malware, hidden in software that purports to do something useful. It would not be explained in privacy policies.
Software that incorporates silent and nonconsensual telemetry is spyware.
If it's reporting telemetry silently, it's covert.
If it's not asking for permission first, for some percentage of users, it's nonconsensual, and is thus rightly qualified as malicious.
It's still malice even if the telemetry is just for product improvement, against the user's wishes for privacy. (It also has the side effect of informing the ISP and military intelligence surveillance apparatus of the user's usage habits.)
Tools that misuse the user's system to benefit the software manufacturer against the wishes of the user by exfiltrating their data without advance warning (covertly) are malware.
> It is covert malware, hidden in software that purports to do something useful.
You just described a software package with silent, no-opt-in telemetry, such as Visual Studio Code, Balena Etcher, the Adobe Creative Cloud, Mozilla Firefox, the Netlify CLI, the Gatsby static site generator, the Google Cloud CLI utility, and many others.
In the world full surveillance you think all telemetry is wrong.
There were better days and there are better worlds. In Arch Linux and Debian you have to find out and install telemetry by yourself [1], [2]. It provides neat insides to the community.
Like in Arch Linux Firefox is on the rise [3], Chromium on the fall [4] and Google Chrome while small is constant [5]. While Debian community strongly prefers Firefox ESR [6] over Firefox [7] and Chromium [8].
Yes, statistics skewed to those who participate in community [9], but same could be said about forums, wiki, chatrooms, mailing lists. That's fine - community care most about those who help community. Anonymized highly technical telemetry is easiest way. I opt in. Bonus point - Firefox Public Data Report [10].
Yeah. Even Brave, a chromium browser with ad and tracking protection built in, has been injecting more and more of their own ads.
A browser that's Actually Not Shady sounds pretty cool. Though bummed to hear in a sibling comment that they don't provide builds.
Would be cool to see a service that provides UC builds, updates, and sync in some kind of transparently secure way. Perhaps with optional ad blocking. Maybe $10/yr or something folks would pay. I would.
Hmm thinking about this a little more, a killer feature for me would be Brave-style untracked browsing by default, but with the ability to enter a fully tracked profile on demand (and perhaps by default for certain domains). I use chrome for all my logged-in stuff, and brave for all logged-out web browsing. It'd be kinda nice to have only one.
What I didn't understand (or maybe I missed it), is all these extra features and they didn't include ability to install extensions not signed by overlords.
I'm a little confused by this - are you referring to Chrome on MacOS and Windows only allowing extensions from the Chrome Web Store? With all other versions of Chrome and Chromium, you can drag-and-drop compiled extensions by default.
It's nonsense. I don't understand all these people ripping on Firefox for absolutely ridiculous reasons. Lack of MIDI support for a 6 year old? Being upset Firefox uses telemetry to improve their product? A minor difference in developer tool design? HN sure has become filled with negativity instead of constructive criticism.
> Being upset Firefox uses telemetry to improve their product?
Being upset Firefox co-opts the user's own computer and network connection to spy on them, violating consent, to benefit Mozilla/Firefox's product development efforts.
That's not ridiculous. That's a human rights violation.
Firefox, in contrast, is nowhere close. It includes trackers, "pings", "experiments", ads, sponsored search engines, bundled extensions, and phone-homes. Despire Mozilla's open-source and privacy rhetoric, its level of bundled spyware is not very different from any other commercial software product.