Hacker News Reader

Comment by charcircuit | Hacker News Reader

Developing a complex product like a browser without telemetry will be hard. Especially if they are trying to commit to objectives like using minimal battery or memory. There are many many different websites so its hard to predict what your users are using the browser for.

View on HN

I'm glad someone is trying to doing something hard that will benefit people. We need more companies that want to do the hard thing, not the easy profitable thing.

Telemetry would allow them to make their product better for more people and know where to invest to benefit their users more. In this case proitability is proxy for how much value people get from the proxy. The thought that something is bad because it is profitable is misguided.

Is all telemetry good in your eyes?

Telemetry is a cheaper solution to hiring quality assurance. Many will feel sharing their usage details to increase profits is acceptance and others might feel this free product isn't so free anymore.

>Is all telemetry good in your eyes?

No, collecting information on how many times someone types the sequence "abcd" is a waste of resources. Figuring out what telemetry will be useful and understanding the privacy implications is important.

>Telemetry is a cheaper solution to hiring quality assurance.

These are not comparable. Telemetry is about understanding how the product is operating. QA is about testing the product.

From your point of view, does using telemetry have downsides? No concept of misleading info or bad product development direction from using it?

>does using telemetry have downsides?

The main downside is the extra work and cost of getting it all set up, properly cleaning up unneeded telemetry, and making sure telemetry itself doesn't cause performance issues.

>No concept of misleading info or bad product development direction from using it?

Telemetry doesn't replace a strong protect sense, but without telemetry you are flying blind.

Do you work in game development? I've heard similar things before in that area, and it kind of makes sense for that specific use case.

Respecting user privacy begins with browser being zero telemetry. If it is not, it can not claim to be privacy-respecting.

Telemetry can be privacy respecting. For example it may be useful to know the average page load time. The browser could record 100 different page loads and then send the median time.

It almost can not by definition, as every telemetry will include user IP address which is considered PII. Regardless what the stated purpose of that telemetry was, private information will leak and that browser can not be calling itself privacy respecting. Zero telemetry by default is the only way a browser respects user privacy.

If the user opts-in into telemetry then obviously it is user's choice, but usually browsers with telemetry do not make this an opt-in choice.

Every single site you visit will get your IP. That is now the web works. Most sites will be logging your IP.

But not my browser

They very explicitly do not want to know what their users are using the browser for.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com