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Mozilla Ditches Firefox's New-Tab Monetization Plans 195

Posted by Soulskill from the benefits-of-asking-for-feedback dept.
hypnosec writes "Mozilla has ditched Firefox's new-tab monetization plans because they 'didn't go over well' with the community. Johnathan Nightingale, Mozilla's VP of Firefox, said much of Firefox's community was worried Mozilla would 'turn Firefox into a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder' and that users wouldn't have control over this or see any actual benefit. 'That's not going to happen. That's not who we are at Mozilla.'"
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Mozilla Ditches Firefox's New-Tab Monetization Plans More

Mozilla Ditches Firefox's New-Tab Monetization Plans

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  • That's not who we are at Mozilla (Score:3, Insightful)

    by koan ( 80826 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @12:45PM (#46967335)

    laugh... but you would have gone ahead with it if you could have gotten it past the "community".

    We need a new Firefox, someone "pure" again.

    • Re:That's not who we are at Mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)

      by QuasiSteve ( 2042606 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @12:54PM (#46967421)

      We need a new Firefox, someone "pure" again.

      Wouldn't a 'pure' Firefox also do away with the default search provider - which is effectively whoever bids highest for the position anyway?

      I do think the 'new tab promotion' bit would have been bad, but mostly from a "what's next?" perspective. Otherwise, it would still be a page you can customize - including just deleting the promotional bits - that essentially has the promoted bits replaced as you browse, and if you really wanted to, never have to see more than once after installation as it is; and if you do, at least there will be some content there instead of vast emptiness. If it means Mozilla gets a bit more money, or at least money from a more diverse pool, I would have been fine with it.

      • Re:That's not who we are at Mozilla (Score:5, Insightful)

        by koan ( 80826 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @01:00PM (#46967469)

        You can have a "default" just give the user a choice, if they want to use it or not.
        That's my thing really, so tired of updates on my phone and computers that don't take how the user feels into consideration.
        A perfect example is Windows 8, another would be Unity.
        Let me leave my GUI the way it is while still getting security updates and feature sets (other than GUI features obviously) give *ME* the choice.

        • The way I read it, this wouldn't actually have affected you if you were already a user of FireFox; i.e. it would be for new users only. You would still have had the existing things with your most frequently visited sites in them. (depending on your version of firefox, that in itself might be new, I suppose).

      • Opera did this - maybe still does - who knows only the sheep and clueless haven't abandoned that sinking ship. Wasn't a big deal, it was just a handful of bookmarks, and ~9 Speed Dial items, that most "geeks" replaced. They should of just gone forward with it, bring in some extra non-google sponsored-directly revenue, and let people change the defaults from a clean install as they wish.

      • We need a new Firefox, someone "pure" again.

        Wouldn't a 'pure' Firefox also do away with the default search provider - which is effectively whoever bids highest for the position anyway?

        I do think the 'new tab promotion' bit would have been bad, but mostly from a "what's next?" perspective. Otherwise, it would still be a page you can customize - including just deleting the promotional bits - that essentially has the promoted bits replaced as you browse, and if you really wanted to, never have to see more than once after installation as it is; and if you do, at least there will be some content there instead of vast emptiness. If it means Mozilla gets a bit more money, or at least money from a more diverse pool, I would have been fine with it.

        I suppose that Firefox could keep several extra tabs dynamically created, and they would serve as follows:
        As you browse a website, the adverts would be directed to those tabs. You would have very few advertisements on the page you are browsing. The would also move the commercial stuff that Google presents in front of your search to a back tab. One tab for advertisements, and one for commercials. (Commercials are dynamic and fleeting, adverts are there for a much longer (until you clear them) time
        My goodn

    • Re:That's not who we are at Mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Hsien-Ko ( 1090623 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @12:55PM (#46967423)
      Seamonkey [seamonkey-project.org] exists, has always been the last designbycommittee-bullshit-free Gecko-based browser for over a decade, but it always feels so unloved.
      • Thanks for recommending this! I Just installed it and it appears to be modern browsing (tabs, css3, html5) with the look and feel of an older browser. I was getting fed up with the incremental death of the toolbar, browser bar etc.. I definitely recommend others giving this a try for an alternative with a retro look.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by antdude ( 79039 )

        I still use it because I have been using suite since Netscape Communicator days. I noticed many people hate the suite products due to bloatness. :(

        • That's ironic, because in the 1.x days, the full Seamonkey suite felt less bloated than even Firefox 3.x and hogged far less memory and crashed less.

          • That's ironic, because in the 1.x days, the full Seamonkey suite felt less bloated than even Firefox 3.x and hogged far less memory and crashed less.

            Firefox 3.x was the apogee of runaway heap allocations. With my usage pattern and plug-ins I was losing 600 MB per day on average. I would have six FF Windows open on half a dozen different desktops, each with 20 to 50 active tabs. When I decided to restart FF because it could no longer keep up with my typing in a textarea box, my session saver would restore

    • Re:That's not who we are at Mozilla (Score:4, Insightful)

      by sunami88 ( 1074925 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @01:06PM (#46967533)

      We need a new Firefox, someone "pure" again.

      Indeed! Australis (FF29 in general) has very nearly pinched my last nerve with Firefox. What the fuck is going on at Mozilla? The last two versions have run like complete and utter shit on my systems, from freezing windows to outright random crashes. What happened to my lightweight and reliable browser?

      (Side tangent: Also, when will we get text reflow back in Android?)

      • Re:That's not who we are at Mozilla (Score:5, Interesting)

        by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @01:19PM (#46967635)

        We need a new Firefox, someone "pure" again.

        Indeed! Australis (FF29 in general) has very nearly pinched my last nerve with Firefox. What the fuck is going on at Mozilla? The last two versions have run like complete and utter shit on my systems, from freezing windows to outright random crashes. What happened to my lightweight and reliable browser? >

        Pale Moon [palemoon.org]

        • thanks! Pale Moon is nice!!!

        • More about Pale Moon (Score:5, Informative)

          by Futurepower(R) ( 558542 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @04:48PM (#46968631) Homepage
          The Pale Moon browser is a better version of Firefox. Pale Moon appears to have better management than the Mozilla Foundation gives Firefox.

          Pale Moon Windows version [palemoon.org]
          Pale Moon Linux version [sourceforge.net]

          Here are some of the advantages:

          1) Pale Moon has a 64-bit version. Firefox doesn't. The 64-bit Pale Moon uses the Firefox add-ons; there are no problems except with some unusual add-ons.

          2) The "Find in page" is better in Pale Moon. In Firefox the "Find in page" field is on the left of the screen and the "Highlight All" and "Match Case" buttons are on the right. In Pale Moon they are together so that you immediately see if something is chosen from a former search.

          3) Pale Moon has backup software. Firefox has only Mozbackup [jasnapaka.com], which works well, but isn't Mozilla Foundation software.

          4) Pale Moon is said to be more stable than Firefox. The memory-hogging flaws in Firefox are so widely acknowledged that there are add-ons for re-starting Firefox: Firefox Re-start Add-ons. [mozilla.org] I use Restartless Restart. [mozilla.org]

          5) Pale Moon is completely independent of the forces that guide Firefox. Pale Moon is in no way associated with Mozilla Foundation. [palemoon.org] The Mozilla Foundation seems to feel forced to change Firefox in ways most users don't want.

          Migration tool: Pale Moon has a profile migration tool [palemoon.org].

      • We need a new Firefox, someone "pure" again.

        Indeed! Australis (FF29 in general) has very nearly pinched my last nerve with Firefox. What the fuck is going on at Mozilla? The last two versions have run like complete and utter shit on my systems, from freezing windows to outright random crashes. What happened to my lightweight and reliable browser?

        Maybe you're using a lot of add-ons. I'm on Fx 29 using nothing but NoScript and it works wonderfully.

        • I am using Firefox on Ubuntu 14.04 with exactly one (1) add on (Tree Style Tab). Firefox crashes multiple times a day. As does Thunderbird. It seems slowly to get less, though, the crashing. But "add ons" (or even it's your hardware) seem to me like easy cop outs.

          • I'm occationally using Ubuntu 14.04 and Firefox works just great for me on it. Sorry but I really think there's something wrong with your system. Try if for a while without any addons just for reference, and check about:crashes to see if you can get more details from it.

            • It's extremely unlikely it's the hardware since it's the same one on which I ran until recently 10.04. On it Firefox crashed only once in a week or so, and IIRC most often when some Flash was involved. Maybe the difference is that I don't use Ubuntu 14.04 occassionally but 8+ hrs a day ;-). (And I have 33+ tabs open in it). Ubuntu 14.04 was very instable the first week or so, each time I logged in it wanted to report 3 crashes. But those have gone after recent updates.

      • You forgot the part where it doesn't completly close and you have to terminate the process before opening a new window. I've switched to QupZilla.

      • Just install the Classic Theme Restorer [mozilla.org] extension. A bit of configuring and you have a better Firefox than either version 28 and Australis.

    • I don't see the problem with it, myself. It would only have been for new users or new installs and minimal usage would have replaced the tiles with sites visited.

      It's also a way for FF to reduce dependency on one big Sugar Daddy (Google) for its finances, which has got to be in FF's best interests, and therefore users best interests.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )

      but you would have gone ahead with it if you could have gotten it past the "community".

      Yes. He's saying that they listen to the community at Firefox and they're not the sort who will push things through if the community disagrees with it. If the community had not disagreed with it, then they would have gone ahead.

    • We need a new Firefox, someone "pure" again.

      Good. Pure. Free.

      Pick any two.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by OhPlz ( 168413 )

      Perhaps Mozilla is too busy working on projects such as FireCEO and ensuring the "purity" of beliefs amongst its executives. There are only so many hours in a day, and so much progress to be done.

  • Maybe Australis Next? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    The new UI isn't going over well either; maybe they should ditch it, too. (I know some people like it - I wish they'd at least make it optional.)

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

      I hate what they did with Australis, I nearly changed to Seamonkey, but classic-theme-restorer has put Firefox back the way I like it, I just hope it doesn't stop working.

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

      Is it just me or is Firefox going much slower with Version 29.0? (no-script + ghostery installed)

      • No problem here (Fx 29 + NoScript). The new look feel good so far; it is quicker to find everything and a traditional menubar is just an F10 away in case I need it.

      • I just updated and it looks basically the same to me (I don't use FireFox much except on Android). What changed so much that you dislike?

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

          "What changed so much that you dislike?"

          Tabs on top
          The inability to put the url bar where I want it
          The inability to put the search box where I want it
          The removal of the status bar.
          The fixing of navigation buttons so they cant be moved.
          Overall - they took away the ability to customise a lot and it left my browser looking a hideous mess because their forced changes didn't work with my previous customisations.

          • Tabs on top

            That's always made more sense to me. The URL bar is part of the tab - it relates to the contents of the tab, not the overall environment - so that's where it belongs. I thought 28 did it the same way, but maybe I misremembered.

            The inability to put the url bar where I want it
            The inability to put the search box where I want it

            Not sure where you want either of these, but I hit the customize button in the pop-up thing to the right of the toolbar and it lets me move them around. Weirdly, it doesn't let me move the URL bar by dragging it, but it does let me move things to the left and right of it, so it jus

  • I ditched Firefox 'cause they're intolerant bigots (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SensitiveMale ( 155605 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @12:50PM (#46967379)

    And I'll never use it again.

    • Re:I ditched Firefox 'cause they're intolerant big (Score:5, Funny)

      by Nidi62 ( 1525137 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @12:56PM (#46967439)

      And I'll never use it again.

      Now who's being intolerant?

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Brett Buck ( 811747 )

        So, just let me get this entirely straight. A man was hounded out of his job for not having the "correct" beliefs*, and when someone objects or defends his right to an opinion, he, too, is "intolerant" (and according to the downmodded post, a "closet homophobe)? This is your definition of tolerance?

        Scratch a liberal or "advocacy group" and you see the same rotten core you saw in 1933.

        And the terrible crime here is that the man contributed to a *successful*

        • Re:I ditched Firefox 'cause they're intolerant big (Score:5, Insightful)

          by Microlith ( 54737 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @01:32PM (#46967723)

          for not having the "correct" beliefs*

          More importantly, for contributing $1000 to a political campaign in favor of an amendment that explicitly attacked a segment of the populace, on top of repeatedly (and publicly) supporting congressmen who regularly express bigoted attitudes towards homosexuals [theguardian.com]. So yeah, he was given the lead position on Mozilla and people flipped their shit because he backed politicians that spew bullshit to demonize them.

          when someone objects or defends his right to an opinion, he, too, is "intolerant"

          No, this is the old "you must be tolerant of my intolerance" nonsense. No one has to sit back and accept being walked over, particularly when the basis for it is entirely hollow.

          Scratch a liberal or "advocacy group" and you see the same rotten core you saw in 1933.

          Wait, what? Is this an indirect Godwin?

          And the terrible crime here is that the man contributed to a *successful* change to the CA constitution

          What does it having been successful have to do with anything?

          after a previous *successful* propostion to the same effect was defeated by the same pack of "tolerance" bullies?

          What are you referring to?

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Anonymous Coward

        And I'll never use it again.

        Now who's being intolerant?

        The management of Firefox, that's who.

        Boycotting Firefox is no more intolerant than boycotting Chic-fil-a because you don't like their policies.

        • Firefox suck and Chic-fil-a is delicious. Big difference. You're better off when you switch browsers from Firefox.

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by Microlith ( 54737 )

      They're "intolerant bigots" because CEO stepped down over public furor regarding him being... an intolerant bigot? No, your logic is broken.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by epyT-R ( 613989 )

      I am sure the gay employees at mozilla have spent private funds supporting their politics, and I didn't see that new ceo hassling them for it, even if he disagrees. Who's the better person here?

      Anyway, none of this should matter because work is not a place where you get to hang out with the people you want to hang out with. You're going to encounter people who have beliefs and lifestyles that differ from yours. You're all there to work, not to establish little gay (or christian, or athletic etc) cliques a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

        I am sure the gay employees at mozilla have spent private funds supporting their politics, and I didn't see that new ceo hassling them for it, even if he disagrees.

        Can you really not see a difference between someone supporting equality and freedom for themselves and someone trying to limit another group's freedom?

        You might as well argue that people who buy protective sportsware are the same as the ones who go around kicking people in the nuts.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by epyT-R ( 613989 )

          Sending private funds to a specific political platform that isn't friendly to gay rights is NOT equal to using pro gay systemic bias to oust someone from a job. The litmus test is role reversal: If he got them ousted because they were gay, what would you think? Right. The left has manufactured a with us/against us culture around the protected castes in 'affirmative action' that is little different than the one neocons created around christianity. Both are reprehensible and detrimental to individual liber

  • Quit telling us what we want, 'kay? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by pla ( 258480 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @12:50PM (#46967389) Journal
    FTA: "But we will experiment. In the coming weeks, we’ll be landing tests on our pre-release channels to see whether we can make things like the new tab page more useful, particularly for fresh installs of Firefox, where we don’t yet have any recommendations to make from your history."

    Or how about just not recommending anything to me? That too complicated a concept, or just not enough money in it?

    Funny thing about the web - I get to decide where I go and what I see and when. Any attempts to circumvent that control, whether by obnoxious advertising or regional access controls or even hijacking my new blank tabs with anything other than a new blank tab, people will push back against. And people will succeed, because you ain't the only game in town - And yes, that includes Mozilla, it includes Google, it includes Microsoft. Give us what we want, not what you wish we wanted, or we will move on and leave you to die from prolonged irrelevance.

    • Re:Quit telling us what we want, 'kay? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by bill_mcgonigle ( 4333 ) * on Saturday May 10, 2014 @01:09PM (#46967563) Homepage Journal

      That too complicated a concept, or just not enough money in it?

      Funny thing about the web - I get to decide where I go and what I see and when.

      Fine, write your own browser.

      Mozilla is facing their $300M/yr revenue stream from Google going away as of December. Perhaps you can offer and execute a better plan for continuing to provide a good, secure, public-interest browser?

      Heaven forbid they sell some ads and give people the option to turn that off ... it's worse than kidnapping little girls, I tell you!

      Mozilla, don't listen to the haters - do what you need to to keep Firefox & Thunderbird alive and libre.

      • Re:Quit telling us what we want, 'kay? (Score:4, Interesting)

        by JMJimmy ( 2036122 ) on Saturday May 10, 2014 @01:43PM (#46967785)

        If Google drops the ball, Microsoft will pick it up for the default search revenue. Mozilla also doesn't need the 300m/y for a public interest browser - they've got more products and experiments than you can shake a stick at and they're expanding into the mobile OS market which will likely result in tablet/pc market as well. They could pull back or eliminate duplication.

        Why they need 11 offices globally is beyond me as well. Close down/consolidate the Vancouver, Portland, Auckland, Taipei, London, and Paris offices then open one in India and Brazil.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by pla ( 258480 )
        Fine, write your own browser.

        Or we could just, y'know, use Chromium/Iron or MSIE or even a dark-horse like Opera or Safari.

        Personally, I still use FF on my PC, though the last ESR version, I don't piss around with their daily feature-breaking releases. But for mobile, FF's refusal to just port the desktop version has left it so badly broken and unconfigurable to behave better that I actually use the default Android browser over FF. I'd go with Chrome, but by some incomprehensible business decision, G
  • Now, if they would just ditch that awful fucking interface they just foisted on us...

    • Classic Theme Restorer add-on. Works well. Tabs underneath as I type this very message! https://addons.mozilla.org/en-... [mozilla.org]

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by hodet ( 620484 )

        My only problem with the new theme was the tabs on top and the status bar disappearing. Why are they so adamant about tabs on top anyway, who cares where we put them? For me I just prefer it that way. Classic theme restorer works well for this one feature. But that's two add-ons I have needed to restore functionality now. Will see what it does to performance.

  • Lets be honest, they reason they're not going ahead with this is because they are not desperate for cash, Google et al are paying Mozilla hundreds of millions literally for their search engine to be prominent (Yahoo is the top placed search engine for Android Firefox).

    And if this was prominent instead, it could cost them a pretty penny.

  • Damn you firefox! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by ADRA ( 37398 )

    If I wanted my fucking browser to look like Chrome, guess what? I woud've switched to Chrome a long time ago. Now I get an update today and it looks like crap.. sigh. Where's the 'don't touch my old fucking settings because i'm a hating curmudgeon' button, because I think its time for it.

  • Options (Score:2, Interesting)

    by EmperorOfCanada ( 1332175 )
    Not to mention that would be the last day I would use Firefox; not merely out of protest but because as a web developer I would know that Firefox's market share would break into the single digits within 6 months.

    This amazes me how companies can become so distorted in their thinking that it would make sense for them to think that this would fly. While I like and use Firefox they must understand that my intrinsic loyalty is nearly pure habit. I have switched browsers maybe 5 times and anticipate that I wil
  • and started using seamonkey, i dont like firefox's new user interface, the stop & refresh button is now embedded on the right hand side of the address-bar and no way to move it back (i want it back to the left). and i notice now when i close firefox that artifacts stay in memory so if i relaunch firefox again a dialog pops up telling me firefox is already running.

    maybe when i get some new hardware and install a newer release of Linux i will give firefox another try, but until then i got to keep this

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      ... and i notice now when i close firefox that artifacts stay in memory so if i relaunch firefox again a dialog pops up telling me firefox is already running.

      Uh, it's not supposed to do that. That's an issue with your Firefox and a fresh install would probably fix it.

      • It does do that. When quitting a heavy session with lots of active/loaded tabs, just the task of exiting and releasing resources etc. can be quite long esp. if a lot of the process's memory resides in swap. Even when all UI windows are closed there's still a firefox process doing that work. At least it did that pre-29. In case like this you can watch it with top in a terminal window, look at the CPU use, and the "RES" memory use going down.

        If you don't want to baby sit Firefox I can recommend the "Restartle

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by SeaFox ( 739806 )

          It does do that.

          It doesn't happen to me. Maybe you're having issues just like Fudrucker. Same with the other posters above complaining about how the new version of Firefox got real slow when using x extension or y plugin -- don't blame the poor software writing for what are likely an individual system issue.

          • You probably won't ever notice if you use less than 100% of your memory and with a very fast CPU (like sandy bridge and up) there would be even less a reason to. If you're using something 150% of your physical memory (running a computer with 2GB or less and Firefox using well over 1GB) that's another story, it does take time to release resources when they are in hundreds of megabytes of swap.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Xest ( 935314 )

        Does it for me too, given that he said Linux and I use Windows I'd wager it's everything to do with Firefox and nothing to do with his system - we're not even using the same OS.

  • If SeaMonkey had tab groups, I'd switch in an instant.
  • The reload button embedded into the url bar without the ability to move it back to the sane place next to the other navigation buttons (home, back/forward, stop/reload) is the killer for me. I mean, wth. Thankfully the classic theme restorer helps out if you can jump through the right setting hoops, as this is a terrible design in my opinion. IE does this and I can't move it. I don't use IE. Chrome does this but lets me move it. I almost switch back to using chrome as my more permanent browser because of th
  • now if they can just get rid of australis and make the browser actually useable again it would be perfect.
  • Their original announcement reads like public relations bullshit: https://blog.mozilla.org/advan... [mozilla.org]

  • This is yet another reason that I'm a great fan of Firefox and Mozilla as a whole. Firefox (and Mozilla) remains the only major browser that has the user's privacy, functions, and security in mind; not to mention a great example of FOSS that is equally viable and usable to the neophyte as the guru. I'm glad that they backed off their latest endeavor in response to user worries, but we users need to figure out a palatable way to support Mozilla monetization soon!

    Now personally, I didn't have a problem with the sponsored starting "quickslots" as I understood them. They only existed on a completely new install, were visibly marked as being sponsored, didn't send back any sort of user data or have other privacy issue, and vanished as soon as the user visited 9 web pages to take up all the "quick dial" slots with their own content! People being worried that it could bleed into something more is understandable, but we need to avoid lashing out at ANY monetization system, because we'll end up in a much worse state.

    Like it or not, Mozilla needs funds to do what they do; acting the paragon of web virtue and privacy, having full time developers etc... isn't cheap. Especially in a market where the "bad guys' are offering "FREE SHINY SUPER CONVENIENCE FEATURE HEY LOOK AT THIS" at every turn, while simultaneously selling the user's data to the highest bidder (see: Google) , it is hard to offer a competing level of service and features with a better ethical bend; its even worse when the "bad guys" offer the biggest bucks (ie the reason that porn, faux antivirus sites, other dataminers and outright malware ads pay the most per click. On the other side, those like American health insurance companies, people search slime etc.. are willing to pay top dollar for your data if Google or whomever gathers it. Atop all of this, Google has to compete with "Joe User's" preferences. Though they do an excellent job bringing their support of an open web and privacy to light, Joe User still may like Chrome Widget A or Feature B, which is part of the reason that Firefox is trying to provide "Chrome UI styles" to those that want them in recent variants.

    Ultimately, I want Mozilla to continue with its FOSS, openness, and privacy-focused mission and I am willing (and do) donate to the foundation in the hopes to help them do so. However, I know I am a minority - most people aren't going to donate and/or pay for a browser. If it is true that Firefox is going to lose a huge chunk of its revenue from including Google as one of its Search Bar default engines, they are going to have to make that up somehow. Honest and innocuous attempts to do so like the previous "quickdial sponsored starting pages" idea should likely be supported. Especially the tech and FOSS geek community shouldn't be rebuking any attempt for monetization, lest we end up with Mozilla either falling further and further behind as they don't have the money to keep up, or worse abandoning their principles to pay the bills. Instead, we need to be supporting Mozilla's attempts to make money that is still in line with their mission and our desires for openness, privacy, security and the like.

    P.S. Despite being one of my favorite pieces of software, recently Thunderbird really needs some support too (especially, being able to detect the new Gmail Categories etc... that's something that the clout of Mozilla should be able to sit down with Google and work out a way to handle it) . Its sad that Mozilla hasn't the resources to invest in continuous improvements and have put the project on the back burner. We don't want to see this happen to Firefox too!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Xest ( 935314 )

      When I think privacy I certainly don't think Mozilla. These are the guys that support the advertising industry by parroting their bullshit excuses in refusing to let people opt in to do not track instead of defaulting them to opt out, or giving them a choice on install.

  • According to Wikipedia Mozilla Corp has 1000+ employees. That's an amazing amount of people for a web browser. Remember, Firefox is the only thing they do that's gained traction.

    That's about 950 too much. What the hell are they all doing over there? It just smells like a huge corruption scandal waiting to explode.

    More than anything, it's over-management that's made Mozilla an elephant. It can probably explain FirefoxOS as well.

  • They don't say they're ditching the plan.

    They say 'we will experiment.' meaning:

    'bit by bit we're going to achieve our goal, just so slowly that you won't all notice at the same time'.

  • Two firefox extentions I use now:
    "Old default Image Style"
    "Classic Theme Restorer"

    All they do is restore previous behavior and give back features that have been taken away (like the statusbar). It's really sad that you now need extentions to get previous sane behavior back. And it's also a bit sad that the MemoryRestart extention is still a must since the memory leak problems that's been in Firefox since forever are still present and seem to get worse, not better, each release.

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