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“After the government sued Google as a monopolist, Mozilla Corp., you’d think, might have celebrated…Yet within hours…Mozilla published a blog post offering a stern warning…: Please don’t go too far…Google pays Mozilla for it to be the default search engine on Firefox, and the money accounts for the vast majority of Mozilla’s revenue.“
Get it now?
Do you understand who Mozilla Corp. ultimately exists to protect? (Hint: it’s not you.)
@aral We're in a bad place with browsers. I mostly use Mozilla derived browsers even though Mozilla is really a Google subsidiary and in its raw form spies on the user via telemetry which is difficult to turn off.
Browsers need to be simplified so that their maintenance does not require a corporation with 1000 staff.
@bob @aral not surprising a org centralised around #powerpolitics and paid for by #dotcons ends up covered in a stinking mess. For this kinda openweb stuff you need “concrete” foundations to build on top of #4opens is an example.
"Please don't put my heroïn dealer in jail."
@aral It's ironic that the people who esentially want Mozilla to fight surveilance capitalism are the ones that will push us more towards a monopoly of browsers.
@andreipetcu @aral yeah really unfortunate, I would not call it "protect", they don't want to protect anything, it's just a huge dependency.
But when they want to get rid of it with things like priavcy-sensitive ads on the home screen or services like Firefox VPN, people scream, too, so 
@aral
This isbthe essential lie that Mozilla tells itself and the world invorder to believe that their lifeboat is not evil:
»“This deal exists because our users want Google search,” says Wen.«
Perhaps understandable -- they *are* dependent on Google. Cutting that income would make their bad situation a lot worse -- until they come up with a better funding model, if they do... if they don't, it'd be game over.
"The game is rigged, but it's the only game in town"
- Neil Gaiman, American Gods
@aral
It's encouraging that the article also cites some people at Mozilla who do see the issue and are not happy with it.
I'd be hard-pressed to suggest a workable solution, though, unless the economy/law changed substantially.
Personally, I would not mind paying a little money for a good web browser -- but I *would* mind competing with Google's money in that regard.
@Mr_Teatime @aral I doubt this is a lie, if they switched to another one for the us, they would very likely get huuge bad reviews.
I mean in russia, China etc they do have different ones, and AFAIK they had switched to yahoo for a while, but I doubt a whole switch over the world would be good.
Especially if they want to o attract people coming from chrome/ium, these kn 90% of the cases still want to use the Google search.
@rugk
I'd not have been happy with Yahoo as default either.
But: why bill yourself as privacy-respecting if Google is the default? How about DDG?
Or you could do what MS was ordered to do in another age, which is to present the user with a choice during initial setup. Show them a list, make it easy to choose.
What Firefox did is hide away my user profile several times, reset everything to Google and tell me I should have set up a Firefox account if I wanted to keep my settings.
@aral
@aral can be Great to have an alternative to surveillance capitalism everydays life software (SCS) easy-to-follow-guide, for non tech people. Not just introduction as in alternativeto.net or switching.software, but more how to do so without knowledge on IT. Like, software that does that automatic, in this case, installing ffox without ggle...
@aral Not possible? then having a guide on alternatives removing their nontrust disorder they, for some philosophical or cliché reason, still bring to the table. Pirates asociation to flags has its history. Besides stand, and moreover beyond good and bad, one non tech person finishes non trusting big tech, nor alternatives, as in both perfumes one smells complications or abuse of power, and when in skin one feels very voulnerable.
@aral Alternatives to capitalism is what makes aesthetics and trust debate complex. But lets no go in there, we are right before after capitalism.
@aral So continuing with the simple non SCS guide.
How to leave android or ios for example without the need of buying new, unsustainable, expensive, colonial heritage or useless devices , nor to get so disoriented and frustrated with tech terms almost impossible to follow as in any non SCS alternative Os one can see these days... understanding just this last frustration is in the core for big tech existence, as they are a mess and big reason for the other mentioned topics.
@aral Can be great to be able to read that, to be able to trust those installation files that will apppear in that guide, and to follow.
Any tip on this bridge between non tech people and alternatives to SCS will be very welcome...
Sorry for all messages 
got carried away
@antipodescafe @aral There are great tools to do such things. For exemple Yunohost lets you host a server and provide many services for free. It has a great community and a good documentation.
We also have Framasoft. It’s a french association which had an initiative a few years ago named : « Ungoogle Internet »