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Comment by guelo | Hacker News Reader

For the first time ever I had my sleaze senses tingling after a recent Firefox install. There is now advertising on the new tab page. And why was I forced onto yahoo search instead of giving me the option?

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You were forced into google search for the last 15 years but did you complain? It's simple enough to just switch it.

That's hardly advertising.

But Yahoo is?

Advertising on the tab page is advertising.

You need to fully read what OP wrote.

As do you!

1. I believe you can turn the ads off. Firefox needs revenue, like any other organization with employees to feed.

2. I believe you can change your search provider. Yahoo search was made the default because Yahoo pays Mozilla a lot of money for it. Mozilla needs money, see #1. If we can diversify the search market while supporting free software, that's fine by me.

Also important to note that sponsored tiles disappear once you have enough history for the new tab page to fill with your favorite sites. I mean it's still ads (And I don't like them personally) but it's ads in a space that would otherwise be useless to users.

> but it's ads in a space that would otherwise be useless to users.

Um, I don't have a problem with the new tab ads at all but this is a false justification. All those banner/block ads you see on the webs can be justified that way too.

That's funny. I felt almost the opposite, coming from Chrome. I completely blanked out the new tab page in about 5 seconds, and I was able to switch away from Yahoo in about 10. I'm not a big Firefox guy but was swayed by a recent writeup lauding the "Firefox is great for heavy tab users" aspect.

Why did they use to force you onto Google instead of giving you the option?

Can't see how you equate the two. One is a default search provider (and easily changed), the other is forcing advertising on you.

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