
Mozilla to stop Sponsored Tiles in Firefox - cpeterso
https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2015/12/04/advancing-content/
======
scrollaway
Mozilla has really lost touch with its users.

Good on them for backtracking on this, but it's a symptom of high level
decisions taken without running them past anybody else. Pocket is another one
of those symptoms.

There is no reason these things can get past development and the various betas
without people yelling out "hey, we should _not_ be doing this, it's damaging
to our product". This happens in companies that have become too large to
understand their own users.

And it's not limited to Firefox - Mozilla as a whole no longer understands its
_core mission_. Its motto of "Freeing the web". Development on _absolutely
critical components of a free web_ such as Persona or a good email client
stops, to make way for development on the completely unrealistic Firefox OS.

Not that the world doesn't need a free mobile OS, but Firefox OS is not it.
Not only is it doomed to be awful (layers on top of layers on top of layers...
browsers are not great for batteries), they're spending decades of manpower
trying to match android 2.0, then selling _that_ to users. I had the
misfortune of trying out the Flame. What a disaster that was. I can't see
_myself_ ever trying out fxos again without a lot of changes and convincing,
so go sell that to non-technical users...

~~~
mburns
Mozilla had already committed to decoupling Pocket following a developer
summit this Summer, due in part (presumably) to the vocal minority of users
that hated the very idea of it.

~~~
pdkl95
Given how strongly Mozilla has pushed extensions in the past (traditionally
core features pushed into extensions several times), what they should have
done is simply offer Pocket as an "officially bundled" extension for the
normal download. They could then trivially offer alternative downloads without
the extension, making everybody happy.

This idea could even be pushed further: they could have several alternative
downloads that are simply pre-bundled extensions. Alongside their normal
version they could have "minimalist", "dev tools", "max privacy", "social/chat
helpers", and the like. Most people would still download the normal version,
but this might introduce more people to extensions, who would normally never
even know about addons.mozilla.org.

~~~
CaptSpify
I agree, but i had heard that certain components wouldnt work as an extension.
That being said, they should have extended their api to make it work as an
extension

~~~
ecnahc515
That's exactly why it came bundled as a non extension. So they could figure
out how exactly they needed to extend the extensions API after having in built
in a for a while.

~~~
epoch1970
They could have done such experimentation in an unreleased fork of the
browser. Or if they needed wider testing, they could have released this
separate, experimental branch and clearly labeled it so that people would know
what they were getting into if they installed it. Mozilla didn't need to force
Pocket on so many Firefox users who wanted absolutely nothing to do with it.

------
staunch
I use Linux for many of the same reasons I use Firefox. But at least with
Linux you can avoid Ubuntu's weird privacy violations (like Amazon affiliate
links in desktop search) by using other (equally good) distributions. And you
can _always_ remove the bad parts (`apt-get remove unity-lens-shopping`).

Firefox is still really the only fully modern web browser that isn't the
proprietary Safari or privacy eviscerating Chrome. It's a shame that it can't
be a pure and neutral operating system for the web.

It seems like Mozilla could use its resources more wisely if this was the
goal. They seem too much like a competitive startup looking to grow and not
enough like a non-profit with a specific mission.

~~~
symlinkk
How is Chrome "privacy eviscerating"? Do you have any evidence or are you just
paranoid because it's made by Google?

~~~
meesterdude
why do you think they pay for ads for people to install it? google makes money
directly/indirectly from people using chrome, and they do it by collecting
data from chrome.

~~~
rgbrenner
They do collect data from chrome (see their privacy policy), but the point
you're making isn't too convincing. Having people use Chrome has a number of
benefits for google.. from saving money paying browsers to make google the
default; to protecting Google from any anti-google moves Microsoft might make
in the future using IE.

Without Chrome, Google's business is very dependent on a third-party (the
browser developer) who has no loyalty to Google. Long term, it's in google's
interest to eliminate such variables in their business.

~~~
Senji
Vertical integration seems to be the name of the game.

------
chimeracoder
> We believe that the advertising ecosystem needs to do better – we believe
> that our work in our advertising experiments has shown that it can be done
> better.

It's a shame that a lot of people I've talked to aren't aware of the
significance of how Mozilla designed the sponsored tiles.

Google and Facebook harvest mine all of your personal data in order to surface
ads that are tailored to you. Mozilla, on the other hand, sent no data back to
the server - _all_ the decision-making was done client-side, which meant that
Mozilla didn't have to collect any information about the user.

I'm not a fan of the advertising model in general for other reasons, but I
wish more advertisers accomplished their goal without violating users' privacy
and hoarding their data.

~~~
epoch1970
I think that's the sort of distinction that most people just don't care about.

They aren't against ads because of how their personal data may be collected or
used, especially when this happens without their knowledge.

They're against ads because ads are often visually disruptive, especially when
they're unwanted and useless.

So Mozilla catered to a concern that most people don't have, without
addressing the real problem that most people have with ads.

~~~
maxerickson
It was straightforward to turn the sponsored tiles off, which seems to
directly address what you are saying.

~~~
epoch1970
That misses the point. People don't want to have to turn off ads. They don't
want them there in the first place.

~~~
maxerickson
People want lots of things though. They usually end up with compromises.

(I totally agree with the banality of my above point, but I don't see where
else the conversation is going to go from here)

~~~
err4nt
Show me where Firefox users were begging to have ads. Is there a mailing list,
discussion group, or support forum where peope asked for this feature?

Im pretty sure nearly zero users hoped it would be there when it didnt exist
yet.

------
huhtenberg
What is the "content discovery" thing they are refocusing on?

This doesn't sound like something that belongs in a browser any more than
those damn tiles.

~~~
greglindahl
A browser, since it can observe all of your activity locally without sending
it to the cloud, can be a great place for some kinds of content discovery. I,
personally, like privacy-preserving discovery mechanisms.

~~~
epoch1970
I'd prefer to not have these "discovery mechanisms" exist in my browser at
all.

If I want said functionality, I should be able to install it using a browser
extension. Unless I opt in like that, my computer's resources should not be
wasted on something I don't even want in the first place.

~~~
tyre
How do you suggest Mozilla makes money?

~~~
Khaine
Why do they have to make money? Mozilla is a not for profit, collect donations
like most other OSS entities.

Its clear they have no idea how to monetise anything to support the not-for-
profit, so why bother and go back to the tried and true donations model.

~~~
Ygg2
Because people need to eat and money buys food.

Would donations model work? There is a difference making Wikipedia work, and
making Mozilla work.

~~~
Khaine
The people who make FreeBSD, OpenBSD and many other open source products need
to eat and buy food. They do it without all of this bullshit, why can't
mozilla?

~~~
Ygg2
They also seem way smaller than Mozilla. You're essentially saying, Firefox
can't keep up with Chrome lets hack its limbs and see whether that will work.

~~~
Khaine
No, most of the money in Mozilla goes for stuff that is outside of making
Firefox, e.g. Firefox OS and community engagement.

Firefox was made great without all of this monetising, it can be made great
again without it as well.

------
whoopdedo

        Advertising in Firefox could be a great business, but it isn’t the right business
        for us at this time because we want to focus on core experiences for our users.
    

Translation, "we were seeing users flee to alternatives like Pale Moon and
need to backtrack. Please accept this marketing-speak damage control as an
apology that doesn't actually admit we made a mistake."

~~~
dangoor
It seems highly unlikely that "seeing users flee to alternatives like Pale
Moon" has anything to do with this. How many users do you suppose Pale Moon
has?

Firefox competes at a very large scale. Browsers that are not Chrome, IE,
Safari and Opera are likely blips that don't register. It wouldn't surprise me
if the tiles were a blip in Mozilla's revenue.

~~~
hysan
I'm probably in the minority, but I pretty much gave up on Firefox because of
their chain of anti-freedom decisions and went to Safari. I figured that if
I'm gonna lose control of my browser and privacy, I might as well use a
product that gives me extra perks/polish at the cost of my freedom. Because
let's face it, Firefox is no where near as polished and good of an experience
as Safari (when on OS X) or Chrome (when on Windows/Linux). It was the ability
to completely control and mold FF into what you want that made it so great.
Without that, FF is a second tier browser.

~~~
jcastro
> chain of anti-freedom decisions and went to Safari.

You really showed them!

~~~
hysan
?

I didn't make the decision to prove anything to anyone. I just made the most
logical decision (for me) based on trade-offs. If I'm unable to maintain
control of my browser and my privacy on FF, then I don't see a point in using
a worse product. And as I said, it's probably a minority opinion, but I
believe that without those freedoms, FF is a poor browser compared to its
major competitors.

------
rgbrenner
Good. Sponsored tiles gives me an icky feeling using Firefox. _Haven 't even
gone on the internet, and already being tracked._ It feels like I have adware
on my computer (which it literally is w/ those ads), and makes me want to
uninstall it.

They could have at least put in an option in the settings to disable this.

~~~
rlpb
> Haven't even gone on the internet, and already being tracked.

Didn't the implementation actually do it without tracking you, by downloading
all the possible tiles and making the choice locally, thus preventing any
privacy leak or tracking?

~~~
rgbrenner
It does look like they did it without tracking. So kudos to mozilla for that.

But my post was about the perception of the ads. Even if mozilla isn't
tracking, there's certainly no way for a user to know that, and no reason for
a user to believe this particular ad is different from other ads the user sees
day to day.

IMO, Mozilla has a huge problem, and it's not how to generate more revenue
(which they already have $300m/year of). Their marketshare is sliding --
they're near a low point in their marketshare. And as a response, Mozilla
pushes ads -- ads that make their software feel like adware; and that
negatively impacts the goodwill the user has toward mozilla. This is not going
to reverse their marketshare problem.

------
verusfossa
This is good to hear, but I agree that all the positive spin is unnecessary
and damages their image. Now they need to backpedal or "evolve" on the Pocket
blob issue. However they want to spin it.

~~~
fabrice_d
Pocket is moving out of the main tree back to being an add-on. You can follow
the progress at
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215694)

~~~
verusfossa
This is better, but why built-in?

~~~
01Michael10
They need to make money... Have you ever donated any to them?

~~~
dombili
Mozilla reportedly doesn't make money from Pocket [1]. So the money is not the
issue. Your guess is as good as mine as to what is.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla...](https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla_is_not_benefiting_from_the_pocket/)

~~~
e15ctr0n
Mozilla's lawyer just admitted to Wired magazine that, in fact, they do earn
revenue from Pocket.

> Although the company emphasizes that Pocket and Telefonica didn’t pay for
> placement in the Firefox browser, Mozilla Corp. chief legal and business
> officer Denelle Dixon-Thayer told WIRED that Mozilla has revenue sharing
> arrangements with both companies.

[http://www.wired.com/2015/12/mozilla-is-flailing-when-the-
we...](http://www.wired.com/2015/12/mozilla-is-flailing-when-the-web-needs-it-
the-most/)

~~~
dao-
Revenue sharing arrangement doesn't mean Mozilla included Pocket for money.
Does Pocket even make money at a scale that could be remotely interesting to
Mozilla? I very much doubt it.

I also doubt that Telefonica makes significant money with Hello. I can't even
imagine a business model around this feature.

I suspect Mozilla was just opportunistic here and made those arrangements in
case these features happen to generate revenue some day somehow.

~~~
detaro
(For me) it's mostly a transparency and trust issue. People widely suspected
that it was Mozilla looking for another revenue source, they aggressively
denied that money is involved. And now it turns out that there potentially is,
but no details are published.

I actually think that with the way they did the integration, they probably
_should_ have received money (Otherwise, why not do a generic "read later"
button and a way for services to register instead of adding a single,
proprietary service). But for me, right now, the most important reason to use
Firefox is trust in Mozilla, so I don't like it if it looks like they are not
telling the entire story. (Compare to the advertising tiles: they clearly
showed that they are receiving money for it, they also described what they did
to preserve user privacy and security.)

~~~
dao-
> (For me) it's mostly a transparency and trust issue. People widely suspected
> that it was Mozilla looking for another revenue source, they aggressively
> denied that money is involved.

And we still don't know that money is involved. ;) But I agree the revenue
sharing arrangement should have been communicated better / earlier.

> And now it turns out that there potentially is, but no details are
> published.

It's not unusual for contracts with for-profit companies that you're not
allowed to make the details public. We still don't know the exact terms of the
old contracts with Google or the new ones with Yahoo, Yandex, Baidu etc.

> I actually think that with the way they did the integration, they probably
> should have received money

Like I said, I don't think Pocket, the company, is big enough. Mozilla could
probably have demanded a six-digit figure for integrating Pocket, but to what
end? It's too little money to really matter and would have just inspired more
"Mozilla is selling out!" rants.

> (Otherwise, why not do a generic "read later" button and a way for services
> to register instead of adding a single, proprietary service).

As you can imagine, there were discussions internally about whether there
should be a provider-agnostic read-later button and I don't think anyone
disagreed in principle, nor is that idea dead now. Integrating Pocket first
was just the cheapest and quickest way to ship something to users.

------
zecg
> "We want to reimagine content experiences and content discovery in our
> products. We will do this work as a fully integrated part of the Firefox
> team."

Please don't.

------
eli
Too bad. I thought it was a nice, genuine user-centric approach to digital
advertising.

------
newscracker
I don't have issues with this experiment (more so because of the way it worked
without tracking and creating a profile of the user to be shared, sold, etc.)
and this decision. As a long time Firefox/Thunderbird user who recommends
these regularly to others and being a fan of what Mozilla is about, I do want
to put a few general comments (ignore the gushing in places if you will):

1\. Mozilla is among the few organizations in the world that must thrive and
also expand for the good of the web and the people relying on it.

2\. Every time there's some kind of controversy about Mozilla that appears to
be a setback, I keep wishing it would be dealt with quickly and appropriately.

3\. Mozilla, there are a lot of passionate users who get upset when
(seemingly) controversial decisions are implemented. I'm pained to watch
Mozilla losing market share and mind share, as are many other users.

4\. Mozilla, it's important that you listen to these vocal users and engage
with them, even if the seemingly problematic decision(s) cannot or won't be
revoked.

5\. Mozilla, experimenting is not bad as long as the users' feedback and your
learnings are utilized.

6\. Mozilla, few things in this world are black and white when it comes to
strategy and decisions. So I'm willing to be more accepting of your decisions
_as long as you show agility_ in reversing them when necessary and as long as
those decisions favor my next point.

7\. Mozilla, we want you to become bigger, better and succeed. All the things
that you stand for don't have a (complete) parallel in other organizations and
companies in the wider web ecosystem.

8\. Mozilla, thanks for all that you have done and all that you do.

------
bduerst
The title is a little misleading - Mozilla is removing the sponsored tiles
that you see when you open a new firefox tab.

~~~
admsyn
How is it misleading? That's exactly what I thought it meant, personally.

~~~
bduerst
They changed the title to be more reflective of the content. It said something
around the lines of Firefox was removing advertising.

------
UrsuppDesquen
That happens if you scare users away with enforcing a concept of another
browser towards your own product... the less high the market share means the
less high the acceptance for web designers to make their sites work, the less
opportunities for investors as they see you not as important enough.

Well, Mozilla brought this onto themselves. I only hope they enjoy the dish
that they have created for themselves.

Perhaps it would have been more smart to keep the power user features too and
not dumping that kind of users, Opera is the best example that replacing a
feature rich concept with minimalism and limited customization options in the
hope to create an user migration from a competitors browser towards their own
is not working well.

------
chinathrow
This is really great. Did they fire that guy who came over from the IAB with
it too? Hostile takeover, reversed for now.

~~~
dao-
You mean Darren Herman, the "hostile" man who also wrote this blog post? He is
leaving Mozilla.
[https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/672889449265676288](https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/672889449265676288)

------
ilaksh
Does that mean they are cutting a few jobs? Isn't advertising a key aspect of
the funding?

~~~
yeukhon
I wonder what would happen to Darren Herman in the long run. My understanding
is he was hired to help driving the ad business side of Tile.

No, they just mean they will no longer engage with the Tiles. Their contract
with Yahoo is not impacted and has nothing to do with Tiles.

~~~
javery
Darren has already announced he is leaving.
[https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/672889449265676288](https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/672889449265676288)

~~~
chinathrow
Ahh great. I still have the strong feeling he was an IAB mole/shill within
Mozilla. Glad he's out.

------
JamesSwift
Am I missing something? I've never seen this feature when I open a new tab.

------
eccstartup
I reported the ad abuse.

------
devit
What does this piece of bullshit really mean?

Were they unable to sell the ads effectively? Was nobody clicking on them? Was
the income not significant enough? Did they decide that it wasn't a good idea
to have ads in Firefox? Did they find a better way to monetize the browser?

Anyway, the ridiculous content-free way this post is written does
unfortunately not inspire confidence in Mozilla.

~~~
potch
We put ads that didn't require an extensive tracking network in the new tab
page of Firefox. We were able to make some money on them and show how to do
ads respectfully. Even so, it was decided to remove them from Firefox as they
didn't provide enough value to the user.

~~~
rlpb
The only part of your answer that actually answered the question was "didn't
provide enough value to the user". That is effectively all you said, which is
about as unhelpful for others to understand as the original article.

What does "value to the user" mean? What exactly were your goals for "value to
the user" before you released the feature? How did you measure it? And how did
you fall short of these goals?

~~~
potch
see literally the comment below this.

------
Sir_Substance
Mozilla: Thank you, this is such a relief.

------
e15ctr0n
I'm waiting to see "Mozilla to stop making Firefox mimic Chrome in every way".

~~~
zxcdw
Is "Firefox mimicking Chrome" something you have an issue with for some
reason, or what are you after?

~~~
thristian
There's a lot of people who have that issue.

When Firefox came out, they wanted to differentiate themselves from the clunky
and awkward cross-platform UI of Seamonkey, so they emphasised following
platform conventions.

When Chrome came out, they wanted to differentiate themselves from existing
native (and native-feeling) browsers by being minimalist, so they invented
their own cross-platform UI. Some people were quite happy to learn a new UI to
gain perceived speed and switched to Chrome, some people preferred native-
looking apps to Chrome's gratuitous differences and stayed with Firefox.

Then Chrome started eating Firefox's marketshare. Whether that's because of
better marketing, technical superiority, or just technical differences in ways
that happened to matter at the time doesn't matter; the point is that these
days when most people think of "web browser" they imagine something that looks
more like Chrome than, say Firefox 3. And so Mozilla feels that to stay
relevant, Firefox has to hide its menu-bar, put tabs above the address bar,
cram a whole bunch of disparate things into a single hamburger menu, and so
forth.

There's a small but vocal contingent who stayled loyal to Firefox and avoided
Chrome so they could avoid those UI idioms, and the fact that Firefox is now
adopting them anyway feels like a betrayal of sorts. I'm not saying it _is_
anything melodramatic as betrayal, but people are entitled to their opinions.

------
stanleydrew
Seems that this isn't what I thought: an ad-blocker integrated into Firefox
directly.

They are apparently no longer going to be advertising in "Tiles", whatever
that is. A quick search makes it seem like an optional interface for the new
tab page, before any navigation has occurred.

I don't use Firefox so can't really comment about Tiles, but I would be kinda
annoyed seeing ads on the new tab page in Chrome.

~~~
yeukhon
Actually, I doubt anyone notice anything. I for one, keeps opening new tab
with CMD + Tab and rarely pay attention to the tiles. Even if I did, my eyes
turn to the sites I visit the most (facebook, HN, AWS, Google, etc). So the
Tiles experiment itself is pretty doom from the beginning. When you try to
sell ads, and you want to remain polite and least annoying, you are doing it
wrong. You can't have it both ways easily.

~~~
JadeNB
> When you try to sell ads, and you want to remain polite and least annoying,
> you are doing it wrong. You can't have it both ways easily.

I agree with the second sentence, but not the first: the fact that you can't
have both easily doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong by trying to have
both.

Remaining polite and as little annoying as possible is _definitely_ doing it
right, so the only sense in which this could be "doing it wrong" is if
advertisers weren't paying; but that seems _not_ to have been what happened
here—the rollback is (or at least is being presented as) a response to user,
not advertiser, dissatisfaction.

~~~
yeukhon
Perhaps they are responding to the dissatisfaction of the users. You are right
that we should try to make advertisement as polite as possible. I feel that at
least 50% of the withdrawl came from the fact that they realize their Tiles is
not an effective revenue model because putting ads on Tiles does not get
enough traction. That's what I meant when I said Mozilla was doing it wrong.
They are not in the position to do ads. Where else can they put ads and still
being "polite"? I see so none in the browser space.

