Saturday, August 1st, 2015, 10:19 am
When Mozilla Puts an Advertising Network at the Very Heart of Firefox
T IS no secret that Mozilla has been planning to put ads inside Firefox. This is a very controversial decision, so Mozilla is apparently still experimenting with it, mostly promoting its own products and services. Today, however, I saw one of my ‘speed-dial’ buttons (linking to Twitter) spontaneously replaced with Mozilla ads, some of them “sponsored” and some proprietary software (like Pocket). I took screenshots to serve as proof of this and here are four examples.
It might not be long before Firefox spies on the users, transmits user data to Mozilla, and then Mozilla sends targeted ads for whatever product/brand exists in the market and looks for clients. Mozilla would be utterly stupid to do such a thing, for the media (not just users) would definitely strike back. If Mozilla needs more sources of revenue, this shouldn’t be it. The negative publicity would induce greater losses than the temporary gains (from sales of advertisement slots).