The sponsored tiles are defaults, and they're replaced by sites you actually use over time. This is a good, unobtrusive way for Firefox to get funding.
I find these even more bothersome than the standard "previously visited" tiles. At least in FF you can turn the tiles off -- Chrome... nope! The thumbnail can even be a security problem in some settings.
I get around this by having a work profile on chrome (in case you didn't know that already). I know it's still bad when you do some lunchtime browsing, etc, but after about a year, my work profile cannot even auto-suggest facebook when i type 'fac'.
> Instead of seeing blank tiles when a new Firefox user opens a new tab, Mozilla thought it would be best that they see “content.”
I don't care much about this sponsored tab fuss but that is some serious BS logic.
Feels like UX goes in circles. The web of the 90s was "Show as much content as possible". Google came around and it became "show only the absolutely crucial stuff". Then facebook came around and we're back to shoving as much crap down the monitors as possible.
Feels like we jump from one extreme to another all the time. And yet, the Google.com homepage remains clean and uncluttered (yes, there's more stuff than there used to, but its still 90% whitespace).
Take it this way: When you create a new folder, a file manager won't show the contents of other folders you often access just because it's "best that you see content". Or when you empty your inbox, gmail won't show some random popular emails. So on.
Showing popular sites is a good idea at its core but if you're on a fresh profile, well you're on a fresh profile. Make money off firefox of course, you need it, but "it's best you see content" is bullshit justification.
How is that bullshit? You've got a page of your commonly-visited sites that would be empty if not pre-populated. Mozilla has offered up a balanced way to pre-populate it: put popular sites up for free and offer a handful of spots to other people who will pay for it.
I've got a Samsung SMART TV that comes with something called "Smart Hub". In the same way as Mozilla they've pre-populated a number of applications that could be useful. This means that Netflix and Youtube are now a single click away for me and usable as soon as the TV is powered on. If they hadn't pre-populated something in the Smart Hub, I'd have to dig through the catalog for to find the apps I want to use, and I'd be staring at an empty screen trying to figure out what I need to do on that page, which is probably the same sort of experience that new users might feel trying to navigate the web.
Defaults help you get started fast, and having "something" rather than "nothing" doesn't automatically mean "cluttered".
It is bullshit. There is nothing wrong, at all, with it being empty. It's a burden on those of independent mind to have to delete extraneous crap.
You might as well be Microsoft saying it's fine that IE is default and bundled with Windows, thus effectively pushing Netscape out of the market.
This is also the exact mentality that leads to bloatware on PCs and phones. The person that put it there thinks it's helpful, even if it took a bit of financial persuasion.
It was never hard to install anything else. The problem was that because it was default most people couldn't be persuaded of the point.
The fact it was low level welded into the OS merely made it possible for MS to argue it was necessary to be in by default for technical reasons as opposed to being a business decision.
I have a Samsung SMART TV too and I find Smart Hub to be extremely annoying in that there are prominent app spots that cannot be deleted. They're just there for Samsung to promote whatever partner it likes and it's the sort of thing that makes me regret buying Samsung.
In this case they can be deleted, and furthermore are eventually replaced by tiles containing thumbnails from your own browsing history, just as they are now.
You are confusing "emptiness" and "lack of defaults" from my post. Maybe I was not clear enough.
Firefox itself used to come with a somewhat large set of default bookmarks I believe. For Google, Amazon and some others. Those weren't sponsored but they also did not take most room on a UI element users are going to see reasonably regularly.
I'm arguing that the tiles being empty is completely fine. I don't even use firefox anymore, so this is of little importance to me personally - I just think that it's wrong to say "it's best for users to see content". Sometimes, it's good for users to see emptiness. It is something we game designers use quite a lot in video games actually: Introduce the user to a nearly non-existant interface and gradually introduce new elements as the player becomes more familiar with some mechanics. I recommend the first hour of Borderlands 2 as the prime example of this.
It's bullshit because there's a big step between 'Mozilla thought it would be best that they see “content.”' and them having default paid advertising in all new browser installs.
Wikipedia's got millions of pages of content but barring some self promotion it doesn't have adverts. Mozilla could have used any of those pages of content if they were just concerned about blank tiles. Indeed there are tons of options that aren't paid advertising from help pages on using FF to a list of the top [U rated] sites used by FF users to links to the most used add-ons/extensions/themes and such.
To recapitulate, it's bullshit because that line is is trying to sell us on them being stuck and having to place advertising in the browser. If they think it's the right thing to do then they should be convinced enough to say "we thought it best to put advertising in the browser", if they're not convinced and feel they need to make excuses then it's highly likely that it's the wrong thing to do.
I expect more from Mozilla, perhaps this is what the change in leadership is bringing us?
I find the tiles highly useful, and Mozilla metrics show that so does a large portion of their uses.
I recently had to deal with a completely fresh Firefox and the empty tiles were quite annoying.
A few years ago a Mozilla engineer talked about advertisement and how ads should not annoy users but benefit them. His example was high-end fashion magazines, which people happily buy - not despite most of the magazine consisting of ads - but because the magazine was mostly ads. The ads are beautiful and tells you what style is in vogue.
I see what you're saying, but in my experience advertising rarely gets this right. The fashion industry is a good example. I have absolutely no desire to read those magazines, let alone pay money to do so. It's blatantly reinforcing insecurities in the readers--the whole concept of what's "in style" is only meant to make people more judgmental, and fear that that same judgment might be turned against them, with constant purchases as the only way out. Quite an ingenious idea for the fashion industry, but a very toxic, manipulative piece of psychology for everyone else IMO.
Of course the tiles aren't so bad. My objection to them is mostly on principle, out of fear that it's another step in Mozilla becoming excessively beholden to advertising interests.
Firefox costs money. If it doesn't get it from the users (like it never was) or from Google (like it could soon be), it needs to find some way to fund anyway. This kind of advertising worries me a little but I find it acceptable. If you disagree, please do so by donating and saying it out loud and calling everyone to do like you.
Firefox chased me away a long time ago with the way their bug reports are (not) handled. While I won't deny they're still a net force for good on the web, if I had been donating to them even with that in mind, this action would have caused me to stop.
With any possible objective definition, Firefox is now adware.
Apparently, people would rather downvote and run than deal with the truth. Ad-filled software = adware. Just because you dislike the definition doesn't mean it doesn't apply.
> If it doesn't get it from the users (like it never was)
But early Mozilla was supported by its users, through donations of both code and money. Volunteers also spearheaded the hugely successful "get Firefox" campaign. Thanks to Google money, Mozilla can now afford to pay top dollar for engineers and prime office space on the Embarcaderro. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I sometimes wonder if it may have made Mozilla a less focused and user-centric organization than it used to be.
I don't think the donations could support mozilla today. I mean look at Wikipedia: how many people it employs, how many pageviews it gets, how drastic its donation drives are and it's not doing amazingly well financially.
And "get firefox" is part of the reasons the google thing worked - it increased the userbase drastically. But it never was a viable way to make money.
I wonder about it too, but I don't think that's the case. I mean, even their offices (like the new one, in Paris) are not just a luxury show off, but they're meant and actually used to attract new volunteers, host events to foster the web, get media attention…
No, the Mozilla Organization was kept alive by Netscape, with some other major corporation sponsoring full-time engineers. When Netscape bailed completely and the Mozilla Foundation was founded on a grant from Netscape, they started having to find their own revenue sources. And they did with Google.
The Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005 because Mozilla was generating so much cash (mainly from Google search), that they got in trouble with the IRS. That was only 2 years after the Mozilla Foundation was created!
The bulk of their revenue has always been advertisement.
As for code, they still very much rely on the open source model for new code.
No, the Mozilla Organization was kept alive by Netscape, with some other major corporation sponsoring full-time engineers. When Netscape bailed completely and the Mozilla Foundation was founded on a grant from Netscape, they started having to find their own revenue sources. And they did with Google.
The Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005 because Mozilla was generating so much cash (mainly from Google search), that they got in trouble with the IRS. That was only 2 years after the Mozilla Foundation was created!
The bulk of their revenue has always been advertisement.
As for code, they still very much rely on the open source model for new code.
It doesn't mean I don't understand you and don't agree with you, but you have to bear in mind that Wikipedia doesn't have competitors while Firefox has, a lot of them. And they don't need money, they don't need to display you advertising: because they ARE advertising (well, kind of, but not too far away in the Google and Opera case).
> Adware, or advertising-supported software, is any software package which automatically renders advertisements in order to generate revenue for its author.
A short, inflammatory comment like yours will probably attract downvotes because it doesn't offer much to the conversation other than offering a starting point for a flamewar.
Personally I think it's more inciteful in a "cut to the chase" way than it is inflammatory.
Search was sold, but search was/is an integral part of web browsing and so was going to be in there anyway. Adverts on the new-tab tiles aren't necessary - if content is necessary there it doesn't need to be paid advertising.
He made a succinct point that others hadn't made, IMO that adds to the conversation.
1. It shows ads only to a small fraction of new users and for a limited period of time.
2. It uses ads to provide a revenue diversity. Ads are just a new revenue source. Not the only one.
I thought it would show ads to all new users? And ads are already the majority source of Mozilla's income, so making more money from ads is going to lessen the diversity.
> And ads are already the majority source of Mozilla's income
Nope. Mozilla primary income source is Google (and Bing, amazon, ebay) paying to be the default search engine (and a search engine included in the search bar).
And then there are users donation, which are slowly but steadily growing. Yet they are way under Mozilla's needs.
> For users with existing tiles (History Tiles) in their new tab page, Firefox replaces the default screenshot with a better image. The Enhanced Tile is displayed only for sites that would have appeared on a user's new tab page based on their browsing history. The improved image is supplied by the site or partner and can include a logo plus a rollover image.[1]
This could very conceivably be used to display ads, e.g. Company X pays site Y to have an ad as part of site Y's tile.
When the tiles first rolled out with Facebook etc a little while back I thought it was going to feel cheap or annoying, but I haven't really noticed. Because of that, I'm not really sure how this is going to generate much revenue either. The go away so quickly after a few minutes of browsing that I almost feel like at some point they'll need to start mixing in a couple ad tiles on each view to generate any meaningful revenue.
Meh. Mozilla has to do this because they have become fat and bloated thanks to Google money. They should go back to their roots and shrink back down to the scrappy little organization that depended on its users for donations and promotion. That Mozilla would never have turned to adware.
Unfortunately, that Mozilla would, in all likelihood, have long since sunk without trace.
Not that I like this development, but I think it basically is what it is, in the absence of a genuine alternative.
(edit after 25 mins: actually, someone mentioned Iceweasel and Icecat up the page a way, neither of which I thought of - I guess there are genuine alternatives after all.)
For me, Firefox reached its peak just before it switched from the classic download window and has been going downhill ever since.
It's now rapidly going in the direction of too many formerly promising open-source projects - the core developers feeding back on each other until they go the way of the fashion industry - "This is what you need. Everything that came before is useless and must be discarded", repeating every so often.
If more users donated to Mozilla, Mozilla wouldn't need to find other sources of money (primarily Google).
Honest question: have you donated to Mozilla? And do you use Firefox? (If the answer to both of those is not 'yes', it's hard to claim that they should abandon their primary source of funding and rely solely on user support.)
I think something like a "Firefox subscription", an automatic monthly donations like those offered by PBS and NPR, could be interesting. NPR calls this "sustained giving". [1] Many people don't mind donating if they are not nagged repeatedly.
Instead of touting "Free Download" on a large green button, why not just call it Download and then have a donate-what-you-want option there? Virtually no one's going to donate after the fact.
That Mozilla could not make Firefox compete against Apple's Safari, Opera's and Google's Blink, and Microsoft's IE.
All that while developing a mobile OS, creating a new browser engine, mantaining Thunderbird, creating a marketplace, improving web standards, rolling out Mozilla Persona, teaching how to code the web to everyone…
As most people, I'm not a big fan of Ads, but in this case I'm making an exception, provided it helps Mozilla diversify its source of incomes (at least a bit), I'm all for it.
I'd rather like to see a progress bar for donations (just like on Wikipedia, reddit and Kickstarter) and I wouldn't mind if it was boldly integrated into the user interface (for example next to the address bar). Advertisement does not feel right for a company like Mozilla.
Ads are currently their only real form of income. If you use the search bar to look for Amazon items and buy something, Mozilla receives money, if you search Google with it and click an ad, Mozilla receives money.
Mozilla may be a non-profit, but they are in the advertisement business already.
it's really surprising to see how strongly people here oppose the idea of Mozilla making money. Mozilla is arguably one of the most important tech companies, committed to FOSS, transparency and providing a much needed counter balance to much larger tech giants that would steamroller all over the web without them. This is probably the least obtrusive change they could have made, how do you expect them to survive without revenue?
Really? Because I can't count to even one post in this thread opposed to Mozilla making money. I can count to more than a dozen that even suggests methods of doing so.
If I remove all the tiles on new tab page, I just have a bunch of empty tiles (using just updated Nightly). Is there a page showing all sponsored tiles that I can go to user/browser-independent?
61 comments
[ 4.6 ms ] story [ 121 ms ] threadIt serves google no purpose in Chrome -- why not just let me turn it off? Especially in an enterprise environment like at the office...
I don't care much about this sponsored tab fuss but that is some serious BS logic.
Feels like UX goes in circles. The web of the 90s was "Show as much content as possible". Google came around and it became "show only the absolutely crucial stuff". Then facebook came around and we're back to shoving as much crap down the monitors as possible.
Feels like we jump from one extreme to another all the time. And yet, the Google.com homepage remains clean and uncluttered (yes, there's more stuff than there used to, but its still 90% whitespace).
Take it this way: When you create a new folder, a file manager won't show the contents of other folders you often access just because it's "best that you see content". Or when you empty your inbox, gmail won't show some random popular emails. So on.
Showing popular sites is a good idea at its core but if you're on a fresh profile, well you're on a fresh profile. Make money off firefox of course, you need it, but "it's best you see content" is bullshit justification.
I've got a Samsung SMART TV that comes with something called "Smart Hub". In the same way as Mozilla they've pre-populated a number of applications that could be useful. This means that Netflix and Youtube are now a single click away for me and usable as soon as the TV is powered on. If they hadn't pre-populated something in the Smart Hub, I'd have to dig through the catalog for to find the apps I want to use, and I'd be staring at an empty screen trying to figure out what I need to do on that page, which is probably the same sort of experience that new users might feel trying to navigate the web.
Defaults help you get started fast, and having "something" rather than "nothing" doesn't automatically mean "cluttered".
You might as well be Microsoft saying it's fine that IE is default and bundled with Windows, thus effectively pushing Netscape out of the market.
This is also the exact mentality that leads to bloatware on PCs and phones. The person that put it there thinks it's helpful, even if it took a bit of financial persuasion.
It wasn't just that IE was the default browser that caused MS problems in Europe courts.
The fact it was low level welded into the OS merely made it possible for MS to argue it was necessary to be in by default for technical reasons as opposed to being a business decision.
Firefox itself used to come with a somewhat large set of default bookmarks I believe. For Google, Amazon and some others. Those weren't sponsored but they also did not take most room on a UI element users are going to see reasonably regularly.
I'm arguing that the tiles being empty is completely fine. I don't even use firefox anymore, so this is of little importance to me personally - I just think that it's wrong to say "it's best for users to see content". Sometimes, it's good for users to see emptiness. It is something we game designers use quite a lot in video games actually: Introduce the user to a nearly non-existant interface and gradually introduce new elements as the player becomes more familiar with some mechanics. I recommend the first hour of Borderlands 2 as the prime example of this.
Wikipedia's got millions of pages of content but barring some self promotion it doesn't have adverts. Mozilla could have used any of those pages of content if they were just concerned about blank tiles. Indeed there are tons of options that aren't paid advertising from help pages on using FF to a list of the top [U rated] sites used by FF users to links to the most used add-ons/extensions/themes and such.
To recapitulate, it's bullshit because that line is is trying to sell us on them being stuck and having to place advertising in the browser. If they think it's the right thing to do then they should be convinced enough to say "we thought it best to put advertising in the browser", if they're not convinced and feel they need to make excuses then it's highly likely that it's the wrong thing to do.
I expect more from Mozilla, perhaps this is what the change in leadership is bringing us?
I recently had to deal with a completely fresh Firefox and the empty tiles were quite annoying.
A few years ago a Mozilla engineer talked about advertisement and how ads should not annoy users but benefit them. His example was high-end fashion magazines, which people happily buy - not despite most of the magazine consisting of ads - but because the magazine was mostly ads. The ads are beautiful and tells you what style is in vogue.
Advertisement can be mutual beneficial.
Of course the tiles aren't so bad. My objection to them is mostly on principle, out of fear that it's another step in Mozilla becoming excessively beholden to advertising interests.
With any possible objective definition, Firefox is now adware.
But early Mozilla was supported by its users, through donations of both code and money. Volunteers also spearheaded the hugely successful "get Firefox" campaign. Thanks to Google money, Mozilla can now afford to pay top dollar for engineers and prime office space on the Embarcaderro. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but I sometimes wonder if it may have made Mozilla a less focused and user-centric organization than it used to be.
And "get firefox" is part of the reasons the google thing worked - it increased the userbase drastically. But it never was a viable way to make money.
The Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005 because Mozilla was generating so much cash (mainly from Google search), that they got in trouble with the IRS. That was only 2 years after the Mozilla Foundation was created!
The bulk of their revenue has always been advertisement.
As for code, they still very much rely on the open source model for new code.
The Mozilla Corporation was founded in 2005 because Mozilla was generating so much cash (mainly from Google search), that they got in trouble with the IRS. That was only 2 years after the Mozilla Foundation was created!
The bulk of their revenue has always been advertisement.
As for code, they still very much rely on the open source model for new code.
It doesn't mean I don't understand you and don't agree with you, but you have to bear in mind that Wikipedia doesn't have competitors while Firefox has, a lot of them. And they don't need money, they don't need to display you advertising: because they ARE advertising (well, kind of, but not too far away in the Google and Opera case).
> Adware, or advertising-supported software, is any software package which automatically renders advertisements in order to generate revenue for its author.
Search was sold, but search was/is an integral part of web browsing and so was going to be in there anyway. Adverts on the new-tab tiles aren't necessary - if content is necessary there it doesn't need to be paid advertising.
He made a succinct point that others hadn't made, IMO that adds to the conversation.
1. It shows ads only to a small fraction of new users and for a limited period of time. 2. It uses ads to provide a revenue diversity. Ads are just a new revenue source. Not the only one.
Nope. Mozilla primary income source is Google (and Bing, amazon, ebay) paying to be the default search engine (and a search engine included in the search bar). And then there are users donation, which are slowly but steadily growing. Yet they are way under Mozilla's needs.
This could very conceivably be used to display ads, e.g. Company X pays site Y to have an ad as part of site Y's tile.
[1]https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/how-do-sponsored-tiles-...
Not that I like this development, but I think it basically is what it is, in the absence of a genuine alternative.
(edit after 25 mins: actually, someone mentioned Iceweasel and Icecat up the page a way, neither of which I thought of - I guess there are genuine alternatives after all.)
For me, Firefox reached its peak just before it switched from the classic download window and has been going downhill ever since.
It's now rapidly going in the direction of too many formerly promising open-source projects - the core developers feeding back on each other until they go the way of the fashion industry - "This is what you need. Everything that came before is useless and must be discarded", repeating every so often.
Honest question: have you donated to Mozilla? And do you use Firefox? (If the answer to both of those is not 'yes', it's hard to claim that they should abandon their primary source of funding and rely solely on user support.)
(Yes, getting every user to donate is logistically impractical, but it's useful to think of the per-user cost when talking about consumer software.)
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Firefox
[1] http://www.slideshare.net/nprresearch/sustained-giving-resul...
Mozilla may be a non-profit, but they are in the advertisement business already.
What if wikipedia put ads?