[remram]

Because Firefox does the same stuff?

Don't get me wrong, I use Firefox myself, but every once in a while I have to disable Pocket, or Studies, or whatever-the-colors-thing-was-called. I have to click the "what's new" button in the menu on Android and immediately close that tab so that the obnoxious blue dot goes away. A new persistent tab thing appeared this week, I am probably going to have to fiddle with my userChrome.css to remove it.

I think it's the better browser but I definitely don't feel in control.

[SturgeonsLaw]

> Because Firefox does the same stuff?

It's not quite the same. Firefox will push Pocket et al as extensions, which can be disabled. Annoying, but that's a pretty reasonable approach.

In this instance of Chrome's behaviour, it looks like it's reading the contents of text fields the user has entered, then feeding that data to back to Google's mothership. It's not clear whether it sends the data when the user opts to view more search results, or if it has already sent it by that point, but either way, Mozilla is doing nothing that egregious.

[rstat1]

>> A new persistent tab thing appeared this week, I am probably going to have to fiddle with my userChrome.css to remove it.

No CSS mods required, you just right click on it and click "Remove".

[ok_dad]

With Firefox it’s easy to disable any of those. With Google, they literally hijacked a search box with private information.

Edit: I have another comment below, I agree there’s no excuse for Firefox either.

[saurik]

I mean, it seems like you can disable this under chrome:flags and looking for the Side Search experiment, which seems pretty "easy to disable". I think the argument, though, was that having to whack-a-mole things in the first place is annoying because it implies a broken incentive on behalf of the developers and Firefox doesn't seem like they are trying to be different here: they are just trying to not be Google... which is like, cool and all? but I want a bold alternative that isn't even playing by the same rules as Google, and that's not Firefox.

[ok_dad]

Good points, I agree, companies should at most pop up a tab telling us about the benefits of a feature and how to enable it, but keep it disabled by default. Better yet, they should take input from users on what they want to see in browsers, it’s probably not some additional tab that I didn’t even read about and just closed because I hate that crap.

I’m guess just pointing out this particular case is especially bad, why couldn’t Google start to hijack searches on internal company sites in the future? This feature seems ripe for abuse or errors causing issues.

[j33zusjuice]

I sure hope there’s something in this that identifies sensitive fields. Are they going to read everyone’s SSN and credit card information? Wtf is this?

[hulitu]

> With Firefox it’s easy to disable any of those.

If you know how, yes. The problem with all mainstream web browsers (Edge, Chrome, Firefox) is that with every release you need to disable something.

[nicbou]

Some of those must be disabled with about: config flags.

This must be done after every update, not just once.

[proactivesvcs]

It may be easy but it has to be repeated every time they add another unwanted feature.

[soraminazuki]

> or whatever-the-colors-thing-was-called. I have to click the "what's new" button in the menu

Theming and introduction of new features are legit features. Not even remotely the same as Google hijacking competing search services.

[nicbou]

According to Mozilla, they're not just themes. They make the world a better place.

[soraminazuki]

You're just nitpicking on the otherwise innocent wording they use to introduce new features. How's that supposed to be more egregious than what Google is doing here?

If that is enough to put you up in arms against Mozilla, you should see Google's PR notice when they suddenly kill off one of their services.

[nicbou]

I use Firefox. However I can't help but chuckle at how they introduced it. Some people at Mozilla live on a different planet.

It's not a comparison to Google, just something silly that Mozilla does. Google is a boring kind of evil. There's no fun to it.

[witrak]

>I use Firefox. However I can't help but chuckle at how they introduced it. Some people at Mozilla live on a different planet.

Exactly. Next example: 2 weeks ago they introduced a new version of the internal pdf viewer and set it as default (that I accept - it's their application). However, when you set FF as the default browser in Windows they make the browser a default pdf application too (see Release Notes 106.0).

[LegitShady]

no I disagree. I use firefox. I don't actually mind the new tab, although I don't really understand what its there for. mine just shows me my recently closed tabs.

But the color theming thing on the page tries to show me how virtuous it is to pick a color theme, and turns my stomach. they couldn't just let me pick a color, they have to try to talk about why its a good thing for society to pick a color on my firefox theme. The exact text says:

>Color can change culture. The latest colorways celebrate voices making the world a better place.

This is stupid nonsense and should never have made it out to users as if picking a color does anything other than picking a theme color. Stop trying to co-opt social nonsense to justify a theming feature. It's incredibly difficult to understand who reads this tripe and feels good about picking a color to 'celebrate voices making the world a better place' by 'changing culture'.

The people who release a theme color feature under the flag of social change need to be removed from the product development team, they are already driving down the average IQ. They are buffoons, advertising features in a way that only buffoons would appreciate.