Mozilla Firefox seems to be moving in the direction of bloat these days. First they bundled Firefox Hello with the browser and more recently Pocket, a separate company’s software, was included with it. While Firefox recently changed the default search engine to Yahoo, it was understandable as a business decision and not that invasive to the end user.
Including Pocket in the browser that used to stand for openness, sends an entirely different message. Incorporating Pocket into Firefox pushes the user to accept Read It Later, Inc’s Privacy Policy and Terms of Service. Both of which include degrading your privacy as the company will track your information and share it with their third parties.
Why was Pocket not offered as an extension? Even an installed-by-default extension, at least it would be clear how to remove it. You can remove the button from the toolbar by right-clicking on it and choosing ‘Remove from Toolbar’. This, however, does not disable the service.
To disable Pocket, head into the advanced Firefox settings by entering ‘about:config’ (without the quotes) into the address bar.
Search for ‘pocket’.
Find the setting ‘browser.pocket.enabled’ and double-click on it to toggle it from ‘true’ to ‘false’.
When you restart the browser, the button on the toolbar will be gone and the Pocket service will be disabled.
Somebody files a bug report on Bugzilla to have Pocket removed and it has gained some traction with votes. Others have left plenty of feedback on Firefox Input to express their dislike of the Pocket integration. Is Mozilla at least making some money off of this deal or are they doing this to compete with a similar feature in the upcoming Microsoft Edge?