Mozilla plans to sell ads in Firefox browser (opens in new tab)

(reuters.com)

23 pointscgrubb12y ago13 comments

13 comments

13 comments · 9 top-level

iancarroll12y ago· 3 in thread

Big whoop.

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

benologist12y ago

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

Do they need more funding? They made $163 million in revenue in 2011 after which they signed a $300m/year deal which ends this year, all of this and most of their money in general is provided by Google.

Sounds more like a play for independence.

hiphopyo12y ago

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_soni12y ago

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 ...

brudgers12y ago· 1 in thread

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

craigvn12y ago

That should be ANOTHER WAY to make Firefox suck.

sheetjs12y ago

related discussions:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7220125

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7223436

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/2014/02/13/more-de...

kitcar12y ago

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... .

x005412y ago

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.

2 more replies

nilved12y ago

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

jfoster12y ago

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.

jwarkentin12y ago

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.

RamiK12y ago

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...

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse