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Mozilla Rolls Out Sponsored Tiles To Firefox Nightly's New Tab Page

Posted by timothy on from the now-how-much-would-you-pay? dept.

An anonymous reader writes Mozilla has rolled out directory tiles, the company's advertising experiment for its browser's new tab page, to the Firefox Nightly channel. We installed the latest browser build to give the sponsored ads a test drive. When you first launch Firefox, a message on the new tab page informs you of the following: what tiles are (with a link to a support page about how sponsored tiles work), a promise that the feature abides by the Mozilla Privacy Policy, and a reminder that you can turn tiles off completely and choose to have a blank new tab page. It's quite a lot to take in all at once.

5 of 171 comments (clear)

  1. Fork in the Road by tuck3r · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I find myself agreeing less and less with the things the Mozilla is doing as a company. I get what they want to do and where they want to go, just don't agree with the methods they are using.

    --
    tuck3r
  2. Re:Well... by mystikkman · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mozilla is the only hope left in the browser market. The rest are controlled by mega corps. Witness the recent ramrodding of video DRM into W3C standards by Google, Microsoft and Apple, all of which have their own DRM implementations.

    Not to mention Firefox being forced to support H.264 playback, after Google promised and backtracked on removing support from Chrome. Based on the above two cases, I guess it's already too late, corporate control has taken over the web.

  3. Re:Well... by Jane+Q.+Public · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It bothers me a lot when I see people shouting "abandon all hope". It's not that bad.

    Still, I would like to see Firefox getting more of its revenue from sources other than Google. Maybe the Firefox Phone will go a long way to realizing that.

    On the other hand, I found tiles on the new page useful, if only marginally. I would prefer to be able to turn off the ads and still use the tiles. But if I must turn them all off to do away with the ads, I will.

    I almost forgot: Chromium is hardly a major player in the browser market.

    Firefox is important, and we should support it. But I don't think supporting it via ads is the best way to go.

  4. R.I.P. Mozilla by nimbius · · Score: 5, Insightful
    one of the core values of the Mozilla manifesto is this:

    use the Mozilla assets (intellectual property such as copyrights and trademarks, infrastructure, funds, and reputation) to keep the Internet an open platform;

    How does mozilla expect sponsored advertisement to exist without a conflict of interest? It can't. Mozilla is now beholden to and will become ever increasingly dependent upon ad revenue, which in turn will ensure mozilla projects and opinions will be screened before release to meet the advertisers approval.

    personally? im switching because i still want a free internet. check out icecat or midori.

    --
    Good people go to bed earlier.
  5. Mozilla tiles too complicated? by lippydude · · Score: 5, Informative

    "When you first launch Firefox, a message on the new tab page informs you of the following .. It's quite a lot to take in all at once"

    It seems fairly straight forward to me: a) a promise that the feature abides by the Mozilla Privacy Policy, b) a reminder that you can turn tiles off completely ..