

Firefox users, get ready for ads in your browser - instakill
http://www.cnet.com/news/mozilla-officially-kicks-off-ads-in-firefox/

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Thev00d00
I don't see any issue with this, apart from the Clickbait title. As it stands
at the moment at first install they would be blank, so they may as well put
ads in them until you have surfed around enough to show something useful
there.

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dkhenry
This is such a dishonest and misleading title. There are ads on the new tab
screen before you navigate to a page and only until you have enough history to
have that displayed. That is the only place you would ever sea browser
provided ad.

On top of that you can turn if off. This is borderline libel

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explorigin
Mozilla, please listen...let us pay for Firefox. Sure someone can freely
donate to the foundation, but giving an option for users to pay would bring it
more money from people that don't even know that Mozilla is a non-profit.

Make it optional. When users disable the ads, ask them to donate with a link.
Something like that. Many of us love Firefox and Mozilla for fighting for
freedom and we want to see it well supported. But those of us who see it are
not enough to fund it alone.

~~~
scott_karana
Here's an idea: if Mozilla had first-class support for Active Directory Group
Policy, my company would almost _certainly_ pay for modest support licenses.

As it stands, Chrome for Business and IE have better support.

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quesera
I hate that Mozilla is doing this.

But I concede that they are in a strategically weak position.

Google has no competition in the search space, so they don't _need_ Firefox's
traffic.

Microsoft _wants_ Firefox's traffic, but most Firefox users would (rightly or
wrongly) consider a default search engine change to be a downgrade.

It's also possible that both Google and Microsoft might decide that,
strategically, the web browser landscape would be preferable to them with one
less major player, each hopeful that their entry would take up the majority of
the gap. So they might non-collusively collude to starve Mozilla.

Where else can Mozilla make hundreds of millions of dollars per year in
revenue by throwing a switch? They are at the whim of corporations whose
interests are not well-aligned with their mission.

So, reluctantly, I get it.

Still, the likelihood that Mozilla can turn itself into a major advertising
medium seems so remote to me. Sure, they hired the ad biz dude, and no doubt
he has minions to sell sell SELL!, but replacing Google revenue is a big hill
to climb.

Mozilla has an expansive mission. No one else is trying to do what they do. I
believe that they deserve our support more than anyone else. They may have
expanded well beyond the point of supportability, however.

If they lose Google, and Microsoft wants them to starve, even with this adrev
move, their revenue would almost certainly drop to 20-30% (at most) of the
current $300MM. That's a lot of people and a lot of projects that will be
cancelled. It would be a new crisis of the web, honestly.

If this advertising move alienates any portion of their userbase, Mozilla's
importance to Google declines even more quickly than their potential
independent ad revenue.

So I'm biting this bullet, hard. I believe in Mozilla, and I recognize an
existential threat to their mission, which is even more obviously important
today than 18 months ago. Hindsight suggests some helpful defensive moves, but
we are here, now.

I understand the "ok then, switching to xx browser" reactions, and even
sympathize with the "whatevs, as long as I can turn it off" crowd.

But we need to give Mozilla the option of a soft landing. Maybe they need to
rein in their projects and staff expenditures and focus on a few super
important things. But letting them starve would be catastrophic.

The Google contract was supposed to expire this month. Do we think Google is
now evil enough to try to game their advantage, in the guise of shifting
corporate priorities? I sure hope not.

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cJ0th
It is unclear to me how those ads will help Firefox. Some people will be
disgruntled by this move and stop using Firefox.(Ironically, those will be the
people who are most likely to donate money) Those that keep using Firefox
probably have the intention to visit an address when they open up a new tab.
Why would they stop for a while before typing in the address to look at those
ads?

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go_prodev
If Citrix remote desktop worked properly in Chrome I wouldn't ever use
Firefox. This post reminded me to give Chrome another try...

