(( previously sent last Friday to fx-data-dev@ and data-announcements@,
echoing by request to dev-platform@ ))

Starting with Firefox Desktop Nightly 124 build 20240202094312, Telemetry
no longer reports Use Counter probes[1]. You will find equivalent data in
the Glean "use-counters" ping[2].

Background:
Use Counters[3] are counts of the use of various features of the web
platform. Mozilla needs to know how often, for example, CSS properties are
used across the web in order to prioritize work and understand when
deprecated features can be removed. To report these use counters to
Mozilla, we employ a data collection system.

Previously, this data collection system was Telemetry. In Firefox 121 we
added use counter reporting via Glean. And now, after validation[4], we've
removed the Telemetry parts.

Why:
We have a lot of use counters (2309 as of time of writing[5]). Telemetry
was sending them as Histograms which are a very inefficient way to report
counts. By switching to Glean we have decreased the size of sending each
use counter by 75%.

(Due to compression, ping structure and scheduling, and that switching to
Glean finally enabled worker-type use counters to be reported, this results
in average data storage savings of 60%.)

Also, by using Glean, use counters can be (and, as of Firefox 121, are)
reported in all Mozilla projects that use Gecko and Glean, notably Firefox
for Android[6] and Firefox Focus[7] and Klar[8] for Android. If we are able
to pursue Gecko on iOS, they'll be reported from there as well.

Anything else:
We have released a public use counters dataset for both Firefox Desktop and
Firefox for Android[9]. Please use it and tell us what you think.

The venerable Use Counter Dashboard[10] remains frozen with information
only up to December 19 (part of the Measurements Dashboard
deprecation[11]). We intend to furnish it with Glean-reported data in
DENG-2547[12].

Questions:
  If you have any questions, please do ask them of us on Matrix in #glean:
mozilla.org or on Slack in #data-help.

Thank you for your attention,

:chutten and Emilio

[1]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1877273
[2]:
https://dictionary.telemetry.mozilla.org/apps/firefox_desktop/pings/use-counters
[3]: https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/dom/use-counters.html
[4]: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1874439
[5]:
https://searchfox.org/mozilla-central/rev/34ba7989ae53b9112d543ce39d350b79dc2a16b4/dom/base/use_counter_metrics.yaml#134
[6]: https://dictionary.telemetry.mozilla.org/apps/fenix/pings/use-counters
[7]:
https://dictionary.telemetry.mozilla.org/apps/focus_android/pings/use-counters
[8]:
https://dictionary.telemetry.mozilla.org/apps/klar_android/pings/use-counters
[9]: https://public-data.telemetry.mozilla.org/all-datasets.json
[10]: https://mozilla.github.io/usecounters/
[11]:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1kqoiKTPzqE6Veqrjg77nsYRZChoR4OzKCJHDEppyDps/edit
[12]: https://mozilla-hub.atlassian.net/browse/DENG-2547

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