Unknown Mozilla dev addon "Looking Glass 1.0.3" on browser

I checked out FF for the zillionth time the other week after the Quantum release hoping to love it, but the deep Pocket integration was just too offputting. Turning it off requires some Googling. There were other irritating commercial things too. It’s a shame. FF is probably the most important open source project in the world and it’s a shame they do stuff like this. I’m still on Chrome :(

Firefox bought Pocket. So it's a first-party feature.

> but the deep Pocket integration was just too offputting

You mean the single button that does literally nothing until and unless you click on it?

Yep, that button was really annoying. And the Pocket thing on the home screen, too. And the fact that I had to Google to figure out how to disable it.

If you must know why, I don't want promos for particular web properties in my browser. I find Pocket to be annoying conceptually (a service to help you carry around all the things you didn't and won't read—eww, no, no thank you), and I don't want to look at it every day. I don't want to have to Google to figure out how to disable it. I don't want my browser to come with nonsense I need to disable.

> You mean the single button that does literally nothing until and unless you click on it?

This must be the kind of mentality that leads people at FF to do silly things like mentioned on this thread, or having "just one button" for their acquired web property. That's the opposite of how great product minds think. Great product people think "how can I REMOVE this button?" Not "how can I get away with having it?"

Add a couple more buttons and hey, you've got a toolbar going.

Why can't they just make a web browser that's... just a web browser? Chrome has never had buttons to email pages with gmail, record videos onto YouTube, share pages on G+ etc.

The default new tab in Chrome contains links to all of those things and more.

Not exactly a great example if Mozilla is trying to claim the high ground.

Despite some strong criticisms I've made about Pocket, it actually is a pretty good tool, as such things go.

My main complaints are that it's not more useful, though with some tweaks, I've made it just that.

https://www.reddit.com/r/dredmorbius/comments/5x2sfx/pocket_...

https://pastebin.com/LjMA5Dms

It needs more help than just CSS, but that's a start.

I cant help but feel mozilla bought pocket because they wanted to justify the included adware nature of it as a first and foremost priority, after all the supposed logic of including it was all about reducing costs for mozilla..

It pays off for Google to develop Chrome, because:

* they can feed Chrome Sync data into their advertising databases.

* it means that they don't have to pay other browser vendors quite so much to make them the default search engine.

* they can take control over webstandards for their other profit-driven purpose.

* they can hinder the blocking of their ads.

Mozilla can't or chooses not to rely on any of these profit schemes, so they need other ways of making money.