The main issue with IE using MSN (or whatever it's called now) as their default home page or search engine is not a moral issue, it is an antitrust issue. Microsoft's IE has a monopoly (at least until recently and maybe still), and they are leveraging the browser monopoly to give them an advantage in another industry (Search).
Mozilla has no monopoly, and thus their use of (a sponsored) Google search box is not anticompetitive.
Not exactly. Creating a fork is much different from writing one's own Firefox- it's just copying code and changing the default browser bit, not writing an entire web browser that's exactly the same.
"Let the user make the initial search choice" -- Yes, I love install steps that abstractly please software theorists and confuse or irritate all others.
Yeah really, computers are MAINSTREAM. That means you have to sacrifice a lot to compensate for the large amount of casual/new users.
My dad knew that the blue E is internet and Google helps you find web pages. He's been using a computer for a while now and doesn't care what a browser or a search engine is.
But he does listen to me when I tell him Google + Firefox are the best.
Yes it does. You'd be shocked at how fast I've seen some people complain that IE was easier when they get the import favorites dialog during FF installation. They don't even bother to read it and see if it's easy, they just see it requires work and want to go back to whatever they were using before.
I think it's easy to justify only including the top two search engines, or at least the search engines with >10% market share (1), for the sake of keeping the choices uncluttered.
By this article's logic, should they also include barnesandnoble.com, since they include amazon, and ubid.com since they include ebay?
I'm going to have to say I agree with the author, Mozilla should take the moral high ground here and not default to Google but ask the user during install or the first time they use the search box.
Not including Live.com seems somewhat petty on their part (or greedy if they have deals with Y! too)
Any organization that gets revenues from some illicit practice would presumably have to fire people if they stopped. So if preserving jobs is sufficient reason to keep doing something, no organization should ever stop doing something bad, as long as it remains profitable.
Yeah, it'd be moral to correct for mistakes like that, but very unfortunate for the employees. I have very close friends who work at Mozilla. I wouldn't wish that on them at all. Still, they came to Mozilla because of its integrity and role. If it was explained to them that Mozilla can only remain independent of corporate influence by re-evaluating their stance on issues like this, I think the employees would understand and many of them (hacker-types) would continue working on the open source projects (as before) when they could.
Look, Google can easily say they like Mozilla, want to fund it with a $100 million per year and that they want to back their stated goal of protecting user choice by saying they do NOT want to be the default but rather one of several choices that a user actively selects from. Mozilla wins, Google wins, users win. But bottom line, if Google is for choice in IE, then it should be for choice everywhere.
Maybe MSFT hasn't ponied up the same $$$ as Google and Yahoo to appear in Firefox?
I don't think a nonprofit that battles MSFT should have to give them free valuable promotional space, and conversely MSFT may not want to fund a competitor.
Compared to the reinvigoration of browser competition and standards-compliance that the Mozilla project has achieved, this issue is a minor quibble. You can add Microsoft and many others with a few clicks.
Someone has got to be the default, and selling preferential placement means this project, an important counterbalance to MSFT, gets around 1/1000th the revenue of MSFT.
Let MSFT outbid Google for the top spot if they want. MSFT doesn't need anyone's charity.
I'm not sure how much overlap there is between people who use live.com and people who use Mozilla's Firefox. I'd assume that people who use live.com use internet explorer because they apparently have some sort of preference to Microsoft products. But, since Google is the most popular search engine on the internet, the vice-versa isn't true, meaning that an IE user wont automatically prefer live.com. Logically speaking, it would be a bad product that doesn't use the most popular search engine as their default configuration. I'd have more issue with this if Firefox had chosen Yahoo! over Google.
I'm not sure I see the problem here.. click the Google icon, choose manage search engines, then "Get More".. Sure it's a few extra steps, but it's not like the browser forces you to use google.
This is ridiculous. It's like complaining that all of the vending machines you see are Coke or Pepsi and not RC Cola.
Microsoft is not short of cash. If they wanted to pay Mozilla more money than Google is in order to have Live search be the default browser, they probably could. The reason they don't is that it would be a waste of money. The vast majority of Firefox users would just change it to Google the first time they used it anyway.
If you want something that has a tiny market share compared to other products in its field, you have to go out of your way a little to get it. This is true with every other product. Why should search engines be an exception?
The default search engine for the internet is google. I'd say firefox is just reflecting that and giving most of the users what they want in the easiest way.
Of course I'm sure the money is nice also ;)
Given that Microsoft <em>competes</em> with Mozilla, as well as almost everything Mozilla stands for, why in hell should Mozilla give them free advertising?
As much as choice is a good thing, I don't think that the default should change from being Google. Mozilla gets a huge amount of money from Google for directing searches there. The money they make by doing this lets this great open source browser keep making headway.
Why don't they go the full distance and build their own Amazon affiliate ID into Amazon searches? I'm sure that will help fund their open source browser project even better.
I am, it's deceptive and goes against the moral high ground Open Source projects typically take. Call me old fashion but I see an issue with back room deals to generate profit that aren't explicitly outlined to the user.
I'd prefer a situation where FF asks you on install which charitable foundation you'd like to donate to, which would then assign the appropriate 'id' to the search box that would effect Google/Yahoo/MS and Amazon searches.
Hm, I like the idea of OSS projects being non-profit, which is what you seem to be expecting. On that note, I also like the idea of everyone working not for profit, but for the betterment of humanity - pushing us faster to wherever our collective progress brings us. And if I were to ever head a religion, that's definitely what I would preach, but until then, using a browser which defaults to the search engine that makes them the most money isn't too much of a moral dilemma for me.
Not sure how it works in older versions, but in Firefox 3 RC2, the search engine you choose seems to persist across instances of the browser. So select Yahoo once and it stays Yahoo (unless that resets on a system restart).
There is a link to adding search engines on the Manage Search Engines window that pops up.
I'm not sure why complicating the install process with silly details like this would be a good thing.
Mozilla has no monopoly, and thus their use of (a sponsored) Google search box is not anticompetitive.