The terrible PR response here is honestly the worst bit about it for me. If they'd come out and said "we tried putting an unobtrusive ad in the browser as an experiment, we'll be collecting...
The terrible PR response here is honestly the worst bit about it for me. If they'd come out and said "we tried putting an unobtrusive ad in the browser as an experiment, we'll be collecting feedback and evaluating our options, yada yada", then fine!
Instead, they try and say it's not even an advertisement, which it clearly is (cf OED):
A notice or announcement in a public medium promoting a product, service, or event
I don't understand how anyone in their right mind can look at this text:
Ready to schedule that next family reunion? Here’s a thank you from Firefox. Book your next hotel stay on Booking.com today and get a free $20 Amazon gift card. Happy Holidays from Firefox! (Restrictions apply).
and not think that there's a product being promoted there.
That would be me. I don't really know how this kind of stuff comes to fruition. Just like any other company, engineering has limited insight into what marketing is up to. There must be some kind...
At least one user here works for Mozilla IIRC
That would be me.
if you see this thread, could you share some insight on how these decisions are made and how it's possible something with this potential of controversy isn't announced beforehand?
I don't really know how this kind of stuff comes to fruition. Just like any other company, engineering has limited insight into what marketing is up to.
There must be some kind of review process for approving content to be served up as snippets, but I don't know how that works on the backend.
Some of us were asking questions about this internally, and most of what we were told is the same as the article. Marketing has arranged a couple of deals that are exclusive to Firefox users and they are using Firefox to promote them.
Would you mind @-mentioning them so that they see the thread and the voice of the community is visible? I too recall encountering them, but don't recall their username.
At least one user here works for Mozilla IIRC, if you see this thread, could you share some insight on how these decisions are made and how it's possible something with this potential of controversy isn't announced beforehand?
Would you mind @-mentioning them so that they see the thread and the voice of the community is visible? I too recall encountering them, but don't recall their username.
I'm not sure. Browser don't just come out of nowhere, it needs money and developers thrown at it. Many, many Linux kernel devs get paid to work on the kernel. Anyone can come along and toss a...
I'm not sure. Browser don't just come out of nowhere, it needs money and developers thrown at it. Many, many Linux kernel devs get paid to work on the kernel. Anyone can come along and toss a patch on up there but the heavy lifting gets done with $$$.
I love Firefox. I really do. But you know what's the worst part about Mozilla? They are the only ones left. Opera gave up. Microsoft gave up. What will happen when Mozilla gives up or screws up so...
I love Firefox. I really do. But you know what's the worst part about Mozilla? They are the only ones left. Opera gave up. Microsoft gave up. What will happen when Mozilla gives up or screws up so much people will get mad? All Goog, all the way. And this scares me. And it scares me even more when you consider that creating a new browser from scratch is such an impossible task in this day and age that some might say creating a commercially-successful OS is more probable.
At this point, if fucking Facebook creates its own browser, I will be happy.
Even Chrome wasn't created from scratch. I don't see why a browser has to be. They've diverged enough from Safari/WebKit to be considered their own entity. I'm not that worried. Both Chromium and...
Even Chrome wasn't created from scratch. I don't see why a browser has to be. They've diverged enough from Safari/WebKit to be considered their own entity.
I'm not that worried. Both Chromium and Firefox are brilliant. It's rare to have a market with two competing high-quality and open-source pieces of software. Most other markets have only one great open-source tool, if any at all.
Competing is a bit of an overstatement: w3schools stats, statcounter. That downward trend in the first one is interesting, it's either FF users mass migrating to MDN or something else for help, or...
Competing is a bit of an overstatement: w3schools stats, statcounter. That downward trend in the first one is interesting, it's either FF users mass migrating to MDN or something else for help, or something quite sad.
We look worse with StatCounter et al than we actually should because they use trackers to measure traffic, and we actively block trackers in many situations. (Yes, there are HTTP server logs, but...
We look worse with StatCounter et al than we actually should because they use trackers to measure traffic, and we actively block trackers in many situations.
(Yes, there are HTTP server logs, but those companies don't use log scraping)
Yep, this is why in the last 5 years you'll have seen Mozilla really turn into yet another Silicon Valley company. They've got a ton of product managers and A/B test everything; it's no longer...
Yep, this is why in the last 5 years you'll have seen Mozilla really turn into yet another Silicon Valley company. They've got a ton of product managers and A/B test everything; it's no longer really audience or developer-driven. They made that terrible bet on mobile with FirefoxOS.
Their explanation leaves much to be desired if I'm being honest. Currently I'd still trust Mozilla over most other companies to display ads that aren't actually low-quality, tracker-stuffed...
Their explanation leaves much to be desired if I'm being honest. Currently I'd still trust Mozilla over most other companies to display ads that aren't actually low-quality, tracker-stuffed garbage, but when it's done in this hush-hush way and their. justification is almost indiscernible from a standard corporate PR response that raises some red flags.
Adding value through ads sounds like a nice idea, but this still reads like Mozilla dipping it's toes in a system that simply isn't malleable enough to accommodate the privacy concerns of the kinds of people who often use Mozilla's software. Ads have been continuously plummeting in value over the past decade and tracking has been the go-to to try and prop it back up. Advertisers want qualified leads, and they will ask for them, and the way to get them is by tracking your users, no two ways about it.
PRSpeak bullshit. You can thank me by doing what you're supposed to do. Firefox is a great web browser, and Mozilla is more trustable than all the major alternatives, but they are not exactly what...
“This snippet was an experiment to provide more value to Firefox users through offers provided by a partner,” a Mozilla spokesperson told VentureBeat. “It was not a paid placement or advertisement. We are continually looking for more ways to say thanks for using Firefox. In a similar vein, earlier this month we offered Firefox users a free opportunity to enjoy a live concert from Phosphorescent. In addition to adding value to Firefox users, these efforts are intended to support an open ecosystem. When users see such offers, no data is being shared with a partner until users have made the choice to enter a relationship. We hope that this strategy sets a positive example.”
PRSpeak bullshit. You can thank me by doing what you're supposed to do.
Firefox is a great web browser, and Mozilla is more trustable than all the major alternatives, but they are not exactly what they tell they are. If they cut all these idiots that cause these stupid mess ups off, maybe they'd need less money to run the project. I'm quite ready to jump ship on desktop, just that addons like uBlock Origin and Greasemonkey, and the Firefox Sync feature are very useful, and there aren't any alternatives I know of on mobile.
I love Firefox but all these "experiments" they've been surprising people with do not inspire confidence in either their motivations or their stance toward openness. I get that they're strapped...
I love Firefox but all these "experiments" they've been surprising people with do not inspire confidence in either their motivations or their stance toward openness. I get that they're strapped for cash but there's got to be a better way to raise some. Maybe an annual Wikipedia-style pledge drive or something?
The terrible PR response here is honestly the worst bit about it for me. If they'd come out and said "we tried putting an unobtrusive ad in the browser as an experiment, we'll be collecting feedback and evaluating our options, yada yada", then fine!
Instead, they try and say it's not even an advertisement, which it clearly is (cf OED):
I don't understand how anyone in their right mind can look at this text:
and not think that there's a product being promoted there.
That would be me.
I don't really know how this kind of stuff comes to fruition. Just like any other company, engineering has limited insight into what marketing is up to.
There must be some kind of review process for approving content to be served up as snippets, but I don't know how that works on the backend.
Some of us were asking questions about this internally, and most of what we were told is the same as the article. Marketing has arranged a couple of deals that are exclusive to Firefox users and they are using Firefox to promote them.
Would you mind @-mentioning them so that they see the thread and the voice of the community is visible? I too recall encountering them, but don't recall their username.
Possibly stupid question but... have I missed an entire conversation or something about the nature of open source programming?
I'm not sure. Browser don't just come out of nowhere, it needs money and developers thrown at it. Many, many Linux kernel devs get paid to work on the kernel. Anyone can come along and toss a patch on up there but the heavy lifting gets done with $$$.
Yes. Especially when you consider who our competitors are.
I love Firefox. I really do. But you know what's the worst part about Mozilla? They are the only ones left. Opera gave up. Microsoft gave up. What will happen when Mozilla gives up or screws up so much people will get mad? All Goog, all the way. And this scares me. And it scares me even more when you consider that creating a new browser from scratch is such an impossible task in this day and age that some might say creating a commercially-successful OS is more probable.
At this point, if fucking Facebook creates its own browser, I will be happy.
Even Chrome wasn't created from scratch. I don't see why a browser has to be. They've diverged enough from Safari/WebKit to be considered their own entity.
I'm not that worried. Both Chromium and Firefox are brilliant. It's rare to have a market with two competing high-quality and open-source pieces of software. Most other markets have only one great open-source tool, if any at all.
Competing is a bit of an overstatement: w3schools stats, statcounter. That downward trend in the first one is interesting, it's either FF users mass migrating to MDN or something else for help, or something quite sad.
We look worse with StatCounter et al than we actually should because they use trackers to measure traffic, and we actively block trackers in many situations.
(Yes, there are HTTP server logs, but those companies don't use log scraping)
Yep, this is why in the last 5 years you'll have seen Mozilla really turn into yet another Silicon Valley company. They've got a ton of product managers and A/B test everything; it's no longer really audience or developer-driven. They made that terrible bet on mobile with FirefoxOS.
Their explanation leaves much to be desired if I'm being honest. Currently I'd still trust Mozilla over most other companies to display ads that aren't actually low-quality, tracker-stuffed garbage, but when it's done in this hush-hush way and their. justification is almost indiscernible from a standard corporate PR response that raises some red flags.
Adding value through ads sounds like a nice idea, but this still reads like Mozilla dipping it's toes in a system that simply isn't malleable enough to accommodate the privacy concerns of the kinds of people who often use Mozilla's software. Ads have been continuously plummeting in value over the past decade and tracking has been the go-to to try and prop it back up. Advertisers want qualified leads, and they will ask for them, and the way to get them is by tracking your users, no two ways about it.
PRSpeak bullshit. You can thank me by doing what you're supposed to do.
Firefox is a great web browser, and Mozilla is more trustable than all the major alternatives, but they are not exactly what they tell they are. If they cut all these idiots that cause these stupid mess ups off, maybe they'd need less money to run the project. I'm quite ready to jump ship on desktop, just that addons like uBlock Origin and Greasemonkey, and the Firefox Sync feature are very useful, and there aren't any alternatives I know of on mobile.
I love Firefox but all these "experiments" they've been surprising people with do not inspire confidence in either their motivations or their stance toward openness. I get that they're strapped for cash but there's got to be a better way to raise some. Maybe an annual Wikipedia-style pledge drive or something?
Unfortunately not everybody can pay for something like browser software.
They do this all the time, I continuously get emails asking me to donate a buck or two. And usually I do, every year, but apparently it's not enough?
Donations don't go toward Gecko/Firefox development. They are only used for the Foundation's initiatives.