Firefox Has Moved to Firefox.com
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The Firefox faithful are abuzz as the browser's download page has made the move to Firefox.com, leaving many longtime users wondering where it was before. As it turns out, the old home was a mishmash of URLs, including getfirefox.com, mozilla.org, and even regional variants like mozilla-europe.org. Some users are nostalgic for the old ways, with one commenter fondly recalling downloading Firefox from ftp.mozilla.org, which allegedly didn't embed tracking metadata. The discussion highlights the browser's evolution over two decades, with users sharing their own Firefox histories and quirks.
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Aug 27, 2025 at 2:56 PM EDT
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At a time when you'd also install spybot and ccleaner.
The normal download page embeds a unique tracking alphanumeric string in your build that is reported to the organization on a regular basis when the telemetry phones home unless you disable this manually and clear the values.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1677497#c0
Is Firefox a honeypot? I can’t see how this serves the user. All telemetry should be opt-in, not opt-out.
We want failsafe, not faildeadly.
Edge = Microsoft.com
Safari = Apple.com
Seems like Firefox is now the outlier, not the other way around.
Now Firefox is the only browser with a home page domain the same as its common name.
(Note: I’m not saying that I think it’s a bad thing.)
No one has to download Edge or Safari.
FTFY
If you're trying to get non-technical people to try an underdog browser, simplicity helps. A single, straightforward brand name is better.
Anecdotally, I’ve heard both people older and younger than you calling it Mozilla. And not tech-illiterate people, either.
Yeah, again, probably because tech-literate (not tech-illiterate) people are more likely to know the history of the organization beyond when they started using the software. My point was pretty much that the know-nothing user learning about the software today/recently knows it's called Firefox and might never have heard of Mozilla. The branding is clear about Firefox and the Mozilla name is essentially background knowledge.
Then they made a trimmed-down version of the browser with only essential features. That was initially called Phoenix, then Firebird, then Firefox. They did the same with the email client and called it Thunderbird. These existed alongside Mozilla Browser for a while until it was discontinued.
Can you imagine the cheesy user-agent strings we'd have?
> Now Firefox is the only browser with a home page domain the same as its common name.
See
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37279788
When the company shut down, the owner owned it and redirected it to getfirefox.com instead of making a profit from it.
I would have rented or sold it to the highest bidder.
I would have found someone on upwork to write me a firefox fork that contains a crypto miner.
The website would have some small print checkbox, making end users actively consent to mining crypto as payment for using the browser for free.
Not said with judgement, just observing.
Seems more like speculating than observing. Unless you can elaborate on what proof you have that each of the individuals you've "observed" (which doesn't include GP) were lonely and had handouts.
Or you could sell it to a malware site, who would lose it fairly quickly but might be able to make some cash in the meantime. I can't imagine they'd earn much though. The old firefox.com didn't have Google juice until after the transition.
The only value in the firefox.com domain is the ability to shake down Mozilla for a sum less than the cost of filing a trademark lawsuit. Which is significant, but not extremely so.
Do you also steal from the library? Mozilla isn't some big bad corporation.
Personally, I'd be a little wary of pissing off the hackers who are fans of that browser using my meatspace name, but hey, you do you. Maybe when you're done you can stroll on down to the local motorcycle bar and kick over some Harleys and see how far that takes you in life.
The only time anything close to busting kneecaps came during an internshipc I had at Firefox in the bay area years ago after a nearby homeless man declaring that he "loved firefox because firefox "doesn't murder the homelss". (You learn all sorts of things when you speak to the users!)
Me being me, I joking asked "Does Chrome murder the homeless?" (The Chrome team had recently moved into the same office building and begun poaching people while throwing pity parties on Twitter if no one showed up at their office because they made a stupid cake.)
Anyways, long story short there were some very fucked up Chrometerns that summer, and apparently there was a literal rumble when one of them instinctively ran towards Sutter Gutter when someone tried to beat them up for no reason. So it's just after last call, bunch of firefox shirts stumble out and... well I'm pretty sure we're past the statue of limitations, but a chrometern got his ass kicked, badly, and transferred down to Mountain View because they were very suddenly aware that homeless people are... people. They talk. And when you try to beat one of them up and get run off... now you're suddenly aware there's quite a lot of homelessness in San Francisco and maybe you were walking home safely because up until that point, you hadn't been an asshole to people.
Anyways, no, there is no Firefox gang, just a collection of people who happen to use a particular web browser. (And no, I don't work for Firefox)
https://web.archive.org/web/20250201000000*/firefox.com