Why is FireFox trying to get into article recommendations? I can only assume it allows some method of monetisation once users get used to it being there. Feels a bit off.
What happens if the money stops coming?
Firefox is a "feature" for Google Chrome.
The day Google stops paying mozilla and mozilla close shop, they will get the same treatment Google itself set up in courts against Microsoft for IE6. It's pretty much protection money for their past selfs.
[1] https://searchengineland.com/report-yahoo-search-losing-fire...
It's cheaper to keep mozilla barely alive than to pay lawyers and governments for anti-trust lawsuits around the globe.
And they get to harvest search data from firefox users as a bonus.
edit: Like many others have noted before this everything is "free" model of the Internet seems completely broken to me and I feel a bit sad/hopeless about it.
In small doses, I rather like them. Back when Firefox only displayed 3 or 4 on the new tab page, I even left them enabled. Now that it has the huge grid of options, with a row peeking out above the fold in the classic dark pattern that demands discovery, I have turned them off.
As for ads, yeah, you'll get those by default too. (But there's a checkbox still where you can turn off the sponsored content.)
I just think it's useful to distinguish true ads from stuff that's intended to provide value. (Sure, ads theoretically can occasionally provide value, but the difference is huge.)