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Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

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Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#31

Post by kijin »

jiggy2011 wrote: post #15
Numberwang wrote: post #14

I'd love for the possibility to start paying for stuff again. Adds bore me. I wonder how much one would reasonably have to pay to make adds go away completely from Google and friends. It would also be in their interest to have customers pay a base fee as then It would be much easier for them to sell extended services like music, movies and privacy.

If you released a pay-for firefox then everyone would just start using iceweasel which could still happen if the ads get too annoying.

If Mozilla ever releases a paid version of Firefox, I'm sure they'll also keep an ad-supported version for people who don't want to pay.

And thus we return to the glorious days of "shareware" and ad-supported "free trials".

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#32

Post by zobzu »

Pacabel wrote: post #17
ForHackernews wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox needs to make money. An optional extension that hardly anyone will install won't help with that.

Yes, that's obvious. What you've missed is the overarching issue here, though. Mozilla will strip out useful functionality from Firefox (like the status bar, for example), and anyone desiring such functionality is told to install some extension to restore the now-missing functionality. If such an attitude is acceptable when it comes to functionality that Firefox users find useful, then it is just as acceptable when i…

i would actually like if firefox just came out of the box with a set of extensions enabled that mozilla chooses.

ie everything would be an extension (or in their words, addon).

That would ensure everything stays compatible and that you can make your browser look exactly the way you want (it would also shut you up! :p)

That being said having looked and sometimes contributed to the gecko source code this is not something that is easily doable.

Til then im actually quite happy with their choices. i uninstalled my status bar addon eventually. Its better without it. I even like the new FF UI. Sure theres a few things that could be better, but overral i find most of the complains to be because of the "i dont want any change, better or not" attitude (even i have a little bit of that attitude).

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#33

Post by maxerickson »

Pacabel wrote: post #24
21echoes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Desktop Firefox, for example, has gotten progressively worse over time. by what metrics? it uses less RAM, runs faster JS, renders faster, is easier to write add-ons for, is more in line with the HTML5 feature-set... > Mobile Firefox on Android doesn't exactly offer a very pleasant experience. compared to what? the stock browser? mobile chrome? in my experience it blows both of those out of the water. > They've was…

Well, after each desktop Firefox update I ask myself, "Am I better off now than I was with the last version?" In the Phoenix, Firebird and Firefox pre-4 days, I'd quite often find myself answering with "Yes". Since Firefox 4, though, I'm not sure if I've answered with "Yes" even once. Sometimes I'm not any better or worse off, but most times I'm worse off. For example, extensions would break very frequently for a lon…

I'm not sure I like the UI changes in 29, but it is, at least qualitatively, much faster. I also saw a nice drop in resource usage somewhere around 20.

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#34

Post by [deleted] »

Pacabel wrote: post #24
21echoes wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Desktop Firefox, for example, has gotten progressively worse over time. by what metrics? it uses less RAM, runs faster JS, renders faster, is easier to write add-ons for, is more in line with the HTML5 feature-set... > Mobile Firefox on Android doesn't exactly offer a very pleasant experience. compared to what? the stock browser? mobile chrome? in my experience it blows both of those out of the water. > They've was…

Well, after each desktop Firefox update I ask myself, "Am I better off now than I was with the last version?" In the Phoenix, Firebird and Firefox pre-4 days, I'd quite often find myself answering with "Yes". Since Firefox 4, though, I'm not sure if I've answered with "Yes" even once. Sometimes I'm not any better or worse off, but most times I'm worse off. For example, extensions would break very frequently for a lon…

[deleted]

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#35

Post by kijin »

sheetjs wrote: post #8
rjzzleep wrote: post #4

i have a lot of little beefs with new firefox versions for example not knowing that firefox leaks dns when you hover a link with no easy way to disable it. but sponsored tiles is not one of them. out of all the browsers out there with silly home screen tiles firefox's are the easiest to disable or never actually hit in practice depending on your browser habits. it's not even really ads just someones homepage similar…

I don't think the ads were the problem. The language that bothered me was the phrase "user-enhancing" when describing ads. Call a spade a spade

I agree. I don't have a problem with unobtrusive ads, but people are seriously deluding themselves when they think ads enhance the browsing experience.

It almost feels like a case of Stockholm syndrome. We're stuck with ads anyway, so why don't we come up with silly reasons to like them . . .

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#36

Post by Spittie »

ladzoppelin wrote: post #16

Mozilla is amazing. Just please be really transparent about these new changes and I do not think people will care. I definitely support any changes that can bring in more revenue for the company.

They are, most of what they do is open in the wild. See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?quicksearch=directo...

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#37

Post by Spittie »

kijin wrote: post #35
sheetjs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the ads were the problem. The language that bothered me was the phrase "user-enhancing" when describing ads. Call a spade a spade

I agree. I don't have a problem with unobtrusive ads, but people are seriously deluding themselves when they think ads enhance the browsing experience. It almost feels like a case of Stockholm syndrome. We're stuck with ads anyway, so why don't we come up with silly reasons to like them . . .

I'll quote a guy from a different site:

    I installed Nightly on Friend's computer yesterday, and
    there were "suggested sites" on the new tab page. And you 
    know what? I was grateful. A few of them were frequently 
    visited by him, so I was able to simply pin the items 
    already there (which had recognizable icons instead of 
    thumbnails) instead of having to browse around and 
    manually click and drag.
http://www.phoronix.com/forums/showthread.php?100100-Mozilla...

I do think that ads can be useful when done right. For example, ads about tickets/cd of a band when I'm browsing Last.fm. Or ads about the stream/box of TV Series/movies when I'm browsing IMDB.

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#38

Post by jasonlotito »

kijin wrote: post #35
sheetjs wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think the ads were the problem. The language that bothered me was the phrase "user-enhancing" when describing ads. Call a spade a spade

I agree. I don't have a problem with unobtrusive ads, but people are seriously deluding themselves when they think ads enhance the browsing experience. It almost feels like a case of Stockholm syndrome. We're stuck with ads anyway, so why don't we come up with silly reasons to like them . . .

> but people are seriously deluding themselves when they think ads enhance the browsing experience.

That's because people tend to think of ads as one thing, when in reality, paid for features that enhance the browsing experience is something that people are quite happy with.

Firefox already does this with the search bar, and with default new window screen, both of which advertise for Google. It happens to also provide a service people find useful.

It sounds like Mozilla is seeing how it can apply this type of advertising to other parts of the browser.

> We're stuck with ads anyway, so why don't we come up with silly reasons to like them

HN supports ads. We just don't see it as ads because it's highly targeted and something we are interested in. Is it any less an ad because you want it?

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#39

Post by kijin »

Spittie wrote: post #37
kijin wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree. I don't have a problem with unobtrusive ads, but people are seriously deluding themselves when they think ads enhance the browsing experience. It almost feels like a case of Stockholm syndrome. We're stuck with ads anyway, so why don't we come up with silly reasons to like them . . .

I'll quote a guy from a different site: I installed Nightly on Friend's computer yesterday, and there were "suggested sites" on the new tab page. And you know what? I was grateful. A few of them were frequently visited by him, so I was able to simply pin the items already there (which had recognizable icons instead of thumbnails) instead of having to browse around and manually click and drag. http://www.phoronix.com/…

According to the article, the ads in the New Tab page will be selected before Firefox knows anything about the user's browsing habits. So there's no guarantee that they will actually be useful to him/her. If they do turn out to be useful, that's merely by chance.

Mozilla could try to ramp up the usefulness of the ads by selecting a bunch of popular sites like Facebook, Twitter and IMDb. But since those sites are already so well known, they won't have much incentive to pay for the privilege of being on the New Tab page. Many of them can already be selected in the Search bar.

Useful ads need to be contextual, but contextual ads require tracking the user's browsing habits. As a result, it is very difficult to display useful ads while respecting the user's privacy as Mozilla wants to do.

Re: Mozilla Is Moving Ahead With Sponsored Tiles On Firefox’s New-Tab Page

#40

Post by erichurkman »

Cool. I'm curious how they'll play out with non-power users. Suggested sites are not always a bad thing. I've discovered some cool sites & services through advertising.

Hopefully they hold the ads to a very high bar, akin to what Reddit does (with manual review of every ad), instead of self-service ad networks that are of dubious quality.

Granted, one of the first things I do with a fresh Firefox install is get rid of the new tab page. Opening a new tab, typing the first two letters of the site I want, and hitting enter is faster than the new tab page, waiting for the tiles/images to load, and using a mouse to click on a top site.

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