Alexis Madrigal, Atlantic's new tech blogger, poses the question this way: You hop onto a parent's computer to check your email or do a little work. But, to your dismay, the only browser available is Internet Explorer and (for whatever reason) you don't like Internet Explorer. You download Firefox (or Chrome), then install and launch it. Firefox (or Chrome) then asks whether you want to make it your (Mom's) default browser. Of course you do! But should you really make this decision for Mom? Yes, says Madrigal, quoting a mashup of Tweeted responses: "It's our responsibility to help our parents figure out technology"...

15 July, 2010

"If you have something that you don't want anyone to know," said Google CEO Eric Smith, "maybe you shouldn't be doing it in the first place." Smith's cavalier assessment of browser privacy issues in an MSNBC interview so incensed the main developer of the Mozilla Firefox browser that he urged Firefox users to abandon Google for a search engine with a better privacy policy, namely Bing, by Google arch-rival Microsoft: Asa Dotzler's outburst raised eyebrows on the net, because the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, maker of Firefox and the Thunderbird email program, depends on Google for about 97 percent of its revenue. Various bloggers...

16 December, 2009