[athrowaway3z]

This is speculation based only on press releases but:

- Google pays Mozilla more than 400m per year.

- Its in Google's interests to not have good Firefox add-ons. (For both Ads and Chrome's market share).

Google's negotiator could easily added some incentive for Mozilla's management to set the focus somewhere else.

In fact, given what Google's team is likely earning, they wouldn't be doing a good job if Firefox's mobile strategy wasn't discussed before signing such deals.

[mod50ack]

Firefox for Android had add-ons before, and even during the past few years, they're fully supported the collection of recommended add-ons, including uBlock Origin from day one. So I don't see how it could be about preventing ad blocking.

[pcwalton]

The idea that Google has some secret underhanded deal with Mozilla to sabotage Firefox comes up here repeatedly and makes no sense. If Google wanted to prevent ad blocking on Android it would be much simpler to just ban ad blockers from the Play Store outright.

There is a much simpler potential explanation for such a product management decision. Suppose Mozilla determines that 90% (made-up number) of users want addons because they want uBlock Origin. It then seems sensible to prioritize that addon and not others when determining how to spend limited engineering resources. Reasonable people can of course disagree with that decision, but there's no need to bring conspiracies into it.

(NB: Even though I worked at Mozilla I have zero insight into this particular issue; it's entirely speculation.)

[SheinhardtWigCo]

> The idea that Google has some secret underhanded deal with Mozilla to sabotage Firefox comes up here repeatedly and makes no sense.

That idea is supported by recent disclosures revealing that Google paid or attempted to pay Activision, Aniplex, Bandai Namco, Bethesda, Blizzard, Com2uS, EA, King, Mixl, Niantic, NCSoft, NetMarble, NetEase, Nexon, Nintendo, Pearl Abyss, The Pokemon Company, Riot, Square Enix, Supercell, Tencent, and Ubisoft to influence each company’s product roadmap. [1]

I think it makes sense that they would attempt to exert similar influence over an entity whose continued existence is entirely dependent on revenue received from Google and (ostensibly) competes with one of their of their strategic initiatives.

Sure, it’s speculation, but it’s not wild speculation.

[1] https://www.theverge.com/2023/11/9/23954107/here-is-the-full...

[pcwalton]

From a skim, "Project Hug" seems like it was a deal to keep games in the Play Store. That is a far cry from some kind of weird deal to sabotage a competitor's product.

[SheinhardtWigCo]

Keep games exclusive to the Play Store = block/sabotage Play Store competitors

[lupusreal]

Why does Firefox still not ship with adblocking by default? Other browsers do, and Firefox touts itself as a privacy browser yet lacks this important defaut. Advanced users can install adblocking themselves, but having it on by default would draw in new novice users.

I already know the answer; it would have to whitelist Google or Google would stop paying Firefox to be the default search engine. And if it whitelisted Google, that would only confirm what people say about Firefox being a pet on Google's leash. All the denials of this are laughably unconvincing, people know how the money flows.

[JustinGoldberg9]

It's not unusual. MSFT funded apple mainly to not appear to be a monopoly.

[asadotzler]

This is just silly. Firefox on Android has had uBlock Origin, the world's most effective ad blocker, since day one. But sure, go invent conspiracies rather than do a little research.

[rightbyte]

That can just be an indication that the conspiracy failed as some internal people countered it by a hack.

I.e. having unlock origin available at launch might have been a conspiracy.

E.g. the yes men types tried to sabotage it, while the unsung heroes did it anyway.