[gloflo]

That's ridiculous though. Performing a search is taking text I entered, concatenating it to a URL and opening that.

Nowhere in that process does Mozilla need to know about what is happening in the local browser of the user.

By that logic, and with some hyperbole, a text editor would need a license from the user to be able to turn their keystrokes into visible text display.

It smells really bad of privacy violation, data hoarding, targeted psychological manipulation (also known as advertisements), and behaviour analysis. That is why people are reacting so furiously.

[addicted]

> That's ridiculous though. Performing a search is taking text I entered, concatenating it to a URL and opening that. Nowhere in that process does Mozilla need to know about what is happening in the local browser of the user.

Every browser I’ve used in the past decade does “search as you type” by default. That does require local access to your browser and your key strokes.

Normal people wouldn’t use a browser that didn’t do search as you type.

[0x0203]

But at no point does any of what you type need to be sent to Mozilla. That only needs to be between the browser and the configured search engine and nothing in between.