Mozilla plans to test sponsored ads on Firefox

Well I am a little concerned. So nervous that Firefox with be damaged to a point where I wont want to use it.

 

Adverts displayed on your home tab? No thanks. I don't really think you could do it in a way that wouldn't be at least a little inferior to previous iterations of Firefox.

 

If they want a 'test' then let them test and swamp with negative feedback.

 

 

In the news article linked below: The Vice President of Firefox Johnathan Nightingale said in a blog post that it won’t “turn Firefox into a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder.”

 

Hopefully^^^

 

 

Sources:

https://blog.mozilla.org/futurereleases/2014/05/09/new-tab-experiments/

http://www.thejournal.ie/mozilla-plans-to-test-out-ads-in-new-tab-page-1460449-May2014/

 

Fox image was a google image search

Mozilla’s revenue comes almost 90% from Google and I can definitely see the need to diversify the income sources. That being said, it all comes down to the implementation of the ads themselves as we cannot say much without having first seen them. Before that there are some points that Mozilla should take into consideration: Quantity, quality and intrusiveness of ads.

  • Will these ads be minimal in numbers or will they appear every time you go to a different page? (:3)

I’d say the 9 ads on the new tabs proposed by Mitchell Baker are a little bit too many. I think 2 ads on each side of the browser would be enough (to keep it digestable). Let’s face it, no one would like to be on their preferred browser open a new tab and be suddenly prostrated in front of an ad wall. It is okay to try and diverge your income source or even scale it up if you need to launch Firefox OS, but 9 ads on a single page?

  • Will the ads be in any way meaningful to the end user?

This is unfortunately tied to the intrusiveness of the ads as you may figure out.

According to Mitchell Baker, 3 of the 9 proposed ads would be sponsored but “no issue there” as they won’t have any tracking features, the other 6 remain to be judged. It would be a shame if Mozilla went the wrong way with the tracking of its user base.

  • And now to the most important, how intrusive will you be Firefox?

Surprisingly, coming from Mozilla, there is no mention to how intrusive the browser will become except from the one mentioned above: No tracking needed for sponsored links. I fear Mozilla may go the same route as Google when it comes to advertisement as they’re putting way too much emphasis on the importance of ads to the end users, although at the same time it would be a little bit extreme of them to do such a thing, we’ll see.

 

One thing’s clear, they’re trying hard to lessen their dependence on Google and successfully launch Firefox OS. In the middle of this situation Google is a clear would-be winner with Chrome OS simply because of the dependency of  Mozilla on them.

And if Mozilla doesn’t block it first, there's always Adblock for getting rid of the ads.

I don’t use Firefox that much but I’ll definitely be looking forward to developments on this case. I wouldn’t mind disabling Adblock for watching the ads on Firefox and giving them a little profit as long as the ads are minimal and not intrusive. 

It's not an issue at all.

Ads on default home page? CHANGE IT. Problem solved. If it gives them money to actually improve the browser, I'm all in.

This isn't new news...but I think it is fine.

They just need to avoid malicious ads and it's fine. Firefox is a very good browser! I am a chrome user, but firefox is still very solid...used it for years before moving to chrome...only because all my bookmarks are here...

 

So0me user tracking is allowable...I mean...look at IE and Chrome...they will go as far as to probe you...checking some things I okay...

 

ADBLOCK IS THE WORST THING TO COME TO HUMANITY! It doesn't just block the"bad" ads! it also blocks the good and non-intrusive ones!

MANY sites need adblock, it you abuse it, you take revenue away from many site and users that need it. It you adblock youtube, that user won't get the revenue, it also blocks websites on pretty much every website...

A good example of what would be hurt is TekSyndicate...that ONE maybe two ads at the top are there for a reason!

 

Ads ARE a good thing, if you want to avoid the malicious ones...I use a plugin that filters out clean ones. I use PrivDog...it came with Comodo...but I don't use comodo... :I

 

in order to sell ads mozilla will need to track you and mine your data, no?

i can't see any good coming of this.....are they going to be click view payed adds or do the adds have to load on the page for them to get paid?

i use add blockers due to the fact i really hate adds , but in some cases i see add blocker very useful for people on a low data plan or have slow internet....less things to load and less data used.

i would be all for an add blocker that blocked adds but still allowed the sites to gain revenue from the adds.

I dunno I think Firefox has already reached the "Damaged" point where I don't want to use it myself. If it generates some income to improve the browsers development that would be awesome and a step in the right direction if you ask me.

if they were not a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the Web better  emphasizing principle over profit that  believes that the Web is a shared public resource to be cared for, not a commodity to be sold, then yes that would be fine.  I get to many emails saying its drive time again for them to do something like this. sure it would bring in money but that's not there job.

What's the big deal? It's open source, if you don't like the version with ads, use the version without ads that someone is sure to release.

just if you saw it and/or clicked it...really...

open source software is never suppost to be a full time job. it's a project that coders should do in their spare time.  so they have something good they can put on their resume to get a much better job.

at the very least if they want money instead of ads Mozilla could integrate some kind of paid web service into their software.

Comodo's Ice Dragon is one such browser:

http://www.comodo.com/home/browsers-toolbars/icedragon-browser.php

I'm a little wishy washy on some of their other software but their browser variants are nice.

After the Chromefoxing, the Chromeification of Opera and Chrome being unreliable and having an (IMO) annoying GUI... what's left?

Sleipnir? Sorry, but Sleipnir 5 is an unusable piece of junk and Sleipnir 4 is buggy as all hell.

Lunascape 6? That's got so high a CPU usage I'm not really sure what they hell is going on.

Konqueror? No Windows build (someone get on that, Konqueror really is decent). Rekonq may also be interesting to get on Windows.

Iceweasel? Hah, as if that'll ever get onto Windows.

Midori? Crashes for me, never works on any of my machines. No idea why, can't assess.

QtWeb? Seems decent, haven't assessed stability yet (only ~10 tab sessions up until now).

Internet Explorer? I wouldn't.

Safari? Nope. Just nope.

Is there any decent graphical browser out there right now that isn't some old version? (you know, links and lynx are all well and good but I really like seeing pictures)