
Mozilla plans to sell ads in Firefox browser - cgrubb
http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/02/12/us-mozilla-advertising-idUSBREA1B1OW20140212
======
sheetjs
related discussions:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7220125](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7220125)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7223436](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7223436)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7230094](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7230094)

Links from mozilla's blog:

[https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publish...](https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/11/publisher-
transformation-with-users-at-the-center/)

[https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/13/more-
de...](https://blog.mozilla.org/advancingcontent/2014/02/13/more-details-on-
directory-tiles/)

------
kitcar
Technically they already "sell advertising"; they just outsource the actual
selling of the ads to Google (as they set your homepage to Google by default,
and have a rev-share agreement with Google for any clicks on Ads in Google
search results), and make it very easy to "opt out" (by changing your homepage
away from the default).

See
[http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244250/Mozilla_banke...](http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9244250/Mozilla_banked_274M_in_12_from_Google_Firefox_search_deal)
.

------
x0054
I am not sure why this is such a big deal as to pop to the top for at least
the 3rd time now. FF is open source, if the adds get really bothersome, it
will get forked by someone and adds will get removed. What's the big deal.
Someone has top pay for development, and they don't get paid as much from
search engine traffic with Chrome taking up good chunk of the market share.

------
iancarroll
Big whoop.

Mozilla needs funding, it's not uncommon to do this in browsers.

~~~
hiphopyo
They also need to radically simplify both their UI and their code base if they
expect to remain among the top dogs this coming decade.

~~~
piyush_soni
I don't know why people keep on saying this (about UI). My father had never
operated a Computer, smartphone up to sometime back and he doesn't know
English more than what a kid in 4th grade (in US/UK) would know. He still
operates in Firefox without a problem for his business, changes settings when
I ask him to (though mostly he doesn't need to). In fact, as a self-proclaimed
geek, I have difficulty finding options in Chrome where everything is crammed
in one menu followed by a giant 'web page' of settings in which finding
anything is hard. And for doing anything useful you have to anyway click the
'Advanced' section ...

------
brudgers
Well if nothing else they have come up with a way to make Firefox suck.

~~~
craigvn
That should be ANOTHER WAY to make Firefox suck.

------
nilved
It's times like this we should be glad Firefox is open source.

------
jfoster
I wonder whether they build this into a full advertising platform, or opt to
leave it as placements that are sold in multi-year contracts. If they do
develop it into a platform, it will be interesting to see what kind of
targeting they come up with. Without any targeting, it feels like this will be
limited to ads for Chrome, Internet Explorer, Coca Cola, and McDonalds.

------
jwarkentin
As long as it's targeted to sites I might be interested in, I don't mind.
Everyone needs revenue and I'll happily support the attempts that aren't evil.
Advertising isn't going to ever end. I prefer relevant, non-invasive
advertising. This seems pretty non-invasive.

------
RamiK
Great. More windows azure ads, goggle apps for business, board development
kits, development ides and car insurance ads for me to click on just to screw
with marketeers.

Makes you miss all the porn\antivirus popups...

