They changed the wording of their policy for legal reasons. They haven’t actually changed what they do. They already updated the text of the policy to clarify.
Yes, because the definition of “sell data” varies by jurisdiction, and they can’t guarantee that their usage of ads (eg the default sites that appear on the new tab page) does not fall under the definition of “sell data” in some jurisdictions. In particular, California’s CCPA is pretty strict and some use cases that aren’t actually selling data still fall under its definition of “sell data”.
And they had this revelation and newfound sense of caution immediately after their main source of income was jeopardized? And they made this change at the exact same time they started forcing users to give them a worldwide commercial license to everything you enter through Firefox? Sure, Jan.
forcing users to give them a worldwide commercial license to everything you enter through Firefox?
That’s not what they actually did, though. They revised the wording to clarify:
You give Mozilla the rights necessary to operate Firefox. This includes processing your data as we describe in the Firefox Privacy Notice. It also includes a nonexclusive, royalty-free, worldwide license for the purpose of doing as you request with the content you input in Firefox. This does not give Mozilla any ownership in that content.
For example, if you type something into the address bar, they need to have the permission to take your content (whatever you’ve typed) and send it to a third party (a search engine) to get autocompletion results.
They changed the wording of their policy for legal reasons. They haven’t actually changed what they do. They already updated the text of the policy to clarify.
…The reason being that they can’t legally claim they don’t sell your data.
Yes, because the definition of “sell data” varies by jurisdiction, and they can’t guarantee that their usage of ads (eg the default sites that appear on the new tab page) does not fall under the definition of “sell data” in some jurisdictions. In particular, California’s CCPA is pretty strict and some use cases that aren’t actually selling data still fall under its definition of “sell data”.
And they had this revelation and newfound sense of caution immediately after their main source of income was jeopardized? And they made this change at the exact same time they started forcing users to give them a worldwide commercial license to everything you enter through Firefox? Sure, Jan.
That’s not what they actually did, though. They revised the wording to clarify:
For example, if you type something into the address bar, they need to have the permission to take your content (whatever you’ve typed) and send it to a third party (a search engine) to get autocompletion results.
Here’s the blog post that clarifies the changes: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/update-on-terms-of-use/