So... what does this partnership actually mean? Will Ecosia be the default search engine once the deal with Google ends?
this post was submitted on 17 Dec 2024
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Whether you prioritize privacy*, climate protection, or simply want a search experience tailored to your preferences, we’ve got you covered.
Ecosia goes beyond data protection by addressing environmental concerns...
Together, Mozilla, Firefox and Ecosia are contributing to a web that is more open and inclusive, but above all — one where you can make an informed choice about what tech you use and why. Your tech choices make a difference.
Someone should tell Mozilla about the AI-sized environmental concern in their browser?
* ETA: Ecosia doesn't mention privacy as a feature anywhere on its homepage. (I'm not counting the link to its unimpressive privacy policy.) They call themselves "Google, but greener", and I believe them.
In that sentence, they're not referring to Ecosia specifically. Rather, they're implying that you can choose a search engine which aligns to that value. A little weird to include it with no examples, in a post specifically about Ecosia, but I believe that's the intent.
To wit, the very next sentence sure does seem to say that Ecosia is private.
Ecosia goes beyond data protection by addressing environmental concerns.
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Mozilla is on a great tear. Layoffs, pointless rebrand, and now a shit privacy greenwashing search engine partnership. I'm so excited for the future of Firefox.
Which pointless rebrand? I actually like "moz://a".
Yea, but they changed to a weird flag thing (?) and a boring font logo:
At least they got this guy:
Oh well, at least the error animals are foxes and not a really weirdly drawn dinosaur
I'm waiting for Ladybug
I'm waiting for Netscape
Firefox WAS Netscape. Netscape was open sourced, rewritten, and released as Firebird (in reference to a phoenix’s rise from Netscape’s ashes). https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Mozilla_Application_Suite
I've been following Ladybird as well, and hope it comes to fruition. Without it we're kinda fucked.
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Oh great, shitty bing search results with tree NFTs.
oh no, don't take away Google results that fill the entire screen with ads and irrelevant bullshit that relies my stolen data before my actual search terms!
Ecosia being any better in this regard would be news to me. They also rely on ads for funding.
As if Google's results haven't been getting worse
Oh they've been getting worse for sure but Bing is still worse. I've used the Bing index via DuckDuckGo for years and it's quite bad.
I now use Kagi which uses both Google and Bing indices (among others) and it's much better and I think most of that is because the Google index is used.
I keep hearing about Kagi, maybe I should try it sometime.
DDG has been quite serviceable to me, however. If I can't find something I can just add a quick !g to my already existing query and look it up on Google instead, which I've found rather convenient.
If I can't find something I can just add a quick
!gto my already existing query and look it up on Google instead, which I've found rather convenient.
Yeah I used to do the same (but with !s).
It's much more convenient to just have good search results to begin with though. Kagi uses the Google index and a few others and you have your own filtering and ranking on top.
In the beginning I felt tempted to do !s a few times too but the results were always worse, so I quickly unlearned doing that.
Executing bangs is also a lot quicker with Kagi; DDG is kind of a slog.
but with
!s
Is that built-in, or do you have to configure it yourself? Configuring one is fine, but DDG has quite a few I semi-frequently use (!i, !g, !gi, !yt, !w, !gt), even Google itself feels like a downgrade when I want to search an image and I manually have to click the 'images' tab after performing my query.
It's much more convenient to just have good search results to begin with though
I agree, which is why I've been happy to continue using DDG.
Is that built-in, or do you have to configure it yourself
It's the official bang for Startpage. You can't configure custom bangs in DDG; Kagi can do that.
I agree, which is why I’ve been happy to continue using DDG.
I've found DDG/bing's results to be quite lacking.
It's the official bang for Startpage. You can't configure custom bangs in DDG; Kagi can do that.
Oh, like so. When you said "same" I assumed you meant Google as well, and I found !s to be an intuitive bang for that. Startpage makes more sense, I know they get their results through Google.
I've found DDG/bing's results to be quite lacking.
It seems our experiences have been different, then.
Ecosia, the "green" search engine with AI chat. Perfect match for Firefox, the browser ever more integrated with AI technology.
I've just given up on Mozilla, using Cromite after a decade of Firefox/Fennec on desktop and mobile had been such an upgrade.
Id still trust/prefer a firefox based browser than something chromium based. Their are a lot of good firefox forks out their and it helps make googles stranglehold of web standards slower. I wish u luck one manifest v2 gets killed (ik its still supported for some forks of chromium but how long is that gonna last?)
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"Ecosia Chat is powered by OpenAI"
ffs
What exactly is the issue you have with Mozillas AI efforts? They use the technology in a private and sensible way as far as I can tell. Maybe I missed something they did.
You missed their AI sidebar feature, which only feeds your data to corporations by default. Or their Orbit extension, which ditto. (The latter also points to the Mozilla FakeSpot privacy policy, which is clear about selling your browsing and location data to advertisers. No, I'm not joking. It's not clear whether Orbit is FakeSpot adjacent...)
Fakespot itself is an AI powered Mozilla subsidiary that has a history dabbling with NFTs.
Mozilla has even dumped money into Hugging Face (a company that's been given hundreds of millions from other corpos like Salesforce and Nvidia).
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Wouldn't this upset Google? (who is the biggest revenue source for Mozilla)
Mozilla will probably lose (part of or all of, it's not clear yet) Google's funding following their monopoly case, so it's probably best for them to look for other revenue sources.
They could also stop all this nonsense crap projects they sink money in without any real benefit, and focus mainly on the browser. This would give the browser likely 500% more funding than it has right now.
Have one product, but make it a perfect product.
So after constantly yelling at Mozilla for 10+ years they should do all kinds of things like a VPN, now we no longer find them to experiment to find alternative money sources?
The money sources are not the issue. The money sinks are. An no-one ever yelled at Mozilla to offer a VPN.
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500% more funding than it has right now.
From whom?
Their financial reports are public.
I was waiting for the 2023 forms to drop.
I'm shocked to find out Mitchell Baker has taken a pay cut of ~$600,000, now struggling at a much more relatable $6.2 million instead of $6.9 million
(ETA $600,000 is also her "base" salary, the rest of the $6.2m is her "bonus." She lost one base salary worth of bonuses last year.)
still, 6 mil is ~10% of their revenue. it's egregious, but cutting the ceo's sallary to zero dollars even would solve nothing
That salary could have been redistributed among the employees Mozilla laid off in the Advocacy division, especially right before they published a report claiming Mozilla needed to be known for advocacy and not Firefox. Or put towards Firefox. Or any combination.
Just removing Mitchell Baker's bonus would already be the majority of that.
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