alt Hacker NewsIt's kinda frustrating that Mozilla's CEO thinks that axing ad-blockers would be financially beneficial for them. Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
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Ditto. A fully functional uBlock Origin is the only remaining reason why I'm still sticking with Firefox despite everything
It's financially beneficial for them in exactly the same way as setting yourself on fire makes you warmer
Mozilla has pressure from their sugar daddy, Google, to weaken ad-blockers.
It might be financial beneficial once as an up-front payment, but long term, as others have mentioned, really not good for the project to remove the only feature that gives firefox a defensible way to fill it's niche in the market.
> Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
Yes but keep in mind that’s not an individual problem that is solved by switching browsers. If a browser engine dies, the walls get closer and the room smaller. With only Chromium and WebKit left, we may soon have a corporate owned browsers pulling in whatever direction Google and Apple wants. I can think of many things that are good for them but bad for us. For instance, ”Web Integrity” and other DRM.
i left chrome to avoid ads.. i'd rather use dillo than ads infested firefox
The users most likely to leave are the ones who actively recommend Firefox to others and keep it installed on friends' and family's machines...
And users would flee not just because they're seeing the ads but because Firefox is obviously the slowest browser again. Stripping the ads is a big performance boost, so right now Firefox feels snappier than Chrome on ad-laden pages.
Which alternatives though? On Mac at least, I'm not aware of any viable non-Chromium alternatives.
Knowing an option, doesn't mean it's his goal. It's probably just a regular offer from Google, they always decline.
> Quite the opposite is true (I believe) since a ton of users would leave Firefox for alternatives.
Alternatives like maybe a fork of Firefox with the adblocker-blocker removed?
There's only two alternatives, safari and chrome-based browsers. Safari isn't cross platform either
The whole web ecosystem was first run by VC money and everything was great until every corner was taken, the land grab was complete and the time to recoup the investment has come.
Once the users were trapped for exploitation, it doesn’t make sense to have a browser that blocks ads. How are they supposed to pay software salaries and keep the lights on? People don’t like paying for software, demand constant updates and hate subscriptions. They all end up doing one of those since the incentives are perverse, that’s why Google didn’t just ride the Firefox till the end and instead created the Chrome.
It doesn’t make sense to have trillion dollars companies and everything to be free. The free part is until monopolies are created and walled gardens are full with people. Then comes the monetization and those companies don’t have some moral compass etc, they have KPI stock values and analytics and it’s very obvious that blocking ads isn’t good financially.