I have seen that Mozilla have implemented sponsored links on the startpagein Firefox.
At first I was slightly annoyed, but the more I think about it, the better I feel.
Firefox needs new revenue streams, they can’t depend on Google any more, and if some small sponsored Links helps pay the bills without Google, I am all for it!
What do you think about it?
I don’t think you have to worry too much about Mozilla running out of money. Right now, they’re spending it like there’s no tomorrow.
CEO salary: Mitchell Baker’s salary jumped by millions of dollars while Firefox browser market share slumped.
Shopping spree: Mozilla purchased two brand new AdTech corporations in the last year or so:
- One of them serves up ads through Firefox on shopping websites and sells your browsing/location history.
- The other works with corporations like TikTok (and at least two more of the top 10 most popular social networks) to analyze their traffic.
Throwing cash around: If wasn’t enough, Mozilla has earmarked $30 million for AI research grants, and another $30 million for random venture capital.
So in general, even if you could to donate directly to the development of Firefox, I think Mozilla should get its financial house in order before you do. (But you cannot donate to the development of Firefox, which is another reason you might want to consider withholding any donations.)
Disabled it the second I noticed
That is what I like about it, if you really don’t want it, you can disable it easily (:
That doesn’t reduce their revenue, right? Except in the case the companies don’t see increased traffic coming from Firefox therefore pulling their sponsored links from FF.
I wish they weren’t needed, but I can see why they help. I don’t quite get why anyone would pay for it though - from the ones I’ve seen so far, I’m having a hard time imagining how they would lead to a transaction occurring. Though for name recognition it probably helps.
As an aside, it’s nice that you can just turn them off. Where do you see that nowadays?
Yes, I too feel I need to be more lenient towards Mozzy just for their dev work (and they do or did more).
Donating some monies too, but this is for the viability of their business model. I don’t think this (within current context) can’t ever escalate to like fullscreen ads or anything, it’s just an income diversification for risk management purposes.
I always remind myself that 90% of the market is chrome.
It’s unfortunate that only bad webpages would pay for such a sponsorship, but you’ve obviously got the same problem with search engines, so yeah, I’d rather have them reduce dependence on that single bad actor.