Thanks everyone for your active participation here. We knew this would have a lot of interest and so we’ve waited to dive into the conversation because we see some themes emerging that I’ll respond to broadly here. The main concerns I’m noting are around the license agreements we declare, our use of data for AI, and our Acceptable Use Policy. Below are a few clarifications to each of these areas.
Oh look at that, a privacy policy in Notepad that tells you how Microsoft uses the data you type into Notepad.
It doesn’t. The policy covers what happens after that. Sure, open up Firefox and type whatever you want in the address bar and you can be as private as you want. The second you press Enter is when Firefox does stuff with what you typed, and Mozilla is saying that when you push Enter you give them permission to do that stuff. You’re giving Mozilla permission to send your search to Google for midget porn, or to post your pro-Trump rant to Facebook, or email your great-Grandma’s secret oatmeal raisin cookie recipe to your ex-wife.
It’s turning an implicit use of a web browser (“Of course we’re sending your search to Google and nowhere else wink”) into an explicit use (“When you provide data to Firefox, we’re gonna do this with it, cool?”)
Except the terms don’t promise that. The terms don’t really say anything at all about what Mozilla (the corporation) or Firefox (the software) won’t do with data I enter into Firefox. They do however say that I grant Mozilla a license to use data that I enter into Firefox for several purposes, which means Firefox could reasonably send the search request I intended for Google to Mozilla as well.