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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

#41

Post by DanBC »

dragonwriter wrote: post #26
kevingadd wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

That is a truly baffling stance to take.

Firefox will present new users a panel of six ad tiles. These exist as placeholders for the most visited site tiles. The ads are replaced by the most visited sites, and then they are gone.

Chrome - exists to gather information about the user to send that information back to Google for them to more efficiently serve you ads.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#42

Post by fauigerzigerk »

zebra wrote: post #28
lucb1e wrote: post #4

I'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.

The point is that Firefox was supposed to be the browser where you can feel safe. The way they are explaining this new monetization scheme makes me feel that I have to get my guard up.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#43

Post by shrikant »

sheetjs wrote: post #30
chris_wot wrote: post #11

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…

> 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 safe…

See this: https://web.archive.org/web/20100614055220/http://chromium.h...

I'm not sure what's changed since then, but it's worth considering.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#44

Post by lucian1900 »

DanBC wrote: post #40
lucian1900 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd really much rather pay for Firefox (or almost any product/service, really) than have to live with ads.

These ads only exist until you've populated your six most visited sites. The google default exists until you change it. You have already been living with ads. But the google ad was not explicit.

The Google ad happened to match my preferences, sure. I would've noticed more if the default was different.

But just because I live with ads doesn't mean I like it. I'd much rather pay Google a flat fee for all of their services for the assurance that I will never see an ad and my data is not used for their mining.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#45

Post by lucian1900 »

blueskin_ wrote: post #34

New tab thumbnails preemptively disabled. Between this, making Sync less secure and Australis, I start seriously wondering if Mozilla are attempting to drive users away.

The more secure sync was apparently too hard to use for non-experts.

Australis is a matter of taste, I personally like it.

They're trying to not drive users away, but you and I are a tiny minority.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#46

Post by blueskin_ »

lucian1900 wrote: post #45
blueskin_ wrote: post #34

New tab thumbnails preemptively disabled. Between this, making Sync less secure and Australis, I start seriously wondering if Mozilla are attempting to drive users away.

The more secure sync was apparently too hard to use for non-experts. Australis is a matter of taste, I personally like it. They're trying to not drive users away, but you and I are a tiny minority.

So why not educate users instead? Especially with the NSA/GCHQ spying still so recent.

Firefox is already a power user's browser - the masses who just want a dumb facebook/youtube/twitter/gmail terminal mostly use chrome and will continue to do so, unaware and unconcerned with customisation and privacy issues (my parents use chrome, and didn't have any addons installed at one point (they now have adblock)). Firefox will never even catch up to where chrome is today in market share, let alone pass it, and I'm fine with that, as it's a browser for power users - customisable, privacy-respecting and more 'traditional' by giving users actual control over their experience and options to customise functionality and looks.

To use beer as an analogy, Chrome is {Budweiser/PBR/Coors/Miller/etc}; Firefox is a craft beer. Yes, it's nicer, but not as accessible, and the majority of people neither know nor care as it's not their market.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#47

Post by chris_wot »

fauigerzigerk wrote: post #42
zebra wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The point is that Firefox was supposed to be the browser where you can feel safe. The way they are explaining this new monetization scheme makes me feel that I have to get my guard up.

Darren Herman is from MDC Partners, a massive advertising company. Then he founded a "media management" company. He's a "marketing innovator".

He writes ambiguous phrases that tend to contradict themselves like "Publisher Transformation with Users at the Center" (what?) and "The new tab page isn’t delivering any value for them." (double-what?)

Let's look at some of the wording from this guy [1], it's straight out of some PR/advertising agency. It makes me so incredibly suspicious, and I worry it will be counter to Mozilla's goals.

"Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla’s pursuit of our mission."

A given geographic region? Who says that it's popular? Hand-picked partners? Who picks them? What are the requirements for being "hand-picked"?

Let's look at some more language, filled with buzz-words and devalued propositions:

We are excited about Directory Tiles because it has inherent value to our users.

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.

When the user is at the center everyone benefits

We believe that if you put the user front and center, you can make every experience for them richer and more meaningful.

I know many will find me harsh, but when I read these things I also immediately have my guard up. I wonder what is being hidden behind these frankly contradictory and ambiguous statements. There is, to my mind, a falseness to them that is disturbing. This sort of language is what a politician or PR agency would use to deliver unpalatable news. I feel very strongly that it has no place being on an official Mozilla blog.

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

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#48

Post by panacea »

chris_wot wrote: post #18
panacea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You think Mozilla will ride the slippery slope to promoting malware or something in the tiles?

It will be links to decent sponsors webpages I'll bet.

Their announcement has been filtered through asshole media.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#49

Post by joveian »

chris_wot wrote: post #18
panacea wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm guessing they aren't going to do tracking yet, but I agree the "we're going to start advertising for the users" presentation is super worrying. This is advanced doublethink. If they can't be honest about the most reasonable changes then I don't trust that they won't at some point make unreasonable changes and simply not mention them. It sounds like they may be trying to copy Opera so take a look at what Opera is doing to see where they might be headed.

Re: Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox

#50

Post by dragonwriter »

DanBC wrote: post #41
dragonwriter wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

That is a truly baffling stance to take. Firefox will present new users a panel of six ad tiles. These exist as placeholders for the most visited site tiles. The ads are replaced by the most visited sites, and then they are gone. Chrome - exists to gather information about the user to send that information back to Google for them to more efficiently serve you ads.

IOW, Chrome affects the selection of ads I'm presented on web pages where I am going to see ads no matter what browser I use, Firefox shows additional ads.
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