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Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

cnet.com

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Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#11

Post by chris_wot »

The original blog post was on HN front page yesterday and it got voted down to oblivion. Or hit some sort of threshold. Frankly, I find the original blog post to be unbelievably weasily - especially this:

"We believe that if you put the user front and center, you can make every experience for them richer and more meaningful. The Content Services team has embraced this, and today I wanted to share some of our thinking and explain our first steps for putting it into practice."

and then:

"While Mozilla hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with all viewpoints in the digital content community, particularly the IAB, we think they’d agree that users’ interests should come first, and we want to help their members deliver compelling content to strengthen the Web ecosystem."

This:

* beats around the bush

* starts with spin

* says that advertisers have the best interest of users in mind - and I assure you, they do not.

I am very, very unimpressed.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#13

Post by panacea »

vanderZwan wrote: post #3

> "We wanted to get away from being this window into the web that doesn't bring value," to users, she said. Nice bit of doublespeak there. Not showing me ads is valuable to me, you jerks.

I don't get the anger at this. They're talking about pre-populating the tiles with some websites before you fill them up with your own most visited sites.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#14

Post by chris_wot »

eXpl0it3r wrote: post #10
matthewbadeau wrote: post #2

The link didn't work for me but I found the article here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-1001_3-57618750-92/mozilla-to-sell...

Didn't work for me either, thanks for a working link!

Try the original blog post:

https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#16

Post by doe88 »

rubbingalcohol wrote: post #12

I would be happy to see ads on the new tab page in Firefox if it means supporting Mozilla. They're doing so much stuff to protect freedom on the Internet, and I just don't see the big deal with helping talented people pay their bills.

Likewise if it's done wisely (no tracking, ads provided only from Mozilla servers and ideally only once in a while) I'm all for it.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#17

Post by kevingadd »

rplnt wrote: post #8
kevingadd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-profits still have to pay salaries. Or would you prefer FF effectively no longer exist and have to use Chrome instead? Honestly, explicit ads marked as ads in the UI are preferable to hidden advertisement/deals - like defaulting to Google search without communicating to users that money has changed hands for that preferential treatment.

Don't they have enough money from Google? They must make at least one dollar a year from each user through search. One would guess... Or is Google finally cutting into that? Just another way to get rid of competing browsers? Sadly Bing isn't an alternative outside of US (and I'm not even sure about that).

Define 'enough money'. Should they cut back every non-essential employee until they have 5 people in a room, one of them responsible for all Firefox development? Should they assume that the Google revenue party will last forever, despite the fact that Google clearly is motivated to get all users on their own browser?

I think it makes sense to diversify the ways they can earn money, and advertising is a reasonable approach as long as it's honest. Nothing here seems to indicate that they will be disguising advertisements or sacrificing usability in favor of advertisements.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#18

Post by chris_wot »

panacea wrote: post #13
vanderZwan wrote: post #3

> "We wanted to get away from being this window into the web that doesn't bring value," to users, she said. Nice bit of doublespeak there. Not showing me ads is valuable to me, you jerks.

I don't get the anger at this. They're talking about pre-populating the tiles with some websites before you fill them up with your own most visited sites.

I can only really speak for myself, but the reason I feel angry is because advertising is a manipulative and often dishonest industry. Mozilla is the total antithesis of this, and it seems very wrong the way it was announced and the manner in which it was done.

I certainly don't see any discussion around the decision - who made the decision to prepopulate the tiles? Where is the original debate? How involved was the IAB in this decision? When did this get decided and for how long now? What stakeholders were notified?

What about privacy concerns - how will these ads target me? I don't want Firefox to turn into some sort of Facebook where my data isn't safe. There are no details about how they will achieve this increased advertising. In the original blog post, they have said they will target advertising via the country you are residing in - but what other data will it start detecting?

All very worrying.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#19

Post by kevingadd »

pekk wrote: post #7
kevingadd wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-profits still have to pay salaries. Or would you prefer FF effectively no longer exist and have to use Chrome instead? Honestly, explicit ads marked as ads in the UI are preferable to hidden advertisement/deals - like defaulting to Google search without communicating to users that money has changed hands for that preferential treatment.

A browser which shows me ads versus one which doesn't show me ads. Pretty easy choice. In both cases the funding is coming from ads, but one of these is waving them in my face all the time and the other one isn't.

The Google search bar that appears in Firefox when you install it, with a Google icon, is effectively an advertisement paid for with Google's money. The fact that it's an effective advertisement (and most people use that search bar) doesn't make it not an advertisement.

Note that for example the default search provider has been different in other countries at times based on other advertising deals Mozilla made - not just Google. It's easier to view it as not-an-ad when it's a search provider you use; less so than when it is a random provider that bid the highest amount.

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