Comment by pythonaut_16
9 years ago
Just checked and saw the Looking Glass add-on installed on my work laptop.
I've uninstalled Firefox and will be removing it from all of my computers. I had just started slowly migrating back to it with the performance enhancements in the latest update, but honestly I don't think I can get past a breach of trust at this level.
I switched to Vivaldi a few months back and tried out FF57 recently. I really wanted to move back to FF again, but two weeks in, the performance enhancements just seem really overrated. The UI is still draggy, load times are not great.
I ended up going back to Vivaldi.
Are you switching to Chrome, the browser that sends your every keystroke back to HQ?
Google does a lot of things but they've never betrayed my trust by installing an extension in conjunction with a third party without telling me.
Google does track a lot of my data but they provide useful services in exchange, and in addition they make it pretty easy to see what data they have on me. Also Google's data is its competitive advantage so our interest in protecting my data from 3rd parties is aligned.
In short, Google tracks me sure, but they're pretty transparent about it. I do think some of the things Google does with Chrome and it's market position is less than stellar so I'm still exploring other options. If you have any suggestions I'd be happy to hear them.
> but they're pretty transparent about it
They may be transparent about the fact that they're tracking you, but not about what they're tracking or when they're tracking it. And there's no way for you to find out because the vast majority of their software is not open source.
Google doesn’t send your data to third parties because Google wasn’t able to identify any other companies more evil than Google to send your data to.
Thanks, thats the funniest thing I've read all week.
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Well, does it matter if I use Chrome, which sends everything I do back to Google Analytics, or if I use Firefox, which also sends my interaction with the Addon menu to Google https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15421708 ?
In a previous discussion, a Mozilla employee gave me as official statement that if I don’t trust Google, I shouldn’t use Firefox.
If I have to trust Google anyway, I can at least use the better browser.
Disclaimer: Until today, I’ve defended Mozilla in all such discussions, and kept the same PoV that you have presented here, but I just can’t do that anymore, when Mozilla is now just as evil as Google.
This misrepresents and overstates the Google Analytics and Cliqz situations
1. Mozilla obtained specific legal / contractual protections around any data that we store in GA, as covered in this adjacent thread: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15932224.
2. We did briefly run an experiment with Cliqz, but that integration was only ever offered to <1% of new, German-language installations of Firefox. I still need to read up on the technical details of that experiment, but it's misleading to claim that Firefox in general has any interaction with Cliqz.
3. As a Mozilla employee myself, I'd be very interested in a citation for that statement re: Google.
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