Firefox to Track User Data?

How does it sound? I’ll start with a quote from John’s Blog which should explain everything:

So we asked ourselves what we can do to help unlock some of this latent potential — and started thinking about whether there’s a project we can do at Mozilla that does a few things:
Collects & shares data in a way that embodies the user control & privacy options which are at Mozilla’s core.
Enables everyone — from individual researchers and entrepreneurs (both the social and capitalist types) to the largest organizations in the world — to take usage data, mix it up, mash it up, derive insight, and hopefully share some of that insight with others.
Helps move the conversation around data collection and web usage forward, to help consumers make more informed decisions.

It seems obvious to us that there’s lots to be done here, and lots that we can do, if we can work with our broad community to figure it out.

If that’s not enough, TechCrunch also wrote an article about that. Check “Mozilla Stealth Data Project Could Be Just What The Internet Needs”.

While it’s too early to get into any deep details, some users don’t like the idea already. Here are some comments from John’s Blog for example:

Rüdiger Hof
Go to hell with tracking data – we will stop this in Germany, if necessary, we will stop firefox.

Tom
So basically Firefox will be spyware .. great move!

Of course, they won’t force you to share the data and it’s not a spyware. But is this a good idea at all? Maybe, it depends on our view. What do you think? Would you allow to track your data?