Firefox really has been going downhill for a long time. Forcing Pocket into the browser, the ad infested new tab page, telemetry, making user accounts a thing, force installing TV show promotions, etc.
What they haven't done before is spend a fortune buying up an ad-tech start up. They barely even bother to maintain a pretense that they care about Firefox users. They basically came right out and said "We know that users don't want this, we can't convince them to, so we were right to force it on them by default and just hope most people don't notice and start complaining" (https://cdn.adtidy.org/blog/new/2wffyscreen_mozilla.png?mw=1...)
Fun fact: by subscribing to Pocket, you're directly contributing to Firefox's development.
Mozilla found itself in a situation of damned if they do, damned if they don't. People scream at them for depending on Google, and then they scream at them for trying to diversify their revenue.
Nobody wants to pay for a browser, browsers are essentially incredibly complex nowadays, and I have yet to hear how in the world are browsers supposed to get funding.
And of course they want to cater to advertisers because it is advertising that maintains the open web, and it is advertising that is paying for all browser development, actually, including Safari. And the open web is also dying, because people have been moving to mobile apps, where all pretence that "the user agent must act on your behalf" is gone. In other words, even if you get what you wish for, in a couple of years it may not matter at all.
> And of course they want to cater to advertisers because it is advertising that maintains the open web
As someone who worked both on advertiser and publisher sides (incl. content monetisation): advertisers like to say that they support publishers and the open web, but in fact, they are keeping it hostage.
We've had the means/tech to support publishers directly for years (I don't mean crypto). It's in the interest of companies like Google to keep users (and publishers, and brands) in the dark. And one of the issues here is that they have so much impact on the discourse. There are only few places, where I saw more people using ad blockers than the adtech businesses I worked with or at.
> Nobody wants to pay for a browser
True, but I don't think people would have an issue with paying for browsers if they understood the value of it. At this stage, I think the only solution would involve:
> As someone who worked both on advertiser and publisher sides (incl. content monetisation): advertisers like to say that they support publishers and the open web, but in fact, they are keeping it hostage.
I know what you're saying, I agree, as I worked (in the past) on advertising platforms as well, but both of those statements can be true at the same time.
The open web was built on advertising, but the perverse incentives in advertising are also poisoning the open web.
I don't think we've ever had a good solution. People like free stuff, and also, micro-transactions are not possible given the huge banking fees. What we're seeing, the alternative, are subscription-based services behind closed hardens, and mobile apps whose ads can no longer be blocked, so here we are.
I also think that Google isn't the greater evil, because Google has an incentive to keep the web going. For instance, what happens with local newspapers, when they die, besides depriving ad networks of revenue, is that the audience of these newspapers moves to walled gardens like Facebook. The failure of advertising on the web right now results in more centralisation.
The problem with micropayments goes beyond the finances.
It's a major friction point.
How do you set up the payment relationship the first time? Maybe you can get it down to one click, at best, with stored credentials.
When you consume content, you still have to track expenditures, whether it's a prepaid credit balance draining or an invoice building up. Every pageview becomes a "is this worth 8 cents?" discussion.
A broad cooperative flat-rate programme-- Patreon on steroids-- seems the best way to manage that. The consumer signs up for the entire universe at $20 per month, and then doesn't have to think about what happens if he visits a new site, or opens 500 articles this month and 5 next month. It's all sorted out with analytics at the content-provider level.
> micro-transactions are not possible given the huge banking fees
Cryptocurrencies like Litecoin have low transaction fees (currently less than a cent). Apple somehow manages to sell apps that cost just several bucks.
Also, in Russia, a Fast Payment System allows transfers up to $1000/months without commission, however these terms are available only to personal transfers and not for business. But it shows that low-cost transfers are possible even in traditional banking system.
Litecoin, as a cryptocurrency, is rife with scams and offers no chargeback mechanism and either requires an end-user to run their own wallet software which can be hellaciously easy to screw up or lock oneself out of or get scammed out of by savvy hackers, or host the wallet through some third party who then has to deduct their own pound of flesh to keep the service running be that through additional fees or through the same anti-consumer "you are the product" practices as ad networks.
Apple (literally the single wealthiest company on the planet) "somehow" manages to sell inexpensive licenses to primarily ad- and surveillance-financed agents that infest end-user hardware through a marketplace that probably acts as a loss-leader for them to sell said hardware to begin with.
And "transfers of up to $1k/mo without commission"? (Why is that quoted in USD instead of Rubles?) Venmo, Zelle, Paypal, and countless other services in the US allow you to transfer $1k/mo and more without fees to other people using the same system and with a lot of friction to get money back out of said system. And the fees are still "only free to friends/family" specifically because you only need chargeback protection when paying to a business.
> micro-transactions are not possible given the huge banking fees
I actually worked on several projects like this and we found a few ways of making this work. A simple example would be having a wallet you can top up, so you can pay per article. The fee was _roughly_ 2x the CPM for a post, and the cost for an average user ca. $5 per month IIRC. There's a bunch of companies doing this stuff, but their usual issue was scale/publisher relationships. After a few years of trying and 3 companies later I ended up in a situation where this wasn't a problem. Apologies for being vague here.
> I also think that Google isn't the greater evil, because Google has an incentive to keep the web going
True, but the web Google wants to "keep going" is _very_ unlikely the same as the one that's good for users. Chrome or Android serve as storefronts, hence consent assumed by default (think Manifest V3, FLOC, etc...).
Example: think of the deal they signed with Conde Nast (and earlier Reddit). Nowadays, Google has exclusive access to search results from Reddit.
> For instance, what happens with local newspapers, when they die, besides depriving ad networks of revenue, is that the audience of these newspapers moves to walled gardens like Facebook. The failure of advertising on the web right now results in more centralisation.
I witnessed it in 2010s when working with publishers (EU, UK, and some US-based). It wasn't much different than what happened during the "cookiegeddon" around '17 '18 (IIRC): moving to new platforms, pushing towards subscriptions, bundles, or focussing on premium/high quality content.
The publishers I spoke with (again, as a vendor working in publishing and then, later, in adtech) generally would be more than happy to drop the ads if we had any other way to let people pay for stuff without using dark patterns (e.g. subscriptions people tend to forget about).
The only people who created pushback were not even their advertising partners, it was _their own sales people_, responsible for pushing their inventory via direct sales. It makes perfect sense, from a people/internal politics point of view. I'd be happy to elaborate on that, but it's getting a bit late!
People like free stuff, but they're also happy to pay for stuff if they understand its value. Imagine walking into a coffee shop and asking for a free americano promising that you'll stare at their ads on your phone for 5 minutes. (This idea only makes sense if you're running an adtech / marketing startup.)
Then, we have more interesting examples like The Guardian, where many of the people supporting them did so because they wanted _other_ people to have access to it.
So yeah, I agree that people like free stuff, and that the current situation is messy to say the least, but I think we need to take a step back and reconsider the things/ideas we take for granted.
> Mozilla found itself in a situation of damned if they do, damned if they don't. People scream at them for depending on Google, and then they scream at them for trying to diversify their revenue.
People didn't like Pocket as a product. It wasn't as if they just didn't like it because Firdfox wanted to make money out of it.
Sure they should diversify, but with something that isn't otherwise (so) objectionable. Like their VPN, or sponsorship, or just let go of all the upper management.
> Fun fact: by subscribing to Pocket, you're directly contributing to Firefox's development.
That's not true. It isn't directly supporting anything except surveillance capitalism. Allowing yourself to be exploited in that way may indirectly support Firefox, but it's not the same thing as direct support.
Firefox users have literally begged Mozilla to let them actually directly support Firefox's development in the form of donations explicitly for that purpose alone, but Mozilla has always refused to allow it.
> Mozilla found itself in a situation of damned if they do, damned if they don't. People scream at them for depending on Google, and then they scream at them for trying to diversify their revenue.
People scream at them when they involve themselves in surveillance capitalism so yeah, spending a ton of money that could have gone into firefox development to instead buy an ad company so they can start spying on us while we use the internet isn't helping.
> Nobody wants to pay for a browser, browsers are essentially incredibly complex nowadays, and I have yet to hear how in the world are browsers supposed to get funding.
Are web browsers more "incredibly complex" than linux? I don't understand how people assume that web browsers are impossible to develop without selling users to the marketing industry while somehow linux and countless other open source projects have never once needed to do that.
Mozilla could at the very least try letting users pay for firefox development like users have been asking them to before they jump to selling firefox users out to the ad industry.
> And of course they want to cater to advertisers because it is advertising that maintains the open web
Advertising doesn't maintain the open web, it poisons it.
> And the open web is also dying, because people have been moving to mobile apps,
That's because many people don't own even computers anymore. Even where computers haven't been entirely replaced by devices that are designed for data collection and mindless content consumption, the cell phone is the computer that people have with them at all times. The dire situation around computing in general wouldn't be so bleak if we could get some decent and affordable mobile devices that weren't designed to spy on us, but I guess you might see it as that spying being what maintains the computer industry.
> Firefox really has been going downhill for a long time. Forcing Pocket into the browser, the ad infested new tab page, telemetry, making user accounts a thing, force installing TV show promotions, etc.
It might be just me, but I find Pocket quite useful and interesting. That, and syncing user accounts across browsers. It's extremely convenient to just stash a link that you can later open while browsing the web on your browser or sitting at home with another laptop.
I guess you can try to make an argument about that being better served with extensions, but that would be missing the forest for the trees. Meaning, extensions are intended to provide third-partied with a convenient way to add custom features and behavior. That is just wasted effort if it's Firefox wanting to add a feature.
Also, you don't need to use any of that if you don't want to. No one forces you to. At most, it takes a couple of clicks to hide the toolbar button. Is that what you call "downhill"?
Frankly, this blend of criticism sounds like grasping at straws. Some people sound like all they want to do is complain about something, and proceed to work backwards to try to find something anything to complain about. This stance is particularly baffling when taking into consideration how god-awful Chrome and Edge are.
What they haven't done before is spend a fortune buying up an ad-tech start up. They barely even bother to maintain a pretense that they care about Firefox users. They basically came right out and said "We know that users don't want this, we can't convince them to, so we were right to force it on them by default and just hope most people don't notice and start complaining" (https://cdn.adtidy.org/blog/new/2wffyscreen_mozilla.png?mw=1...)