Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.
Google warning you about Mozilla is just peak fucking irony
Even if this isn’t entirely true, you know Google wouldn’t pass up the opportunity to reduce Firefox market share to scare everyone back to Chrome.
Like chrome does something different?
Yes, chrome is doing something different. It is even worse!
That’s not the point they’re trying to make I think. It’s more of an attack on perfection. Like “the alternative is not perfect either so why not just stay with Chrome”. It’s not a very strong argument in general but it might be enough to keep people from switching.
the alternative is not perfect either so why not just stay
It does work for a lot of people. Seeing they need to change and adapt if they do change, and it seemingly seems to be as bad as what they’re using now, why change and face headaches and hassle.
exactly, when confronted with cognitive dissonance people look for any shitty excuse to avoid changing their minds.
No but where are you going to go. The options are shrinking.
Fennec on mobile. LibreWolf on desktop.
Waterfox works great on Android.
Iron fox is another option.
Zen browser is great on desktop
Zen, at least from the few times that I’ve tried it, also has some major issues that I personally find to be deal-breakers. Like forgetting tabs in a window that has just been closed. If you accidentally close a window that you’re working, without quitting the browser, you lose everything in it. As someone who is prone to doing that when closing a tab, it’s not ideal.
It integrates into the Google ecosystem well, and if that has value to a person it may just be enough to bring them back to chrome.
Who would use the Google ecosystem? Yuck. 🤮
There’s no need to reduce Firefox marketshare. Most people don’t even consider using anything else than whatever is default in their device.
Also, it’s not a Google scare tactic or a flex. Every application on the Play Store must disclose the general outlines of their data policy, including the sharing of data. Lying with those checkbox is not a good idea but they are completely informative and put there by the publishing party, so the people responsible for publishing Firefox on mobile just updated these, and this is what is shown when an app publisher say their app is sharing data with third parties.
tl;dr: it’s very likely that not a single soul at Google even looked at this, as this is just the regular behavior of the Play Store with apps that changes their data policy or indicate sharing user data with third parties.
Why the dichotomy between the chrome listing on the store then?
No idea, I’m not that obsessed with it. But do note that “The developers of these apps provided info about their data sharing practices to an app store. They may update it over time.” and “Data sharing practices may vary based on your app version, use, region, and age.”
The recent changes to Firefox terms of use (well, their introduction really) was supposedly meant to appease some regional lawmakers. Maybe it is a regional thing. Maybe they changed it again. Maybe it’s, as often with store page update, rolled out progressively to people (in either direction, whether it’s adding or removing these terms).
The point is, that’s neither a “Google” operation to put Firefox in a bad light, nor a Mozilla operation to… do whatever it is they’re doing these days. It’s just a regular message. Which, reading a lot of the replies here, is something that have to be said.
I wonder if they say people should be careful with Chrome 😂
they don’t have to! they microsoft explorered that shit
There isn’t to much to reduce. I don’t think Google is scared or afraid by Firefox, like at all.
Firefox? You mean the company they give several hundred million dollars/year? Yeah I don’t think they’re too worried. They need some number of users on Firefox to prevent anti-trust issues. Which they’re on the brink of right now.
you’re right Google’s not worried.
as for anti-trust, they’re already in sentencing phase.
Given the current administration, I’d be very unsurprised if that disappears.
Lol if Google really wanted to kill FF they would just stop paying them half a billion a year.
So you’re advocating that Google shouldn’t broadcast that firefox is broadcasting your current location? Even though they do this for every other app available on Android, you’re saying they shouldn’t do this for firefox?
Why?
This notice is effectively added by the Firefox developers when they select the ability to enable location services and also tick a box thay they collect data.
They want to scare people to stay on Chrome now that they discontinued support of uBlock (not that it was ever supported on Chrome for Android anyway)
So they do this for all apps. Every single app that is in the Android ecosystem. But in your mind they’re specifically targeting firefox with this to make people “scared” huh?
Must be nice to live in denial.
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The story I heard was that by of California’s definition of selling data, doing anything with user data that could benefit the company was considered selling data. So they updated their FAQ to be in line with that definition. But I could be wrong, if someone could point me to a good article I’d appreciate it.
Here’s Louis Rossmann’s wiki where he details it. I hope that helps.
Thanks! Sounds like limiting risk from the California bill is a plausible reason, but it isn’t confirmed.
Legal Definitions of “Selling Data” Under the CCPA Are Broad: As noted above, the CCPA’s definition encompasses many data-sharing practices that may not align with common understanding of “selling data”.[16] Even if Mozilla was not directly selling user data, its search partnerships, telemetry data sharing, & sponsored content could have been interpreted as data sales if Mozilla received any financial benefit from them, all of which were actions that Mozilla has already been transparent & upfront about.
Mozilla’s Search Engine Deals Could Be Considered Data Sales: As mentioned earlier, these partnerships could legally qualify as data sales under the CCPA definition, despite being an existing part of Mozilla’s business model that consumers are already aware of.[1]
Sponsored Content in Firefox’s New Tab Page Involves Data Exchange: Mozilla dReferencesisplays sponsored content and ads on the Firefox New Tab page, which may involve user interaction data being shared with advertisers.[11] Even if the data is anonymized, the CCPA considers certain types of aggregated data as personal information if it can be linked back to users.[16]
It sounds like a bullshit excuse, to me.
If they wanted to cover their ass, they could have changed their ToS any number of different ways than what they went with.
Let’s not be naïve. All corporations are the enemy, including Mozilla.
To be fair they are a company with bills to pay and they have to shield themselves from being fined or sued. At this point I assume almost everything has been backdoored to hell and I’d rather use the product from the company with better overall terms and principles.
i’m a person with bills to pay, but if i paid those bills by endangering people, i’d be a bad person.
corporations exist to protect people from the financial and legal repercussions of their business activity.
they should not exist, and so, I will celebrate if Mozilla goes into bankruptcy.
we do not need them. control of firefox should be in the hands of a not-for-profit group, not a company.
ACAB? C being Companies.
A weird number of C things fit in there.
Cops Companies CEOs
In short: yes.
You’re saying “exploiting” user data might have been more precise than “selling”. Either way I don’t want them doing it.
terrible choice of link. There was a stack of reporting from various tech-news sites and blogs; but you’ve given as the nazi site.
“Quick! Jump to chrome instead!” - Google spokesperson
Isn’t that just because Firefox got access to location data because some site asked for it?
Yep. Like a map website…
commenting cus I also have the same question
Okay, turned it off. If a site needs my location it can ask me and I can politely tell it to fuck off unless it has a warrant.
i mean it’s just because you can grant websites location data and toggle telemetry.
God damn why’s the world so shit
i know, thats some really late stage capitalism bullshit.
It really is. Literally everything is shit and I’m so fucking over it.
God damn why’s the world so shit
Society empowers and encourages shitty people that only care about their own kind/tribe, is why.
Society empowers and encourages shitty people that only care about
their own kind/tribethemselves, is why.
This is the Bad Place
My understanding is this is due to regions broadening the definition of “sell” to include any form of personal data transfer. So Mozilla giving location info (with consent if you enable “ask every time” in the permissions) to websites to look up local store hours or whatever is “selling data.”
AFAIK, nothing has changed in Firefox.
Wait a second. You’re expecting Google to not FUD? Ha ha ha oh wow. I mean I didn’t actually expect them to do so, but yeah.
Wth is fud?
Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt. It’s more commonly used in crypto communities.
[stern stare]
Forgotten the history, have we? I was referring to Microsoft’s tactics in the early 2000s.
Crypto bros have watered down the term and made it a laughing matter. They ruin everything they touch. Goddamn it.
Huh. I wasn’t even aware of it having that much of a history to begin with.
Oh the term has rich history! First used in modern tech sector sense in 1975 about IBM.
Fucking Ultra Demon
Elmer
Expected, no. Surprised, also no.
Google: “Forcing us to divest Chrome could have impacts on our ability to support Mozilla and their high executive salaries as we own the space with Chrome.”
Also Google:
That’s a regular notification, which would happen for any application whose data policy is changed on the Play Store page. These policy are as declared by the app publisher. This would be the same for any application that didn’t check that “sharing data with third party” box earlier, then checked it later on.
I don’t get what your comment is getting at. I don’t view this post as saying anything special or unique about the notification. I see it as a warning that Firefox is now doing this.
The legal definition of “sell” has changed in several major markets, and that’s (supposedly) why Firefox has recently changed their terms. The word “sell” is now ostensibly broad enough to include “give to anybody for any reason”, including if you use Firefox for any reason where you would legitimately want and need Firefox to give (“sell”) your data - for example if you use it for: literally any shopping or even just browsing store pages; any interactive (real world) maps where you may want to use your location; any searches where you want local businesses to be listed; any search engine that may want to use your location to aid in results; etc. etc. etc.
Any legitimate exchange of data can now be construed as “selling” because of the new legal definitions, regardless of if anyone is actually selling anything.
It’s very possible that nothing has changed - that Firefox hasn’t started selling user data, they’re just updating their terms (and this app listing) to reflect the changes in the legal definitions of “sell”.
The whole “legal definitions are why we changed” is definitely what they’re rolling with, but I don’t think a lot of what you said is correct. Websites selling data is not the same as firefox selling data. If a site sells your data while you’re using firefox, that is in no way shape or form involved with firefox. That’s also not what they are claiming. They are strictly talking about the data that firefox directly collects and distributes. It would include search results if you searched via the address bar, I suppose. They have sold data for a while, but it’s anonymized (https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/sponsor-privacy).
Firefox is free to use, but it costs a lot of money to develop. They need money, nobody here is denying that. Many users on this platform have tried to avoid any form of data collection as much as possible (myself included) so they would rather pay to fund it (though many don’t). However, most people would rather pay for the service with ads and data collection. Because to them, it’s basically free. Most users would never even consider moving to Firefox if it was paid. They could offer two options, one paid and one “free”, but they haven’t done that yet and it’s not clear if they plan to.
Most importantly, it’s really about being transparent. If they need money, they shouldn’t try to hide the fact they are selling anonymized data by saying “We never sell you data” or to be like “oh no, we are doing it because of legal definitions” when in reality they are selling data. I get it’s a PR movement, but most of the people intentionally using Firefox are tech savvy people wanting to get away from Google’s big brother approach. I get people defending Firefox, and I also get people hating on Mozilla, but we should also be clear about the reality. Firefox is, and has been selling your data (in some form), but now the laws are changing to make it more clear that what they’re doing is in fact selling data.
Which parts do you disagree with? I’m not talking about websites selling your data after you access them through Firefox, I’m saying that now - with new definitions of “sale”/“sell” - that Firefox giving anybody any data for almost any reason can be legally construed as “selling”. This isn’t just the case for Firefox, it’s the case for literally any web browser, and anything that can access the internet for any reason.
Yes, I thought about including the fact that Firefox does engage in ad-based revenue, and I suppose I should’ve, but Firefox is pretty upfront about this and allows users to opt out of targeted advertising - and this has been the case since long before this past week or two. These ads only appear on the “new tab” page, and only if you consent to seeing them. Anybody who’s dropping Firefox for this recent controversy seens to be missing that. It’s very possible (and personally I think it’s likely) that nothing at all has changed from within Firefox.
This comment reads differently to me than the one of yours I replied to. When you said:
for example if you use it for: literally any shopping or even just browsing store pages That read to me like you were talking about the store itself, and not firefox.
Regardless, I agree with what you’ve just said more. My argument is moreso that Firefox has been selling data (so nothing really has changed with them), but now they’re being required to state that they’re selling data. I get that Mozilla doesn’t want to be lumped in with “selling data” groups, because it can be done in very extremely different manners with varying levels of invasion on privacy. But I also think they should have been more up front about where they get some of their revenue, and not tried to be like “We never sell your data” while literally having sponsored suggestions (both on the new tab page, and website suggestions in the address bar).
As for what the current drama impacts on this? Nothing, really. Other than they are being required to disclose that they sell data, and their getting backlash because they’ve been trying to pretend they don’t. Now that they’re lumped in with the “data selling” corporations in peoples minds (even though they’re very different than google), who knows if that will give them the extra room to be a bit more invasive with their data collection. They’ve already crossed the largest PR hurdle, so the future incremental changes would be much easier. There’s no guarantee, but with traditional enshitification, it wouldn’t surprise me.
Have you read all the other replies? “Google mad”, “Google putting Firefox in the dirt”, “False info”, etc.
I interpret top level comments as responses to OP unless they say something otherwise.
As of the latest Chrome update on PC, they have dropped support for uBlock. You can still technically enable it, but they disabled it by default once you update.
That got me back to Firefox with breakneck speed.
Hopefully soon Librewolf, Fennec F-droid and other forks will become mainstream.
I haven’t switched to Librewolf on pc yet; hoping that turning off the telemetry/etc options in ff is enough, but I’m starting to think it might not be long.
I switched over to LibreWolf recently. I discovered Vivaldi just a few hours before I learned about the Manifest v3 stuff for Chromium (which is a shame because I actually LOVED Vivaldi). I really want to try Zen Browser, but I’m using old, 2011-era Macs (running Ubuntu 24.04 on one) and it won’t install. LibreWolf is great because of its clean, minimal design and absolute privacy-forward thinking. I’ve enjoyed it so far (and I’m only running it on the Ubuntu machine).
I was that same way with Firefox for a while, but after I gave Librewolf a long-term test drive I stuck with it.
If you’re used to Firefox with the privacy stuff cranked up, from a user perspective Librewolf is basically just that. But I like knowing that some of the Mozilla stuff is actually removed.
They also roll out updates quickly. I’m pretty sure I updated Firefox and Librewolf to 136.0.1 today just hours apart.
I want to switch over further but so far I’ve had so much else going on that data privacy hasn’t taken a priority. Things are getting weird now so it is time for a priority change.
Frankly speaking, calling out Google and Chrome, then moving to Firefox while Mozilla have been doing it’s best Google impression for years now is not that great of a plan.
I wonder how long Firefox will be ok with all that, since Mozilla bought that advertisement business a while ago.
The main problem is that building a web browser is extremely difficult and everyone else uses Google’s version of WebKit. So there’s no alternatives: it’s either Google or Mozilla. Forks don’t count because if some functionality that end users need is deprecated, nobody will maintain it and it will just disappear once it’s removed from the main codebase
Yes, I agree. That’s why I’m weirded out by people saying “Firefox bad, use Librewolf” and the like.
I still think a solution that relies on donation (maybe with some corporate support) would be very good for everyone involved. Unfortunately, Mozilla is not a player in this, so we’re stuck with basically three engines, one that can’t be used, one that’s openly hostile, and one that’s becoming hostile.
Not great.
You just described Servo. It will happen. The Linux Foundation is backing it up now… after Mozilla dropped it.
Servo
Hm. Did not know about that. Interesting, thanks.
Hopefully Servo will change that
building a web browser is extremely difficult and everyone else uses Google’s version of WebKit
To be fair it is based on KHTML. One of projects KDE can spend that extra money on and resurrect.
Bring back Konqueror too while at it!
Edit: Apparently it still exists, it just isn’t the default on any mainstream distros anymore
Saying KHTML = WebKit is like saying a sponge is a killer whale.
“based on”
FWIW I’m not seeing this on the Play Store for Firefox 136.0.1 on my Pixel 8a, and I’m not seeing any warnings on Beta or Nightly either:
I don’t see it from installs direct via Obtainium, either.
Pot Calling Kettle… etc… 🤣
I know, right, the fucking balls of Google to fucking say this
Because they are legally obligated to mention it?
Are they? What law?
Probably GDPR if I had to guess. Seems like anything decent these companies do can be directly traced back to GDPR.
Edit: guys, “probably” means that I’m unsure.
No GDPR does not require google to display app permissions like that…
Your just making things up.
Do you want the short or the long version?
A link to it will do
Show me where I made something up, boss. Or do you not know what “probably” means?
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Do you? Because made up satistics are still made up.
This is how misinformation starts.
If your not sure, google it before commenting. For the sanity of the internet.
…except they don’t for their own browser.
It’s literally there.
This is not at all a pot kettle situation, there is no reason to warn about Firefox.
There is: default search results on FF have always legally been sold to Google, the public didn’t know since there were no terms of service or mention by FF whenever they uploaded the android version on the playstore that their users data would be collected and some be sold. Position is one of the data that may be sold as it could be used by Google to dermine which localised version of the search result is the best one to serve
And it’s not going to be Google in the future: it could be Bing, startpage, ecosia, qwant etc… As long as someone pays, then the results are sold and there needs to be a warning to users.
the public didn’t know
That’s not true, for many years Firefox was basically financed by Google for being the default search engine, because Google didn’t want Microsoft to monopolize Internet Browsers. Everybody who had the slightest interest knew that.
But that’s completely irrelevant, it’s a very marginal source of revenue today, and Firefox does not sell user info to Google. So it’s on Google to warn about using Google search.
The only reason for the change in Firefox privacy terms was for clarification. For instance any information given to Firefox, does not grant Firefox ownership of it. (opposite of for instance Facebook)
That’s a guarantee of user protection, not the opposite. Firefox has a very limited scope of “using” user data, like for instance storing links with Firefox, so they work across multiple devices.
There is no “harvesting” of user behavior or information.https://techcrunch.com/2025/03/03/mozilla-rewrites-firefoxs-terms-of-use-after-user-backlash/
Deactivate from settings Have https always on, protection against tracking on strict, data collection and daily ping on off.
And that’s it.
