Geolocation in firefox doesn't work anymore

[Éric Piel (Delmic)]

Since a couple of days (around beginning of August 2016) the geolocation in Firefox doesn't work anymore. I _think_ (but not entirely sure) this happened already with Firefox 47.

That seems to affect all the website using the W3C geolocation, but to test, go for example to:
http://benwerd.com/lab/geo.php

In the popup, accept to share the location, and the text displayed in the location is:
"The page could not get your location."

My computer is running Ubuntu 16.04, with Firefox 48.0+build2-0ubuntu0.16.04.1 .

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

indeed, that gives an error on xenial, tried on openstreetmap and http://html5demos.com/geo as well

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

trying on chromium it doesn't work either, openstreetmap is giving errors as well (but chromium hints that is only active for https webpage so I tried with https which also doesn't work but gives a different error), bing map seems to work though

[Chad Miller (cmiller)]

The Google API calls for reaolving Geoloc crept from 90 to 100% utilization in July. I sent mail to Pavel H at Google to ask for a higher quota. I suspect some ad network is now using html5 geoloc more often.

[Éric Piel (Delmic) (piel)]

As a workaround, for now, I've switched the geolocation service to MLS, as described there:
https://location.services.mozilla.com/apps

The drawback is that it's a lot let precise (although I've contributed a lot to MLS in my region!).

[Clément de l'Hamaide (clemaez)]

Being the maintainer of a web application using the geolocation API I confirm that geolocation won't work anymore since begin of July.

The workaround from Éric Piel works fine.

Hoping Google will accepts higher quota, geolocation API is more and more implemented everywhere on the web, we need a long term solution where quota should not be a problem.

[Amr Ibrahim (amribrahim1987)]

This also affects me on Ubuntu 14.04.5 (Xenial HWE stack). Bing Maps can't get my location either.

[Pierre Rudloff (rudloff)]

Debian switched to MLS by default and I guess Ubuntu could do the same. This would help avoid quota issues.

[Delmic BV (delmicbv)]

This now works fine again, so this bug can be closed.
(However since Firefox 55 geolocation only works on https websites so the test website will not work).