1. Feb 27, 2017 Mozilla has acquired Pocket, a kind of DVR for the internet, for an undisclosed sum.The nine-year-old company, which makes tools for saving articles and videos to view them later, is Mozilla’s.
2. Pocket is built into the Firefox browser, allowing you to save a variety of content (such as blogs, news sources, web pages and videos) to one place with the click of a button so that you can access it later from any device. To get started, sign up for a free Pocket account. You can even use your existing Firefox Account to sign up.

• Mozilla Pocket Open Source
• Mozilla Pocket Android
• How To Use Firefox Pocket
• Mozilla Pocket Review

Jun 23, 2015 Mozilla's official stance on the integration is that Pocket is a popular useful service that can easily be disabled by users who don't want to use it. Pocket has been a popular Firefox add-on for a long time and we’ve seen that users love to save interesting Web content to easily revisit it later, so it was an easy choice to offer Pocket as a service in Firefox and we’ve gotten lots of. Pocket is the place to save, read and get fueled by the best content on the web. Fill Your Pocket in Firefox Use Firefox to browse, log in, save and see suggested content in Pocket. Save and discover the best stories from across the web. Get protection beyond your browser, on all your devices. Product Promise. Learn how each Firefox product protects and respects your data. Sign up for new accounts without handing over your email address. Firefox Private Network (beta).

Starting in version 38.0.5, Firefox includes a built-in integration withthe bookmarking service Pocket.Although the Pocket service has been available in Firefox through anextension for several years, the integrated feature sparked an outcryamong some users. Critics raised a variety of perceived problems withthe feature, but most of the backlash focused on the proprietarynature of the Pocket service or on the perception that the featureresulted from a secret deal between the company and Mozilla—a dealthat, presumably, did not take the community's best interests into account.

Recent history teaches that Mozilla should probably expect blowbackwhenever it adds a Firefox feature that involves cooperation with aclosed-source service or company—implementing the W3C EncryptedMedia Extension (EME) API or H.264 support, for example. Thoughblowback should perhaps be expected for every new Firefox feature (seethe controversy about signedextensions, for example). In any case, although the past week hasseen a rise in public debate about the Pocket feature (with blog postscritical of Mozilla from BenjaminKerensa and JulienVoisin, among others), the feature itself is more than a month old, whichwarrants examining it in its historical context.

The Firefox 38.0.5 release landed on June 2. Pocket integrationadds a button to the toolbar; clicking on it essentially allows theuser to store the URL in a per-user Pocket account, from which it can belooked up and read later. In that sense, Pocket is no different thana traditional bookmark, except that a user's Pocket list is accessiblefrom non-Firefox browsers (unlike bookmarks synchronized with FirefoxSync).

The addition of the feature was mentioned in the releasenotes and accompanying blogpost, but some users seemed to find that degree of communicationinsufficient. For one thing, the 38.0.5 release is a 'point point'release, which is not the normal place one expects to find theintroduction of a significant new feature. For another, the featureevidently landed for Firefox 38 without first spending the usualamount of time in the Nightly channel—which, again, is theexpected behavior. Many users—including Nightly channeltesters—were taken by surprise when the feature appeared.

Questions

The most detailed critique of the feature, though, took place onthe Mozilla Governance mailing list. Tucker McKnight filed a bug reportabout the move, in which he listed several issues. Shortlythereafter, McKnight was told to take the topic to the mailing listinstead—which he did, there reiterating his concerns. McKnightfocused on implementation details, starting with the fact that the Pocketintegration is not implemented as a Firefox extension, but as native code. This, he said, raises three concerns:

• Extensions can be removed entirely, but Pocket support can only be disabled.
• Pocket support can only be disabled through the about:config page, which is not user friendly, 'and therefore not in line with Mozilla's mission. In the past, Mozilla has been very good about showing the user what new features have been added to the interface and explaining any privacy implications that may come with them.'
• Pocket support uses the user's existing Firefox Account to sign in to the Pocket web site. 'It may also not be clear to some users that, even when signing in with your Firefox account, you are still giving your email address to a third party whose privacy policy is different than Mozilla's.'

Adam Porter replied, raising the lack-of-public-discussion issue,and also pointed out that the move gives favored status to a proprietaryservice at the expense of similar free-software projects (like wallabag). A more appropriate approach, he said, would have been todefine a 'save for later' API that Pocket and other projects could hook into.

The ensuing back-and-forth was, at times, overly heated—inways that will sound familiar to those experienced in Internetdiscourse. A number of community members chimed in just to expressoutrage and announce that they were switching to Chrome, and someMozilla employees lashed out at the critics to accuse them of beinguninformed.

If one takes away the emotion, though, a few key points remain.Some critics objectedto the Pocket feature because Mozilla has historically resisted adding functionality to the core Firefox code that could easily beimplemented in extensions (ad blocking, for example). That philosophywas one of the original justifications for decoupling Firefox fromthe Netscape suite, so changing it now seems like a policy shift.Similarly, others pointedout that 'back in the day, Mozilla implemented Mozilla Weave(now Firefox Sync) exactly because existing alternatives wereproprietary.' Thus, partnering with a proprietary vendor is anabout-face, one that is particularly noticeable given that Mozilla droppedits Pocket-like'ReadingList' feature at the same time.

Finally, a few critics raised specific objections to the privacypolicy and terms of service (TOS) for Pocket. At the very least, thelanguage of both documents is written to apply to an installablesoftware project (as the Pocket extension was), while the newPocket-integration feature is implemented as a set of web API calls.Those API calls use a pocket namespace, which adds someadditional fuel to the argument that the feature favors one vendor tothe exclusion of all others.

Mostcritics seemed to feel that Pocket, as a commercial entity, should notbe implicitly trusted with user data, and many worried that theprivacy policy allows Pocket to change its mind and begincommercializing the submitted data—leaving little recourse tousers. Others raised concerns about the US-centric language in thepolicies and about prohibitions on using the service commercially orwith objectionable (to some) links.

Answers

Mozilla Pocket Open Source

For its part, Mozilla representatives have provided responses tomost of the core criticisms. Gijs Kruitbosch, a Mozilla engineer who worked on Pocket feature, answeredboth the lack-of-discussion and 'playing favorites' criticisms. Thefeature landed late in the development cycle, he said, so the API andpreference names were written specific to Pocket for the sake ofspeed—but the plan is to generalize them in future releases.Furthermore, Mozilla is using the Pocket implementation to gatherusage datathat will lead to a more open API once the use patterns andrequirements are better understood. Mozilla's Mike Connor addedthat the same approach was taken for the first versions ofsearch-engine integration and Firefox's Social API.

As to the concern that Pocket is a closed-source service, Mozilla's Gervase Markham repliedMozilla has partnered with closed-back-end services in the pastwithout raising ire—most notably 'the bundled search engines, safe browsingand (until recently) our location service.' He did, however, agreethat the UI's perceived ambiguity about the fact that user data is being sent to a third party is avalid complaint.

Mozilla Pocket Android

Ultimately, though, Mozilla could not provide easy answers to everyquestion—in particular, to the privacy and TOS concerns. Dan Stillman called thecomparison to search-engine integration invalid, given that Firefoxalready had a bookmark-sync feature that did offer privacy safeguards:

Connor notedthat Mozilla's bookmark-saving web service, Firefox Sync, was designed with strong cryptographyand strong privacy protections in mind, and that it failed to catchon. 'The vast majority of users didn't understandor care about the added security. It was more of a liability than an asset.Firefox Accounts make a different tradeoff as a result, and it'sunsurprisingly more popular (and _useful_) as a result.'Meanwhile, he said, Pocket has already proven itselfpopular—both as a browserextension and on other platforms (such as e-readers and mobile OSeswithout Firefox).

On June 10, Markham volunteeredto get clarification on the Pocket TOS and privacy policy as theyapply to the Firefox-integration feature. On July 14, Urmika Devifrom the Mozilla legal team joinedthe discussion and gave a blanket answer to the policy questions:

It remains to be seen how Devi's response (which also addressedsome of the specific, recurring concerns) will be interpreted, but the legalteam has agreed to follow up on any additional questions.

How To Use Firefox Pocket

Nevertheless, there remain other unanswered questions, too. Forexample, Stillman, McKnight, and several others requested moreinformation (and even atimeline) about when and how the 'save for later' feature nowused only by Pocket wouldbe opened up to additional participants, as Kruitbosch suggested itwould. Others have asked whether or not the Pocket deal providesrevenue to Mozilla. There has not yet been a reply on either point.Whatever else Mozilla may have in mind for the feature, this debate indicates that onething it certainly needs is improved clarity and communication withthe community.

Mozilla Pocket Review