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Benjamin Kerensa

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Unnecessary Finger Pointing

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I just wanted to pen quickly that I found Chris Beard’s open letter to Satya Nadella (CEO of Microsoft) to be a bit hypocritical. In the letter he said:

“I am writing to you about a very disturbing aspect of Windows 10. Specifically, that 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.”

Right, but what about the experiences that Mozilla chooses to default for users like switching to Yahoo and making that the default upon upgrade and not respecting their previous settings ?What about baking Pocket and Tiles into the experience? Did users want these features? All I have seen is opposition to them.

“When we first saw the Windows 10 upgrade experience that strips users of their choice by effectively overriding existing user preferences for the Web browser and other apps, we reached out to your team to discuss this issue. Unfortunately, it didn’t result in any meaningful progress, hence this letter.”

Again see above and think about the past year or two where Mozilla has overridden existing user preferences in Firefox. The big difference here is Mozilla calls it acting on behalf of the user as its agent, but when Microsoft does the same it is taking away choice?

Set Firefox as Windows 10 Default
Clearly not that difficult

Anyways, I can go on but the gist is the letter is hypocritical and really unnecessarily finger pointing. Let’s focus on making great products for our users and technical changes like this to Windows won’t be a barrier to users picking Firefox. Sorry, that I cannot be a Mozillian that will blindly retweet you and support a misguided social media campaign to point fingers at Microsoft.

Read the entire letter here:

https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2015/07/30/an-open-letter-to-microsofts-ceo-dont-roll-back-the-clock-on-choice-and-control/

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Comments

  1. Your comparison is not very sound:
    1. the switch to Yahoo! respected users choice, indeed users who changed the default engine were not touched. The others didn’t express a choice, maybe they were happy with the status quo and they had to express a choice later. But the point is that no explicit user choice has been overridden.
    2. Pocket is actually an addition, the user can choose to use it or not, but It’s not limiting existing user choices. At a maximum it’s adding one more choice: use it or not? Should Firefox stop having new features so users don’t have to make new choices?
    3. Tiles is a very complicate matter, did users want this feature? likely not. But do they want a very competitive, independent and free browser that can fight for the Web? Likely yes, but that means that browser must be able to survive in today’s market, otherwise we all lose. Btw, which choice has been overridden here?

    When Microsoft overrides the default browser, it overrides an explicit user choice, not an implicit one, not a de-facto status. The user took care of reading a dialog and clicking a confirm button (at a minimum) to make that choice. I don’t see how this can relate with the examples you pointed at.

    Last, but not least, the discussion should not forget we are living in a monopolistic competition, and the monopolist company is forcing a user choice. The EU already expressed his opinion in the past about this. This matters when you evaluate a company action, it makes a big difference even when comparing similar (not this case) actions from different companies.

    • “1. the switch to Yahoo! respected users choice, indeed users who changed the default engine were not touched. The others didn’t express a choice, maybe they were happy with the status quo and they had to express a choice later. But the point is that no explicit user choice has been overridden.”

      That is incorrect see here and note that in regions other than the U.S. users were switched to other defaults Mozilla picked: http://www.computerworld.com/article/2853435/mozilla-will-automatically-switch-firefox-search-to-yahoo-for-most-us-users.html

      “2. Pocket is actually an addition, the user can choose to use it or not, but It’s not limiting existing user choices. At a maximum it’s adding one more choice: use it or not? Should Firefox stop having new features so users don’t have to make new choices?”

      Yes but a default none the less and existing users browsers upon upgrade got it automatically see: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/disable-pocket-firefox

      “3. Tiles is a very complicate matter, did users want this feature? likely not. But do they want a very competitive, independent and free browser that can fight for the Web? Likely yes, but that means that browser must be able to survive in today’s market, otherwise we all lose. Btw, which choice has been overridden here?”

      And again a default picked for users as you point out it is likely a feature users did not want and a default they did not want.

      “When Microsoft overrides the default browser, it overrides an explicit user choice, not an implicit one, not a de-facto status. The user took care of reading a dialog and clicking a confirm button (at a minimum) to make that choice. I don’t see how this can relate with the examples you pointed at.”

      In all the examples I have users did not make an implicit choice to A) have their search engine preference changed B) have a proprietary service baked into their toolbar C) have monetization backed into their new tab

      What the EU decides on monopolies is not an argument I am making what I am pointing out is that Mozilla has made decisions for users that users did not implicitly choose and this is very similar to the situation we have here with Windows 10 which has picked a default for Windows users.

      We can spend all day debating this but clearly we disagree and this is clearly a marketing stunt because if you read the open letter it says Mozilla reached out to Microsoft and yet only gave
      it a few days before it launched a campaign to point fingers.

      • That is incorrect see here and note that in regions other than the U.S. users were switched to other defaults Mozilla picked

        The article says exactly what Marco said, how is that incorrect?

        If someone changed the default search engine, nothing changed with Firefox 34, and as far as I know the same is true for non en-US builds.

        Do you have any evidence that this doesn’t correspond to reality?

      • “That is incorrect see here and note that in regions other than the U.S. users were switched to other defaults Mozilla picked”

        If any user who changed the default engine has been switched, that was a bug (software is hard to get 100% right). If the user didn’t express a choice, it’s honest to say no choice has been overridden.

        “Yes but a default none the less and existing users browsers upon upgrade got it automatically”

        Also the awesomebar was a default and users upgrading to Firefox 3 got it automatically. It was even worse cause you couldn’t disable it. Nobody is complaining today though.

        “And again a default picked for users as you point out it is likely a feature users did not want and a default they did not want”

        I agree, nobody wants advertisement (even if it’s done right), but we live in the real world, where development DOES have a cost. What’s the proposed solution to this problem that has the same benefit?

        “What the EU decides on monopolies is not an argument I am making”

        Indeed, imo it’s a huge miss in your argument. If you should decide whether to adopt a guinea pig or an elephant at home, you’d probably not compare their “playing” just because they are both animals; one is likely to break your house (yes, monopoly is likely to break users).

        I’m sure we’ll keep our positions and I have no plan to spend all the day replying, I just wanted to clarify.

        Have a good day!

        • “If any user who changed the default engine has been switched, that was a bug (software is hard to get 100% right). If the user didn’t express a choice, it’s honest to say no choice has been overridden.”

          So users who used and kept the default (Google) have no expectation of that being their choice for the long term?

          “Also the awesomebar was a default and users upgrading to Firefox 3 got it automatically. It was even worse cause you couldn’t disable it. Nobody is complaining today though.”

          Yes and that is an example of where users did not have a choice so again it is pointless to point fingers on user choice unless you are the golden example of user choice
          and to be honest I don’t believe in unicorns when it comes to making software all projects have flaws and get user choice wrong sometimes and Mozilla is no exception.

          “I agree, nobody wants advertisement (even if it’s done right), but we live in the real world, where development DOES have a cost. What’s the proposed solution to this problem that has the same benefit?”

          Mozilla has been paying the bills for Firefox fine with search revenue for years the problem is Mozilla has grown and nearly double its staff and office presence and spent pretty loosely
          and needs to make more than enough money to cover development but also money for things like Firefox OS and other projects that are very risky and have very small likelihood at success.

          If we had spent the same amount of energy and money just on Firefox Desktop and Android and iOS there is no doubt we would not be shedding users. This is why I am glad there is a proposal to focus
          on the pillars of Firefox so to speak.

          “Indeed, imo it’s a huge miss in your argument. If you should decide whether to adopt a guinea pig or an elephant at home, you’d probably not compare their “playing” just because they are both animals; one is likely to break your house (yes, monopoly is likely to break users).”

          I think discussion monopolies requires a much longer blog post but for what it is worth I am not convinced that Microsoft has a monopoly
          anymore in fact Bug #1 has been closed. https://gigaom.com/2013/05/30/ubuntus-number-1-bug-is-fixed-microsoft-is-no-longer-the-enemy/

          Microsoft is frantically trying to stay relevant not even be a monopoly in a world that is mostly going mobile a game which it has
          already lost at.

          The EU says lots of things are monopolies and I think there is a lot of hand waving over there.

          “I’m sure we’ll keep our positions and I have no plan to spend all the day replying, I just wanted to clarify.

          Have a good day!”

          You too!

          • “Mozilla has been paying the bills for Firefox fine with search revenue for years the problem is Mozilla has grown and nearly double its staff and office presence and spent pretty loosely and needs to make more than enough money to cover development but also money for things like Firefox OS and other projects that are very risky and have very small likelihood at success.”

            Can you back this up? This does not match my sense of things, so it sounds to me like it’s more your personal assumptions/impressions, but I could be wrong. I have the impression that Mozilla has been pretty conservative with its spending (not that I have any particular ideas on what it *should* be spending more on).

            I do agree that FxOS seems high risk and has taken a large chunk of available resources, but I would be unwilling to conclude that the gamble is/was a bad idea. I am not that familiar with the landscape, but my gut feeling is that *not* making the attempt would be higher risk at this moment in history. I also hold out hope that even if FxOS doesn’t survive in its current incarnation, it will still be able to move the needle and have lasting positive effect on the overall ecosystem (eg by shooting down arguments that things have to be closed off and walled in “because the Web capability can never compete with native”, and by motivating the iOS and Android ecosystems to move to be more open to counter our threat.)

            As for the Microsoft situation, I feel the important question is how many users the Windows 10 behavior will move over to Edge, and how many of them would have made the move if they had been magically educated on the available alternatives. In practice, it comes down to a rather dull segment of the user base: those who don’t care enough about which browser they’re using to bother switching back. Because even though those people are not die-hard Firefox fans, they are a large enough chunk of the user population to matter in terms of market share and hence indirectly keeping the Web open and alive (specifically, avoiding monoculture or “duoculture”).

            So… if the bulk of those users are going to choose the Express option and be switched away from something that they or their personal tech support buddy (child, paid tech help, or whatever) explicitly chose, then this is a real problem. Just because the actual mechanism is subtle and relatively easy to bypass for someone in the know doesn’t make it any better. And in fact, if this were a more overt action, there would be no need to call it out — it would be so obviously problematic that everyone would be up in arms without any need for open letters.

            The history of the Web, and many other institutions, is littered with examples of subtly underhanded actions that undermined freedom and choice. There are a lot of things where the harm is difficult to understand, where in fact it is unfair to expect most people to understand unless they’re deeply steeped in Web history and pressures, that we’ve had to take a stand on. Well-meaning people have been on both sides of countless issues — DRM, MPEG vs WebM, Flash, identity, Dart, NaCl, prefixing all come to mind. The opposition is always going to try to use convenience and short term benefit to lock openness out. We won’t, and haven’t, always won. But we have to keep watch and start the fight before everyone else catches up to the danger.

            Constant vigilance! 🙂

      • A few things:

        The way you word your response feels like you think every new feature should now be prompted to users before it is enabled. Do you really want that? We already know that too many dialogs/prompts and a lot of the time users don’t read them.

        With the pocket integration, the footprint is minimal compared to the rest of the browser, why is it a problem that it’s enabled by default when it doesn’t do anything unless you click the button and use it? (I’m ignoring the third party integration feelings here, as you seem to be calling out the addition of the feature by default, not the other issues).

        Tiles has been explained pretty well in various posts, its part of our what can we do to help sustain Mozilla in a user friendly, privacy aware manner. Yes, I agree its advertising, and no-one particularly likes that, but this is the first bit I’ve seen done in a way that respects users and isn’t in their face all the time.

        Also how do you derive the “few days”? We’ve been working with the Windows 10 betas for a month or two now – this was certainly known at the start of July (a colleague had mentioned it to me) and I suspect a while before that.

        • Hi Standard8 😉

          “The way you word your response feels like you think every new feature should now be prompted to users before it is enabled. Do you really want that? We already know that too many dialogs/prompts and a lot of the time users don’t read them.”

          Absolutely not however I think in the case of existing users their preferences should always be respect and we have not always done that and in regards to a feature like Pocket I think it should only ship to new users and be flagged as disabled on upgrade. I’m a strong supporter of opt-in to changes like these.

          “With the pocket integration, the footprint is minimal compared to the rest of the browser, why is it a problem that it’s enabled by default when it doesn’t do anything unless you click the button and use it? (I’m ignoring the third party integration feelings here, as you seem to be calling out the addition of the feature by default, not the other issues).”

          I think a better approach would have been to have it disabled on updates for existing users but shipped to new users by default.

          “Tiles has been explained pretty well in various posts, its part of our what can we do to help sustain Mozilla in a user friendly, privacy aware manner. Yes, I agree its advertising, and no-one particularly likes that, but this is the first bit I’ve seen done in a way that respects users and isn’t in their face all the time.”

          Again I’m not against tiles but think the user choice approach would be to respect the expectations of long time users and not shove things like this in their face but focus on shipping this to new users and let old users opt-in. As an example when Ubuntu shipped a new default Amazon search lenses I was very much opposed to this and ultimately a year or two later Canonical realized bundling in new features like this without opt-in was not something users appreciated or expect and they made the feature opt-in.

          “Also how do you derive the “few days”? We’ve been working with the Windows 10 betas for a month or two now – this was certainly known at the start of July (a colleague had mentioned it to me) and I suspect a while before that.”

          Good question I saw a tweet from another employee indicating Mozilla in its testing of the early and beta builds did not see these changes and it was not until the official release (July 29th) that Mozilla became aware of this if that is true then Mozilla couldn’t have communicated till it became aware and less than 48 hours seems like short notice see the thread here: https://twitter.com/TechJournalist/status/626863614687858688

          • The problem with the disable on update approach is that you then get a sort-of two tier system – existing users won’t get to know about new features (unless they happen on a news article or something else), and then they’ll have to go into somewhere to get to it. To me that’d be a bit like “we did this great new thing, but we only want to give it to new users, and ssh don’t tell the rest” (or we’re not proud enough to ship it to our existing codebase, therefore it must be bad).

            I appreciate the reasons for opt-in, but that’s got to work alongside discoverability – and remember that generally its one or two options in the UI somewhere. The code is still going to be on the disk, just not run.

            • “The problem with the disable on update approach is that you then get a sort-of two tier system – existing users won’t get to know about new features (unless they happen on a news article or something else), and then they’ll have to go into somewhere to get to it. To me that’d be a bit like “we did this great new thing, but we only want to give it to new users, and ssh don’t tell the rest” (or we’re not proud enough to ship it to our existing codebase, therefore it must be bad).”

              There are some ways to address this like transactional updates where instead of updating the entire browser the update manager presents the user with available updates and the user can select which ones they want much like a distro like Ubuntu or Windows for that matter (updates are not automatic on these and its opt-in) this creates and issue though with stale versions of Firefox of course and update fatigue I suppose.

              There does not seem to be a great solution for a browser I guess but I still like the idea of opt-in so their are “No Surprises” and not just for Firefox but also for changes on browsers or any software really
              because sometimes updates bust functionality and if you get updates automatically you are stuck like chuck.

              I think one thing to consider is that Chrome doesn’t even bundle stuff like we are bundling in Firefox (Pocket, Hello, Tiles etc) their really are no big surprises on Chrome and other browsers and
              so I think we could get better at that. Maybe offer things as add-ons? Promote them on the new tab like we do with campaigns?

        • 😉 Also I can probably articulate on this topic better tomorrow as it is almost 3:00am here

  2. I think you’ve misunderstood the letter. The issue raised in the letter is that for users who have chosen to set their default Windows browser to something other than Microsoft’s, Microsoft is willfully making it difficult to preserve those choices during the Windows 10 upgrade.

    The letter is *not* suggesting that significant changes to the default product experience should be opt-in for users.

    • “When we asked Microsoft for a comment, we received the following from a company spokesperson: “We designed Windows 10 to provide a simple upgrade experience for users and a cohesive experience following the upgrade. During the upgrade, consumers have the choice to set defaults, including for web browsing.”

      Source: http://techcrunch.com/2015/07/30/pushed-over-the-edge

    • I’m going to spin up a Windows 8 VM and upgrade it to Windows 10 tomorrow after having set Firefox as the default
      and see if Microsoft’s comment on the matter is accurate.

      • During my upgrade, Windows asked me if I wanted to change some default apps. Those were checked by default, but you could uncheck them, so I still have firefox as default.

        This seems fair: they have a new browser, so it’s not so strange to offer it as default. If people don’t read the installation questions, that’s their own problem.

        • I have seen a lot of comments on Twitter, Hacker News and elsewhere that suggest exactly what you say and this seems to question the accuracy of the letter too. I have not personally had a chance to test an upgrade but will in a few hours here.

          Either way though the decision-making Mozilla is accusing Microsoft is passive and that is the same level of decision-making Mozilla offers its existing users in upgrades when it implements new features.

        • I think the path changes depending on whether you choose Express options or customized ones. Most people will go for the express option, trusting the OS to do the best choices.

  3. If you want to transpose what Microsoft is doing with Windows 10 into the Firefox world of search engines, this is what it would look like:
    – Upgrading Firefox shows you a dialog to choose between a quick upgrade, or customization.
    – Choosing quick upgrade changes your search engine to Yahoo, whether you were using the previous default or set your own preferred search engine.
    – Choosing customization brings a dialog with plenty of knobs, with many different implications on various settings, almost none of which default to what you were using before, or were expecting before (regarding e.g. privacy).
    – Changing the default search engine is now not available from the search box, and the preferences panel where it was possible to change it is not where it used to be.
    – The APIs to change the default search engine in Firefox are removed and the best an addon can do is to open the preference panel for search engines and leave it to the user to select the default they want. (so that the workflow is not “ask user if they want my engine as default” -> “done”, but “ask user if they want my engine as default” -> “open prefs dialog” -> “tell them how to do it and hope they’ll do it” -> “maybe done”)

    None of the above happened in Firefox.

    • こんにちはGlandium,

      I’m not trying to transpose but point out that Mozilla in regards to Pocket, Tiles and even the Yahoo Search engine change offered users only passive decision-making which
      is the same type of choice Mozilla is accusing Microsoft of here.

      • There is a big difference between what Microsoft is doing and what Mozilla has been doing. That’s what I’m pointing out.

        • Absolutely but that doesn’t mean the letter is any less dramatic and every media outlet has pretty much pointed out how
          dramatic it is.

  4. Upgrading for me worked fine and it asked if I wanted to keep Firefox and did not set the default to Edge.

  5. I have a lot of qualms about this post (one of them it being the exact same finger-pointing it calls Mozilla out for), but this line: “Let’s focus on making great products for our users and technical changes like this to Windows won’t be a barrier to users picking Firefox.”…

    Now this is the line that’s just the more eloquent phrasing of the “I don’t care about *insert_feature*, maybe Firefox should fix *insert_whining* before anything else, as it has become slow and shitty and until that I’ll stick with *insert_browser_here*”-comments that sooner or later tend to turn up under each and every one of the Firefox-related discussions and we (and as a Mozillian, I’m guessing you as well) learned to despise.

    The inclusion of this line is what (open letters and finger pointing and all) I just cannot stomach, or even comprehend.

    • “I have a lot of qualms about this post (one of them it being the exact same finger-pointing it calls Mozilla out for), but this line: “Let’s focus on making great products for our users and technical changes like this to Windows won’t be a barrier to users picking Firefox.”…”

      Except I am not a company calling out a competitor and throwing a tantrum that even the Google Chrome Team did not throw instead I am pointing out how this is a utter waste of time and distraction from much more important work like evangelizing Firefox and its importance. This is really a big non-issue that for whatever reason Mozilla Leadership thought would be a good issue to wield their big pen over.

      “Now this is the line that’s just the more eloquent phrasing of the “I don’t care about *insert_feature*, maybe Firefox should fix *insert_whining* before anything else, as it has become slow and shitty and until that I’ll stick with *insert_browser_here*”-comments that sooner or later tend to turn up under each and every one of the Firefox-related discussions and we (and as a Mozillian, I’m guessing you as well) learned to despise.”

      You didn’t quote the line so I’m not sure what you are referring to specifically.

      “The inclusion of this line is what (open letters and finger pointing and all) I just cannot stomach, or even comprehend.”

      Again no quote so I do not know specifically which line you are referring to

  6. I agree with Benjamin, the open letter is self serving.

    Also Mozilla’s argument would have had more weight had Microsoft continued with Internet Explorer 10 as default.
    But there is a new browser, Edge, that has been explicitly detailed in all Windows 10 presentations and one can assume that people choosing to upgrade are fine with giving Edge a go.

    Nowhere has it been stipulated that browser choice is for all eternity. An upgrade to a new operating system seems to be a good point to have people test new browsers. Same for all apps really, such as music and video apps.

  7. I don’t agree that Moz was hypocritical with the default search engine change away from google to yahoo. Only users that actually had left it at default of google got changed to yahoo.

    But I do agree with the pocket being a hypocritical move. I also think copying Google Chromes preferences UI is also hypocrticial, if you want to copy something you have to do it better, the preferences UI was totally copied and is worse then Googles, Im hoping for some innovation there.

    Anyways yeah overall the letter was not crazy hypocritical, just when you think about Pocket though I agree.

  8. My solution to Firefox was easy. We uninstalled it from all computers as of THEIR choice of implementing tracking, DRM, YAHOO and other unwanted options were included (forced) by default.
    Mozilla is cutting their own throat and to be honest this is just another nail in their coffin.
    No great loss!

  9. You know what I find ironic about all this? People simply bash Microsoft because they didn’t like Microsoft 15 years ago.

    People attack Microsoft claiming it is taking away user choices, that windows 10 is skynet, that Microsoft is spying…. etc…. has anyone used the MAINSTREAM alternatives?

    Should we talk about any of the iOS systems? Not only do you not get choice, but apple actually filters what apps you may or may not install and jail-breaking has been deemed illegal in many places, meaning as a user you don’t even OWN the product you purchased, only the right to use it. No one is screaming about the lack of choices apple presents.

    How about the fact android and iOS don’t support flash and google has announced its removal from browsers. Where is the choice? And what about the spying. How many times have I seen news broadcasts that people should pay attention to privacy better because many apps require tracking abilities and access to other user accounts and all sorts of crazy stuff.

    People hate Microsoft because its Microsoft. Unless you ONLY compare Microsoft to a *nix system, the alternatives are very close to being worse in terms of choice and privacy.

    And yes this was CLEARLY a marketing hype move done by Mozilla to ride a wave… and its likely the case that this very article was posted to ride both those waves….

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