
The HTML “ping” attribute is disabled in Firefox - SimeVidas
https://webplatform.news/issues/2019-04-15
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dininski
This clearly shows the different priorities for Google and Mozilla, amid the
current feud.

Mozilla is advocating towards a free and open internet, where the web
standards are not dictated by the monetization strategies du-jour. Meaning
that ads and tracking are not inherent to the internet itself, but serve a
more corporate interest.

This is where Google comes in. It feels more like they consider the internet
more of a platform for business growth and are no longer that unbiased.

As an example - I wouldn't be surprised if at some point they start pushing
for adding product metadata to the HTML spec, say a <product> tag. This would
essentially change some of the semantics of the standard. Maybe a more
generalized version of this: [https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-
types/product](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/data-types/product)

Just my 2¢.

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adontz
I really cannot get why reverting to JavaScript is better. I believe Mozilla
people are professional and know what they do, but some explanation would be
welcome.

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redwall_hp
Good. uBlock Origin also has a feature that disables this spyware.

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comex
Great, and instead you get to go through a redirect which tracks the same
information but is slower.

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anoncake
So at least sites that spy on their users will have a worse UX than before.
That is an improvement, though a small one.

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comex
Speak for yourself. In my opinion, the ability to count how many people click
on which search results, and rank results higher if they get a lot of clicks
(excluding cases where the user then pressed back and picked another result),
seems like a good way to boost result quality without having much impact on
privacy.

Full disclosure – I also allow Google to track my search history for
personalization, but I think there are many good reasons to dislike that, I
understand why people turn it off, and while I don't, I'd prefer a
personalization method that doesn't require such granular data.

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anoncake
This kind of tracking might be worth it, given informed consent by the user.
If the user does not consent, it is spying. Especially if you have to bypass
intentional privacy protections, in this case the disabling of the ping
feature.

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howiroll
Ugh. With datalist values (Which hasn’t been fixed for 6 years) and another
breakage of web standard by firefox I’ve seen, in a week. Can’t believe
firefox actually insulted Internet Explorer for rigging standards.

What’s the point of disabling it when you can mimic the feature with
javascript?

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comex
FYI, you appear to be shadowbanned.

