Sure it is - it markets my information to advertisers via its own platform. It is my neighborhood drug dealer, and drug are pretty good - nicely packaged and no one fucks with me when i use its drug delivery service.

Mozilla is pretending to be a health store. But we are starting to see that they are also peddling drugs. Not Google drugs - drugs with security and drugs with delivery system and drugs that we are pretty sure how they work - but some other drugs, from shady producers using shady means.

Can you specify which "shady drugs" are these? Because I'm not seeing it. In this particular case, the addon was written by Mozilla employees, and was completely harmless. I don't think Mozilla did well - and I've said so in the original thread - but calling it shady compared to Google ads? That's laughable. DoubleClick is one of the largest malware distribution platforms in history.

Pocket.

Mr. Robot.

Google tells me - "Dude, for providing me your information you get gooodieeeees!"

Mozilla tells me - "We respect your privacy. "

In a micro-font : "except when we do things that you should not be concerned about"

Which of those violated your privacy?

It's a myth that Google literally sells your information to advertisers. It uses your information to show you advertisements which both it and its advertisers hopes are relevant and useful (so you will click on them). If you think about it, that business model essentially requires that the ads not be too annoying, because if they are, people will use ad blockers and the business model dies.

The really annoying ads which auto-play videos, block content, etc., tend to be served by companies who aren't taking the long view --- which is why Chrome is going to be adding adblocking for those ads that are ultra-annyoing early next year.

There's a pretty big difference between "using your information for marketing", and "marketing your information to advertisers". The second implies that your private information is getting divulged for a price, and that's simply not true.

There is less of a difference between those than there seems to be, there are a lot of interesting research papers and experiments regarding methods to create a feedback loop between targeting ads and then identifying those targeted.

If I narrowly target an ad and then I know you saw it, I now know all those things about you.

So, yes, they do not literally sell your information, there is one level of indirection there. And the amount of information that data brokers get their hands on tells me that it is very likely people are exporting this information regularly.

> it markets my information to advertisers

and what other uses?

That is the whole point. You know it does it, fair game. Mozilla is speaking one doing and doing shady things also.

my point was that people don't know the full scope and nature of what google does, so suggesting they're 'better' is comical.

I do not need to know a full scope of what Google does. Lets stipulate that they sell all the information. There, I now know the entire scope.

what makes you think that is the "entire scope"?