Re:Thunderbird’s New Home
by lowflyer on Tuesday January 28, 2020 @03:23PM
(#22173668)
Pocket was already an external product (readitlater?). Send solves a real problem people have, and it was probably easy to develop it separately. Similarly to Monitor, you don't have to touch the core product to make it. Lockwise was probably easy to make, if you already have Firefox Sync, it's just a viewer app.
[ Parent
| on HN ]
> Pocket was already an external product
OP's point still stands though. Mozilla spent millions acquiring Pocket. They also made it so users can't disable it as a plugin like they used to be able to.
And this a semi-annual reminder that it has been X years since Mozilla Corp spent $29m to acquire Pocket and said it will "become part of the Mozilla open source project", and Pocket is as open source today as it was on the day before the acquisition, which is to say, it's not.
X here is 3.
Pocket played into an overarching internal strategy that I believe Mozilla has shifted away from since (but it's still useful for populating the default New Tab page).
If you want to make an ex-Mozillian shudder, sneak up behind them and whisper "Context Graph" in their ear.