Mozilla is ~83% funded by Google. That’s right- the maker of the dominant Chrome browser is mostly behind its own noteworthy “competitor”. When Google holds that much influence over Mozilla, I call it a false duopoly because consumers are duped into thinking the two are strongly competing with each other. In Mozilla’s effort to please Google and to a lesser extent the end users, it often gets caught pulling anti-user shenanigans. Users accept it because they see Firefox as the lesser of evils.
Even if it were a true duopoly, it would be insufficient anyway. For a tool that is so central to the UX of billions of people, there should be many more competitors.
public option
Every notable government has an online presence where they distribute information to the public. Yet they leave it to the public to come up with their own browser which may or may not be compatible with the public web service. In principle, if a government is going to distribute content to the public, they also have a duty to equip the public to be able to consume the content. Telling people to come up with their own private sector tools to reach the public sector is a bit off. It would be like telling citizens they can receive information about legislation that passes if they buy a private subscription to the Washington Post. The government should produce their own open source browser which adheres to open public standards and which all the gov websites are tested with.
I propose Italy
Italy is perhaps the only country in the world to have a “public money → public code” law, whereby any software development effort that is financed by the gov must be open source. So IMO Italy should develop a browser to be used to access websites of the Italian gov. Italy can save us from the false duopoly from Google.
The reason why firefox and chrome work so well, is that they literally have been in development for over a decade. In Firefox’s case, it’s actually over two decades now.
Instead of trying to reinvent the wheel, why not support some currently existing alternative browsers that look promising? You have servo, you have webkit, and you even have a ladybird now. That’s three potential browsers.
All three are under somewhat active development. Servo, in my opinion, looking the most promising, that shares a lot of dependencies with Firefox still, which means maintenance cost is not super high. It’s easy to hack on, and of course it’s rust.
who doesnt love rustIt’s called WebKit and it’s used by Safari.
That’s your third option.
I just had a look at Debian’s official repos. No Safari browser. Did a search… found “how to install Safari on linux… start by installing WINE…” (yikes)
So in terms of a government offering public services that need to serve all people, Safari is not an answer unless the gov finances porting it to linux.
Gnome Web. Literally one Google search to find a browser using WebKit on Linux.
But sure, pretend Italy of all people will build a new browser just for you.
This misses the point. Governments are designing web services for Chrome. So you have two choices:
- pawn yourself to Google and use Chrome; or
- experiment with unsupported browsers, which even if they work you’re still limited to the window of standards Google decided was good for their business
It’s a lousy idea. The gov should be supplying services that are wholly free of Google’s influence.
Why does a government need to make their own browser to combat this?
Just make sites to existing web standards that work in Chrome, Firefox and Safari. Even the UK government is capable of this.
Web engines are so insanely complex that you can’t just create a new viable competitor without millions on fundings. They’re practically as complex as operating systems themselves.
Millions = mere peanuts, for developed countries. That price tag is also a good reflection of the degree of privacy people are being forced to compromise in order to finance the development and maintenance of Google Chrome. A gov has a duty not to subject its people to arbitrary privacy abuses. Yet some govs are designing web services for Google Chrome and then forcing people to access those services online by removing the offline option.
Wait until you find out how much effort and money Microsoft spends to make sure Windows and Office remain the only option in public administrations and schools around the world…
Google is Mozilla’s #1 financer solely because they pay an absolute fuckton to keep Google as the default search engine in FireFox. Considering Mozilla is a private company they’re not really in danger of a hostile takeover.
Mozilla is not in danger so long as they continue to serve Google. You cut 83% of Mozilla’s revenue and I guarantee you there will be problems.
Maybe a Servo based browser could be a good option.
Need Servo completed first, and then it will come. It’s coming along, but it will still be a long while.
Internet Explorer it is then!
You know something went seriously wrong when people start rooting for Internet Explorer. Can we go back and reset?
it often gets caught pulling anti-user shenanigans
I’m not aware. Can you list a few?
Receiving funding doesn’t necessarily mean serving. Google is interested in funding to keep it’s position. Mozilla still provides alternatives and regularly criticizes Google.
I’ve not been tracking them because I tend to only collect dirt on the greatest of evils. What comes to mind:
- default search engine: Google (this is what that Google money is for officially)
- Mozilla gave the boot to a lot of plugins and imposed some kind of control-freakish trust mechanism. Plugins/extensions were evicted from the plugin repository and they made it hard for plugin creators to distribute their plugins. I lost several very useful plugins when Mozilla took this controlling protectionist stance.
- MAFF ditched. Mozilla abandoned a good format for archiving websites. I had a lot of content saved in *.maff files which Mozilla dropped direct support for and at the same time they blocked MAFF plugins.
- Without Firefox, Google would be easily targeted with anti-trust actions. Google props up Mozilla just enough to be able to claim they have “competition”. Google can be most dominant when it has a crippled competitor under its influence.
- Google killed the free world JPEG XL format. When a browser as dominant as Chrome withholds support JPEG XL, there is then no reason for web devs to use that format. Google did this because JPEG XL competes with a proprietary Google format. Firefox does not support it out of the box either, likely because of Google’s influence. Firefox users can enable it by going through some config hoops, so if Chrome alone did not kill it, that certainly would.
I vaguely recall a slew of Mozilla actions that were anti-thetical to privacy and user interests which caused me to move them from “a decent browser” to a “lesser of evils”. Hopefully others have better records of Mozilla’s history.
update May 2024
- Mozilla uses data abuser Cloudflare for their exclusive access-restricted blog
- Mozilla has decided to add more tracking to their browser to collect people’s search activity.
Most of this is self referencing. Like the default search engine is not an example of Google’s control, it’s Mozilla’s revenue model.
The remainder sounds like personal gripes that you’re misconstruing as evidence of nefarious intent.
There’s also plenty of evidence to the contrary, total cookie protection to name but one.
Additionally, beurocratic processes produce terrible software. Log in to any govt website as a refresher.
Finally, browsers are incredibly complex, if this model worked you’d use it for much simpler projects first.
Like the default search engine is not an example of Google’s control, it’s Mozilla’s revenue model.
It’s both, of course. Mozilla’s revenue enables Google control. If Mozilla changes the default search to one that is not in Google’s interest, they will lose their revenue.
The remainder sounds like personal gripes that you’re misconstruing as evidence of nefarious intent.
It’s both. I’m a user so I notice when Mozilla makes an anti-user move. Businesses serve their customers. Mozilla’s customer is Google, not me. So Mozilla serves Google, not the users. W.r.t evidence, I gave no evidence. I did not say “this is evidence”. If you want to challenge a claim because you can’t find the evidence on your own, you can ask for the evidence.
And as I said, I did not keep track of all Mozilla’s anti-user shenanigans over the years. So you’re not looking at a complete list of issues. It’s disingenuous to treat it as if it were.
There’s also plenty of evidence to the contrary, total cookie protection to name but one.
I did not mention anything about cookies, so which of my points do you think cookie protection counters what I’ve said?
Additionally, beurocratic processes produce terrible software.
Nonsense.
First of all, capitalism produces terrible software when you’re the product rather than the customer. It’s often shit even when you are a paying customer. The best quality software is produced outside of capitalistic structures.
I’ve worked on both gov and commercial environments. The gov process was superior for quality. On a commercial gig I was actually told not to fix bugs as they were spotted because it was important for the customer to discover the bug & report it so the supplier could charge them extra for the bug fix. The whole commercial work environment was rife with chasing profit (of course) which means cutting corners to cut expenses. If a developer produces something high quality in a fortune 500 company, they get back-roomed for “gold plating” (which means they’ve invested more in quality than necessary for the consumers). That doesn’t happen on gov projects.
It’s also wrong to attribute bureaucratic processes strictly to government projects. You may have a shit-ton of bureaucracy in the governance outside of the project which leads to: “build a Mars rover”. How bureaucratic the processes are within the organization is independent of whether it’s a commercial project or not. Fortune 500 corps are inefficient due to their bureaucratic structures. I could not reuse code from one project to another within the same company because there were rules about one project benefiting from another internal pot of money. So a piece of code had to be rewritten from scratch on the other project which means more bugs than you would have if the audited code could have been reused.
Finally, browsers are incredibly complex
Precisely why lack of competition is problematic.
In principle, if a government is going to distribute content to the public, they also have a duty to equip the public to be able to consume the content. Telling people to come up with their own private sector tools to reach the public sector is a bit off.
This statement is a rearrangement of events. The governments of the world didn’t create an online presence and then tell the private sector to create browsers. Governments joined in an already existing method of communication because it was convenient, popular, and browsers already existed to view the content.
My comment does not imply when the first browsers were developed. Nor is it relevant. The problematic status quo sequence:
- offer web-based gov services
- leave people to their own devices… to fend for themselves and pawn themselves to the private sector as needed to reach public resources
.
The sequence should have been:
- ensure sovereignty-respecting public tools exist
- offer web-based gov services that officially support the tools distributed in step 1
.
The internet began as a military project (government). The graphical web later emerged in the 1990s. So all governments have had 25+ years to become sovereign and ensure that the gov itself is not subjecting people to a US surveillance capitalist.
It was only in the past ~2—3 years that my local government closed its doors and decided to force everyone to do public administration tasks online. Indeed things are happening in a reckless sequence of events. Sovereignty from US tech giants should be sorted out before a government forces people to interact with their web-based services. So w.r.t my local gov, the status quo (first sequence) now has a third step:
- force people to use the web-based gov services without equipping them.
.
Do you see the problem? Step 3 is the most abusive, and that’s quite recent.
That sounds like your government has an issue. That isn’t the same as governments as a whole using the web.
In the US, we still have the option to do things in person. The online presence is a convenience. That’s how it should work everywhere.
Even in the US people are forced to use the web for public service even if it’s not officially announced.
E.g., suppose you want to see the state secretary’s records for a corporation. A lot of SoS websites try to force you to solve a #CAPTCHA. Fuck CAPTCHAs. I don’t do CAPTCHAs. So there’s an offline option, right? Ha. Try it. Send a snail mail letter to a state secretary requesting the registration records for an arbitrary business you know they should have records on. They just ignore it now. They don’t even have the courtesy to respond to say why they will not treat your request. Offline services have been quietly taken away without people even noticing.
I can walk in to the library of Congress and make a face to face request.
The web is a convenience for any public need in the US.
SoS records are state records, not federal. Are you saying every state shares their corporate database with LoC?
I would not be as fast as you to call the web a mere “convenience” to 99.9% of the country who are not a walking distance from Washington DC. If the analog way of doing something requires thousands of miles of travel, the online way is not a mere convenience. It’s a requirement, in effect.
BTW, it’s worth noting that the LoC has an access restricted Cloudflare website. So their exclusivity makes an offline option essential. If that means face to face in DC, that’s fucked up indeed. You should be able to use the postal service.
I think you’re struggling with the difference of convenience and difficulty. Doing things without the web implies you are going to do them in the same way you’d have to pre-web. That makes the web more convenient.
Pre-web, postal correspondence was treated. Now it’s not. Convenience and difficulty are inversely proportional measures of the same thing. When you take away one out of two options, the other option is not a convenience. It’s a requirement.
The idea that you think people nationwide traveling to DC to get a business record is mere inconvenience is absurd. Are you drunk? You’re making a lot of bizarre assumptions, starting with assuming the travel is even possible for everyone nationwide who needs the service. If someone needs to sue a company for $200 and travel costs to DC to get the registered agent of the company is $400, you’ve effectively killed their access public service by nixing correspondence.
Your perverse understanding of convenience is ultimately just a language game that changes the language but not the problem. So let’s say traveling from California to DC to get an address is a mere “inconvenience” and using the web is “convenient”. That so-called “convenience” is essential in countless scenarios. And because what you refer to as “inconvenient” is actually not plausible in a scenario, the need for convenience in your language becomes essential.
