On February 26th, Mozilla, the partially non-profit corporation responsible for the Firefox web browser, introduced a Terms of Use for the browser. Firefox is an open source web browser that was famed for its speed and ease of use in the early 2000s, but started to lose popularity after Google Chrome was launched. In the modern day, it is mostly used by Linux users and other privacy and technology enthusiasts. Its market share sits around 6%, making it the 4th most used PC browser. There already was an open source license for the browser, but, according to the blog post that announced this addition, Mozilla wanted to make their public privacy commitments “abundantly clear and accessible.” However, users of the browser were specifically concerned with one paragraph in the new Terms of Use:
When you upload or input information through Firefox, you hereby grant us a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license to use that information to help you navigate, experience, and interact with online content as you indicate with your use of Firefox.
Many interpreted this as the new Terms of Use permitting the Mozilla corporation to use the data of Firefox users to train AI models. This was an understandable concern, because Mozilla had invested heavily into AI and related technologies. In version 133 of the Firefox browser, Mozilla introduced an experimental “AI sidebar,” enabling users of the browser to keep an AI model of their choice visible and usable while browsing. And Mozilla had previously added built-in local AI translation capabilities to the browser. In any case, the outrage over the change was enormous. “This sounds like boilerplate AI harvesting language,” one user of Firefox responded to the Mozilla forum post which announced the change. (This same user also noticed that Mozilla mysteriously removed language on their FAQ promising not to sell user data, adding to the flames.) “I think this is the final nail in the coffin for me,” another user responded.
“What basic functionality requires you (Mozilla) to collect our data and thus need a license for it? You only need a licence if you take our data…” The backlash was so much that Mozilla was forced to address the concerns and update the language used in the Terms of Use. In a blog post two days after the original announcement of the change, Mozilla tried to control the reputational damage and explained that, without the Terms of Use, later changed the controversial paragraph to:
You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.
The company later explained that the change in the FAQ was to avoid ambiguity over the legal definition of words like “sell.” They also explained that whenever Mozilla shares user data with some of their “partners”, the company always makes sure that the data is stripped of potentially identifying information. However, for some users, this was the last straw. The Mozilla Corporation is no stranger to controversy. For one, 81% of the company’s income does not come from the users of its products. Instead, it comes from payments made by Google to the company in exchange for keeping Google as Firefox’s default search engine. These payments are believed to be one of Google’s methods to keep the Mozilla Corporation nominally operational and stop the Firefox browser from disappearing.
If the Firefox browser disappeared, it would make it easier for the government to argue antitrust cases against Google and potentially force the company to sell or spin off Google Chrome. A few months ago, the Austrian-based digital rights group None of Your Business filed a complaint against Mozilla for a feature they added to the browser called Privacy-Preserving Attribution, which was automatically enabled in the Firefox 128 update.
The goal of Privacy-Preserving Attribution was to allow advertisers to track the performance of their advertisements without violating user privacy. However, NOYB had concerns about the tracking being built into the browser, which potentially violated EU privacy laws. In 2018, Firefox added sponsored links to the New Tab page. And well before this, in 2014, the CEO of Firefox resigned after controversy that they donated 1000 dollars to California’s Proposition 8 campaign, a ballot proposition that sought to make same-sex marriage illegal in the state, that was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
With all of these controversies, many users have been looking for alternatives, but few good ones exist. Google Chrome recently changed their browser extension rules to make it more difficult for ad-blockers to operate in the browser. Safari isn’t available on Windows and Linux. Most of the other browsers use the same engine that Google Chrome uses, Chromium. That mainly leaves a few Firefox “forks.” Firefox forks are browsers that use a modified version of the Firefox source code, but change the user interface and/or bundle certain browser extensions. Librewolf is one popular fork of Firefox that bundles the ad blocker Ublock Origin with the browser, changes the default search engine to DuckDuckGo, and gets rid of controversial “telemetry” that allows Mozilla to collect technical data on how Firefox functions while it is being used. Zen Browser is a newer Firefox fork that primarily changes the user interface to add features like vertical tabs and a Compact Mode that hides the tab bar. GNU IceCat is another Firefox fork that makes the browser entirely “free software” by getting rid of trademarked artwork. In any case, if Mozilla continues to be constantly bathed in controversy, many Firefox users are likely to switch to these forks.
