Google Analytics' status has always been considered as a crucial tool for tracking and analyzing the targeted users as well as their preferences. So, it was natural for businesses to feel worried when Mozilla blocked the Google Analytics tool recently. The company has been working for this update to come into action for quite some time now and initially it was announced in August 2018. So, the users of Mozilla were somehow were aware about this update earlier.
Some analytics users, PPC Experts, business owners as well as Mozilla’s employees all took the support on Twitter to raise concern on both sides which the particular person was on. Mozilla was portraying itself while taking a moral stand in favor of data privacy, but at the same time businesses considered it as a move that is going to snatch their data which is the key to helping them stay ahead of their competitors in their particular trade.
What benefits Mozilla Claims to provide the users after this update:
As per the Mozilla, the overall speed of the browser will significantly increase with this update in addition to stricter privacy of the user. It has been noted that Firefox 67 loads page faster after the update due to the better task performance of the browser at the optimum time. Moreover, Mozilla says that Google, Amazon, and Instagram searches get executed around 40% to 80% faster as compared to the previous version of Mozilla. The latest version of Mozilla Firefox also has a feature that scans for alternative style sheets helping in loading the page even faster. Furthermore, Firefox 67 skips unnecessary and irrelevant tasks while loading and assists in a faster startup.
What has Really Changed after the Updates?
There is a perception that the update will also going to affect the old users. But it’s not true as only the users who install Firefox browsers from now onwards will have the setting with tracking protection “on” by default, whereas the default setting for old users will be “off”. Till now, Mozilla blocked third-party cookies from 2,500+ tracking domains and they are planning to expand this list over time. Moreover, Mozilla has also made it very clear that website owners can still generate analytic reports in order to help themselves out for fine-tuning their websites. Mozilla allowed it because the analytic report uses a first-party cookie and the recent move by Mozilla blocks only the third-party cookies.
Should Businessmen really be Concerned about the recent Update?
The user share of Firefox in India is somewhere between 9% and 11% because Google Chrome still holds the top rank with 68% user share, but it doesn’t mean that Firefox can be neglected. Because at some places in the World for e.g. The no. of Firefox users is quite high in Europe and Luxembourg is number one with 28% of the population using Mozilla as their primary browser, whereas in Poland 32% percent users use Firefox however, the browser ranks at the second position.
So the effect on businesses of this Mozilla Update in the countries mentioned above will be more as compared to places like Turkey (where fewer people use Firefox ) as almost 83% of users in Turkey only use Google Chrome. In Australia Firefox users are merely 3% so the impact on businesses may be negligible. However, Mozilla is not the only leading browser which is blocking the third-party trackers, as a couple of years ago, Apple also added a similar feature to their own web browser Safari where it modified the browser in order to block almost all trackers.
What’s different from Apple Safari:
Apple went very deep in securing user privacy which resulted in many issues for the end users. Several users as well as websites rely on cookies and trackers in order to make sure that people can be logged on to them and the websites can serve them up with relevant information. However, when they have blocked all the cookies and trackers, then the client experience became a little turbulent. When talking about Mozilla, it has been less sturdy in blocking third party cookies & trackers. It has blocked only known trackers but not all of them. Mozilla knows the fact has also admitted that some of the websites may not work properly if all the cookies are blocked. So, they have chosen the partial approach instead and blocked some known trackers and cookies only.
So, here is our Take Away…
We can’t predict the future though but the long going fact is that users are generally inclined towards better user experience. With tracking system it was possible for users to see ads, recommendations as well as the relevant products as per their interests. However, at this point of time it is difficult to say whether users will sacrifice privacy or the better user experience. So, we can’t say that users will make a slow switch from Mozilla to other browsers or will stay with Mozilla Firefox for telling that their privacy is dearer to them.
To conclude, we can say that it can’t be said still, whether businesses are really going to suffer from this move of Mozilla Firefox or not. After all, they will lose the major tool for tracking and targeting potential customers. So let us keep our fingers crossed till the time nothing concrete can be said, as in many cases, time provides the answer.
