Hi Benjamin, I'm going to assume the issue of Mozilla "doing it for the money" is now settled, based on your change of subject. That's a subject worth addressing on governance, and the reason I chimed in on the thread. Product feature discussions are another story, so I'm going to suggest you take those concerns to firefox-dev, where the discussion really belongs (and the right folks are following along).
-- Mike On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 6:37 PM, Benjamin Kerensa <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 3:24 PM, Mike Connor <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Hi all, >> >> Let's be perfectly clear here: the decision to integrate (and continue >> shipping) Pocket in Firefox did not, and does not, have anything to do with >> money. I can understand how people can fear the worst, so I'd like to set >> the record straight as much as I can. >> >> On Thu, Dec 17, 2015 at 4:08 PM, Benjamin Kerensa <[email protected]> >> wrote: >> >>> Would you agree though that while you were not paid to integrate >>> that it was probably known that there was a revenue sharing deal >>> going into this and that roughly translates to incentivizing >>> the integration? >>> >> >> Frankly, I don't know if revenue sharing was widely discussed, but I >> would be somewhat surprised. I know that the focus of the Firefox team was >> entirely on getting a great feature into the product, and the idea to >> bundle Pocket instead of Reading List came from that product team. That we >> negotiated a revenue sharing arrangement was more about getting to share in >> what a for-profit entity would potentially gain from inclusion. (Much like >> our various search deals!) It wasn't a priority or driving factor at all. >> >> I'm sure someone on the Firefox Team didn't wake up one morning >>> and say "Great Scotts we are missing Pocket in Firefox!" and AFAIK >>> this was not on any long term roadmap. >>> >> >> If you look at the history (as Adam just linked), we'd been working on >> Reading List as a Firefox feature/service for months, with various pieces >> landed across products and deployed on our infrastructure, even shipped in >> a beta. There was considerable research that suggested that this was a >> core use-case for browser users that we were not meeting ourselves, which >> is why we were making significant investments into the feature. The >> decision to partner with Pocket instead of building our own service was a >> shift in strategy, based on the belief that they offered a significantly >> better feature and service than we were going to be able to deliver in a >> timely fashion, and (as a bonus) at significantly less cost to Mozilla. >> >> So I can only assume that this was a money versus something that >>> Mozilla that users wanted. >> >> >> Even if your other assumptions were correct, revenue sharing requires >> generating revenue, which really requires a lot of usage (especially in a >> freemium business model like Pocket's). If users didn't want the feature, >> it'd be silly to ship it, let alone try to profit from it after the cost of >> making the deal, building, shipping and promoting the product, and >> maintaining the code long term. The _only_ way for us to even >> theoretically profit from an integration like this is for it to be >> successful with users, which means we have to give users something they >> want and need. >> >> Happily, we're actually doing all of this for the right reasons, and with >> no revenue pressure. >> > > Have you even looked at Input? Because the feedback about Pocket continues > to be overwhelmingly > negative. > > > https://input.mozilla.org/en-US/?q=pocket&date_start=2015-09-18&selected=90d > > Let me share some feedback from users: > > "unable to remove Pocket from menu. it does not show up in bookmarks or > bookmark toolbar. and generally such 3rd party items are unwanted." > > "I really don't like you force things upon users. You remove innovative > unique features like tab grouping that I use and you add vendor specific > addons like pocket which I don't use. Why there's no feature voting system > already? You asks for donation while forcing ideas upon users. I regret my > donation." > > "How do i remove pocket from the browser? WIll be using chrome until this > is fixed." > > "Fuck DRM, Pocket, Hello and all of that bullshit. Fuck Yahoo too." > > "Because you integrate Pocket. It hurts the web!!! And Mozilla Foundation > is against this!! WE ARE AGAINST THIS. That's the reason i choose Firefox." > > "Please remove pocket and hello from Firefox and make a separate plugin > instead" > > " > 现在简体中文版的火狐42.0不能用pocket！既没有集成在火狐软件中，又在添加附加组件中被删掉了（无法搜索到），浏览器重装后就没法用pocket了！！！！希望能解决！！！" > > > There are hundreds of other pieces of feedback about Pocket including new > comments left daily and I would encourage Mozilla to really look at whether > this feature serves users and is what they want. > > We cannot keep taking risks and making mistakes if we want Firefox to be > around in the future and I am of the opinion this was a mistake and to be > utterly honest I think this feature will be gone in a year or two when > Mozilla realizes it. > _______________________________________________ governance mailing list [email protected] https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
