Google-Firefox search deal gives Mozilla more money to push privacy

[steven36]

Too bad fewer people are using Mozilla's web browser.

 

An expanded Firefox search deal with Google helped push Mozilla revenue's annual revenue up 8 percent to $562 million for 2017 -- money that should come in handy as the nonprofit tries to salvage what's good about the internet.

Facebook's Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal have led plenty of people to question whether today's tech is actually a net benefit for society. But Mozilla was founded to tackle those kinds of internet health issues.

"Privacy and security have been brought to the mainstream. We love that we can talk about these issues in a way that's creating a lot more knowledge and understanding for the consumer," said Chief Operating Officer Denelle Dixon.

 

Mozilla is using not just the Firefox web browser but increasingly other products, services and campaigns to try to help us online. "That's our focus as we enter into in 2019," she said.

Too bad Mozilla is arguably losing leverage just when we could use it the most.

 

Over the last year, the number of people using Firefox monthly has dipped from about 300 million to about 277 million, according to Mozilla's own figures. Mozilla offers more technology than Firefox, but the browser is its best-known brand, most widely used product, and a key tool to get people to try things like Mozilla's VPN service for network privacy, Lockbox tool for password management, and the Firefox Monitor tool to warn if you were affected by a data breach.

 

And Firefox trails Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari, too. Firefox usage slipped over the last year from 6 percent to 5 percent, according to analytics firm StatCounter, which measures how often browsers are used to view websites among its network. That's third place to Google's dominant Chrome browser at 62 percent and Apple's Safari at 15 percent.

 

Firefox doesn't need to dominate the internet. But it does need a strong enough presence to influence the development of standards so the web remains an openly developed platform, not just whatever works with Chrome.

 

Mozilla's 2017 revenue increased 8 percent to $562 million.

 

 

Some of the increase in Mozilla's 2017 revenue came because Mozilla signed a deal to get paid for Google search traffic in parts of Europe, Thayer said. "We generate a significant amount of revenue from outside the US," she said, including from non-Google partners.

 

She declined to comment in detail on the Verizon lawsuit, which is in a preliminary data-discovery phase.

 

"We feel very good about our revenue from existing partners. We have anticipated not receiving any additional revenue from Yahoo as the litigation is pending," Thayer said.

 

Mozilla has taken on Facebook, pulling its advertisements and offering a Firefox plugin that makes it harder for Facebook to track you online. But Mozilla's search partners aren't free from criticism, either, whether it's Google tracking you online or wrestling with the idea of censored search results in China. Of course, you can always search in Firefox's private-tab mode, which makes it harder for Google to profile you based on your search history.

More marketing money

Mozilla's revenue increased from 2016 to 2017, but so did its expenses, including $30 million more spent on software projects and $18 million on marketing -- mostly the new Firefox Quantum version that's spearheading Mozilla's attempt to reverse its market declines.

 

Also in 2017, Mozilla paid $2.3 million to its chair, Mitchell Baker, a key executive since Mozilla's early days. Mozilla's total expenses increased from $361 million to $422 million.

 

Mozilla is branching out beyond Firefox, though only modestly at this stage. One example is its 2017 acquisition of Pocket, a service that lets you bookmark websites, save them for online or offline reading at your convenience, and more recently convert them into spoken words with AI text-to-speech technology. Pocket feeds recommendations -- including sponsored posts -- into the new-tab page in Firefox.

 

You can also subscribe to Pocket for ad-free usage. Mozilla garnered nearly $3 million in revenue from Pocket, Thayer said. Mozilla also disclosed that it paid $25 million in cash for Pocket plus $5 million in deferred payments. It might not be the last time Mozilla decides to expand through an acquisition, too.

 

"We're constantly evaluating our options in building, buying and partnerships," Thayer said. "I would hope to say Pocket is not our last acquisition."

Firefox-generated search revenue

The lion's share of Mozilla's revenue -- $542 million, according to the 2017 tax reports it released Tuesday -- comes from deals that send our queries in Firefox to search engines such as Google, Yandex and Baidu. An earlier deal with Yahoo ended in an as-yet unresolved lawsuit with its owner, Verizon. Mozilla is paid in proportion to the search traffic it sends to search sites, which make money by sometimes showing search ads alongside search results.

 

Source

[DKT27]

I think the title is misleading - I expect such from the source. But good to hear that search engines is bringing Mozilla some money to continue working on Firefox out there.

[steven36]

3 hours ago, DKT27 said:

I think the title is misleading - I expect such from the source. But good to hear that search engines is bringing Mozilla some money to continue working on Firefox out there.

The only part is misleading  is says  Mozilla Firefox  is that  it's  for good for privacy if it were people  would not be forking  Privafox-Firefox like they fork ungoogled-chromium:

 

Privafox-Firefox here

https://github.com/intika/privafox-firefox

 

Firefox  leaves   lot of holes  in there browser  that are well known only thing it has going for it that it's open source therefore you can fix any leaks  it may have but Eloston does the same for open source chromium.

 

As far as them losing users that is correct  because  Mozilla list it themselves.

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

 

Waterfox , Palemoon  .Tor browser  all have better privacy than Firefox out of the box,  but you can tweak it yourself to have decent privacy it much much easy to reverse than chromium. If its closed source the code is closed  therefore if it leaks  or harvest your data you can't do jack to really stop it other than try to use addons witch dont even help with baked in tracking .

 

I use Waterfox mostly  because  they still let me use old addons they have classic addons archive  and it still gets ESR security  updates  from upstream Mozilla I have Firefox and chromium  in Linux but  only as spare browsers . I still use Firefox in Windows  but here lately  i don't be in windows very often .

 

 

 

 

[tivstip]

any thoughts about iridium?  im using ungoogled but always i was curious.

[steven36]

4 minutes ago, tivstip said:

any thoughts about iridium?  im using ungoogled but always i was curious.

Its a good  open source  browser i don't think it's as good  as ungoogled   because it uses Inox patchset, Bromite , Debian and iridium patches.

[steven36]

You can see  at Data Firefox  that all the hype  around Quantum cause a very short uptick in users back around the time it was released last fall  but its been all down hill  for them every since .  So making Quantum was another failure  because a year latter they have less users than before it was released . So most of there money increase has came from  there partners like Google because they have less users   using it than ever before.

[DKT27]

On 11/28/2018 at 9:53 PM, steven36 said:

The only part is misleading  is says  Mozilla Firefox  is that  it's  for good for privacy if it were people  would not be forking  Privafox-Firefox like they fork ungoogled-chromium:

 

By misleading, I mean the title from the source is suggesting that they are doing something new on privacy with the Google's money. It's not that they are not. It's just that the article is nothing about privacy.

 

On 11/28/2018 at 11:46 PM, steven36 said:

You can see  at Data Firefox  that all the hype  around Quantum cause a very short uptick in users back around the time it was released last fall  but its been all down hill  for them every since .  So making Quantum was another failure  because a year latter they have less users than before it was released . So most of there money increase has came from  there partners like Google because they have less users   using it than ever before.

 

As a person who waited a long time before upgrading, the previous gen was really slow and was giving me a lot of problems. It's not the issues are settled in newer one, but those are more addon related here.

[steven36]

1 hour ago, DKT27 said:

By misleading, I mean the title from the source is suggesting that they are doing something new on privacy with the Google's money. It's not that they are not. It's just that the article is nothing about privacy.

Firefox are the ones who gave Cnet that impression with there  fake initiatives . they never done nothing for privacy to begin with but slowly invade it over the years.

 

Quote

 

Mozilla's pretend privacy

First, the facade - let me show you some quotes and article titles from Mozilla's website:

Fast. Private. Fearless. (this is about Firefox)
Your Privacy Focused Holiday Shopping Guide
Latest Firefox Rolls Out Enhanced Tracking Protection
When the Facebook breach was revealed, Mozilla had an immediate response – and a Firefox product to support user privacy.
Individuals’ security and privacy on the internet are fundamental and must not be treated as optional.
In our Webby-winning podcast, IRL, Veronica Belmont gets real about the online issues that affect our real lives, from privacy and filter...

 

There is much, much more. That's not even considering the stuff inside their browser, such as the fake initiatives Do Not Track and Private Browsing. If you saw just these quotes, you'd think they must be some champions of privacy; nothing could be further from the truth, though. OK, now let's move on to the fun part - busting the facade! For that, we have to direct ourselves to their website privacy policy (archive) as well as general privacy policy (archive):

We care about your privacy. When Mozilla (that's us) collects information about you, our Mozilla Privacy Policy describes how we handle that information.

They are shameless - still trying to keep up the facade even when the same document refutes it later.

We may use cookies, device information and IP addresses [...]

I don't give a shit what you use it for - keep your hands off my device information!

We may also use cookies, device information and IP addresses, along with clear GIFs, cookies and third party services [...]

Clear GIFs - that's a common tactic of trackers - the same trackers that Mozilla proudly speaks out against! And then the third party services - so they now recruit others to spy on you as well.

Mozilla has implemented third-party technology, Google’s Invisible reCAPTCHA [...]

Google is one of the most anti-privacy companies there are; and here Mozilla is allying with them - proving they are made of the same mold. The really vile thing here is that since the captcha is "invisible", you will have your data collected by Google and you won't even know it's happening. Okay, let's move on to the regular privacy policy which describes how the data gets used:

Your privacy is an important factor that Mozilla (that's us) considers in the development of each of our products and services.

Still continuing the pretense? Anyway, let's check out the section when do we share your information with others?

For processing or providing products and services to you, but only if those entities receiving your information are contractually obligated to handle the data in ways that are approved by Mozilla.

So Mozilla is sending your information around to some unknown entities - but it's fine since they are obligated to handle the data in a way that Mozilla has approved (does that strike you with confidence after reading the above quotes?).

When we are fulfilling our mission of being open. We sometimes release information to make our products better and foster an open web, but when we do so, we will remove your personal information and try to disclose it in a way that minimizes the risk of you being re-identified.

So you release information but it's fine since you minimize the risk of me being identified? Well, minimize means it's still not zero, so f&&k off with that excuse.

When we believe it is necessary to prevent harm to you or someone else.

That can mean absolutely anything. So just expect your information to be thrown around for any reason! Now for something even worse - the Firefox privacy policy (archive):

That’s why we build Firefox, and all our products, to give you greater control over the information you share online and the information you share with us. We strive to collect only what we need to improve Firefox for everyone.

Still lying I see. Okay, now - the section is very  long, and I don't want to bore you to death here, so I will just list the general data that FF collects, straight from the horse's mouth: Interaction data, location data, webpage data for Snippets, webpage data for Pocket recommendations, technical data for updates, technical data for Add-ons blocklist, webpage and technical data to Google’s SafeBrowsing service, webpage and technical data to Certificate Authorities, crash reports, campaign and referral data, search suggestions, Firefox Accounts data, Synced data, Screenshot uploads, Addon search queries...and I've skipped much of it anyway. There is probably very few pieces of software collecting MORE data by default than Mozilla Firefox. Check their website for more or even better - the Spyware Watchdog (archive) for a saner analysis.

I could keep going (this is a heavily condensed version), but there's still other sections to write! Anyway, as you can see, the myth of the privacy-respecting Mozilla has evaporated before our very own eyes; in fact, they've been compromising it all along - while claiming to fight for it. How despicable. Now let's explode some other myths:

 

https://digdeeper.neocities.org/ghost/mozilla.html

 

then they wonder why they went downhill.  Mozilla need to stop saying one thing and doing the opposite of what they say .If you take  what they preach at face value  witch  i stop buying it years  ago  from there lies it easy to confused and think  they protect  privacy. They already  messed there browser up and  its a shame  its not the same browser i used back in version 1.5  and switch to in v2 . Once upon a time you didn't need CTR to make Firefox look like Firefox   and even they kill CTR with Web Addons now so the closet thing to the Firefox i started out with is palemoon  but due to lack of addons  for it i don't even use it anymore. They stop being who they claim  they are years ago, when they got new management. Old management makes Brave Browser now . There no longer about anything but  failure , they going to end up like Opera  who also gets all there money from privacy invading entities and  don't really have any marketshare anymore.