Mozilla to sell New Tab page ads in Firefox
cnet.com
cnet.com
"We believe that if you put the user front and center, you can make every experience for them richer and more meaningful. The Content Services team has embraced this, and today I wanted to share some of our thinking and explain our first steps for putting it into practice."
and then:
"While Mozilla hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with all viewpoints in the digital content community, particularly the IAB, we think they’d agree that users’ interests should come first, and we want to help their members deliver compelling content to strengthen the Web ecosystem."
This:
* beats around the bush
* starts with spin
* says that advertisers have the best interest of users in mind - and I assure you, they do not.
I am very, very unimpressed.
- Mozilla needs to raise money because it's a non-profit.
- We're going to place ads on the "directory tiles" page.
Questions the Mozilla blog post should have answered, but never did:
- Will these ads only ever appear once?
- Will these ads re-appear if you clear your cache or cookies?
- Can this feature be disabled or bypassed?
- What analytics or tracking will the ads use (if any)?
I understand that Mozilla needs to diversify its sources of funding. I just wish the Mozilla blog post was written in a plain, straightforward manner. There's far too much padding and "corporate-speak".
Phrases such as "publisher transformation", experiences that are "richer and more meaningful", promises to "transform the user’s content experience", and to provide "inherent value to our users" just sound over-inflated and meaningless.
There is just no way you can spin that as "helping", it's advertisements, nothing more, nothing less.
It was flagged heavily, which shouldn't be a surprise given the heavy pro-Mozilla bias here. (case in point: this post will be downvoted at least a few times in the next few minutes)
But to be fair, the ads haven't been rolled out yet, and there's a nonzero chance Mozilla will come to their senses and reverse course. And if not, use a browser that actually values your privacy and safety (my current browser is SRWare Iron https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php)
I'm not sure what's changed since then, but it's worth considering.
I understand that Mozilla is looking for ways to fund itself. But they should not join those who use the word "relevant" in this disingenuous way.
This phrasing is an obvious attempt to sugarcoat the fact that we are being inundated by so many schemes to grab a piece of our limited cognitive capacity that we wouldn't even be able to notice something relevant if it were actually there.
Mozilla's advantage over other browser makers is that users trust them not to use the kind of deceptive chicanery that we're being subjected to left and right. So they better not ruin that trust by using dishonest language.
I'm all for Mozilla getting income from more sources (instead of search engine revenue), but I just don't like ads. There is a reason I donated in the past.
If I can't disable the ads this way, it's not that hard to install an add-on that does it, edit about:config or just recompile from sources. No problem if you want to play that game. But I'd much rather pay them.
If Mozilla does not cross this border I'm fine with this very passive advertisement.
He writes ambiguous phrases that tend to contradict themselves like "Publisher Transformation with Users at the Center" (what?) and "The new tab page isn’t delivering any value for them." (double-what?)
Let's look at some of the wording from this guy [1], it's straight out of some PR/advertising agency. It makes me so incredibly suspicious, and I worry it will be counter to Mozilla's goals.
"Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla’s pursuit of our mission."
A given geographic region? Who says that it's popular? Hand-picked partners? Who picks them? What are the requirements for being "hand-picked"?
Let's look at some more language, filled with buzz-words and devalued propositions:
We are excited about Directory Tiles because it has inherent value to our users.
While Mozilla hasn’t always seen eye-to-eye with all viewpoints in the digital content community, particularly the IAB, we think they’d agree that users’ interests should come first, and we want to help their members deliver compelling content to strengthen the Web ecosystem.
When the user is at the center everyone benefits
We believe that if you put the user front and center, you can make every experience for them richer and more meaningful.
I know many will find me harsh, but when I read these things I also immediately have my guard up. I wonder what is being hidden behind these frankly contradictory and ambiguous statements. There is, to my mind, a falseness to them that is disturbing. This sort of language is what a politician or PR agency would use to deliver unpalatable news. I feel very strongly that it has no place being on an official Mozilla blog.
1. https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...
I have someone javascript bookmarklets and they don't work with the regular new tab page, but they do with about:blank
Nice bit of doublespeak there. Not showing me ads is valuable to me, you jerks.
I certainly don't see any discussion around the decision - who made the decision to prepopulate the tiles? Where is the original debate? How involved was the IAB in this decision? When did this get decided and for how long now? What stakeholders were notified?
What about privacy concerns - how will these ads target me? I don't want Firefox to turn into some sort of Facebook where my data isn't safe. There are no details about how they will achieve this increased advertising. In the original blog post, they have said they will target advertising via the country you are residing in - but what other data will it start detecting?
All very worrying.
It will be links to decent sponsors webpages I'll bet.
Their announcement has been filtered through asshole media.
What she really meant.
Honestly, explicit ads marked as ads in the UI are preferable to hidden advertisement/deals - like defaulting to Google search without communicating to users that money has changed hands for that preferential treatment.
With this anti-feature, I would use Chrome anyway -- even if it was otherwise identical to FF.
> Honestly, explicit ads marked as ads in the UI are preferable to hidden advertisement/deals - like defaulting to Google search without communicating to users that money has changed hands for that preferential treatment.
Whether its the default I prefer or one that I don't, the why they set the default doesn't matter. What matters is (a) is it clear up front what the default is, (b) is it what I prefer, and (c) if not, is it clear and simple to change.
OTOH, ads in the browser UI are a significant anti-feature compared to all the browsers that don't do that.
Note that for example the default search provider has been different in other countries at times based on other advertising deals Mozilla made - not just Google. It's easier to view it as not-an-ad when it's a search provider you use; less so than when it is a random provider that bid the highest amount.
Or is Google finally cutting into that? Just another way to get rid of competing browsers? Sadly Bing isn't an alternative outside of US (and I'm not even sure about that).
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation#Financing
$300MM is still a giant number.
I think it makes sense to diversify the ways they can earn money, and advertising is a reasonable approach as long as it's honest. Nothing here seems to indicate that they will be disguising advertisements or sacrificing usability in favor of advertisements.
Building an additional layer of advertising into the FF browser is a good way to advance Google's goal of getting all users on Google's browser.
Firefox will present new users a panel of six ad tiles. These exist as placeholders for the most visited site tiles. The ads are replaced by the most visited sites, and then they are gone.
Chrome - exists to gather information about the user to send that information back to Google for them to more efficiently serve you ads.
The google default exists until you change it.
You have already been living with ads. But the google ad was not explicit.
But just because I live with ads doesn't mean I like it. I'd much rather pay Google a flat fee for all of their services for the assurance that I will never see an ad and my data is not used for their mining.
https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...
For new users that don't have any recently used sites rather than blank tiles they will get some Mozilla suggested sites and some sponsored tiles.
I presume for existing users you'll never even see these and, for new users, as soon as you've actually visited some sites these will disappear.
[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...
You people and your slippery slopes.
Between this, making Sync less secure and Australis, I start seriously wondering if Mozilla are attempting to drive users away.
Australis is a matter of taste, I personally like it.
They're trying to not drive users away, but you and I are a tiny minority.
Firefox is already a power user's browser - the masses who just want a dumb facebook/youtube/twitter/gmail terminal mostly use chrome and will continue to do so, unaware and unconcerned with customisation and privacy issues (my parents use chrome, and didn't have any addons installed at one point (they now have adblock)). Firefox will never even catch up to where chrome is today in market share, let alone pass it, and I'm fine with that, as it's a browser for power users - customisable, privacy-respecting and more 'traditional' by giving users actual control over their experience and options to customise functionality and looks.
To use beer as an analogy, Chrome is {Budweiser/PBR/Coors/Miller/etc}; Firefox is a craft beer. Yes, it's nicer, but not as accessible, and the majority of people neither know nor care as it's not their market.