• LWD@lemm.ee
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    1 day ago

    I understand retiring Pocket after a long, long run.

    But what’s up with ending FakeSpot? They just bought that. They spent an undisclosed amount of money and are now abandoning it.

    Is the FakeSpot shuttering a sign of money totally wasted, or should I be concerned that the FakeSpot TOS allowed them to sell user data (specifically in the event of an acquisition) right before the Mozilla acquisition?

    • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
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      1 day ago

      It’s astounding how stupid that decision was. Fakespot, quite literally a device to help deter people from buying products, was gobbled up by way too much money by Mozilla - who - apparently wanted it to make profit? How?! Why?! Why did they even buy it?

      I think it was just executive idiocy. They searched for extensions with the term privacy in them, bought it, and thought it would make their product worth more. I’m getting really tired of companies just sunsetting products the instant they don’t make money.

      We really need an open version of fakespot.

      • LWD@lemm.ee
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        10 hours ago

        Teixeira v Mozilla (2024):

        Apart from Firefox, none of Mozilla’s other product offerings were profitable, with the Pocket product notably being allowed to operate in a state of negative profitability for over 5 years before Mr. Teixeira joined Mozilla.

    • Vincent@feddit.nl
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      1 day ago

      I expect that Fakespot already had problems funding themselves, and thus they were a relatively cheap acquisition, and now it turned out they couldn’t cover their own costs as part of Mozilla either. But I’ve never used it so I have no idea.

    • thingsiplay@beehaw.org
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      1 day ago

      what’s up with ending FakeSpot? They just bought that.

      Assuming the tool was not accepted and used well enough by the user base. Also Mozilla got all user data and the technology. Maybe they plan on a new project that implements part of it in the future? Mozilla is currently experimenting a lot. Shutting down lot of services should be expected.

      • lime!@feddit.nu
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        16 hours ago

        it was never available outside the usa i think. hard to get useful market penetration then