If you have been out of the loop, Google is facing a US DOJ anti-trust lawsuit for monopolistic and anti-competitive practices, specifically regarding their search engine market, which has an actually considerable chance of resulting in Google having to split their business up into different companies, possibly even having to sell off Chrome and Android. Well, at least that was the recommendation of the prosecutor on how to address the issue, it not set in stone what is going to happen yet, but one thing is for certain, Google stands on trial for monopolistic practices and it will take a lot of "lawyer dollars" for them to wiggle their way out of this.

Google appealed the Court's decision but the process requires that first a remedy proposal is submitted by Google for the DOJ's search distribution case. Last Friday, Google presented its remedy proposal, and regarding the search engine deals with Apple and Mozilla, amidst the hyperbolic word salad, Google provided no real solutions other than allowing renegotiating the search engine deals more often and splitting them in multiple default agreements across different platforms (desktop vs mobile). This, of course, does not fulfill in the least the requirements of the prosecutor, and Google is well aware of that, but they just need to come up with something to appeal the decision.

Two days before, a blog post authored by 'Mozilla' addressing the DOJ case stated that:

As written, the proposed remedies will force smaller and independent browsers like Firefox to fundamentally reexamine their entire operating model [...] A key concern centers on proposed contractual remedies put forward by the DOJ that could harm the ability of independent browsers to fund their operations. Such remedies risk inadvertently harming browser and browser engine competition without meaningfully advancing search engine competition [...] We urge the court to consider remedies that achieve its goals without harming independent browsers.

Now, this is really bad. With these words of 'concern', Mozilla is pretty much acknowledging that they are critically dependent on being a tentacle of Google's monopoly through their default search deal money for operation.

Let's get one thing straight. Apple is not dependent on Google's money. And besides, Mozilla is not the only other independent browser in existence, there are others, like Brave or Vivaldi. The recommended remedies put forward by the DOJ do not "harm the ability of independent browsers to fund their operations", as neither Brave or Vivaldi depend on Google's money and are not dependent on the outcome of this lawsuit. It harms Mozilla's ability alone. And that is something that they should have seen coming from very far off.

The web has been under Google's stronghold for a long time. In addition, Google has very questionable privacy breaching policies in their user data handling. Google has been cruising along stacking rolls of money with a monopoly on advertising, search and mobile unpunished for years which goes completely against the open web ideals that Mozilla supposedly upholds, and which ironically have actually contributed to Firefox's market share decline, i.e. Google's own services and the web at large having more compatibility and optimization for Chrome, putting Firefox at clear disadvantage. In that sense, Google's default search deal money could arguably be addressed as mere compensation for dominating the web for themselves rather than a revenue stream. The prosecution demands are more than fair considering the way Google has abused its position. It is really awful to see Mozilla get to this place where they are critically dependent on a negative outcome from a anti-trust case against Google for the very same practices that have actually hurt Firefox as well.

In Mozilla blog post, the words read like a desperate pleading "pls we really need that money, we are activists and we are the only alternative browser engine", when in fact, Mozilla should be rather applauding the DOJ case in standing up for the open web. Notice how the prosecutor mandates that Google Play Services and Google Apps are decoupled from Android and not forcibly pre-installed, which means now phone manufactures can actually decide to ship Firefox as the default mobile browser. Great news, right? But Mozilla is nowhere near as concerned about that, why? Because they really need that search engine money.

Mozilla claims that their "users" had a strong preference for Google and that is why they resumed the search deal with Google, but the reality is that such only cemented Google's monopoly and Mozilla allowed themselves to be used as a tentacle of Google's octopus, since users can change their default search engine to Google in 2 clicks anyway, as Mozilla themselves stated:

Today, Firefox users in the U.S. can choose between Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo, Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia directly in the address bar. They can easily add other search engines

Mozilla was too complacent to wean off Google's easy and dirty money and now it might end really badly if they don't get alternative sources of revenue on very short notice. Regardless, the DOJ has decided that paying up other companies to make Google the default search engine is an unacceptable anti-competitive practice. Mozilla having to advocate for Google's right to continue to be able to do it and calling it a "revenue stream for independent browsers" is rather unfortunate and it only further reinforces that "to fundamentally reexamine their entire operating model" is a necessity for yesteryear.

To day 10 of my friends stopped using chrome and chose the only way, way of Firefox

I'm posting this here because the BitWarden subreddit is filtering anything critical of their new UI update.

If, like me, you're finding their new extension laggy, then try this.

Open the extension and go to "settings" - "appearance". From there, uncheck the "show website icons" and "enable animations" buttons.

It worked for me, so it's worth a try.

A few months ago, I posted about how my history would delete after a while. I fixed that issue, but currently I do not have the roughly 3 or so months of history that were deleted. They currently show up on Nightly on my phone, but I cannot sync it over since its been too long ago. Is there some other way for me to transfer the data, or extract it from my phone? I am not very familiar with Android.

https://addons.mozilla.org/addon/removepaywalls-com/

• one click functionality: click the button and it goes straight thru to the article
• no big header that hides any text
• URL cleaning so that it still works even if there are query or utm codes attached
• views easily on mobile without having to scroll or pinch screen
• options for alternative ways to bypass if the article didn't work

Would love any feedback on how it could be better!

Lost Years of Bookmarks After Password Reset – Please Add a Clear Warning!

I recently reset my account password and ended up losing all of my synced bookmarks and saved information that I’d accumulated over the years. To make matters worse, I built a new computer, so there was no local data to recover either.

I know this is partly my fault for not backing things up, but it’s devastating to lose years’ worth of saved links and information. It would be really helpful if there were a BIG, BRIGHT warning during the password reset process to let users know they’ll lose all their synced data. For me that part that's highlighted in yellow, its not a 100% clear for me on what is exactly going to happen.

For anyone who’s been through this or wants to avoid it, make sure to back up your bookmarks regularly or use a secondary method to save important links.

Just wanted to share my experience and suggest a small change that could prevent others from going through the same thing.

Hello,

First of all, I am not sure if this is the right place for this question; however, I was unsure where else to ask it. Basically, I was trying to capture a video element in Firefox using the mozCaptureStream() function. After obtaining the stream, I attempted to retrieve its tracks and use the track.applyConstraints() function to apply the following constraints:

track.applyConstraints({
    width: 1280,
    height: 720,
});

However, I always get the following error: "Constraints could not be satisfied."

This works in Chrome, and I believe it should also work in Firefox. Does anyone have any idea why this might happen?

Hi everyone. I have a razer mouse and I've configured a button to CTRL+W so I can easily close browser tabs. However, when I hold it for a smidge too long, it starts to close multiple tabs. Is there any way on firefox to prevent this from happening? Maybe set it so that I can only close tabs one second at a time? Thanks!

Is it possible to force FF to always translate a specific website to English? The icon shows up on top, but i would prefer not to manually translate every page everytime.

I'm on Fedora 41, 1920x1080 (125%).

This is probably a bit of an insane add-on to have and would be insanely complicated but I have OCD and I find that I start to spiral into a specific theme when I see a topic too often - it can be anything from direct exposure to a specific topic through media or even something as mild as a couple mentions of the word and a particularly sensitive context. This obviously wouldn't be an issue if I could avoid websites that centre around the specific topic that triggers it but it's a lot more tricky when it comes to things like Reddit and Reddit comments or articles I skim past online that mention it that I inevitably get pulled into due to curiosity.

Does anyone know of an add-on that can do something like this (wipe all mentions of a specific word and maybe even, if it's on Reddit, the comment chain or post entirely)? The reasoning is very silly but it does get a bit much at times. I remember UBlock Origin had something like this but I think the furthest I could go with it was to erase the word and the context around it but that led to posts and comments with blank text on sites which I knew contained a potential topic I didn't want to see...which ended up making me think about it again.

FWIW I also remember the different Reddit apps (pre-having to pay for API, of course) having this option but, again, that's not a browser add-on, so it might be quite different.

I used to use Kiwi for Android and you are able to play multiple audio sources without any problem, it's very seemless. Is this not a feature in Firefox android? Multiple audio sources playback? Am I missing something in the settings or in the flags menu?

why firefox doesn't have this feature by default?

is there any way where i can hear the sound so that i can put another stuff on download?

I couldn't figure out to modify the tree style tab custom css to display tab url in the tab label/title.

Any pointers would be appreciated.

SOLUTION: Uninstalled old Bypass Paywalls extension and replaced with Bypass Paywalls Clean.

Thank you u/sifferedd!

------------------

ISSUE:

Forgive me if I don't use the correct terminology here: Today The Washington Post website has started autorefresh/redirecting all pages from html to amp for me. I click a link, go to the page, after a few moments it's refreshed and is at the amp version. Oh, and--bonus!--sometimes the amp page is of the non-signed-in truncated version of the page.

Testing around:

• It only happens in my normal ff profile. I can't recreate it on my other firefox profiles.
• It happens whether or not I'm signed into my (free) account.
• It happens even with ublock disabled (I've some frames I manually blocked for the site)
• Still does it after setting accessibility.blockautorefresh = true
• Redirect AMP to HTML extension does nothing (although I imagine I'd go into a refresh cycle of doom if it did)
• Skip Redirect extension doesn't help either

Any thoughts? This is driving me absolutely batty.

So I jumped ship from Chrome after over a decade of use. I remember using Firefox a bit as a kid and decided to go back to my roots. And hey, I actually like it. It even has some UI features that Chrome did worse imo.

But why on Earth is it so difficult to properly sync my bookmarks?

I'm on the app and have it connected to my laptop. Cool. Easy process. But when I make changes to my bookmarks on PC there's a lag on the app.

That isn't too big a deal, but it also never updates the changing position of the bookmarks. Like ever. New ones just go to the top. I've done a resync. Turned bookmark off and on. Nothing. They don't even have the decency to let you manually move the position yourself.

People have been complaining about this for 5+ years and all anyone does is slap a developer link to make the team aware. And don't get me wrong, that's at least something. But it's just crazy to me that such a basic feature is so broken still.

Hello everyone, I recently switched over to Firefox from Chrome after learning about uBlock origin, and the experience is amazing. I can’t look back to Chrome anymore but there is just one thing which bothers me, the fact Chrome gives the ability for creating different user profiles (afaik Firefox doesn’t have them?) Otherwise, I really can’t find much to complain about. If there are any more tips or tricks that you can recommend for a seamless switch, I’d be really grateful. Thank you!

The button shows for me, but it doesn't work. :( I just want it on top while I do other things, like with youtube

Hello,

Everytime I try to download Adobe Creative Cloud, I have this message on Firefox : "Firefox is installing components needed to play the audio or video on this page. Please try again later"

Then, I download the file but when I try to install it, it disappears.

Can you help me, please ?

when i click on a new page or go back to the previous page, the browser frequently flickers. this happens even on safe mode and even when i disable and reenable hardware acceleration. how to fix?

Is there a way (settings) to reduce the amount of battery Firefox is using "in the background." When I check Windows 11 battery usage (Dell XPS 15 9510) Firefox is often the largest user. I am seeing high "in use" and "background." Is "background" referring to unused tabs? How to I reduce energy usage for both...but especially background?