https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/31/mozilla-ad-on-firefoxs-ne...
If this said:
> Eich: Ad on Brave's new tab page was just another experiment
> "This snippet was an experiment to provide more value to Brave users through offers provided by a partner"
> "It was not a paid placement or advertisement."
You would recoil in disgust. Do the developers think the explanation is satisfactory? No one would seriously believe that a browser vendor would just willingly place ads for a company without any sort of compensation. In fact, that someone would even consider putting an ad in the web browser itself would probably be enough to push you to choose something else.
Circling back to the beginning, people blindly believed Google's "Do no Evil" and Google profited mightily by chipping away at the generated goodwill.