More conclusions from the Mozilla study

The Brave browser has its own search engine

In this article I share more conclusions of the study from Mozilla. According to research from the Foundation behind the Firefox browser, the decision by big tech companies to push their own browser slows innovation and hurts users. We are referring to Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta.

As I said in previous articles, I don't think that the study contributes too many things. Of course, you can ask me why I have four articles on the subject. I do it because it serves to ask us interesting questions even those that Mozilla ignores completely. Your own responsibility for what happened

More conclusions from the Mozilla study

Search engines and browsers

The study we are discussing points to something certain, that Chrome forces Google to be used as a search engine and Microsoft Edge does it with Bing. Both search engines favor results that pay for advertising. But, I want to stop at this paragraph:

Independent browsers are the only companies that can freely consider search defaults on behalf of their consumers. They are also among the few companies that encourage the discovery, evaluation, adoption and innovation of alternative search and advertising experiences.

I assume you are referring to Brave, which not only created its own advertising system but also rewards content creators and developed a search engine. because the Mozilla Foundation, even though the browser allows you to change the search engine, by default in most countries it is Google and, in the same study, it says that people almost never change the default options. On the other hand, Google is the largest contributor of resources to the Mozilla Foundation.

On the other hand, my partner Pablinux He told us like the last year Mozilla included in Firefox a feature that causes ads to be displayed based on what you type in the search bar and your location. At the moment it is only available in the United States.

As if anticipating my comment, they included a paragraph explaining what their system does best for them:

Browsers also bring innovation to search and advertising. “Firefox Suggest” complements the default search engine to create a richer search experience that instead of starting at the search engine results page (“SERP”), starts directly at the address bar. When a person starts typing, the browser suggests results and relevant websites. The result is to optimize web browsing and create opportunities for new specialized search and advertising experiences. At the same time, Mozilla does not believe that advertising needs to be as invasive as it currently is.

At this point I think it is necessary to point out one thing. No matter how many search engine options are available, it does not mean that they are equally useful.. I can access the yellow pages of the Czech Republic online, but if what I need is a plumber near my house, it is of no use to me.

The same thing happens with search engines. I'm fed up with Google and that the first results are always from a shopping portal or YouTube videos. But, at least in Argentina, Neither alternative performs well when it comes to local searches.

The Mozilla studio puts too much emphasis on the fact that something is installed by default and, with that, they forget their own history. Many of us abandoned Internet Explorer for Firefox even though it already came pre-installed in Windows because it was a better browser. Many others migrated to Chrome even though Firefox came pre-installed in Linux distributions and was open source. It was simply because Chrome worked better and still had support for Flash when Adobe discontinued the Linux version.

I am not denying that the monopolistic practices of the big technology companies are an obstacle to innovation and the adoption of open source solutions. Much less than oligopolies are harmful to users. But, We cannot deny that in many cases the products that Mozilla gives as an example are actually better than the alternatives.


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  1.   Miguel Rodriguez said

    Well, if Google bothers you so much, it's because you haven't become maniacal enough when you want to browse safely enough, in terms of privacy at least, I use many add-ons in my Firefox browser in Manjaro, I recommend that when you use firefox you program in settings that When you exit the browser, all data is deleted, so that each session is as if you had installed from 0.

    – uBlock Origin: very good and consumes less ram, although it leaves me to be desired with some ads that cannot prevent redirection, very unlike another one I used, Adblocker Ultimate, although the latter accompanied it along with Noscript, I removed them in favor from uBlock Origin because I found that I could get the best of both worlds in 1 without having to give as many specific permissions when visiting sites for the first time (as is the case with Noscript). Although not perfect, it saves me a bit of ram.

    – LocalCDN: inspired by the legendary decentraleyes, this one seems to be carrying the baton now.

    – Forget Me Not: although it already needs an update, it seems that it still works, and you have to take advantage of it, you can program it to delete cookies, browsing history, download history and browser cache, among other site data that is commonly stored in real time after a few seconds of visiting the site. Since my PC is a potato (still running Linux), saving as much memory as possible while almost making your browsing data unusable is a plus. Although seriously, there are many plugins to delete cookies and browsing data, but I have never seen one so complete, it will hurt me a lot the day it stops working if it is not updated.

    – Starpage Privacy Protection: although I miss the DDG bangs, the default search engine is the google algorithm, although sometimes some results seem to be skipped or blocked when comparing both searches, maybe it is because of the style of one and the other, it offers a security such that, using a plugin called Swift Selection Search to search google or youtube, having a gmail logged in tab open, the resulting search for whatever you searched for on Startpage after using this plugin prevents the google or youtube search from being registered, because the tab opens both the google or youtube search engine without access to the google account.

    Uso una lista de complementos muy variada que me facilitan la existencia cuando uso internet, corrector gramatical, traductores… No siempre los puedo tener todos activos porque el jalón de ram sería abrumador, uBlock Origin por ejemplo, me permite ver Linuxadictos sin publicidad, aunque no se ve tan bien como cuando lo hacía con Adblocker Ultimate junto a Noscript. Ahora se me ve un poco feo y activar los filtros cosméticos para que quede bonito como el que usaba antes jala más memoria desafortunadamente.