[deleted]
Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
21–30 of 52 posts
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#22Earlier 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).
Mozilla has publicly stated that they make at least $300 million per year from Google (as of 2011) [1]. Although there are reports that this is closer to $1 billion per year now (including all search-related revenues).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#23> "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.
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.
> Or would you prefer FF effectively no longer exist and have to use Chrome instead?
With this anti-feature, I would use Chrome anyway -- even if it was otherwise identical to FF.
> 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.
Whether its the default I prefer or one that I don't, the why they set the default doesn't matter. What matters is (a) is it clear up front what the default is, (b) is it what I prefer, and (c) if not, is it clear and simple to change.
OTOH, ads in the browser UI are a significant anti-feature compared to all the browsers that don't do that.
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#24I'm thinking about proposing something like "I'll run your bloody ads for 1 month. Then you tell me how much you earn off of me and I'll pay you twice that." I'm all for Mozilla getting income from more sources (instead of search engine revenue), but I just don't like ads. There is a reason I donated in the past. If I can't disable the ads this way, it's not that hard to install an add-on that does it, edit about:con…
In my config I set browser.newtab.url to about:blank
I have someone javascript bookmarklets and they don't work with the regular new tab page, but they do with about:blank
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#25Reading the original article [1] this doesn't look like such a big issue.
For new users that don't have any recently used sites rather than blank tiles they will get some Mozilla suggested sites and some sponsored tiles.
I presume for existing users you'll never even see these and, for new users, as soon as you've actually visited some sites these will disappear.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#26Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 app…
> 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?
Building an additional layer of advertising into the FF browser is a good way to advance Google's goal of getting all users on Google's browser.
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#27"Mozilla said that the ads are part of an attempt to connect new browser users to sites that they might find relevant."
I understand that Mozilla is looking for ways to fund itself. But they should not join those who use the word "relevant" in this disingenuous way.
This phrasing is an obvious attempt to sugarcoat the fact that we are being inundated by so many schemes to grab a piece of our limited cognitive capacity that we wouldn't even be able to notice something relevant if it were actually there.
Mozilla's advantage over other browser makers is that users trust them not to use the kind of deceptive chicanery that we're being subjected to left and right. So they better not ruin that trust by using dishonest language.
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#28I'm thinking about proposing something like "I'll run your bloody ads for 1 month. Then you tell me how much you earn off of me and I'll pay you twice that." I'm all for Mozilla getting income from more sources (instead of search engine revenue), but I just don't like ads. There is a reason I donated in the past. If I can't disable the ads this way, it's not that hard to install an add-on that does it, edit about:con…
The ads in fact are placeholders in the empty dial screen. They will disappear after you visit 6 sites. I'm not 100% sure, but I think that you will not be tracked if they are shown to you.
If Mozilla does not cross this border I'm fine with this very passive advertisement.
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#29The 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…
Especially the last part infuriates me, I'm now being done a favor by having ads shoved in my face against my will?
There is just no way you can spin that as "helping", it's advertisements, nothing more, nothing less.
Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
#30The 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…
> it got voted down to oblivion.
It was flagged heavily, which shouldn't be a surprise given the heavy pro-Mozilla bias here. (case in point: this post will be downvoted at least a few times in the next few minutes)
But to be fair, the ads haven't been rolled out yet, and there's a nonzero chance Mozilla will come to their senses and reverse course. And if not, use a browser that actually values your privacy and safety (my current browser is SRWare Iron https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php)