Xmarks May Not Be Dead After All 123
gatorfan sends word that Xmarks, which announced its upcoming closure a few days back, may not be so dead after all. The outcry from people willing to pay for the service was so loud that the company has now posted a pledge that users can sign if they are willing to pay for the service, and they say that they have fielded inquiries from several organizations who might be willing to buy the company's assets and keep the service going.
whatmarks? (Score:4, Insightful)
maybe put something in the summary about what it is.
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xmarks the spot, obviously.
Re:whatmarks? (Score:4, Informative)
Ya know, you don't even have to click on any of the links in the summary, but rather just hover over the first link to learn that XMarks is a bookmark synchronizer.
More specifically, it's a centralized service plus a plugin for all major browsers so that you can have the same bookmarks in every browser on every machine you use. Further, it lets you create profiles for your bookmarks, so that you can have slightly different bookmarks on different machines based on what you use that machine for (ie. your "home" bookmarks don't show up on your "work" machine). And for those who don't trust the centralized bookmark repository, you can even set up your own XMarks server (albeit slightly limited in functionality) and not have to trust them.
In short: it's pretty damn cool.
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google says.... (Score:3, Informative)
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Or you could use Chrome or Opera where online bookmark synch is built in.
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it does sync really well and silently.
actually there is no alternative to xmarks (speaking of feature completeness) at the moment. there sure will be if xmarks is gone.
however, nobody would have wanted to pay for a service, which might be implemented by other browsers / plugins similarly.
xmarks also builds on some kind of already open sourced protocol for syncing. at least, you could use custom servers in the past.
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Those of us who use multiple browsers by necessity will be shit out of luck should XMarks shut their gates.
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Except when you want to synch your Firefox/Chrome and Safari extentions from your personal systems to the crappy IE only desktop you have to use at work. I work at many different sites, and often get placed on a computer there, with brand new profile. I love the fact that one synch with XMarks and I have all of my useful links right at my fingertips.
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What's the problem with Chrome? IMO it has the cleanest and most efficient layout of all browsers (it actually looks very similar to how I always used to customise the Firefox menus whenever I was setting up a new account for myself), it's noticeably faster than Firefox even when you don't count the crazy startup time, and since it got adblocker plugins it's been my main browser.
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Here are my complaints in no particular order:
1. It won't open PDFs in a browser window.
2. While its sync functionality does run automatically at browser shutdown, it currently doesn't sync stored passwords.
3. Since there is no Application Bar in XP like there is on OSX I have to configure Chrome to have the "bookmark bar" visible on every tab.
4. On XP Chrome exhibited a UI bug where the horizontal space at the bottom of the screen used to display downloaded files became permanently "blank". I wasn't able
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Ah, I've been using Chrome on Ubuntu. I think I prefer page loading as it happens, to an extent. Sometimes it looks really nasty, but if a page is designed correctly then the basic layout loads first and then parts are filled in later without having to rearrange everything...
Have never consciously noticed the little address tab until you mentioned it.. I've definitely read the text before as stuff loads, but didn't think about the design. I do prefer that to having screen real estate taken up by the status
Re:google says.... (Score:5, Informative)
Your comment leads me to believe that you've never used it. For a substantial period of time it was the only sync app (which you would know if you read the original XMarks article), and it became quite popular. It's true that there are alternatives now, but the researching I did when I was looking to change led me to believe that they don't support as much as XMarks does. If you take into account that XMarks can sync bookmarks, history, open tabs, and passwords across several browsers across all the browser's supported OS's you can see why people would be a little upset.
Regardless, people despise change. How would you feel if your favorite pub closed? There are probably plenty of pubs that are just about the same nearby, but I know I would be sad.
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How would you feel if your favorite pub closed? There are probably plenty of pubs that are just about the same nearby, but I know I would be sad.
Finally, an analogy we can all identify with!
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How would you feel if your favorite pub closed? There are probably plenty of pubs that are just about the same nearby, but I know I would be sad.
Finally, an analogy we can all identify with!
Here Here!
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Where?
Oh, there. [randomhouse.com]
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Where?
Oh, there. [randomhouse.com]
Yeah...I realized that right as I hit submit...lack of caffeine is not your friend.
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How would you feel if you favorite car was gone? There are probably plenty of cars that are just about the same nearby, but I know I would be sad.
Or probably a better one that this audience can relate to....
How would you feel if your favorite sci-fi show was cancelled? There are probably plenty of shows that are about the same.....ok, well probably not....there aren't enough sci-fi shows. But there are other shows.......
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And I bet you're bad to the bone, and like one bourbon, one scotch, and one beer.
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Oddly enough, xmarks does allow backing up to a custom server. I haven't used their official server in a couple of years, because I don't really want them harvesting my bookmarks, nor do I want them examining all my google search results.
I mean it's a neat concept and all, if you like that whole "sharing with a couple million people" thing. I'm just not that guy.
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The custom server (last I checked) only works in Firefox, and I lose the convenience of being able to access my bookmarks online. I use Xmarks to sync across browsers primarily.
If there are any cross-browser solutions for this I'd be happy to hear about it, even without the online access. Since Xmarks suggested on their blog other non-cross browser solutions, I'd wager a viable solution doesn't exist at this point.
Re:google says.... (Score:5, Informative)
None of the alternatives work across several browsers on multiple platforms. I have xmarks on chrome, firefox, safari on 2 windows pc and one mac, plus the iphone. All through xmarks.
There are no alternatives at the moment.
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Its a bookmark and sync app. Idk why theres such a big outcry if there are many alternatives
Because it's really the only one that does so across browsers...
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Its a bookmark and sync app. Idk why theres such a big outcry if there are many alternatives
Because this one works *well* and does logins/passwords too. Also it works across a lot of browsers. There isn't a good alternative (yet).
uhuh... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:uhuh... (Score:4, Insightful)
Yes, because telling everyone you're closing down and then waiting a couple of days to see them move to alternatives before announcing your clever plan works - way better than just coming out with the news "sorry guys, the only way we can survive is by charging a fee"
That's nonsense of course. You're creating a false dichotomy: either you do what XMarks did or "suddenly becoming a paid service". There would have been plenty of ways to deal with it more graciously, if they had planned to switch to a paid model. But the fact of the matter seems to be that they didn't think there would be enough paying customers. In fact, they've asked their users about this in the past, I've been with them since early beginnings. I think they were simply surprised by the number of users that turned out to be willing to pay, faced with the alternative of the service just disappearing.
What is strange about all this is the fact that XMarks was unable to find a buyer or investor, if it now turns out XMarks can make a living out of selling this service. What did these investors see that XMarks doesn't? Will XMarks survive, or will they come to the same conclusion as the investors and decide it will never make a decent profit?
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Yes, because telling everyone you're closing down and then waiting a couple of days to see them move to alternatives before announcing your clever plan works - way better than just coming out with the news "sorry guys, the only way we can survive is by charging a fee"
I have one machine left to convert from xmarks to firefox sync... This is killing them. I'm not about to convert back and chip in some cash. I probably would have been OK with chipping in some cash.
Back when no-ip.com suddenly started charging for no-ip.com domains, I coughed up some dough because I liked it, they had served me well for years with NO service complaints, and it wasn't much dough. Very much like xmarks. If they had pulled a xmarks and reported their own closure, I'd have simply moved to a
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I'm not about to convert back and chip in some cash. I probably would have been OK with chipping in some cash.
Everyone always says that. But they have had a donations button for years and less than 0.001% gave the suggested donation of $7.
The interesting thing I found in his blog post is that most of their donations came from Europe rather than the US.
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Everyone always says that. But they have had a donations button for years and less than 0.001% gave the suggested donation of $7.
I used Xmarks for about 3 years and never once have I had a need to go to their webpage. Maybe they shouldn't have made such a good product so I would go need support from their website and see their donation button.
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I tried Firefox Sync, it simply doesn't cut it, limits me to a single browser and is slow, so slow that one hour after I added a set of bookmarks, they still were not synced across machines. XMarks however does that right after a new Bookmark is added.
On the other hand, if they "just started charging" I would have dumped the service based on a probably wrong assumption, and that would have been that th
Publicity Stunt? (Score:5, Interesting)
But not a bad one at that... Why simply implement a premium pricing plan when you can get a bunch of free press and encourage a public outpouring their love for your product.
I signed the pledge.
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Setting up such a bookmark/password/sync app takes a lot of time, and it's a pain to switch services. People who use it already would rather pay than see it go away.
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I remember when iwantsandy shut down and initially there wasn't even going to be a way of exporting ones information. Paying wasn't an option, and at no time did they even bother to ask the people that had come to rely upon it for help paying the bills, or even let on that it was becoming a problem.
Free services are vuln
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But Xmarks did tell you. They gave you alternatives. They even were going to keep Xmarks active until January so you'd have time to research and find a viable alternative.
They had no reason to believe that enough people would pay to support their server costs, especially since they had been asking for donations and receiving nowhere near enough. Then, after they announced they were closing, the massive response convinced them to reevaluate their options, believing that maybe they could earn enough to kee
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Not really. It's as easy as installing Firefox Sync, and setting up an account there. This is a 3-minute operation. If they'd stayed open until FF-4 (which will come with sync built-in), it'd have been even less of an effort.
Also, Xmarks has been getting increasingly annoying for a while now, with added antifeatures like manipulating search-results with their opinion of the links and thus submitting your search-history to them. Yes you can turn this off, but it's still an annoyance.
In contrast, Firefox sync
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Just curious, does Firefox sync addon support syncing to your own server somehow?
I see no mention of such a feature on the plugin webpage, but you mention "so even if you sync to their servers" which implies the option.
Because you're googleing for "firefox sync own server" or something like that. The product went thru a name change, during R+D it was called "WEAVE". So google for something like "firefox weave support own servers" and eventually you find detailed descriptions of exactly what to do to set up your own sync server.
Such as:
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Labs/Weave/Sync/1.0/Setup [mozilla.org]
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I do not believe that this is a publicity stunt through up by some marketing department. The amount of money they are asking for is very modest and can probably pay for the electricity, network connectivity, server space and a developer or two.
I have used Xmarks for several years and it has been a painless experience to sync across machines and platforms. In fact it is so easy to use that I forget that there is a real application running somewhere that takes care of the synchronization and storage.
If they r
you know (Score:1)
I wouldn't mind Xmarks disappearing if FireFox Sync actually had the same functionality. It doesn't. Specifically it doesn't sync automatically at browser shutdown. So if you bookmark something and then shut down the browser before the next periodic sync...it doesn't get sync'd. So I switched to Chrome. Now I keep noticing all these annoying things about Chrome that make me wish I were still using FireFox. Except...the non-Xmarks sync is deficient. Woe is me.
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Curious about why (Score:2)
Did they offer any reason why? Persistence of state on shutdown is a basic desire, and a sensible one. Not implementing an autosave-on-shutdown feature is rather braindead, unless there's some technical issue getting in the way. Are they just being curmudgeons, or do they have some rationale?
Curious,
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They said that, since FF Sync manages a lot more than just bookmarks, automatically syncing at browser shutdown would cause an unacceptable delay that would bother some users. I suggested they make it toggle-able and default "off" and was basically told, "We've already discussed this at length in other threads; we're not going to do it."
That's certainly their prerogative. It just means I'm either going to pay for Xmarks or use a different browser.
Here [google.com] is the thread.
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Interesting. Sure sounds curmudgeonly to me, but I'm happy to admit I have a very limited view of the issues.
Cheers,
Stuck in a moment they can't get out of. (Score:5, Interesting)
These "We're shutting down... oh no we're not!" stories remind me of a electronics/appliances store around here called Bernie's. See, they were losing money and decided to go out of business. They started a Going Out of Business sale and under state law, you can't advertise a Going Out of Business sale without going out of business immediately afterwards. But, a funny thing happens when you start discounting things like TVs and Monster Cables below their minimum advertised price and offering your customers good value for what they pay and cutting down on returns with an All Sales Final policy. You become... gasp... PROFITABLE!
It's legal to bring in new inventory even during a Going Out of Business sale, so they're restocking with versions of products that didn't exist when the "Going Out of Business Sale" and they've been stuck going out of business for years. It's a business model that works for them.
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On a long enough scale, we're all going out of business...
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DEAR GOD!!! You're right! What is the point.. of ANYTHING?! *harakiri*
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On a long enough scale, we're all going out of business...
Some worthless bank in a commodity market (banking) almost goes out of business, its "too big to fail" so the govt takes our money to bail out the failed management, whom promptly award themselves bonuses.
On the other hand, a genuinely useful non-commodity service goes out of business, and its tough luck charlie.
Brilliant PR (Score:1)
This is almost as good as an it could be worse [youtube.com] plan. Instead of doing research about your customer base and if they're willing to pay... announce you're going to pay model, announce you are going to shutdown.. let your users beg to pay for a service they used to get for free.
You have framed the conversation. And all "complaints" about going to a pay service are now de-legitimized.
Youtube, Twitter, Facebook could learn from them.... not making money? Striving to find a business model? Want to
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Did the hire the GOG PR clowns? (Score:1)
Announce shutdown
Illustrate free alternatives
Display a big "delete everything now button"
Yerp, they are dead to me.
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Services like this depend upon the users to trust that it's going to be there, it's not like GoG where they encouraged people to keep backups, you
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Warning: Pay for ZoneEdit or you'll lose free DNS. (Score:4, Informative)
Also in the business-model-change department that users of this site will care about, ZoneEdit [zonedit.com] is transitioning accounts to a new business model soon. People who enjoyed five free domains worth of DNS service will see their free service cut to two domains (potentially leaving some forgotten-about sites unreachable) unless they've paid for credits for their premium services at some point in the past. They're also multiplying stored credits by 12 because they're going monthly instead of annual credit usage.
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Thanks for the info. Yargh...anyone know of possible alternatives out there? What a PITA..
There isn't an alternative (Score:3, Insightful)
I signed the pledge.
I tried Firefox sync but it's not quite as good and it's not cross-browser.
Nothing I'd pay for. (Score:2)
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It's about keeping your bookmarks in sync across all of the various computers you have/use in a day. If you only use one, it's probably not for you.
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Actually, I don't want them to be in sync. At work I have work related bookmarks, and at home I have non-work related bookmarks. Even where the same bookmark appears on both computers, they are usually in quite different places, because the bookmarks are organized for different purposes.
Now having said that, easily accessing each other's bookmarks would still be nice, but not by making them the same.
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You aren't very bright are you ? This is the *ONLY* utility that allows you to automatically sync bookmarks across browsers and computers. I have 10s of thousands of bookmarks across 3 machines.
Do you have any idea how quickly those would get out of sync if I was forced to do manually ?!
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I've never udersttod the need for more than a dozen or two bookmarks. All the main sites I use have either memerable URLs or can be found reliably in quick one or two word Google search.
On;y a few useful but rarely used sites that don't have memorable URLs do I ever bookmark. I have 23 bookmarks in Firefox, and many of those were ancient things added by accident, that I never bothered to delete.
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I use tabs for that - right now, I have about 40 tabs open. Of course, I only use one browser, so syncing would be useless anyway.
I have bookmarks, but I wouldn't mind losing them - it would just take me a while to dig to the specific page on the website, and I might forget a couple of links, but nothing important.
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Oh, if I need stuff for months I won't trust bookmarks either - I'll save a copy of the pages to the disk. I don't want to suffer 404 hell :|
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All the main sites I use have either memerable URLs or can be found reliably in quick one or two word Google search.
Which is exactly why I don't bookmark "bankofamerica.com"
On the other hand I do bookmark apparently the only source of drivers for an obscure Taiwanese settop PC video card which I found on a link from a link from a link from a link etc, and I can't even google for it because I don't speak Chinese so I wouldn't know what to type, probably a screen full of UTF-8. From memory its a via micro ITX from about 2005 with a strange on board video card, but thats probably not even the right manufacturer much less s
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Doesn't Delicious do that or am I missing something?
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Unison [upenn.edu] is better for two-way sync (even with more machines, as long as you sync pairs: AB, BC).
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Unison is better for two-way sync (even with more machines, as long as you sync pairs: AB, BC).
I use a hub -n- spoke topology.
For small text-y stuff with lots of files I use git. For individual config files I tend to use Puppet. For big multimedia collections its unison time. And to "do it all" on request, I have a script that takes care of it. Distributed in git of course.
For big fun, roughly "once per debian stable release" unison changes its online format. So default unison from lenny is not going to sync with squeeze. For civilized OSes, backports are available for mostly seamless interoper
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When this many people love it, maybe you should actually take the time to look into what it does before dismissing it. You think you're the first person in the world to notice that you can export bookmarks?
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Import/export:
1) Click bookmark manager
2) click export
3) choose path
4) insert usb drive
5) copy file
6) remove drive
7) insert drive on another PC
8) open bookmark manager
9) import file
10) deal with inconsistencies and duplicated bookmarks
Xmarks:
1) Close browser
2) open browser in another computer
Yes, Xmarks users are the stupid ones.
I use my own server (Score:2)
I never used xmarks' server so I don't really see the need for paying for their service. I would pay for their software though. It's very handy and has been working flawlessly for me for quite some years now.
$2 million dollars a year (Score:2)
Really
What the hell were they spending that on?
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2 Million a year.
Office building lease, business overhead (insurance, legal consult, business licenses etc) could be 300-500K easily. ...
Couple of executives worth having in a startup.. 150-200K each/year, so another 500K
5 decent programmers. 100G each/year, so 500K
Couple of sysadmins 150K
Server Hardware budget including provisioning/replacement/depreciation 200K
Telecom costs 100K
Office manager, secretary, general cost of business, travel expenses, tradeshows, customer focus groups?
Seriously, if you thin
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$2mil/yr is peanuts, in almost any business serving more than a small handful of clients. OTOH, if you run your business out of your mom's basement, $250k/yr may be enough. </sarcasm>
From their blog (Score:1)
"This is not a scientific experiment to predict what % of our base will pay, but it's a data point that will definitely help."
No, it's not an experiment. It is a very deliberate effort to increase the perceived value of the XMarks assets by attaching an anticipated revenue stream, thereby increasing the amount of money a potential suitor would need to pay.
Clever. Very clever.
Not worth $: It's a feature not a product. (Score:2)
Xmarks had a great idea but it doomed from the start. Syncing bookmarks isn't a product. It is a feature like spellcheck in a Word Processor. It can't stand alone and can't be protected from others doing the same thing. Thus it can't be marketed as the only place to get this feature. Google or Firefox will have it built in at some point because they can recreate it without paying the original creators for the idea. Had they patented the idea they might have had a chance. IF they could patent it. As
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I'd pay for it. I have multiple machines all running multiple browsers. I also often reformat my machines. What xmarks does is not easy, AND they do it quite well, so they have a lot more going for them than a single lousy patent-able idea.
Yeah, I know organizations like the RIAA exist and profit solely from the concept of exclusive rights to intellectual property, but some companies still make money by making something GOOD.
I'm happy to see my money going toward something I've been using for free for years
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I understand the value. But you really think that Google will not be offering all the features of Xmarks in the next 3-6 months? For free(in exchange for data mining your bookmarks and tracking the use of them of course.)
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Seeing as how Xmarks has been around for 6 years and this hasn't happened yet, that's exactly what I think.
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Syncing bookmarks is a product. As is connecting Evolution to an Exchange server. As is pretty much anything that makes people's lives easier. At the moment there is no other product doing the job, and as their pledge page shows there are tens of thousands of people prepared to pay for such a service.
Sure anybody can do the same thing, they've been able to for all the years Xmarks has been around. But they haven't.
Sure Google can do a Firefox version of their sync, or Firefox can do a Google version of thei
At what price? (Score:2)
And these "organizations who might be willing to buy the company's assets and keep the service going" would be planning to do what with the (hopefully) aggregated data?
I support the pledge... (Score:1)
if not, please prove me wrong
since the 27.09.10 I tried Opera and just can't get used to the stuff moving the frame on the left hand side. I tried Firfox sync and not sure if it works, need to check later at home.
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OK, so how does this work again?
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