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Mozilla to stop Sponsored Tiles in Firefox
- e15ctr0n 11y agoI'm waiting to see "Mozilla to stop making Firefox mimic Chrome in every way".
- zobzu 11y agoI'm waiting to see "HN commenters stop trolling on baseless stuff" But they both have URL bars, copy!
- zxcdw 11y agoIs "Firefox mimicking Chrome" something you have an issue with for some reason, or what are you after?
- thristian 11y agoThere'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.
- muddi900 11y agoNamely, dropping XUL support. Chrome still doesn't have a functional DL manager.
- SeldomSoup 11y agoChrome does many things right. I use Firefox and am ecstatic about the new extension architecture, for example.
- ilaksh 11y agoDoes that mean they are cutting a few jobs? Isn't advertising a key aspect of the funding?
- yeukhon 11y agoI 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 11y agoDarren has already announced he is leaving. https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/672889449265676288 https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/672889449265676288
- wott 11y ago"A return to my technology routes" ... ... Sigh.
- yeukhon 11y agoThank you. Definitely not surprising after this blog post.
- chinathrow 11y agoAhh great. I still have the strong feeling he was an IAB mole/shill within Mozilla. Glad he's out.
- greglindahl 11y agoAll of their funding comes from search deals, which are driven by the high value of search advertising vs display advertising. The tiles are display advertising and probably added up to roughly nothing. I predicted (at launch) they'd kill it as soon as they realized it was irrelevant to their bottom line, and annoyed people. Edit: added info about search/display ad split
- huhtenberg 11y agoWhat 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 11y agoA 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 11y agoI'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 11y agoHow do you suggest Mozilla makes money?
- stonogo 11y agoCharge?
- krapp 11y agoWhy would users start paying money for a browser which is surrounded by free competitors (including forks of Firefox?)
- rickycook 11y agobecause if they made it less bloated, perform well, and focused on real UX then they might produce the only browser that doesn't suck in some way and that's worth paying for considering how long many of us spend in browsers every day
- chimeracoder 11y ago> 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.
- JohnTHaller 11y agoNot sure why you're being downvoted here. Exploring non-invasive advertising techniques is a valid monetization strategy, especially when it's optional.
- i80and 11y agoThis is a VERY important point. I won't cry over tiles going away, but if indeed all the magic happened client side, then that's a perfectly ethical way of going about advertising.
- epoch1970 11y agoI 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 11y agoIt was straightforward to turn the sponsored tiles off, which seems to directly address what you are saying.
- stanleydrew 11y agoSeems 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 11y agoActually, 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 11y ago> 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 11y agoPerhaps 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.
- bduerst 11y agoThe title is a little misleading - Mozilla is removing the sponsored tiles that you see when you open a new firefox tab.
- admsyn 11y agoHow is it misleading? That's exactly what I thought it meant, personally.
- bduerst 11y agoThey changed the title to be more reflective of the content. It said something around the lines of Firefox was removing advertising.
- mahouse 11y agoAnd that's what the title says, unless it's been edited since you wrote this comment.
- bduerst 11y agoIt has been edited. It used to say Mozilla removed advertising from Firefox.
- staunch 11y agoI 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 11y agoHow is Chrome "privacy eviscerating"? Do you have any evidence or are you just paranoid because it's made by Google?
- staunch 11y agoChrome calls home with all kinds of private data and it doesn't ask permission. https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/ https://www.google.com/chrome/browser/privacy/
- symlinkk 11y agoWhich point on there specifically bothers you? All of those seem obvious to me - if you use Translate, it goes to Google. Also, a lot of that is disabled when you go to incognito mode; e.g. the search engine prediction in the omnibar. Plus, you can encrypt the data Chrome uses to sync -- see: https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1181035?hl=en
- heroh 11y ago>a lot of that is disabled when you go to incognito mode ಠ_ಠ
- rgbrenner 11y agoGood. 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.
- rfk 11y agoNot that it really matters after this announcement, but it has always been possible to disable the suggested tiles, from the little settings gear icon on the newtab page.
- rgbrenner 11y agoCool.. didn't notice that was there. But isn't this menu a bit deceptive? This is a setting menu with 2 options: disable suggested tiles, and show blank page. Show blank page can be set from the regular options page.. while the 'disable suggested tiles' option is not in the regular options. So the only unique feature of this menu is disabling suggested tiles. It's as if, this menu was created entirely to hide disabling suggested tiles.
- dombili 11y agoUnfortunately that's what Mozilla does now. They force these so called features on their users, but they don't get enough crap for it for doing so simply because they can be disabled. Most people miss the point that majority of people who use Firefox probably don't even know what tiles were to begin with. (same goes to Pocket, Hello etc.)
- rlpb 11y ago> 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?
- 11y ago
- devit 11y agoWhat 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.
- e15ctr0n 11y agoAgree. The corporate bullshit jargon is strong with this one. Not surprising when the CEO himself is a purely marketing man. People have even made games like Bullshit Bingo based on corporate-speak in meeting rooms. http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/bullshit/ http://www.bullshitbingo.net/cards/bullshit/
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JoshTriplett 11y agoIt certainly doesn't help to have a pile of people unceasingly seeking every opportunity to snark about this on every article about Mozilla and Firefox.
- yuhong 11y agoMy mistake. I thought this was by the CEO. It is not.
- potch 11y agoWe 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.
- potch 11y ago
- whoopdedo 11y agoAdvertising 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."
- nonbel 11y agoIf that's the case, they still haven't learned the lesson: >"We want to reimagine content experiences and content discovery in our products"
- dangoor 11y agoIt 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 11y agoI'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 11y ago> chain of anti-freedom decisions and went to Safari. You really showed them!
- 11y ago
- verusfossa 11y agoThis 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 11y agoPocket 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 11y agoThis is better, but why built-in?
- 01Michael10 11y agoThey need to make money... Have you ever donated any to them?
- dombili 11y agoMozilla 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_is_not_benefiting_from_the_pocket/ https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/38aorv/psa_mozilla...
- e15ctr0n 11y agoMozilla'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-web-needs-it-the-most/ http://www.wired.com/2015/12/mozilla-is-flailing-when-the-we...
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JoshTriplett 11y ago> I just don't like having my browser history on display for the world to see. Same here; I turned off tiles immediately, in favor of a blank tab. If I want one of the more common sites I visit, it's generally 1-2 letters away via the awesomebar: Ctrl-t l [enter] is LWN, Ctrl-t y [enter] is the YouTube Subscriptions page, etc.
- scrollaway 11y agoMozilla 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 11y agoMozilla 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.
- scrollaway 11y agoI'm well aware. My point is that if the company knew its userbase, it would not have happened. I don't care about it by the way, I like Pocket and I use the functionality. But it was obvious that there would be drama. Edit: In reply to the dead comment below, no I do not think Pocket should be preinstalled, and I really hope that's not the message that's getting through in my posts.
- ossreality 11y agoI like Google Voice and I use the functionality. Should every single Firefox user have a Google Voice extension pre-installed? It's just painfully stupid in every way. If it was a built in extension that by-default talked to a Mozilla hosted open source Pocket clone, we might be having a different conversation.... but I'd still be annoyed. Just as annoyed as I am that Chromium (yes, Chromium, not Chrome) comes with a god damn Google Docs extension.
- eccstartup 11y agoI reported the ad abuse.
- eccstartup 11y agoI reported the ad abuse.
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- JamesSwift 11y agoAm I missing something? I've never seen this feature when I open a new tab.
- DHJSH 11y agoAt least they didn't bundle the "Ask Toolbar." I don't think anyone in the history of the Internet _ever_ wanted that thing.
- zecg 11y ago> "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 11y agoToo bad. I thought it was a nice, genuine user-centric approach to digital advertising.
- Sir_Substance 11y agoMozilla: Thank you, this is such a relief.
- chinathrow 11y agoThis is really great. Did they fire that guy who came over from the IAB with it too? Hostile takeover, reversed for now.
- dao- 11y agoYou 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
- newscracker 11y agoI 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.
- UrsuppDesquen 11y agoThat 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.