If you were one of the many hoping that Firefox would be making a retreat from sponsored tiles on its new new-tab page, then we’re sorry but your hopes are about to be dashed.
No ad to show here.
The confusion, it seems, came about after Mozilla’s Vice President of Firefox Jonathan Nightingale wrote a blog post defending the plan.
As TechCrunch notes however, a number of people misinterpreted the post to mean that it was scrapping the new product.
What Nightingale was actually saying though was that Mozilla would continue to implement the now product, first floated at the IAB conference in February, but would do so relatively slowly. At this stage, it’s experimenting with experimenting with different new-tab pages and that they will likely include sponsored content in the future.
The move is meant to be especially useful for new Firefox users, who haven’t browsed enough for their new-tab page to have anything from their browser history. Indeed, a few Mozilla resources and some useful sponsored pages could help new users stick with the browser.
It’s also incredibly important for Mozilla to find new revenue streams. At present, 97.9% of what it makes comes from deals it’s made with search engines and Google in particular.
Nightingale has promised that the new product won’t turn the new-tab page “into a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder; without user control, without user benefit.” Typically, it seems, the sponsored content would stay with the users for 30 days unless they’re actively managed.
