IIRC, Firefox did that once, and then apologized. Unlike Google, who keeps doing the same thing all the time.

>Firefox did that once

At least twice. https://www.engadget.com/2017/12/16/firefox-mr-robot-extensi... https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/9ii8sj/firefox_kee...

I stand corrected. Of course, “twice ever” is still a lot less frequent than “keeps doing it all the time”.

It's already compromised. Who cares how much times it was?

And if they implemented these "features" as part of the core browser update rather than as an extension, it would have been okay?

There may be a legitimate debate worth having here, but basing the complaint on the good code hygiene practised by Mozilla's developers is silly.

These so-called "compromises" were nothing in any practical sense. Meanwhile, every web page you visit leaks the fact of your existence a hundred different ways and 99% of us don't care much.

They just did it again to gain a count of users who turned telemetry off.

In general, I see firefox's point that using the system extensions to deliver autouodates and allow them to iterate more quickly. However, it also feels like whenever we see these extensions that they're something shady.

I don't know why you're being downvoted, but what your saying is true.

Firefox activates limited telemetry for folks who turn off the heavy stuff. While your firefox browser shows that no telemetry is taking place, the browser will silently send information about your browser, os, and other information to Mozilla.

Personally, the privacy implications don't concern me as much as a browser that is deliberately lying to and deceiving it's users (though I can certainly see how it can be privacy concern).

If someone wants true and total control over their browsing experience, neither firefox or chrome are a good choice (imo).

With firefox, you can disable extension auto updates.

You can't disable it installing new extensions behind your back without telling you, though. These are "system extensions" and you can't opt out of them.

System extensions are not really extensions, they're just parts of built-in browser functionality that have been implemented by programmers with good code hygiene.

It's unfair to describe these as "installing random extensions without asking" because you would then have to admit that it's equally true of every new feature of every software program that is ever updated.

I don't think it's unfair; I can disable automatic software updates. I can't disable Firefox installing secret extensions behind my back.

That is a logically incoherent statement. The only mechanism Mozilla has for "installing secret extensions" is via software updates. If you turn that off, they can't install anything.

At least with Firefox you can disable both individual extension updates and browser updates.

Chrome on the other hand removed that option years ago. Deleting Chrome Update's scheduled-task is my workaround.

I don't recall if extension updates can be disabled in chrome.

Well, there is that joke extension from recently, and then there is installing qwent (or whatever it was) for all German users by default.

It was Cliqz.

It's sad to see people jumping between the same browsers, when the amount of change between each jump is getting smaller and smaller. All of them are becoming more hostile, just at different rates.

The outlier is (was?) IE, it kept the same interface and configurability while others continued dumbing down (although things are changing with Edge too) and it seems the massively anti-user decisions the other browsers made never really took hold at MSFT until most recently when they began sticking telemetry up the wazoo.

If you care more about user control than web standards compatibility then perhaps IE is the best choice... for now. At least it is more compatible than the "fringe" browsers like Dillo and NetSurf, or even the text-based ones. Opera, before it became another WebKit-shell, might be another good one.

(Disclaimer: No affiliation with MSFT, just someone who has watched these browser wars for a long time and saw this gradual "illusion of choice" take hold. I use various browsers depending on which site it is.)

I think the core motivation of the Vivaldi team is also a browser that's maximally customisable, so Vivaldi is another viable option that's not 'dumbed down.'

I still use seamonkey. It's on life support though. Maybe worse as mozilla just pulled infrastructure support.