
Mozilla will reportedly launch a paid version of Firefox this fall - rohmanhakim
https://thenextweb.com/apps/2019/06/10/mozilla-will-reportedly-launch-a-paid-version-of-firefox-this-fall/
======
weinzierl
I'd be happy to pay for Firefox, but I have a few points that are important to
me. They are probably not very realistic but here they are anyway:

1\. _I would like my money to go into Firefox development and nowhere else._

I certainly don't want my money spent on their content business, even if it is
used as a leverage to generate more money for Firefox development. I'm torn
about Rust development because I certainly would love to see Rust flourish,
but if we allow the money go into personally preferred projects it becomes
hard to draw the line.

2\. _I would like a Firefox with absolutely no strings attached._

\- No Pocket, not even a trace of it. The proper place for Pocket is a plugin.

\- No experiments, labs or whatever they call it (see Mr. Robot for an
example)

\- No network connections to third party hosts as long I haven't explicitly
opted in.

\- Safe search off by default

\- No predefined search engines

\- No predefined start page

3\. _I would like Mozilla (as a whole and not only the Firefox branch) to be
more careful with the selection of their businesses partners._

I'm am not aiming at their co-operations with Google, Yandex and the like,
which are OK for me. At least as long as my points from above are respected.
Specifically I'm OK if the free version of Firefox continues to be sponsored
mainly by Google. I'm not OK with business deals of the kind they had with
Cliqz for example.

4\. _I would like to be able to pay without having to be logged into a Firefox
account._

This is actually davidhyde's idea from another thread [1] but I added it here
because I fully agree.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20144726](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20144726)

~~~
sametmax
I'm pretty sure you are right now paying a lot more money to companies doing a
lot less efforts Mozilla is currently doing. And now you are asking even more
of them, just as a condition for maybe giving them something day.

See, that's one of the weirdest problem in FOSS: the fans hold them to a way
too high standard, making it twice as hard to thrive. Once because it's hard
to make money as an open source, benevolent product in a world of free for
all. And another time because the very people that should be supporting you
will always say you don't do enough.

~~~
maxsilver
I generally agree with this (FOSS fans can be wildly too demanding, especially
for the tiny amount of cash donated)

But is the comment above really too high a standard? If a paid version of
Firefox doesn't (1) at least strip the adware out, and (2) actually fund
Firefox development, then what would even be the point?

If you want to blanket donate to everything Mozilla, you can already do that
today. [https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/](https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/)

~~~
sokoloff
I think a default search engine and default first tab is fine as two examples
where that list of demands is excessive.

And depending on what “no network connections to third-party hosts unless I’ve
explicitly opted in” means, this probably breaks CDNs, multi-host content
serving, and lots of common js distribution mechanisms in ways that normal
users will find confusing and result in “Firefox doesn’t work” if that’s the
default it ships with.

~~~
thrower123
I'm not sure why that is excessive, except that Mozilla made (maybe still
does, I'm not sure) most of their money from getting paid to put search
engines as their default. How hard is it to pop a dialog in the installer or
on first run to let you pick? I don't think that is unreasonable.

And the default tab just means loading a blank tab up. The last time I used
Firefox, this was already a setting that you could pick.

~~~
sokoloff
When I last installed it, the default tab was the Firefox home page (or some
other Mozilla landing page), which seems perfectly reasonable to me.

I find a lot of open source software insufficiently opinionated. Can't decide?
Make it an option. Want to be "fair" to all? Make it an option _and_ prompt
the user during installation! As a user, I like when I have options but when
some kind of sensible default has been pre-selected to shorten the time and
mental effort between deciding to install and the first "wow" moment.

~~~
brianpgordon
You may be surprised at what the default looks like now-

[https://i.imgur.com/hGe837H.png](https://i.imgur.com/hGe837H.png)

------
pornel
I'll buy whatever they're selling. I'm very happy with Firefox quantum, and
I'd like Mozilla to have a sustainable income that doesn't come from the
AdTech/surveillance industry.

~~~
dorgo
I'll buy too. I spend hours every day using firefox. It's worth almost every
price they could demand. But I still hope they give me some freedom back I had
before quantum.

------
wyc
There is a class of products with strong elements of charitable contribution.
For example Plex Pass, endangered species chocolate, LWN subscription, and
select blockchain tokens--and maybe this too. There are hard to pin down non-
commercial benefits to purchasers mixed in with traditional value drivers.

With Plex, I purchased a lifetime membership not because I valued any of the
added features (I don't use them to this day), but because I got so much value
out of the project that I felt indebted and wished to express my gratitude. I
wanted the project to live on, and I also got to brag about my deeds on tech
forums. The incredible scaling characteristics of software allow me to already
enjoy most of the benefit from the free/open base edition alone.

Here are reasons for my "charity-driven" purchases:

\- Admiration for project vision and desire to ensure its longevity

\- A sense of gratitude due to incommensurate value enjoyed for very cheap or
free

\- Wanting to belong to the community and feel like part of the journey

I find myself valuing these items as "real commercial benefit":

\- Strong privacy guarantees

\- Cost-plus models such as selling managed storage, bandwidth, etc.

\- Subscription to updates backed by regular human labor

\- Access to premium support/SLA

------
Vinnl
This looks like they're not so much launching a paid version of Firefox-the-
browser, but a paid subscription service, including e.g. a VPN service. This
is in line with their recent push towards Firefox as a brand for related
services and products like Firefox Send and Lockwise in general, with the
browser being specifically referred to as Firefox Browser.

So presumably, Firefox accounts will become a freemium service, where paid
accounts have e.g. higher limits for Firefox Send, a VPN, etc.

~~~
absorber
If Mozilla is able to setup Firefox as a turn-key noob-friendly solution for a
more secure and private web experience, then I can definitely see this as a
sustainable business model.

For that however, many things (which are far from trivial) have to be done.
Among other things:

    
    
      1. Focus on security. That means among other things: 
       1a: Reducing core code complexity (for example, removing Pocket and integrating it only as an opt-in extension)
       1b: More audits
       1c: More Rust (and Servo by that extension)
      2. Focus on integrating more privacy-enhancing features, such as:
       2a: Reducing the effectiveness of browser fingerprinting
       2b: Integrating more features from Tor-Browser into vanilla Firefox. Would be even better if they integrated Tor out of the box too. 
           In fact, Firefox should perhaps aim at 0 difference between TBB and vanilla Firefox.
       2c: Reducing reliance on (user-hostile) search engines. Perhaps integrate DuckDuckGo as default search engine in the future?
      3. Focus on marketing campaign which includes super noob-friendly (video) tutorials. I'm thinking something in the Kurzgesagt style.

------
jasonhansel
As long as it's all FOSS, this sounds like an excellent idea. I'd gladly pay
for Mozilla to stop being beholden to Google.

~~~
nexuist
Is it still FOSS if it's paid?

~~~
Millennium
As long as all of the source is available under FOSS licenses, yes. Free as in
speech, not free as in beer, remember?

Question is, will Mozilla actually stick to that? What the paid features also
be open-source, at least to whatever extent the concept of source code
applies?

~~~
jasonhansel
Ideally, Mozilla would let us pay to use their servers, while also providing
an OSS self-hosted version with equivalent functionality.

(Firefox is available under the MPL, which is a sort of compromise between
copyleft and MIT-style licenses. So it'd be difficult to make any new FF
feature entirely closed source.)

~~~
Crinus
MPL does allow closed source extensions, Netscape wanting to create a
proprietary browser on top of Mozilla was the main reason MPL was created and
they didn't use something like GPL.

------
lmorchard
Yeah, this is a kind of misleading headline. I can't predict the future, but
AFAIK there are no plans to launch a paid version of Firefox.

There are plans to launch paid subscription services & products in a Firefox
brand family. Some of services may even be independent from the browser and be
separate standalone apps & products. Some of the services may even - gasp -
work in a non-Firefox browser.

Think of things like Firefox Send, Firefox Monitor, Firefox Lockbox, a system-
wide VPN, an in-browser secure proxy. Specific plans are still in progress,
but I don't think any of them are literally "you pay for browser now"

------
samcday
Finally, a proper way to vote with my wallet in the browser wars. I'm sure
Firefox can make more money from me individually by allowing me to pay them,
rather than funneling me through Google for some eyeball $$$s, especially
since I've personally switched to DuckDuckGo.

Actually that makes me wonder - how _does_ Mozilla currently make money off me
if I've stopped using Google searches in Firefox?

~~~
pkaye
How much would you pay for Firefox per year?

~~~
Brain_Thief
Not OP but I would pay $5-10 per month without blinking an eye.

~~~
tracker1
Similarly, if there were a $20-50/year option, I'd probably go that route.

------
newscracker
I see more than a few comments with some form of "I would pay if X/if not
X/does X/does not X". The article, which has limited details, says that it
would b some bundled services, such as a VPN service (like what Mozilla
partnered with ProtonVPN for as a limited trial before) and online cloud
storage.

At this time, it doesn't seem like this would be a paid version of the Firefox
browser with a different feature set. Any decision of that kind could confuse
people and hurt the Firefox brand, IMO.

Can we instead put out our wishlist of services that we'd want Mozilla to
handle because we trust it?

1\. I'm stealing at least one idea from elsewhere in this discussion, which is
a private paid email service with standard protocol support (like IMAP) with
cheaper pricing for multiple mailboxes.

2\. Another would be a revival of the Persona (authentication) project and
service. In light of Apple's announcement of "Sign in with Apple" in WWDC,
this would make a lot more sense for people who trust Apple now, but don't
really like the idea of trusting a for-profit corporation forever or have some
other reservations with "Sign in with Apple". Persona can actually work with
"Sign in with Apple" and many other providers.

3\. A hosted Bitwarden or Bitwarden-like service that can work on multiple
platforms and browsers could be interesting.

------
tannhaeuser
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20144521](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20144521)

------
el_cujo
Not sure about a Mozilla-run VPN. I'd trust them to have a competent-enough
service, but I would definitely not expect them to try resisting any western
government getting hold of their logs (though I guess the claim of any VPN to
actually accomplish this is dubious at best).

Maybe a good option if you live somewhere like China or certain Middle Eastern
countries where you need a VPN just to get news not controlled by the
government, but all of the VPN users who just want to hide their IP when
torrenting will probably look elsewhere.

~~~
morpheuskafka
I think the latter would be fine as well. The objective their is to block DMCA
notices sent by bots not suboeonas that require a human to be involved. Those
rarely if ever occur.

------
Millennium
Good luck to them, assuming they stick to their principles. But IIRC,
experiments with paid browsers have typically not ended well. What makes them
think they can pull it off?

~~~
sametmax
Because:

\- it's only an experimental additional source of revenue. They already got
money covered, they are just trying to find new way to become more financially
independent.

\- they don't intend to sell the current state of Firefox. It will still be
free. They intend to add stuff on top of the already awesome experience.

------
onyva
Excellent idea bundling VPN and cloud storage. Currently using proton and
iCloud (mostly though relying on self hosted Nextcloud). Hopefully they’ll
offer NextCloud too.

------
bambax
Chrome crippling adblockers creates a huge opportunity for paid competition. I
would gladly buy a browser just to be sure adblock will always work.

Of course, FF + uBO is free, and one can always make donations. But buying a
product feels different.

Also, businesses can expense what they buy with an invoice -- usually not the
case with donations.

------
scandox
I will pay for this IF they improve their PDF view/print. I know a lot of
people say this, but it's just a really important feature for me which is
really poor in Firefox. And I do pay for software and contribute financially
to open source projects.

------
swtrs
Interesting bundling their services via the browser. Its a single point of
entry vs Google (seemingly) access disjoint. Password management, notes, file
transfer (and storage?) browse and secure connections through one browser is
something I think Id want.

------
osrec
If they want us to pay, they MUST provide dev tools that are as good as
Chrome's, if not better.

My team builds a lot of PWAs, and Firefox simply did not provide good enough
diagnostic tools, so we couldn't use it in earnest (even though we really
wanted to).

~~~
yorwba
What specific functionality of the Chrome dev tools did you miss in Firefox?

~~~
osrec
Ability to stop/start/reinstall service workers, view app manifests, validate
app manifests, add apps to the desktop etc, store local results as global
variables in the console. Connect mobile devices and run a local server on the
mobile device.

There are more, but I can't think of them currently.

~~~
bzbarsky
The UI is not very pretty, but about:serviceworkers lets you reinstall or
unregister serviceworkers.

------
richliss
I'd happily pay as long as:

1\. It also funds Thunderbird.

2\. Their focus is on privacy/no telemetry, security and overall experience.
NOT more rebrands!

3\. It helps pay for continuously updated blocklists, miner blocking lists,
anti-content farm lists etc. that get built into the browser rather than
through add-ons.

4\. Curated add-ons that are funded especially around security - too many add-
ons don't get updated.

5\. Real profile management and switching.

6\. An expert mode with a proper download manager (pausing, reordering etc.)

7\. Self-maintaining, self-repairing and self-updating options so it ALWAYS
just works.

8\. An outreach program to get websites/apps/etc. that are broken to fix them
so we don't have to open up an instance of Chrome.

~~~
ForHackernews
You can (and I do) specifically donate to fund Thunderbird:
[https://donate.mozilla.org/en-US/thunderbird/](https://donate.mozilla.org/en-
US/thunderbird/)

Unfortunately, I believe that general Mozilla funding no longer supports
Thunderbird in any way.

------
neilv
If this move will let Mozilla fund its operations, in an honest and
straightforward manner, while doing things that peeve the
surveillance&brochure&bigmoat dotcoms, that seems potentially great news.

------
hjek
Looks to me like they'll be charging for an integrated VPN service; not like
they're releasing a separate version of Firefox with proprietary components.

Brilliant way of funding free/libre software.

------
user17843
When it comes to dependence on ad-tech money, the writing is on the wall:

> Cost per click on Google properties — which roughly measures the amount
> Alphabet charges advertisers for each ad served on its web sites — dropped
> 29 percent from last year and 9 percent from last quarter, which might be
> alarming investors concerned that Google’s pricing power for ads is eroding.
> [1]

Additionally, Firefox is losing users, around 50,000 - 100,000 per day. [2]

They now want to add all kinds of additional stuff in order to make money. For
a browser this is a death sentence. A browser can not be more than a browser,
and ad tiles are the only practical way of making money next to search engine
deals. While a pro-version of Firefox is certainly an interesting idea which
can be sold to a tech-savvy minority, it neither can diversify their revenue
in a meaningful way, nor is clear yet whether Mozilla is going to offer a paid
Firefox version, or simply tries to upsell a software bundle branded with
their name.

Mozilla paid around 30 million to aquire Pocket (one of their supposed
foundations for making money), but there isn't any data to show whether they
are profitable with it. Given the low number of ads in Pocket, they probably
aren't profitable. In 2017, according to their financial report, they only
made 2,5 million with Pocket ads.

Opera is the only other major browser that has to survive without having a
tech giant behind them. They do everything they can to make money with Opera.
And it has boiled down to ads in the start page and licensing. There’s nothing
more you can do.

Opera is surviving on three kind of deals: [3]

– search (ca 60%)

– ads in start page

– licensing deals on mobile phones

Licensing is off limits to mozilla because they have lost the mobile market.

So all that is left is ads on the start page. Its that simple. There’s also a
lesson to learn for Mozilla from the time Opera abandoned Presto: [4]

> “Because of our switch to the Blink engine, our retention rate on desktop
> users is much better now. This is because most websites work in Opera since
> we’re using the same engine as Google. We think we’ve become more relevant
> after we moved over to the Blink platform, and more companies now start to
> work with us,” Boilesen said.

> “We’ve got twice as many developers on the desktop browser now than we had
> with Presto, because all [our] resources went into maintaining Presto. The
> only error we made with Presto was that we kept it too long. Our change to
> Blink was because we wanted to get on the offensive with regards to
> innovation, we used too many resources to keep Presto competitive."

There are only two ways. You either stay innovative and keep up with the
times, or you downsize and develop for a small niche group. Mozilla is doing
neither.

[1] [https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/alphabet-
earnings-q4-2018.ht...](https://www.cnbc.com/2019/02/04/alphabet-
earnings-q4-2018.html)

[2] [https://data.firefox.com](https://data.firefox.com)

[3] [https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/02/browser-maker-opera-has-
fi...](https://techcrunch.com/2018/07/02/browser-maker-opera-has-filed-to-go-
public/)

[4] [https://www.zdnet.com/article/show-me-the-money-how-opera-
st...](https://www.zdnet.com/article/show-me-the-money-how-opera-started-
thinking-about-the-bottom-line-and-what-that-did-to-its-software/)

~~~
asark
My greatest hope at this point is that some small group survives whatever
happens and becomes the new Firefox, like Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox did with
the original Mozilla. Maybe the Servo team?

Mozilla has seemed way too big to me for the actual useful development they
accomplish (which is quite a bit! But the company's _giant_...) for years, and
this move stinks of "death spiral" :-/

[EDIT] and Firefox has _been_ the new Mozilla browser since, what, 2.0?
Bloated and slow. The original was so easy to sell to friends and family in no
small part because it was snappy and light, even on early 2000s/late 90s
(still-running desktops from a few years earlier) hardware.

------
BuckRogers
I'm unsure how many of the comments here read the article at all, but I see
this as a smart move. Built-in VPN and cloud storage makes a lot of sense.
They're building enough features between Lockwise, Send and soon VPN and some
cloud storage, they're going to have a compelling package.

Toss in a secure @firefox.com email to use on the included cloud storage and
Mozilla has my money.

------
acjohnson55
Take my money!

I've received incalculable value from using Mozilla products and I'll gladly
pay to support them, especially when it comes to increased privacy.

~~~
farisjarrah
I really hope there is a Paid Mozilla email service in there somewhere. That's
what will get me to instantly sign up.

~~~
newscracker
I've been donating to Thunderbird the past few years when it started accepting
donations just for it (instead of being a donation to Mozilla though
Thunderbird was spun off as a community driven project with some support from
Mozilla).

If Mozilla comes with a paid email service focusing on privacy that's not just
a white label rebranding of ProtonMail (which I won't use) or another existing
provider, I'd surely be one of the first to try it out. Something that's
preferably cheaper for multiple mailboxes with own domain support would be
awesome.

~~~
TechieKid
Why would you not use ProtonMail? Genuine case of out of the loop.

------
ForHackernews
Good. Anyone who wants to avoid the internet becoming a Google/blink
monoculture should be happy to pay for this.

------
madisfun
I use Firefox and have setup a monthly donation anyway. I understand that many
people need something extra in return to give their money. So if there is a
paid version which gives access to some _services_ like VPN or storage, and it
works better than donations, then why not.

------
floatingatoll
The original interview is here: [https://t3n.de/news/mozilla-ceo-chris-beard-
anbieten-1168614...](https://t3n.de/news/mozilla-ceo-chris-beard-
anbieten-1168614/)

------
JoshMnem
I'm a long-time Firefox/Mozilla user, and I'd give it a try for $10/month. It
would be an easy sell to me if it includes a reasonable amount of online
storage.

------
robohoe
Remember when Opera had a free version with an ad on it? Ah those days...

Hopefully Mozilla will not go down that path. I certainly don't think so with
all they are doing in respect to privacy.

------
yogthos
I already donate to Mozilla, and I'd be happy to pay to fund an actual open
source browser that's not being produced by an ads company.

------
dontbenebby
Looking at their previous partnership with ProtonVPN, ten dollars a month for
a VPN seems a bit high. My self hosted Algo instance only run ~6 a month with
tax.

Maybe if they also gave some cloud storage it would be worth it. Being able to
store a veracrypt volume with my important data in the cloud securely would be
nice.

Current options seem to be Amazon, Google, or Dropbox. Spideroak has the
"hive" but there's not really an option to just upload stuff, it needs to
reside locally and be mirrored.

~~~
unimpressive
> Looking at their previous partnership with ProtonVPN, ten dollars a month
> for a VPN seems a bit high. My self hosted Algo instance only run ~6 a month
> with tax.

You are not the target market for this product. "A few more dollars than my
self hosted solution..." is a sentence that typically takes you way outside
the target audience of most products in this vein.

~~~
dontbenebby
>You are not the target market for this product.

I've been using Firefox since it was Firebird. The people who did not abandon
it are technically savvy folks who enjoy controlling our browser experience.

------
equalunique
I'd pay for firefox. Relatively fine quality FOSS deserves it, so long as the
"do no evil"

------
cgtyoder
Let's hope it includes blocking auto-play videos from TheNextWeb.

~~~
SanchoPanda
About:config Media autoplay default: 1 Media autoplay allow muted: false

------
Hasknewbie
They kind of have to go that way (offer extra VPN/storage as a service for a
monthly fee), their market share of users has tanked since their last deal
with Google, they're not going to get that kind of money from them any more.
Gotta diversify.

------
gurumeditations
$500M a year isn’t enough to develop Firefox?

~~~
bdcravens
Most of their money comes from Google. I presume they see a future where that
becomes less likely.

------
chrshawkes
I would pay for a browser that didn't spy on me everywhere I went, this
doesn't fit the bill for me.

~~~
verbatim
How does it spy on you?

------
virusduck
Netscape is back on the menu, boys!

------
hajxg
If it's a paid version of Firefox this means it will respect our privacy by
having no telemetry, no remote code execution via Normandy, etc, or will it be
the same thing in that regard?

~~~
pjmlp
Better than Chrome will ever be.

~~~
hajxg
That's open to discussion. Even if Chrome sends your data to Google (and it
probably sends more data than Firefox), at least you know the data is being
received by Google and not by unrelated third parties, like when Mozilla sent
full URL history of some users to an advertisement company:
[https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-
cliqz-i...](https://blog.mozilla.org/press-uk/2017/10/06/testing-cliqz-in-
firefox/)

~~~
HugoDaniel
The logic here is that Google will never send/sell your data to third parties
?

How do you think Facebook et al gets a hold of your google data ? How do you
think companies like Cambridge Analytica thrive ?

I am genuinely curious to know what your view of the world on these topics is
and why are you so insistently (and apparently naively) defending google in
this regard.

~~~
hajxg
I said Firefox is bad at protecting my privacy. Someone compared Mozilla to
Google, so I said that even Google is better. In other words I'm not defending
Google, I'm saying Mozilla is even worse. I despise Google, too.

What's your proof that Google gives your data to Facebook? That doesn't sound
right. On the other hand, I showed proof that Mozilla gives your personal data
(list of URLs you visit, no less!) to a third party.

~~~
headsoup
Are you hoping people don't read the article you linked or do you not
understand the approach Mozilla used?

The data is not used to identify the user by building a profile and the source
IP is removed on collection. Now of course there's a level of trust required
in them doing what they say, but this is nowhere near Google et al's levels of
data hoarding and reselling anyway.

------
josefresco
Will it be called ... Netscape 10? I'm honestly asking / hoping. Does AOL
still own the brand?

~~~
josefresco
Since I got crickets on my question (as well as downvotes - love you HNers!) I
looked it up.

Answer: Maybe Facebook?

[https://boingboing.net/2019/03/30/facebook-
navigator.html](https://boingboing.net/2019/03/30/facebook-navigator.html)

TLDR; AOL bought Netscape, who sold it to Microsoft, who then sold it to
Facebook.

Edit: Maybe not, the domain WHOIS shows it points to Yahoo! Oath Inc. -
[https://www.whois.com/whois/netscape.net](https://www.whois.com/whois/netscape.net)

------
MikusR
It will come with Premium Mr. Robot adds.

------
libeclipse
A centralized VPN solution for all users is a terrible idea, and what is
"secure cloud storage" going to offer that Dropbox doesn't?

I understand that developing a browser is expensive work and Mozilla need
money to do it. I support them in this effort. But honestly no ones gonna buy
this

~~~
zrobotics
I personally plan to, even though I run my own VPN & already pay for Dropbox.
I definitely won't use the VPN, if the cloud storage looks decent I'll likely
use it (since I already use encrypted volumes that I store in Dropbox, I only
need to trust they won't delete/lose them).

I already donate to mozilla, I guess people have forgotten the web was during
the days IE was dominant. I'm frankly shocked that so many web developers seem
to be fine only supporting Chrome, at least those were the sentiments I was
hearing when Edge went to chromium.

------
burtonator
I really want a version of Firefox that doesn't have adblock and is ad paid so
it's free.

We could call it.. Chrome!

------
egypturnash
Can we talk about the auto play video in the middle of this for a “Smell DJ”
box for a moment.

People keep on trying to make the Internet of Smells and the devices keep on
being bought by absolutely nobody. Who funds these things? Who thinks there’s
a market waiting to be tapped? I see some kind of scent-making box announced
every four or five years and they all just fade without a trace.

This one can be controlled by Alexa. I doubt that’s gonna be the wrinkle that
makes it a must-have.

------
DiseasedBadger
I would do that in an instant if it:

Dropped WideVine

Dropped WebRtc

Brought back XUL Extensions

Otherwise, I'll keep using a pre-australis fork, until I probably eventually
just decide to use Chrome. Firefox different distinguish itself from Chrome.

~~~
dralley
Wow, that's the most unreasonable take I think I've ever seen.

Also, Firefox doesn't come with Widevine. You have to click yes to download
the module the first time you visit a page that uses it.

~~~
jandrese
Dropping WebRTC doesn't seem all that unreasonable. It's not used that often
and is a major source of information leaks.

------
Endy
There is no way Mozilla can remain a corporate entity and simultaneously make
me feel like they deserve my money. It would require a complete clean break
with Google, with the understanding that if they can't make it on their own,
with their users, then it needs to be just a community project. If it makes
money for Google, I don't trust it. If it supports Google, I don't trust it.
And right now, Firefox does both.

------
eitland
I'm a huge Firefox fan, but as many others here point out: for this to work in
the long run they have to respect us and stop pulling all kinds of iRobot
nonsense etc.

Mozilla needs to understand it is not OK to mess with my Internet banking
client.

The browser is now critical Internet infrastructure and it is _not OK_ when
someone scares me by force installing extensions.

Also while Normandie would have been OK with me of I knew about it ot annoyed
me when I found out about it because of a mistake.

Mozilla could have had a 9/10 score but thanks to issues like this I rate them
7/10.

(Chrome however is far worse.)

------
t0t4lnoo3
This is really scary. I keep getting messages from friends I converted to
Signal, asking me to go back to WhatsApp since Facebook has a deal with their
providers to not charge WhatsApp data.

Now picture those able to afford their first mobile plan, they don’t have
disposable income, they don’t have the option to pay for Firefox, I’m afraid
this will drive people to use Google even more.

~~~
headsoup
It's a paid premium service, the free version will still be there.

People need to also stop thinking free internet services are genuinely free.
Pay for things that provide value and if it's free, ask what value is in it
for the provider instead.

~~~
asdkhadsj
Yup. The more "free" it is the more incentive companies/etc have to start
misusing your data/etc. Google is "free". Facebook is "free".

If there's a cost I want to see that passed on to the consumer. Otherwise I
can't trust a company, simply put.

