Telefónica bought pretty much every South American national phone monopoly when the country privatized it. I dealt with them while living in Chile and let me tell you: Comcast's customer service is top notch compared to them.

By putting that logo in there, Mozilla is pretty much shutting down any chance of adoption in South America. In my case, even Microsoft's logo would be easier to swallow.

I mean, they do deliver decent internet, but their customer service is awful.

So? You have to send written notice to cancel any contract in Germany. This is totally standard.

Actually from my experience that was pretty good compared to uh... Telefonica in Argentina.

And then people complain about Comcast!

I'm currently with them because my preferred cable provider (R) didn't have coverage in my building a year ago, but now they do have coverage, so I'm probably saying bye-bye to Telefonica soon. Yes, the service is now technically good, even probably the best (FTTH), but who cares if all their policies (the above is just an example but there are lots more) are set to nickel-and-dime the customers, and to sell more and more and more. You can't even do a technical service call without them spamming you and trying to sell you stuff. R doesn't have FTTH but has a much, much better customer service (including automatic improvements in the bandwidth for time to time, without even asking).

in Spanish: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YKHUA3bs1iY

translated: Published on Jan 15, 2015

The Mayor of Manilva, Urieta Diego and director of the South Territory of Telefónica Spain, María Jesús Almazor, held a meeting to present the expansion plans the company has planned for the town. Thus, they have confirmed that it has begun the deployment of Fiber to the Home (FTTH) and that citizens already have 4G technology.

According highlighted the mayor, Manilva, later this year will be the first municipality in Andalusia to have installed fiber optic network in the hundred percent of the town.

For example, by funding Mozilla, Google helped to remove Microsoft's browser monopoly. Since Google's business relies on the Web, that made perfect sense. Now they have their own browser too, which makes things complicated :)

Likewise, Microsoft currently has a dominant influence in video chat, thanks to Skype. It makes sense for Telefonica to erode that dominance, since they have more business opportunities in an open, many <-> many ecosystem compared to a Skype-only one.

Too many companies base their business model on becoming a monopoly in their field ("the next Microsoft", "the next Google", "the next Facebook", "the next Twitter", etc.), rather than allowing interoperability and having to succeed on merit. When this inevitably fails, they leave behind nothing except useless, incompatible APIs. Hopefully this is different :)

In the past we could hope that Mozilla and Google had the best interest of their users in mind but now having such super-obvious product placement? This raises a lot of questions for me and will do even more so for the average user.

Actually, quite a few non-profits are sponsored by commercial interests and while sometimes this is a problem, often it is not.

Also: How would you like to fund development of Firefox?

When I hear the company's president mumbling [1] about how Google owes them money because Telefónica provides the networks, but Google makes the money thanks to their networks, I wonder how has the company grown so large, and how can a director be so incapable of coherent expression.

[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTOAyZxOTy0

Edit: I leave this comment because I like Mozilla and enjoy Firefox, but I was dismayed to discover a few weeks ago that Telefónica was involved with Hello.

Telefonica was providing services in villages and small towns with very difficult geography (mountains, roads, ...). Now there is a big competition in Spain, for example Jazztel is offering 200Gigabit/s up-down for 36 euros/moth and phone tax included. Our country is getting better in the IT sector and telefonica was the pioneer. It is easy to critique but in the old times there was no other option, and for many to have the opportunity to be connected is much better than to be out of the web.

Yes, it's clear from the post that it is from personal experience. Why would you think otherwise?

Telefonica was providing services in villages and small towns with very difficult geography

Yes, back when it was a public company; that was just their responsibility.

It is easy to critique but in the old times there was no other option

Yes, but neither BSousa nor I were talking about dial-up times. Nor was the EU when they fined Telefonica for anti-trust violations, multiple times: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telefónica#Monopoly

There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider

There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider

Being a monopoly isn't illegal, abusing that position is, and that's what Telefonica was fined for.

I live in Barcelona, is it likely that bigger cities get better service than other places?

There is a headline: Peter Thiel: Google Is A Monopoly - Business Insider