As Windows 10 becomes more prevalent, the browser companies are competing for usage. That is the case with Mozilla’s Firefox as well. In an effort to genuinely protect their users’ privacy, Mozilla has stated they are working on an update to their popular browser, Firefox. It states it wants to do this because of the ever growing security concerns with Google Chrome and Microsoft’s Edge.
Google’s Chrome has been on the the top of the heap, making it the browser of choice by almost half of internet users and Google knows it too. Their all inclusive browser makes it possible to have convenience and ease because everything you may wish to do is in one place. All of the convenience has a cost though.
Google is notorious for “monetizing” their browser results, especially through their browser. Information that is supposed to be anonymous like shopping data, is clearly being retained by them. Not only that, but they have a new patent most users may find interesting. If you grant Google permission, they can look at any files you have on your computer, whether you are doing a websearch or not. Of course, that does not mean that Google will utilize this technology, but it is not hard to see the way they think in this case.
Mozilla CEO Chris Beard plans to give users back some of their privacy with the new version of Firefox. He has stated more testing was needed, but the new version controls privacy to the point where websites may look broken. He recently started a war of words by openly blasting Microsoft about the way they handled their upgrade. It seems the upgrade automatically changes the default web browser to Microsoft’s new browser, Edge. In an open letter to Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella, he stated “The update experience appears to have been designed to throw away the choice your customers have made about the Internet experience they want, and replace it with the Internet experience Microsoft wants them to have.” Beard hopes that more will come back, once they realize how much information Microsoft gets sent from windows 10, no matter what security settings are being used.
Mozilla’s goal in bringing some of these things to light is to recapture users. Some may say what they are doing is just fear mongering, while others of us disagree. Beard makes some very good points and perhaps a bit of fear is a good thing. Will it get people to pay more attention? Possibly. Will it bring users back to Firefox? That remains to be seen.