Mozilla rolls out sponsored tiles to Firefox Nightly’s new tab page

As noted in the bug report, there are plenty of extensions if you want to change the New Tab page. Here's one you might like: https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/new-tab/adcpijkmbe...

It is bullshit. There is nothing wrong, at all, with it being empty. It's a burden on those of independent mind to have to delete extraneous crap.

You might as well be Microsoft saying it's fine that IE is default and bundled with Windows, thus effectively pushing Netscape out of the market.

This is also the exact mentality that leads to bloatware on PCs and phones. The person that put it there thinks it's helpful, even if it took a bit of financial persuasion.

I have a Samsung SMART TV too and I find Smart Hub to be extremely annoying in that there are prominent app spots that cannot be deleted. They're just there for Samsung to promote whatever partner it likes and it's the sort of thing that makes me regret buying Samsung.

You are confusing "emptiness" and "lack of defaults" from my post. Maybe I was not clear enough.

Firefox itself used to come with a somewhat large set of default bookmarks I believe. For Google, Amazon and some others. Those weren't sponsored but they also did not take most room on a UI element users are going to see reasonably regularly.

I'm arguing that the tiles being empty is completely fine. I don't even use firefox anymore, so this is of little importance to me personally - I just think that it's wrong to say "it's best for users to see content". Sometimes, it's good for users to see emptiness. It is something we game designers use quite a lot in video games actually: Introduce the user to a nearly non-existant interface and gradually introduce new elements as the player becomes more familiar with some mechanics. I recommend the first hour of Borderlands 2 as the prime example of this.

It's bullshit because there's a big step between 'Mozilla thought it would be best that they see “content.”' and them having default paid advertising in all new browser installs.

Wikipedia's got millions of pages of content but barring some self promotion it doesn't have adverts. Mozilla could have used any of those pages of content if they were just concerned about blank tiles. Indeed there are tons of options that aren't paid advertising from help pages on using FF to a list of the top [U rated] sites used by FF users to links to the most used add-ons/extensions/themes and such.

To recapitulate, it's bullshit because that line is is trying to sell us on them being stuck and having to place advertising in the browser. If they think it's the right thing to do then they should be convinced enough to say "we thought it best to put advertising in the browser", if they're not convinced and feel they need to make excuses then it's highly likely that it's the wrong thing to do.

I expect more from Mozilla, perhaps this is what the change in leadership is bringing us?

I see what you're saying, but in my experience advertising rarely gets this right. The fashion industry is a good example. I have absolutely no desire to read those magazines, let alone pay money to do so. It's blatantly reinforcing insecurities in the readers--the whole concept of what's "in style" is only meant to make people more judgmental, and fear that that same judgment might be turned against them, with constant purchases as the only way out. Quite an ingenious idea for the fashion industry, but a very toxic, manipulative piece of psychology for everyone else IMO.

Of course the tiles aren't so bad. My objection to them is mostly on principle, out of fear that it's another step in Mozilla becoming excessively beholden to advertising interests.

Maybe but a search engine provides a service for no cost (except sometimes your privacy), an ad is there to sell you a product.

Firefox chased me away a long time ago with the way their bug reports are (not) handled. While I won't deny they're still a net force for good on the web, if I had been donating to them even with that in mind, this action would have caused me to stop.

With any possible objective definition, Firefox is now adware.

> If it doesn't get it from the users (like it never was)

But early Mozilla was supported by its users, through donations of both code and money. Volunteers also spearheaded the hugely successful "get Firefox" campaign. Thanks to Google money, Mozilla can now afford to pay top dollar for engineers and prime office space on the Embarcaderro. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I sometimes wonder if it may have made Mozilla a less focused and user-centric organization than it used to be.

I think Mozilla could have tried the Wikimedia way.

A short, inflammatory comment like yours will probably attract downvotes because it doesn't offer much to the conversation other than offering a starting point for a flamewar.

It isn't adware anyway.

1. It shows ads only to a small fraction of new users and for a limited period of time. 2. It uses ads to provide a revenue diversity. Ads are just a new revenue source. Not the only one.

I've given up and switched to Pale Moon.

For me, Firefox reached its peak just before it switched from the classic download window and has been going downhill ever since.

It's now rapidly going in the direction of too many formerly promising open-source projects - the core developers feeding back on each other until they go the way of the fashion industry - "This is what you need. Everything that came before is useless and must be discarded", repeating every so often.

I don't think user donations could replace $300 million a year.

Instead of touting "Free Download" on a large green button, why not just call it Download and then have a donate-what-you-want option there? Virtually no one's going to donate after the fact.