Re: KDE and Google

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Re: KDE and Google
by T. J. Brumfield on Sunday 02/Mar/2008, @13:24

What have they sold out?

Default search engine is the only thing they've sold out. I think Konqui defaults to Google, but does it for free. It has been said time and time again, that Firefox's Customize Google add-on hurts Google by blocking ads, and yet Google has never once complained about it. Google has never once requested that Firefox block it, or not host it on their site.

Google has made no demands to Firefox/Mozilla that I know of.

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Re: KDE and Google
by Andreas on Sunday 02/Mar/2008, @14:55

What is probably the most popular Firefox extension? (You know it...)
Now guess why it is not shipped and enabled by default in Firefox. Do you *really* think that this has nothing to do with the huge amount of sponsorship money they receive?

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Re: KDE and Google
by T. J. Brumfield on Sunday 02/Mar/2008, @15:04

Adblock Plus doesn't block Google ads. Customize Google does.

And Firefox doesn't ship with any popular mods. You can't blame that on Google. That has always been the stance of Mozilla, to be modular and not ship with mods.

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Re: KDE and Google
by Max on Monday 03/Mar/2008, @22:24

See, I'm really not jealous for Google to make money. They deserve it. They give me the information I need, when I need it. Something Yahoo, and Microsoft can't do anymore.

I also like Altavista as a search engine. I had good results. (I tried it again for the first time last fall after a good 10 year hiatus. They got better. I actually found something with it, that I couldn't find with google.)

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Re: KDE and Google
by yxxcvsdfbnfgnds on Sunday 02/Mar/2008, @16:56

Besides the default entry in the search field:
Start page and anti-phishing.

That led to the effect that Mozilla is now completely dependant on Google. All main Firefox programmers are paid with money from Google. Of course they'll continue to add features that please Google while locking out the competition (eg. not using the community-based PhishTank.com blacklist for anti-phishing).
FF will also never ship with AdBlock due the Google involvement. While you claimed that Google ads are not blocked by AdBlock Plus, let me remind you that DoubleClick is a subsidiary of Google and indeed blocked. I think it also depends on the subscribed filterset, if regular text-based Google ads are blocked.
I'm sure that Thunderbird was also dropped because Google prefers that GMail via browser is used.

Some corporate sponsoring is OK but a "sponsorship monopoly" is bad. How much development community does Mozilla really have besides paid programmers?

BTW: I don't think that Google even wants a close collaboration. Google (with Android) and Trolltech (with Qt/Qtopia) are competitors. Why would Google want to promote a competing technology?

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Re: KDE and Google
by T. J. Brumfield on Monday 03/Mar/2008, @07:41

Start page and anti-phishing were directly part of the Firefox/Google deal. Without the financial support and paid development, I doubt Firefox 3 would be would it is today.

And Thunderbird is installed with Google's internal distro, so I don't see how you can pretend Google hates on Thunderbird. It was dropped largely due to a lack of developer interest.

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