Mozilla to sell advertising in Firefox browser

[Shawn Knight]

Mozilla has revealed plans to sell advertising within Firefox’s new tabs page. Yes, this is the same Mozilla that decided to block third-party cookies by default in Firefox 22 last year – a move that was described by the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s top lobbyist as a nuclear strike on the industry.

It’s a complete change of course for the foundation but naturally, Mozilla is putting a pleasant spin on it. Darren Herman, Mozilla’s VP of content services, said the Directory Tiles will suggest pre-packaged content for first-time users. 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 their mission, he said.

In case you weren’t already aware, sponsored content is simply a fancy term for advertising.

But why the sudden change of stance on advertising? Truth be told, it likely all comes down to money. Mozilla relies on Google for a large portion of its income thanks to a $300 million per year deal to use Google as the browser’s default search engine.

That may sound like a conflict of interest considering Google has its own browser in Chrome but either way you slice it, Mozilla is making serious bank on the deal. The bad news is that the deal is up for renewal in December of this year.

With the advertising deal, Mozilla may be looking to diversify their income stream in the event a deal can’t be hammered out. As the saying goes, it’s never a good idea to put all of your eggs in one basket.

Permalink to story.

https://www.techspot.com/news/55641-mozilla-to-sell-advertising-in-firefox-browser.html

 

[cliffordcooley]

I switched to Firefox last week and one of the first things I did was install Speed Dial. It makes me feel more at home after leaving Opera. Speed Dial is the first thing I see when loading Firefox, because I have it set as my homepage and load at Firefox startup. This means I only see what I have setup.

They can advertise all they want as far as I care, I will never see the "New Tab" page.

 

[Darth Shiv]

Mmm yes massive reliance on Google income stream is a bit of a liability. After reading the article (vs the headline), a lot happier with Mozilla's decision.

 

[Eddo22]

I used Firefox for 2 days (recently) and got rid of it. It's very slow and doesn't work on a fair amount of webpages (more than old Opera 12). It's also slower than old Opera (which is pretty slow nowdays).

I started using New Opera about a month ago and haven't looked back. It's fast and so far is turning into a great replacement for the old Opera. BTW: You can get a bookmarks plugin that works just fine.

 

[NTAPRO]

The woes of being nonprofit organizations (with the exception of the nfl)

 

[Fred-H]

Firefox did not block third-party cookies by default in version 22. They announced that they would, but then postponed it "to collect and analyze data on the effect of blocking some third-party cookies." Firefox 26 still doesn't block third-party cookies by default.

 

[Guest]

Well then - it seems Mozilla has lost it's way and given the world's population a good reason to switch to Google Chrome. Forced advertising is unacceptable under any circumstances. I DO NOT care about the money "left on the table". Must absolutely everything on the web have to push propaganda (advertising)? Must everything be about money - even for a not-for-profit so-called "foundation". Given Truth in Advertising laws have been methodically killed over the last 3 decades by the GOP any advertiser can say pretty much anything they want with impunity. The whole thing makes me sick. Goodbye Firefox and Mozilla ... it wasn't that much fun anyway. And I would bet a month's pay many many people will feel exactly the same way.

 

[Cryoburner]

@Guest - Did you even read the article, and not just the headline? It sounds like they'll simply be providing links to popular sites as the default tiles on the new tab page, which can be deleted or edited to your own sites at will. This is basically just copying what Opera's Speed-dial was doing for years, and is similar to the sponsored bookmarks that have been in browsers before that, and can hardly be considered invasive. It's not much different than having sites (like Google) pay for being the browser's default search engine, which is how they've been funding the browser. Your suggestion to switch to Google Chrome is nonsensical if you're really against advertising, since Google is the largest online advertising company there is, and their browser is little more than spyware designed to better track users for targeted advertising.

This method of funding Firefox seems very reasonable, and allows them to diversify their income sources instead of relying entirely on however much Google or another company is willing to pay to be the default search engine. This way, if Google drastically cuts the amount on offer, it won't hurt Mozilla as much. This could happen too, since in the few years since Firefox last made their search engine deal with Google, Chrome's user-base has grown from having around the same number of users as Firefox, to now having significantly more.

This article itself is rather alarmist too. Providing a set of default links to new users is rather different from deciding whether or not to block third-party cookies by default. Third-party cookies are mostly used by ad companies to track users browsing habits across sites, whereas a sponsored link to a site is just a link. And as someone else said, Firefox doesn't even block these by default yet, and so far Safari is only major browser to do so.

I switched to Firefox last year after being an Opera user for many years, since the 'new Opera' is basically just a re-skinned Chromium with a few custom extensions pre-installed, and the classic Opera suite has been pretty much discontinued. Firefox's interface can be a bit less responsive than Opera's, and requires a lot of extensions to restore functionality that was built into Opera 12, but its performance and compatibility with complex sites tends to be better, since most designers actually test their sites with it. It's not a perfect replacement for the classic Opera suite, but it's much closer than the unconfigurable, featureless shells of a browser that are Chrome or the 'new Opera'.

 

[mattd73uk]

I used Firefox for 2 days ...

Do you have anything more to say about Opera? We really want to know.

 

[mattd73uk]

Well then - it seems Mozilla has lost it's way and given the world's population a good reason to switch to Google Chrome...

Yes, Mozilla should work for free, like everyone else. There is an alternative, Guest, if you agree to pay the housing, food, medical, energy and transport costs of the people who build and support Firefox, and you set up the servers to host its distribution, they may well drop this ad plan.

 

[FLWrd]

What the heck did they spend these $300M on then? Devs? Let's say one dev year costs about $150k. That would make 2000 dev years. That's certainly not the amount of (paid) work that's gone into Firefox.

 

[Skidmarksdeluxe]

I tried using Firefox again a few weeks back after years of abstinence, by the end of the same day it was uninstalled and I was back with the masters of 'sponsored content', Google Chrome, not that I ever see any advertising in Chrome...

 

[cartera]

What the heck did they spend these $300M on then? Devs? Let's say one dev year costs about $150k. That would make 2000 dev years. That's certainly not the amount of (paid) work that's gone into Firefox.

Who said they spent it? Being a non-profit they may have banked it, invested it, etc. There is also much more than development costs - Infrastructure, equipment, hosting, advertising to name a few.

 

[FLWrd]

If they invested it, they still have money coming in from their investments, so they don't need ads. Infrastructure? If it was $3M it would have meant a significant part of the budget, but of $300M? Firefox has a few hundred million users. Let's say they do a full update every year (and that's overestimating). That's about 3E7 bytes times 3E8, or 1E16 bytes per year. That comes at around $0.01 per GB, or $10k. Add some server costs, and you're done under $100k per year. If I'm off by an order, it's still less than $1M.

 

[cartera]

If they invested it, they still have money coming in from their investments, so they don't need ads. Infrastructure? If it was $3M it would have meant a significant part of the budget, but of $300M? Firefox has a few hundred million users. Let's say they do a full update every year (and that's overestimating). That's about 3E7 bytes times 3E8, or 1E16 bytes per year. That comes at around $0.01 per GB, or $10k. Add some server costs, and you're done under $100k per year. If I'm off by an order, it's still less than $1M.

From this report they invested it, and their overheads are in the region of $100M.

 

[Eddo22]

I used Firefox for 2 days ...

Do you have anything more to say about Opera? We really want to know.

Nothing more needs to be said. It's the best. Try it

 

[Guest]

I used Firefox for 2 days ...

Do you have anything more to say about Opera? We really want to know.

Nothing more needs to be said. It's the best. Try it

In browsing speed, perhaps, but where it fall shorts is Opera Link. It's not as seamless as Chrome Sync, not to mention it does not support open tab sync.

 

[Guest]

Well then - it seems Mozilla has lost it's way and given the world's population a good reason to switch to Google Chrome...

Yes, Mozilla should work for free, like everyone else. There is an alternative, Guest, if you agree to pay the housing, food, medical, energy and transport costs of the people who build and support Firefox, and you set up the servers to host its distribution, they may well drop this ad plan.

Indeed. Unfortunately, the freetards and especially the lousy FOSS zealots are still under the delusions that companies can provide free services without incurring costs.

 

[havok585]

I used Firefox for 2 days (recently) and got rid of it. It's very slow and doesn't work on a fair amount of webpages (more than old Opera 12). It's also slower than old Opera (which is pretty slow nowdays).

I started using New Opera about a month ago and haven't looked back. It's fast and so far is turning into a great replacement for the old Opera. BTW: You can get a bookmarks plugin that works just fine.

U must be joking right? I used all the major browsers and firefox is the all in one, chrome or ie doesnt even come close ! Speed? what speed? this aint racing track, sonny, of course it doesnt boot as fast as IE (ie>chrome>ff) but who cares? ie + chrome combined dont have the add-ons market support that ff have. It's all about comfort, and Firefox wins.

Opera u say? please, who uses that old garbage, yea, it was useful maybe 10 years ago.

 

[Guest]

"Yes, Mozilla should work for free, like everyone else. There is an alternative, Guest, if you agree to pay the housing, food, medical, energy and transport costs of the people who build and support Firefox, and you set up the servers to host its distribution, they may well drop this ad plan."

Actually Mozilla is making money already. Quite a bit it seems. I do understand wanting more though, at least, to an extent. At some time, trying to make too much money can backfire. Most users may or may not care but if these "ads" are anything more than a collective of links on a single page they just lost me.

Hopefully chrome won't follow suit.