Mozilla has a clear conflict of interest in their statements: they are now an ad company. Because of this, they must be approached with skepticism.

Every corporation invested in unhealthy ventures will say it is necessary, and they can do it ethically, regardless of how misleading or untrue it is. They will launder their bad behavior through an organization to make it appear more ethical and healthy.

Mozilla is doing nothing new under the sun. But for some reason, after burning through so much community goodwill, some people are still willing to give Mozilla the benefit of the doubt with a technology that they surely would not have given Google or Adobe or Facebook the same treatment.

Surely we wouldn’t ignore the canary in the coal mine until it was too late. Surely, we wouldn’t look at a huge corporation and say “this time it won’t be the same.”

When Google acquired DoubleClick, they positioned it as a net good for everybody in terms of privacy. DoubleClick was notoriously awful in those terms. Google said (and people, including myself, believed) that by owning them, Google can make them into something better.

Instead, DoubleClick made Google into something much, much worse.