> Even Google has decent data collection policies.

I’m not sure if you’re trying to intentionally ignore the issue here.

You are asking people to trust Google. If people trusted Google, they’d use Google Chrome in the first place. Your entire userbase is people that don’t trust Google, at all.

If you use Google proprietary software in Firefox, and tell people to just trust Google, you just entirely destroyed every value Firefox ever had, and your own job.

The whole purpose of Firefox is that I don’t have to trust Google. That I don’t even have any kind of interaction with Google. That I can exist without having to use Google’s technology.

If you use Google Analytics in Firefox’ Addon menu, or in Firefox Focus, and say "but Google doesn’t technically track people because we have a contract with them", then I can just as well use Chrome. If I trusted Google to keep their word, I’d use Chrome.

Chrome runs far faster, looks better, is easier usable, has better addon support, works with more websites because everyone only supports Chrome anymore, it actually supports 10 bit video, oh, and it even does hardware video decoding on Linux.

The entire reason anyone still uses Firefox is because they don’t trust Google. If you ask people to trust Google, you’re literally telling them to just use Google Chrome.

That is the elephant in the room that everyone at mozilla tries to ignore by putting Google Analytics into the addon menu of Firefox (and, as result, also in the Tor browser), and by importing a Google Analytics library into Firefox Focus. This destroys the one single value that Firefox has in the current world: It’s not Google.

I don't think they're ignoring the issue, I think you're pushing an issue that they've already explained in parts of their statement that you chose not to quote.

> st3fan: Because that library is there does not mean that we are giving data to Google. It does not even mean that it is active or that it is sending anything.

Having gone through the comment chain in other places it seems like your entire position in the debate between you and st3fan is based on ignoring what he's actually saying in general. In response to their request for evidence your responded

>That's pretty simple. Don't use proprietary software.

which sidesteps the query entirely and does nothing to lend credibility to your original position.

I don't expect to change your mind and frankly I don't have a reason to, but if your goal is to have productive or persuasive conversations then you may want to evaluate your current communication strategy.

It is disappointing that it seems the Mozilla representative on this thread does not appreciate that Google cannot be trusted on this. Anyone who has been a Chrome user for a period of time, and tried to use its privacy settings to stay private, will have noticed that they do not observe their own policies. Their entire business is based on monitoring people to improve targeting of advertising. I am technical (former CTO) and have put a lot of time into carefully tweaking settings for privacy, and there is no question that Google "cheat" on this.

I thought Firefox Focus was a great step forward in privacy, but I am dismayed to see it includes Google code, that it uses a third party analytics library, and that the developers do not see either of those as a big problem.