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Comment by geowwy | Hacker News Reader

It's not just an opinion that Firefox regularly phones home. It also uses privacy-hostile services such as Google Search by default. It has an economic incentive to do that since Google, etc. are the ones who fund them.

As the website says your best options are GNU IceCat or Ungoogled Chromium with uMatrix and HTTPS Everywhere.

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I have my problems with some of Mozilla's marketing and technical decisions but saying that the browser contains a "massive" amount of spyware is ludicrous and doesn't exactly inform the reader.

If the author listed more precisely their problems (like you just did for instance) then the reader could make an informed choice. Saying "Chrome is a botnet and Firefox is filled with spyware" is hogwash and disqualifies this page completely IMO.

It is not an evil thing to have "google search by default" and fund this browser with the money from google. Because people don't want to pay for it. Firefox doesn't stop you from changing the default search engine easily.

Lets be realistic here. Mozilla is doing very good things for privacy and free software and it has arguably much bigger impact than GNU. The problem with real world is that change is gradular and things are about compromises.

People will not start suddenly compile their own browser or dig github for browser they never heard of.

They use Google and Gmail. Firefox surely knows that 70% of people will be pissed right there if google is not default browser so they atleast get money from google for it. It's compromise.

They need money to compete with mainstream browsers and they have to make smart decisions about which compromise to make.

Signal is getting similar shit for using google services for messaging. But it makes e2e encryption mainstream.

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