Firefox update adds support for multiple picture-in-picture windows and “Total Cookie Protection”, to prevent the use of cookies to track users across sites
Beginning last year, the internet began playing a bigger role in our lives than ever before.
The change sits at the start of a broader Firefox privacy sequence: Total Cookie Protection launched as an opt-in control here, then was enabled by default for desktop users in 2022, alongside later work to remove certain tracking parameters from URLs.
First-order effects
Firefox users can keep multiple videos in separate picture-in-picture windows while browsing.
Sites seeking to recognize Firefox users across sites through cookies face per-site cookie isolation rather than a shared browser-wide store.
Second-order effects
Mozilla’s later decision to make Total Cookie Protection the desktop default turns an opt-in privacy feature into a baseline compatibility condition for sites and advertising technologies.
Firefox’s subsequent URL-tracker stripping extends the same protection strategy beyond cookies, limiting another route through which Meta, HubSpot, and Marketo trackers can persist across navigation.
Third-order effects
If browser privacy protections continue to stack cookie isolation, tracker blocking, and URL cleanup, cross-site measurement will increasingly depend on methods that work within each site rather than shared identifiers.
The competitive distinction shifts from offering a single privacy toggle to deciding which protections are enabled by default and how broadly they apply.
The trend: Firefox is moving from blocking selected trackers toward privacy defaults that constrain several forms of cross-site identification.
I'm sure they've run this by their 1/2-billion-dollar-a-year customer (Google). Google allowing Mozilla to do this, combined with Google's own plans to phase out third-party cookies, tells you they're confident they don't need them to track you anymore. #SurveillanceCapitalism ht…
Certain products are multi-sided markets meaning you need to incentivize two groups to adopt (e.g. Uber needs drivers & riders). Firefox has continually been hostile to web developers by breaking cookies and wonders why users see no benefit when they browse sites with Firefox. ht…
Partitioned third-party storage in Firefox 86 (ETP Strict mode), following the path set by Safari and Brave in particular. https://blog.mozilla.org/...
this may be the final straw that makes me jump to firefox as my primary browser. the current state of advertising is killing the internet, and this will put a pretty serious dent in that. https://twitter.com/...
Hot + fresh in our latest update: Total Cookie Protection! 🍪 Just one more way to help protect your from trackers, we can now confine each website in a separate cookie jar so cookies can't be used to track you from site to site. Read more here: https://blog.mozilla.org/... https:…
Firefox 86 has come with lots of interesting changes: 🖥 Watch multiple videos in PiP 🍪 Total Cookie Protection on Strict Mode 🖨 Improved Print functionality 💳 Credit card auto-fill for users in Canada And many more that you can check here https://www.mozilla.org/...
Consumers: we want a faster horse. Mozilla: what about a morally superior horse? Consumers: so it's not faster, cuz Chome is pretty darn solid? World: it's not clear what we do about this Google horse racing dominance, but we need to do something! Me: 🤔 https://twitter.com/...
I think what the world wants is pretty simple: - Faster page loads - Snappier web apps - No ads - No cookie banners - 10-20x less memory consumption - 5-10x less CPU to stop fan noise - A major comeback to browser innovation https://twitter.com/...