On 9 June 2015 at 16:13, Dan Stillman <[email protected]> wrote: > On 6/9/15 3:19 PM, Mike Connor wrote: > >> >> On 9 June 2015 at 07:04, Dan Stillman <[email protected] <mailto: >> [email protected]>> wrote: >> >> >> The Pocket integration seems almost purposely designed to blur the >> distinction between Mozilla and Pocket. (As Pocket's CEO put it, >> "With the exception of search, it’s rare for companies to be >> integrated this deeply into the browser." [1]) >> >> >> At least to some extent, that's true of any good integration of a third >> party service. It's certainly true for search as well. Painting something >> as foreign and possibly scary would be directly counter to the goal of >> helping users make use of a valuable feature/service. If we don't think >> it's something we can recommend/promote to our users, we simply shouldn't >> include it. Same goes for if we don't believe our users can or should >> trust a partner. >> > > With search you can switch to DuckDuckGo with a couple clicks. With Share > you choose from many different services. Pocket is integrated as a sole > provider for a core feature. >
For now, yes. I don't believe that to be the long term plan. Until 1.0 Firefox only shipped with Google. The first version of the Social API was Facebook only. Something has to go first, and it's way easier to do that with a single partner for a v1. The issue for me is the combination of the privileged integration with how > different it is from Firefox's own bookmarks architecture a few icons over. > If Mozilla hadn't previously deemed user bookmark data so sensitive that it > merited client-side encryption, this wouldn't strike me as so odd. > Let's get this one out there. The original, strong-crypto-despite-bad-UX Firefox Sync didn't resonate with a lot of users. I know, I led work on it for years. It resonated with some (many of whom didn't even trust Mozilla with the encrypted data!) but the vast majority of users didn't understand or care about the added security. It was more of a liability than an asset. Firefox Accounts make a different tradeoff as a result, and it's unsurprisingly more popular (and _useful_) as a result. We still encrypt data, however it's derived from a username and password, not a fully random key. > And it's not a matter of trust. Again, Pocket seems like a great company. > But sensitive user data is being sent, and Mozilla and users have no > control over what's done with it, now or in the future. I don't believe it's viable to try to build everything ourselves, or limit the usefulness of our products out of concern for what _might_ happen. That's missing out on the best the Web has to offer, and the best product experience for our users. I think the significant majority of users don't think about where their > data is going, which is why it's up to privacy-focused organizations like > Mozilla to do it for them. We should at at least acknowledge that Mozilla's > position on what is acceptable with regard to users' data has changed > dramatically from when Firefox Sync was designed. I imagine there were > third-party, unencrypted bookmark sync providers that Mozilla could have > partnered with to speed development of Firefox Sync, offer more features, > and avoid having to maintain a sync architecture. For that matter, I > imagine an unencrypted version of Firefox Sync that was still run by > Mozilla would have been significantly easier to develop, but that's not > what Mozilla chose to do. We made a very different decision in 2008 than we'd make today. That said, I don't believe the use case of a reading list is the same as a bookmark provider. Bookmarks are a browser feature, while reading lists/apps are a very specialized case that isn't constrained to browsers. There are apps, e-reader integrations, web sites, and more capable of consuming articles saved to these services. Pocket in particular has a much bigger reach than Firefox in terms of mobile devices (e.g. platforms we don't support), and that's one of the major advantages of working with an established partner. > The question to ask is not whether we can build it, but whether we can >> build it as well and as quickly, and what we would be giving up if we >> committed to competing with the existing services. Pocket's a market >> leader in this space, and focused entirely on this space. Playing >> catch-up, and investing enough in development to match their user value >> proposition (especially their mobile coverage) would be prohibitively >> expensive. >> > > I think this is a false dichotomy. A version of this that piggybacked on > Firefox Sync, with its inherent data protections, wouldn't need to — and > couldn't, by definition — offer all of the features of Pocket. But it would > maintain Mozilla's position of protecting bookmark data by default instead > of shrugging and shipping that data off to a third-party company without > public discussion. I don't think "build a less useful product" is in line with what is good for Firefox or our users. We actually did build this, and chose to go with Pocket integration instead as it was considered a much more usable product for our users. There are tradeoffs both ways, we chose to ship the better product. -- Mike _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
