6 ms·

Updated Firefox and the first thing I'm greeted with is an advert for their VPN. Not too happy about that.

jsiepkes 6y ago
Would you pay a small fee, say 20 Euro, a year for a Firefox version which guarantees no-ads or pocket? If enough people feel like that they might consider it. Meanwhile something has got to pay for the bills. I don't think advertising for their own VPN service is too bad.
- LarvaFX 6y ago
  I would have but since they fired the devtools and mdn team, it's only a matter of time until firefox becomes totally irrelevant.
  - pbhjpbhj 6y ago
    Can't have a dev team using up wages when that money could go on bonuses to an already hugely overpaid executive now can we!
- leeoniya 6y ago
  > Would you pay a small fee, say 20 Euro, a year for a Firefox version which guarantees no-ads or pocket? i would have, even $50. but not after they've laid off most of their servo engineers to focus the company on more idiotic moneygrabs. there was never a way to pay for firefox. only some black hole foundation contrib that probably went to their many failed, poorly-conceived initiatives.
  - ChrisSD 6y ago
    Those "money grabs", by definition, make more money than they consume.
    - bigbubba 6y ago
      Money grabs by definition never fail? No, money grabs aspire to make money but may not succeed at it.
- parliament32 6y ago
  I'd honestly happily pay for an FF license (or support license or something) if it was guaranteed the money was going directly to FF development instead of other Mozilla initiatives.
- detritus 6y ago
  I'd happily pay at least £5 a month for Firefox, if I could. If I were richer, I'd pay more, and I totally understand the millions of people who don't want to pay a penny. From having read lots of posts over the years - here and elsewhere - I get the sense it would at least be worth their while opening up some kind of donate/subscription function, for people who feel they want to help.
detritus 6y ago
Why? It's 'their' product and fits within Mozilla's ambitions for the product, namely making the user central to the online privacy debate. If I paid for Firefox, I'd perhaps be a little irked, but given I've never given Firefox a penny, I'm happy for them to try and get me to spend money on their things (even though as a Euro, I can't yet - I think the VPN's US only?). If anyone from Firefox is reading this - please hurry up and allow me to pay for your product. I'd dearly like to! - ed: typos
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  > Why? Because people want to use their browser to browse. They don't want to be advertised to while they're trying to work or otherwise get on with their hectic lives. They also don't want to hear about silly TV shows while they're browsing. All things Mozilla needs to learn.
  - rakoo 6y ago
    But a VPN is arguably an help for a better browsing, so it's in line with what the user wants already.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      > But a VPN is arguably an help for a better browsing, so it's in line with what the user wants already. Lol and Coca-Cola is delicious and refreshing so it's arguably in line to put it on the side of a bus when it goes past people who are thirsty. I don't want your product shoved in my face, no matter how awesome you think I should find it.
  - detritus 6y ago
    Ok, I've updated to see for myself. The 'advert' is in the start up page we see upon every update. It's as much of an imposition upon my browser experience as a welcome page in any application, and because my hand is already hovering over Ctrl+W, it's gone before I even got a chance to care. I just don't get the irritation here. My web browser is my single-most used application and I've never paid Firefox a bean for it. If they want to promote an extension to their service that they presumably feel is relevant to a percentage of their userbase, then they should go for it - even if the likes of you or I don't really care for it. The Mr. Robot promotion was a screw up, no denying it.
protomyth 6y ago
I would be fine with the notice if it supported the machine that I am on. Come on Mozilla, you know what OS I'm running, don't advertise "coming soon" to me.
sp332 6y ago
It's not a great default, but you can disable these by clicking the gear icon in the top-right of the new tab page and turning off "Snippets".
rplnt 6y ago
After Google used browsers to gain monopoly and cutting off their income, there's only so many monetization strategies you can do to stay somewhat competitive with an advertising company providing browser for free while simultaneously trying to block you from using any other browser.
- spinningslate 6y ago
  Won't argue that Mozilla/Firefox has been comprehensively out-manouvered by Google/Chrome. I'm still puzzled why Moz haven't tried a paid-for Firefox option. They've gone to the bother of creating entire new paid-for products - with all the budget and product/market fit uncertainty that involves. Surely a paid-for FF option would have been a less expensive experiment? Perhaps the terms of the Google "donation" prevent/constrain that. I wouldn't be surprised if so. Which does lead to an interesting - if probably fanciful - scenario from the anti-trust investigation announced today... ...charactertise the browser as a "utility" and require G to (a) transfer it into Mozilla's stewardship and (b) force them to license from there. (I know: unrealistic, unworkable, lots of other "just no"s. But a fun idea nonetheless).
  - modo_mario 6y ago
    >Won't argue that Mozilla/Firefox has been comprehensively out-manouvered by Google/Chrome. And sometimes without being at fault really. I remember a key moment when firefox was bleeding users was when google decided that H264 would be the standard after switching for a while and mozilla having to run after it trying to get implementations going and then still having a laggy af experience on youtube and the like because the implementation google went with was proprietary. >I'm still puzzled why Moz haven't tried a paid-for Firefox option. and what functionality would the paid version of firefox have? Chances are it would cause an outrage and user-loss due to cries that functionality would be premium only tbh. It would also probably make not much of a dent in the budget.
    - spinningslate 6y ago
      > and what functionality would the paid version of firefox have? Maybe it's what it _doesn't_ have. No ads for Pocket/VPN/whatever. Maybe it comes with DDG as the default search engine. Or maybe it's pre-configured with a set of tested privacy-focused extensions. Pro-privacy advocates might be in the minority, but it's a growing and generally vociferous minority. Mozilla's VPN offering suggests they see privacy as a market. FF is still by far their most popular offering; so I'm simply wondering why there's been no effort I'm aware of to explore the intersection of FF, privacy and revenue. Recognising Google would most likey challenge that.
jacobsenscott 6y ago
Just wait until you go to google and see an advert for chrome!
- battingmarten 6y ago
  Might be waiting a while. I tend not to go to Google.
unethical_ban 6y ago
God could grant some of you immortality and you'd complain about not being able to instantly transport anywhere. Firefox is a decent product that you get for FREE, the output of all these groups' work is free and reproducible, but you don't like a once-in-six-weeks underwriting message when a new version comes out.
- doc_gunthrop 6y ago
  If someone is so perturbed by something so trivial, it speaks more about the person than the product. The FF team could probably do away with that page and the user will still find something to complain about.

Would you pay a small fee, say 20 Euro, a year for a Firefox version which guarantees no-ads or pocket? If enough people feel like that they might consider it. Meanwhile something has got to pay for the bills. I don't think advertising for their own VPN service is too bad.

LarvaFX 6y ago
I would have but since they fired the devtools and mdn team, it's only a matter of time until firefox becomes totally irrelevant.
- pbhjpbhj 6y ago
  Can't have a dev team using up wages when that money could go on bonuses to an already hugely overpaid executive now can we!
leeoniya 6y ago
> Would you pay a small fee, say 20 Euro, a year for a Firefox version which guarantees no-ads or pocket? i would have, even $50. but not after they've laid off most of their servo engineers to focus the company on more idiotic moneygrabs. there was never a way to pay for firefox. only some black hole foundation contrib that probably went to their many failed, poorly-conceived initiatives.
- ChrisSD 6y ago
  Those "money grabs", by definition, make more money than they consume.
  - bigbubba 6y ago
    Money grabs by definition never fail? No, money grabs aspire to make money but may not succeed at it.
parliament32 6y ago
I'd honestly happily pay for an FF license (or support license or something) if it was guaranteed the money was going directly to FF development instead of other Mozilla initiatives.
detritus 6y ago
I'd happily pay at least £5 a month for Firefox, if I could. If I were richer, I'd pay more, and I totally understand the millions of people who don't want to pay a penny. From having read lots of posts over the years - here and elsewhere - I get the sense it would at least be worth their while opening up some kind of donate/subscription function, for people who feel they want to help.

detritus 6y ago

Why? It's 'their' product and fits within Mozilla's ambitions for the product, namely making the user central to the online privacy debate. If I paid for Firefox, I'd perhaps be a little irked, but given I've never given Firefox a penny, I'm happy for them to try and get me to spend money on their things (even though as a Euro, I can't yet - I think the VPN's US only?). If anyone from Firefox is reading this - please hurry up and allow me to pay for your product. I'd dearly like to! - ed: typos

chrisseaton 6y ago
> Why? Because people want to use their browser to browse. They don't want to be advertised to while they're trying to work or otherwise get on with their hectic lives. They also don't want to hear about silly TV shows while they're browsing. All things Mozilla needs to learn.
- rakoo 6y ago
  But a VPN is arguably an help for a better browsing, so it's in line with what the user wants already.
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    > But a VPN is arguably an help for a better browsing, so it's in line with what the user wants already. Lol and Coca-Cola is delicious and refreshing so it's arguably in line to put it on the side of a bus when it goes past people who are thirsty. I don't want your product shoved in my face, no matter how awesome you think I should find it.
- detritus 6y ago
  Ok, I've updated to see for myself. The 'advert' is in the start up page we see upon every update. It's as much of an imposition upon my browser experience as a welcome page in any application, and because my hand is already hovering over Ctrl+W, it's gone before I even got a chance to care. I just don't get the irritation here. My web browser is my single-most used application and I've never paid Firefox a bean for it. If they want to promote an extension to their service that they presumably feel is relevant to a percentage of their userbase, then they should go for it - even if the likes of you or I don't really care for it. The Mr. Robot promotion was a screw up, no denying it.

protomyth 6y ago

I would be fine with the notice if it supported the machine that I am on. Come on Mozilla, you know what OS I'm running, don't advertise "coming soon" to me.

sp332 6y ago

It's not a great default, but you can disable these by clicking the gear icon in the top-right of the new tab page and turning off "Snippets".

rplnt 6y ago

After Google used browsers to gain monopoly and cutting off their income, there's only so many monetization strategies you can do to stay somewhat competitive with an advertising company providing browser for free while simultaneously trying to block you from using any other browser.

spinningslate 6y ago
Won't argue that Mozilla/Firefox has been comprehensively out-manouvered by Google/Chrome. I'm still puzzled why Moz haven't tried a paid-for Firefox option. They've gone to the bother of creating entire new paid-for products - with all the budget and product/market fit uncertainty that involves. Surely a paid-for FF option would have been a less expensive experiment? Perhaps the terms of the Google "donation" prevent/constrain that. I wouldn't be surprised if so. Which does lead to an interesting - if probably fanciful - scenario from the anti-trust investigation announced today... ...charactertise the browser as a "utility" and require G to (a) transfer it into Mozilla's stewardship and (b) force them to license from there. (I know: unrealistic, unworkable, lots of other "just no"s. But a fun idea nonetheless).
- modo_mario 6y ago
  >Won't argue that Mozilla/Firefox has been comprehensively out-manouvered by Google/Chrome. And sometimes without being at fault really. I remember a key moment when firefox was bleeding users was when google decided that H264 would be the standard after switching for a while and mozilla having to run after it trying to get implementations going and then still having a laggy af experience on youtube and the like because the implementation google went with was proprietary. >I'm still puzzled why Moz haven't tried a paid-for Firefox option. and what functionality would the paid version of firefox have? Chances are it would cause an outrage and user-loss due to cries that functionality would be premium only tbh. It would also probably make not much of a dent in the budget.
  - spinningslate 6y ago
    > and what functionality would the paid version of firefox have? Maybe it's what it _doesn't_ have. No ads for Pocket/VPN/whatever. Maybe it comes with DDG as the default search engine. Or maybe it's pre-configured with a set of tested privacy-focused extensions. Pro-privacy advocates might be in the minority, but it's a growing and generally vociferous minority. Mozilla's VPN offering suggests they see privacy as a market. FF is still by far their most popular offering; so I'm simply wondering why there's been no effort I'm aware of to explore the intersection of FF, privacy and revenue. Recognising Google would most likey challenge that.

jacobsenscott 6y ago

Just wait until you go to google and see an advert for chrome!

battingmarten 6y ago
Might be waiting a while. I tend not to go to Google.

unethical_ban 6y ago

God could grant some of you immortality and you'd complain about not being able to instantly transport anywhere. Firefox is a decent product that you get for FREE, the output of all these groups' work is free and reproducible, but you don't like a once-in-six-weeks underwriting message when a new version comes out.

doc_gunthrop 6y ago
If someone is so perturbed by something so trivial, it speaks more about the person than the product. The FF team could probably do away with that page and the user will still find something to complain about.