14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla is working on a new policy in Firefox to automatically block third-party cookies, normally used by advertisers for tracking. Apple's Safari already does this and Mozilla believes the move should beef up users' privacy protection.
But the move hasn't been without its critics. The ad industry, understandably, has come out against the proposal arguing that Firefox blocking third-party cookies will destroy small businesses and sites, the very ones that make the internet what it is.
Essentially, Mozilla will single-handedly destroy the internet, as we know it. The Internet Advertising Bureau (IAB), an industry group, argued against the move.
"If Mozilla follows through on its plan to block all third-party cookies, the disruption will disenfranchise every single internet user," IAB president and CEO Randal Rothenberg wrote.
"All of us will lose the freedom to choose our own online experiences; we will lose the opportunity to monitor and protect our privacy; and we will lose the chance to benefit from independent sites," he added.
Coincidentally or not, the change has just landed in the Nightly version of Firefox on its way to becoming a standard feature of Firefox 22.
Mozilla will test the feature for the next few months, but there are no guarantees that it will even be used. But if everything goes well, it should land in the stable channel next summer.
Under the new policy, Firefox will allow first-party cookies, i.e. cookies from the domain users are visiting, and third-party cookies from domains the users have already visited, i.e. for ads from companies they've clicked on previously.
Safari has had a very similar policy in place for years, both on the desktop and on mobile devices. But the advertising industry didn't complain much, perhaps because Safari wasn't very popular at the time.
It's not incredibly popular today either, on the desktop, but it does dominate on mobile devices as the default browser on iPhones and iPads.