Firefox

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When Google paid websites to promote Firefox (leonidasv.com)

submitted 2 years ago by cypherpunks@lemmy.ml to c/firefox@lemmy.ml

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[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 years ago (1 children)

for instance by banning early on third party scripts by default, ad-blocking by default, blocking tracking and other cookies by default with much smoother controls

That wasn't just for Google, why they did not do that. Them having an own browser engine, they need webpage owners to use technologies not just available in IE/Chrome, and ideally test their webpages in Firefox, too.
It was easy for Brave et al to be more aggressive in the past, because webpage owners were buiding+testing for Chrome anyways. But on the flipside, you get all the shortcomings of Chrome's engine, too.

[–] JoeBidet@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 years ago (1 children)

They should have done it way way way back. before Brave existed, and before surveillance was pervasive. They had a chance when they had gotten a peak in market shares (around 2008-2010?), but their (secret) contract with Google probably prevented them from doing that... Has anyone seen the Mozilla-Google contract?

[–] Ephera@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 years ago

The only shareholder of the Mozilla Corporation is the non-profit Mozilla Foundation. If the MoCo makes any profit, they either have to pay it out in wages or re-invest it into Firefox / their other products.

So, if Google ever offered such a contract, I think, they should have accepted the extra money, especially also, because their peak market share was at only 32%, which is IMHO too little for webpage owners to not just drop Firefox support, if it started getting bullish.