Found this notification this morning on my pixel 6.
Even if this isn't entirely true, you know Google wouldn't pass up the opportunity to reduce Firefox market share to scare everyone back to Chrome.
this post was submitted on 11 Mar 2025
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There's no need to reduce Firefox marketshare. Most people don't even consider using anything else than whatever is default in their device.
Also, it's not a Google scare tactic or a flex. Every application on the Play Store must disclose the general outlines of their data policy, including the sharing of data. Lying with those checkbox is not a good idea but they are completely informative and put there by the publishing party, so the people responsible for publishing Firefox on mobile just updated these, and this is what is shown when an app publisher say their app is sharing data with third parties.
tl;dr: it's very likely that not a single soul at Google even looked at this, as this is just the regular behavior of the Play Store with apps that changes their data policy or indicate sharing user data with third parties.
Why the dichotomy between the chrome listing on the store then?
No idea, I'm not that obsessed with it. But do note that "The developers of these apps provided info about their data sharing practices to an app store. They may update it over time." and "Data sharing practices may vary based on your app version, use, region, and age."
The recent changes to Firefox terms of use (well, their introduction really) was supposedly meant to appease some regional lawmakers. Maybe it is a regional thing. Maybe they changed it again. Maybe it's, as often with store page update, rolled out progressively to people (in either direction, whether it's adding or removing these terms).
The point is, that's neither a "Google" operation to put Firefox in a bad light, nor a Mozilla operation to… do whatever it is they're doing these days. It's just a regular message. Which, reading a lot of the replies here, is something that have to be said.
Like chrome does something different?
Yes, chrome is doing something different. It is even worse!
That's not the point they're trying to make I think. It's more of an attack on perfection. Like "the alternative is not perfect either so why not just stay with Chrome". It's not a very strong argument in general but it might be enough to keep people from switching.
the alternative is not perfect either so why not just stay
It does work for a lot of people. Seeing they need to change and adapt if they do change, and it seemingly seems to be as bad as what they're using now, why change and face headaches and hassle.
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It integrates into the Google ecosystem well, and if that has value to a person it may just be enough to bring them back to chrome.
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Firefox? You mean the company they give several hundred million dollars/year? Yeah I don't think they're too worried. They need some number of users on Firefox to prevent anti-trust issues. Which they're on the brink of right now.
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Friendship ended with Firefox. Waterfox is my new best friend ❤️
As of the latest Chrome update on PC, they have dropped support for uBlock. You can still technically enable it, but they disabled it by default once you update.
That got me back to Firefox with breakneck speed.
Hopefully soon Librewolf, Fennec F-droid and other forks will become mainstream.
I haven't switched to Librewolf on pc yet; hoping that turning off the telemetry/etc options in ff is enough, but I'm starting to think it might not be long.
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FWIW I'm not seeing this on the Play Store for Firefox 136.0.1 on my Pixel 8a, and I'm not seeing any warnings on Beta or Nightly either:
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So if Mozilla wants to monetize location data, what does this mean for all the custom ROMs that use Mozilla's location provider instead of Google's?
This might mean that we would have no true free location provider left.
Edit: just was thinking, what does this mean for Firefox forks that also use Mozilla's location service?
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Pretty easy to disable the location app permission or set it to ask every time. Firefox hasn't asked me to enable it since turning it off.
Yeah I'm pretty sure Firefox won't ask for or use your location, unless a website wants it for some reason (which is almost never a good one).
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