Comment by 1vuio0pswjnm7

"Publish a version of Firefox with no sponsored content, no telemetry, no Google (by default), and ad-blocking built in. I wouldn't hesitate to pay.

If Mozilla doesn't do it, I fear someone else will."

Why fear; competition drives improvement

IMHO, need more non-commercial browsers; I use a 1.3MB (static) text-only one for printing large HTML files^1; there are not many choices for such programs

The author makes a strange but persistent assumption; payment will stop surveillance

Payment does not necessarily solve the issues of sponsored content, telemetry, Google partnership or ads (not to mention non-telemetry data collection and tracking)

It is possible to accept payment and still perform surveillance and advertising services

"Big Tech" is already doing this; e.g, stop ads/tracking in one context after payment, but still collect data, track and/or show ads in other contexts

What is more lucrative for the "browser developer"

(a) payment from trillion-dollar market cap companies serving the advertising industry, or

(b) donations from www browser users, or

(c) both

1. It bloats to 7.5MB (static) with OpenSSL; one of many reasons I use a TLS forward proxy

"Personally, I'd be ok with opt-in telemetry if the information was used solely within Mozilla for product development.

The red line for me is sharing of telemetry data with advertisers."

These so-called "tech" companies offer no such enforceable promises; the absence of enforceable (cf. non-binding) promises is intentional

How does this commenter know Mozilla does not share telemetry with its other partners, e.g., Google.

"Product development" is for the benefit of Google^2 and anyone else who leverages Mozilla's work.

2. Chrome's initial development was performed by former Mozilla developers who joined Google. The idea that Mozilla is "competing" with Google or offers some meaningful alternative is bonkers. Mozilla's work has direct benefits for Google. By all means, use Firefox and warn against Chrome. But spare us the illusions that this somehow impedes Chrome. The companies are business partners; they share data under agreement

IMHO, all these popular "modern" browsers suck.^3 Too large, too complicated and effectively outside the user's control. The developers maintaining them are paid with profits from selling advertising services, or search data in the case of Mozilla. The resulting software is designed with advertising and tracking in mind. That is why we see bizarre ideas, e.g., from Google, Apple, about how make data collection, advertising and tracking "acceptable".

3. This comment was submitted without using a browser. I'm using vim 4.6, hunspell, a couple of custom UNIX filters, a TCP client and a tiny 54-line shell script