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Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

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Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#41

Post by darkpuma »

clairity wrote: post #29
jchw wrote: post #16

Wow. They keep using that word 'experiment' to mean 'I can run whatever code I want on an end user's computer' which is not right. It's an ad. You're pushing ads. It's not the worst thing in the world if you just call it what it is, but using the 'experiments' mechanism to push ads is scummy and to me a violation of trust. I've been running Firefox inside of Firejail, a sandbox, lately, primarily as a light form of e…

the difference may not matter to you but it's not an ad because it's not a paid placement. no personal info is shared up front either. obviously you'd share info once you click on it. i don't like ads either, but this seems better than the standard track-you-out-the-wazoo ad.

> the difference may not matter to you but it's not an ad because it's not a paid placement.

Why should that matter? It makes not a lick of difference to me whether they got paid for it or not.

Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#43

Post by nvo »

Mozilla's death will be one of the saddest dead-horse-beatings to be ever seen. Personally I've switched to Chrome after so many years of using Firefox and I'm not looking back. I'll be stabbed in the back, but I won't say I didn't expect it! Also the knife in my back will be placed by competent people, keeping my bleeding to a minimum ^_^

Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#44

Post by scarejunba »

david-gpu wrote: post #4
gulbanana wrote: post #3

how do these people convince themselves that the problem with ads is privacy and tracking? i use an ad blocker so that i _won’t see ads_.

I would happily pay a flat $50/month for an ad-free experience where content producers got paid for each of their pages I visit.

I, too, would pay $1000 for unlimited use of any supercar I want.

Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#45

Post by yowlingcat »

clairity wrote: post #25

the hubbub over this seems overblown. sure, there is advertising value to booking.com, but if no data is shared with them until you click on the offer, this seems like a decent privacy-respecting effort to find another revenue stream for mozilla that's not google. if you already use booking.com, it's 20 bucks free. moreover you can turn off snippets in the about:preferences > Home tab. at least it's not chrome, which…

Please don't resort to whataboutism to defend a move that would obviously alienate a very core part of Firefox's userbase. Being better than Chrome is a very low bar. This hubbub seems overblown to you, but not to others, and from your comments on this thread, you don't seem to understand why.

Firefox has traditionally been the _only_ major browser that champions the traditional freedoms that many folks (myself included) associate with the web. For me personally, that involves looking at the commercial internet as a subset of the internet as a whole, which is a successful decentralized system which has reached escape velocity. The legacy of Firefox is the legacy of that system. You seem to presume that the corporation and its profitability is necessary for Firefox to be successful, and so a "decent privacy-respecting effort to find another revenue stream" rooted in advertisements is reasonable. I don't agree on principle, and I don't agree in practice, because these things take away the sole differentiator that prevents Firefox from becoming Chrome with less market share.

This is probably the central thing that might make sense for you to think about: what is the market differentiator for Firefox? Why would anyone bother to use it versus Chrome? Being less obnoxious in doing sketchy things but still doing them is not a good reason. Not doing sketchy things is a good reason.

Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#46

Post by csande17 »

x0x0 wrote: post #22
TAForObvReasons wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's simple: $$$$$. Every one of these actions is a short-term cash grab. The real amazing part is how privacy advocates let these transgressions, or what Mozilla calls "experiments", slide.

Here's reality, though: The minimum annual cash burn to have a high quality browser engine, js runtime, and UI seems to be several hundred million dollars. FF is now utterly dependent on google for cash (and to be fair, google really needs FF to exist to pretend chrome isn't close to a monopoly). But who knows how long that will last and if/when google will exert control. One of the best things for Mozilla to do as a…

I sometimes wonder why Firefox needs to be actively developed at all. The Web already has all the features it needs to be insanely successful, as evidenced by the fact that it's insanely successful. Why do we need to add more?

Sure, security fixes are important, but it seems like browser developers spend more of their time on new features. Things like a new and exciting way to use asterisks in JavaScript, or another UI redesign, or an API for websites to interact directly with smart waffle irons. Maybe if Mozilla didn't develop these things, they wouldn't need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars a year on their browser.

Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#47

Post by x0x0 »

mprev wrote: post #27
x0x0 wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's reality, though: The minimum annual cash burn to have a high quality browser engine, js runtime, and UI seems to be several hundred million dollars. FF is now utterly dependent on google for cash (and to be fair, google really needs FF to exist to pretend chrome isn't close to a monopoly). But who knows how long that will last and if/when google will exert control. One of the best things for Mozilla to do as a…

Yes but Mozilla does a lot more now than produce and maintain software. For example, in 2017 it spent $24m on its internet health project [1]. I’m making no judgement about that but there are two sides to fiscal longevity: getting more money is one, the other is to focus spending. 1. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2017/

Oh, don't get me wrong: Mozilla wanking about with firefox phone from 2011 to 2015 while watching their browser marketshare crater from 30% to 15% is infuriating. However, they're the only alternative we've got.

Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#48

Post by clairity »

yowlingcat wrote: post #45
clairity wrote: post #25

the hubbub over this seems overblown. sure, there is advertising value to booking.com, but if no data is shared with them until you click on the offer, this seems like a decent privacy-respecting effort to find another revenue stream for mozilla that's not google. if you already use booking.com, it's 20 bucks free. moreover you can turn off snippets in the about:preferences > Home tab. at least it's not chrome, which…

Please don't resort to whataboutism to defend a move that would obviously alienate a very core part of Firefox's userbase. Being better than Chrome is a very low bar. This hubbub seems overblown to you, but not to others, and from your comments on this thread, you don't seem to understand why. Firefox has traditionally been the _only_ major browser that champions the traditional freedoms that many folks (myself inclu…

i deny your whataboutism and counter with slippery slope!

but seriously, i don’t think it’s a big deal because

1) no personal data is shared up front

2) it's an experiment

3) you can turn it off/block it

4) some people might appreciate the discount

5) there’s a wide non-slippery gulf between complete ad blocking and complete tracking

6) mozilla might find a decent compromise between those extremes, which is sorely missing

7) i trust mozilla to course-correct if necessary, as they have in the past.

i don’t want ads everywhere either, and i applaud your principles, but please apply them to helping mozilla find non-ad and non-google revenue streams (assuming you’re not anti-revenue as well). please work through and put forth a rationale, not an emotional appeal, and refrain from condecscension.

n.b. - i've used firefox since it was called phoenix (v0.3).

Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#49

Post by david-gpu »

scarejunba wrote: post #44
david-gpu wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would happily pay a flat $50/month for an ad-free experience where content producers got paid for each of their pages I visit.

I, too, would pay $1000 for unlimited use of any supercar I want.

Snarkiness does not help.

Right now publishers make zero from me because I have a couple layers of ad blockers. If I'm willing to pay X for some number of ad-free articles, which does not have to be unlimited, then publishers would be making X dollars more.

Re: Mozilla: Ad on Firefox’s new tab page was just another experiment

#50

Post by scarejunba »

david-gpu wrote: post #49
scarejunba wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I, too, would pay $1000 for unlimited use of any supercar I want.

Snarkiness does not help. Right now publishers make zero from me because I have a couple layers of ad blockers. If I'm willing to pay X for some number of ad-free articles, which does not have to be unlimited, then publishers would be making X dollars more.

Yup. That's why I don't pay for HBO, so I totally get it. If they want to make it $2, at least they'd get something from me. Until then, there's always Putlocker. Their loss, really.
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