Even though I myself use and recommend Firefox to people, I agree that it’s far from perfect, so I’ll just give my thoughts.
- They have tons of telemetry which is on by default and that telemetry literally collects everything. Just have a look at their privacy policy for firefox .
I’m not a fan of telemetry, and I wish it wasn’t included in Firefox at all, but an important distinction needs to be made here. Telemetry is not always evil. The telemetry in Firefox is:
- Easy to disable
- Very transparent (Through about:telemetry, you can see everything being sent)
- Properly anonymized
- Not sold or shared to 3rd parties or used for advertising/tracking (i.e. Google and Microsoft)
With that being said, I don’t think Firefox’s telemetry is a “nightmare” or as bad as some people act like it is. I still wish Mozilla didn’t include it (or at least not enable it by default), but personally I can live with it existing due to these factors.
- Mozilla Products (like pockets) implemented in the browser itself have one of the worst privacy policy ever written check it out here Even though many claim that it subjects only to pockets itself the integration of the product in browser itself and an accident click can make you a subject to this tracking .
Pocket should not be included, I agree. The good news is that like others have said here, Pocket doesn’t really become active unless you actively interact with it, and it’s easy to fully disable through about:config with extensions.pocket.enabled. I do wish though that this pref would at least be exposed through the UI, so that it’s easier for users to disable it completely.
- They keep Google Search Engine as default thanks to the massive amount of paycheck they get from google. Of course, this can be changed but out of box, this is a privacy nightmare.
It’s kind of a necessary evil right now unfortunately until Mozilla can better diversify revenue, but again, I agree, Google should not be the default search engine.
- They implement default shortcuts from mostly privacy invasive companies and the sponsored shortcuts are also similar. On first start, the firefox will send a request to these sites to fetch favicon and there goes some information from your browser.
There’s really not any sensitive info I’m aware of being leaked with favicon requests besides IP address. But again, I agree that these should probably not be present on Firefox.
- They use google safe browsing for protecting users, again a product offered by google.
Safe Browsing is legitimately useful and helpful at preventing malware and other garbage. But Firefox’s implementation imo isn’t ideal, so I will partially agree with you there. I wish that Mozilla would proxy the requests to Google like Brave and Safari do (if you agree, please vote on the idea here!), and I also wish that Firefox wouldn’t send metadata of your downloads to Google by default as well. (This can be toggled with browser.safebrowsing.downloads.remote.enabled, which forces downloads to be checked locally, but I wish this was at least exposed in the UI so its easier to disable). So yeah, I think Safe Browsing is important and should be kept in the browser, but Firefox’s implementation should be improved.
- Many people doesn’t use chromium engine and use firefox solely to fight google monopoly, not knowing that most of development is coming from google’s money and it’s just protecting google from legal actions from courts over monopoly. So In any case even if you don’t use chromium and choose mozilla, you are still helping Google INDIRECTLY.
This is where I really disagree. I see the argument a lot that Google has leverage over Mozilla or some kind of control over them due to the search engine deal, but I really disagree. Firefox has had different default search engines in the past, and they likely will again in the future. Last year, there were even talks from Microsoft to get Bing as Firefox’s default engine. So my point is that Google doesn’t really have the leverage or control people act like here. If Google stops paying, someone else will. By default, Firefox even blocks Google Analytics tracking. That sure doesn’t sound like that’s helping Google to me. 
- Most people in privacy community are also against censorship and mozilla have been rooting for more censorship on the internet This blogpost .
Irrelevant to the browser itself, and like others have pointed out, was blown out of proportion anyways.
- It is less secure than other browsers on platform like android, making it a less of a recommendation for security minded folks.
100%, Mozilla needs to prioritize improving security.
At this point, I’m convinced that for newcomers to privacy browsers like Brave are much better. Forks like librewolf, mullvad browser and Tor Browser are just way better than firefox.
Recommending Brave is pretty odd, especially when it has nearly all of the same problems you have with Firefox. Brave has telemetry on by default, includes far worse bloat than Pocket like all their crypto nonsense, Google is still set to the default search engine on some platforms (Though this is moving to Brave Search which is good), it includes “top sites” and “sponsored images” on the start page as well, etc.
Librewolf has much better defaults than Firefox, but it has other issues like delayed updates and trusting another party. Really no point to it over just using Firefox with a user.js like Arkenfox.
Tor Browser and Mullvad Browser are both browsers that have very specific use cases and I don’t think they’re going to be a good replacement for most people who use and rely on Firefox anyways.
What are your thoughts on this situation?
Overall, I hope I’ve made it clear that I do have criticisms for Mozilla and Firefox, and I do hope they can work on some of these things. But the truth is, Mozilla has done a significant amount of work for privacy and the open web as a whole since their inception, and have gone well above and beyond others in most cases. Engine diversity is also important as well, and Firefox’s customization is just unparalleled to any browser out there. For those reasons, in spite of its issues, I personally use Firefox with Arkenfox and some other tweaks.
