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Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

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Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#51

Post by mahouse »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #26
ama729 wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But that's not good either? Indeed, it's not a binary decision, there are other ways than just sell you user's data. For starter, Google (and now Yahoo) were giving hundreds of millions every year. What did Mozilla do with that?

What did they do with it? Have you looked at the insane amount of engineering they have done in the past 8 years? Their Javascript engine is among the fastest in the world. An insane amount of money has been pumped into hiring world-class experts to develop it. Not to mention the continuous improvements to their rendering engine, marketing and awareness projects, charity projects to get minorities like kids and women…

> Their Javascript engine is among the fastest in the world.

And still easily the slowest.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#52

Post by vdaniuk »

vegancap wrote: post #49
dannypgh wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox isn't a business, it's an open source/free software project. Mozilla is a nonprofit entity which pays some people to work on it. This is an important distinction, no?

Not particularly, they still have to gain some form of revenue to keep their core ventures. Their revenue in 2012 for example was $311 million.

An organization being for-profit or non-profit is not particularly important distinction? Elaborate please.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#53

Post by FooBarWidget »

ama729 wrote: post #38
icebraining wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly, it funded development: http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/mozilla_re...

In 2012 they had a surplus of more than $100,000,000 though... And still, $30,000,000 for administrative cost? $45,000,000 for marketing? (never saw any ads for firefox, did you? I have no idea what they spent so much money on)

Maybe you can email them and ask?

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#54

Post by ama729 »

vdaniuk wrote: post #50
ama729 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your first link: > This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users. At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except markete…

>At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. So users wouldn't care if most ads would be popups and autoplay sound, right? Oh, they would? Who is being dishonest then?

Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all. I don't think putting ads in Firefox will reduce ads on websites.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#55

Post by [deleted] »

vdaniuk wrote: post #50
ama729 wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From your first link: > This is still one of our early steps towards our goal of improving the state of digital advertising for the Web – delivering greater transparency for advertisers, better, more relevant content experiences and, above all, greater control for Firefox users. At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except markete…

>At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. So users wouldn't care if most ads would be popups and autoplay sound, right? Oh, they would? Who is being dishonest then?

[deleted]

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#56

Post by icebraining »

ama729 wrote: post #38
icebraining wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mostly, it funded development: http://venturebeat.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/mozilla_re...

In 2012 they had a surplus of more than $100,000,000 though... And still, $30,000,000 for administrative cost? $45,000,000 for marketing? (never saw any ads for firefox, did you? I have no idea what they spent so much money on)

Marketing is not just ads. They support a lot of projects like the Stupid Shit No One Needs & Terrible Ideas Hackathon[1], the Gigabit Community Fund[2], the Hive NYC Learning Network[3], and many more, which probably are itemized as marketing.

[1] http://stupidhackathon.github.io/

[2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/gigabit/

[3] http://hivenyc.org/

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#57

Post by kozukumi »

binarymax wrote: post #42

I hate ads. I love Mozilla. I understand Mozilla needs the money. I don't mind supporting them with cash. Why not have a freemium option for folks to subscribe to Firefox and hide the ads?

Freemium wouldn't work. There will be unofficial builds available with this kind of stuff removed available for free within hours of the official release.

They could charge for services such as sync but again that is going to be difficult Chrome does it for free.

I think Mozilla need to seriously look at how they are spending their money as it seems to be pretty insane some of their outgoings.

I know they are trying to diverge from just being a browser with things like Firefox OS but we all know that isn't going to ever be a real competitor to iOS and Android. Even in developing nations I think people are more likely to go with a dirt cheap Windows Phone when Windows 10 is out over a Firefox phone. One thing Windows Phone does really well is run great on very low powered devices. I can't ever see Firefox OS getting above 0.x market share.

Perhaps Mozilla is just too big now? Do they need to scale back to save money? Can they survive on a donations alone?

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#58

Post by binarymax »

icebraining wrote: post #48
binarymax wrote: post #42

I hate ads. I love Mozilla. I understand Mozilla needs the money. I don't mind supporting them with cash. Why not have a freemium option for folks to subscribe to Firefox and hide the ads?

You have. Disable the feature (yes, it's easy to disable) and donate.

I do donate :) My point is show a message that says 'Subscribe to hide these ads' or something similar. The process you describe is not ideal for most uses who might not even know they can donate. Remove the friction.

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#59

Post by [deleted] »

FooBarWidget wrote: post #46
hiamnew wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a whole cosmos of FLOSS software that utterly destroys that argument.

As an open source developer myself, I say that you are way too optimistic about it. With a few exceptions, open source projects tend to be consistently underfunded. I get the feeling the HN crowd doesn't realize/appreciate/care about this fact. Let's take a look at two contrasting open source projects: Ruby and the V8 Javascript interpreter. Ruby is dog slow in comparison to V8. They both languages are extremely dyna…

[deleted]

Re: Firefox will show ads on the new tab page based on browsing history

#60

Post by vdaniuk »

ama729 wrote: post #54
vdaniuk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>At least one would hope they could be honest in their goal, I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers. So users wouldn't care if most ads would be popups and autoplay sound, right? Oh, they would? Who is being dishonest then?

Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all. I don't think putting ads in Firefox will reduce ads on websites.

>I don't think anybody care about the state of digital advertising except marketers.

As I have demonstrated with a simple example, this statement is false.

>Most users would prefer if there would be no ads at all.

Your attempt at moving the goalposts is irrelevant.

Therefore, your accusation of Mozilla being dishonest with their goals is not supported by your arguments.

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