FireFox

[Malicious Intent]

In June 2005, we read that a Silicon Valley blogger with alleged insider information was reporting that the Mozilla Foundation was raking in $30 million annually from their Google connection. To substantiate this figure, we asked the tax-exempt Foundation for a copy of their Form 990. They are required by law to provide copies. We want the correct figure for their 2004 Google income, and are also curious about whether they filed a 990-T to pay taxes on this sum as "unrelated business income."

The Foundation tells us that they have filing extensions that give them until November 2005 to file this form, and no information is currently available. Various officers have declined to comment on their Google income to reporters over the past several months. Their 2003 form shows total revenue of $2.4 million from donations that helped Mozilla Foundation get started, and that seems reasonable. But if we're talking about tens of millions from Google in 2004, this changes the character of their operation considerably.

On August 3, 2005, the Foundation announced that they are restructuring by spinning off the Mozilla Corporation, a for-profit subsidiary. This tends to confirm the rumors about tens of millions of dollars from Google. We sent emails to Mr. Mitch Kapor and Ms. Mitchell Baker, the Chair and President, asking for the two items that will appear on the Form 990 in November. It looks like the Foundation is buying time to get their legal affairs in order, and we are not likely to get any answers.

Apparently the bulk of the money from Google is due to Mozilla's agreement to make Google the default engine in the Firefox search box. When a Firefox user clicks on an ad from a Google-box search, Mozilla gets a cut of Google's profit. A couple of months ago it was discovered that Google is also prefetching the top result for all searches done from the Google search box. This means you end up with cookies from sites you never visit, and much bandwidth is wasted in the process. Fortunately, you can disable this "feature" by entering about:config in the address bar and then scrolling down to network.prefetch-next and toggling it to false. You can also change the default search box to any of nearly 2,000 plug-ins that can be downloaded from Mozilla.

There are other Google connections in Firefox. If you enter search terms in the location bar instead of a web URL address, Firefox goes to Google and picks off the top link, and takes you directly to that site. A surprising percentage of web surfers don't know the difference between a location bar and a search box, which makes this is a major concession to Google. If you try the same thing in Explorer, you get a search preview from MSN, but you aren't sent directly to the top site. Microsoft's behavior is less intrusive because it gives the user more options, and therefore has less of an impact on traffic patterns. Google and Firefox are behaving the way that Microsoft used to behave in the days when it forced manufacturers to bundle certain software. This behavior is unacceptable.

We no longer feel good about linking to Firefox, even though they present an alternative to Explorer that is open-source, more secure, and generally more configurable. It seems to us that Mozilla Foundation came to a fork in the road all Google-eyed, and chose the wrong path.

http://www.scroogle.org/gscrape.html#ffox

Anti-google hysteria, or is the browser promise land nothing more than g-browse?

[Shawn]

Anti-google hysteria

I'd say

[Ken]

It looks like Google is backing FireFox for various reasons.

I think there was a "Google browser" rumor running around, well, I think the real Google browser is actually FireFox.

All in all, I could give two shits. I get no tracking cookies (I don't use the Google search box anyway; actually I remove it completely from the GUI), I always set my start page to a blank page whenever I install FireFox, and I do my searches through Google's main page anyway.

Google and Firefox are behaving the way that Microsoft used to behave in the days when it forced manufacturers to bundle certain software. This behavior is unacceptable.

Bull fucking shit.

Bundling software with no opt-out is far far far far far far far far worse than what Google and FireFox are doing.

I'm not a Google lunatic, but I find this article bias and full of contempt on the part of the author.

He wanted to draw lots of comparisons between Google and Microsoft, couldn't do it, so he slanted his language around hand picked facts to make it seem that way.

That's something Fox "News" does every 10 seconds.

[Ken]

Anti-google hysteria, or is the browser promise land nothing more than g-browse?

I don't know.

Is the weather outside where you live below 0 degrees Celsius or above 162 degrees Celsius?

I bet it's neither, but you couldn't answer my question could you?

Why does Google have to be either immaculate or Satan themselves?

[slum_goddess]

If you enter search terms in the location bar instead of a web URL address, Firefox goes to Google and picks off the top link, and takes you directly to that site.

who the hell does that? oh wait:

A surprising percentage of web surfers don't know the difference between a location bar and a search box

oh my...tough on them for not edumacatin' themselves.

[Excrement_Cranium]

I like to google firey foxes...

and ogle them too.... :good job:

[DudeAsInCool]

Google posted some interesting news on their blog regarding a new "feature" to their search experience. The idea is, when you search and Google has determined that the first result is likely the one you're looking for, they will pre-fetch that page behind the scenes for you. I'm sure they have good intentions and a highly accurate system for determining what is relevant for you but this sort of activity could place material on your computer without your knowledge and it could be something offensive, illegal or worse. At least, this is how I dissect the potential for this new feature.

What's worse (IMO) is that prefetch is turned ON by default in Firefox. What on earth were the Firefox/Mozilla people thinking?!? It's one thing if Google does it, if you tend to trust Google. But by having it ON by default you expose users to all sorts of malicious people who will use the same "prefetch" tag. They can prefetch just about anything, like a page with pronography on it that your IT manager decides to fire you over. Or perhaps some other illegal material which the police use against you if your computer is ever siezed. The whole idea seems bad to me.

Thankfully I tend to go to sites where this sort of playing around by a webmaster is unlikely to occur but it is not an impossible thought. For all of Firefox's good qualities and attention to security detail this seems like an awful blunder, perhaps due to pressures from outside companies, like those who pay several Firefox developers. Who knows.

In the end there is a way to turn off the functionality in Firefox but I think they have the knob reversed. It should be OFF by default, just like other risky features that may exist within the browser.

To be fair, I might be missing something but so far, from what I've read about the feature, it scares me and I think it was a mistake.Slashdot users opine here.

http://www.tmcdonald.com/blog/_archives/20.../31/503184.html