The feature will soon land in the Beta branch

May 22, 2015 08:42 GMT  ·  By

Mozilla is going forward with its plan to implement ads in the Tiles that are available in the New Tab. It will be able to disable them, but they will there by default.

Mozilla is looking for all sorts of ways to monetize Firefox. It no longer has Google’s support, or at least not in the same amount. It was a time when Mozilla was receiving tens of millions of dollars from Google just for the fact that it was the default search engine, but that is not happening anymore. Google now has its own browser, and Mozilla needs to find other ways to generate money for the project.

The simplest and most obvious way to make money on the Internet is with ads, and they don't have a lot of choices. They can't put ads in noticeable places, like websites or menus, so they are using the next best thing, the Live Tiles that have been added in the New Tab. A lot of users will question this decision, but it's still happening.

Firefox is no longer the top contender

The Internet browser "pie" has constantly been shifting in the past few years, and we've seen a serious decline for Internet Explorer. For a while, it looked like Firefox was going to be the top contender, but that title is now going to Google Chrome. This leaves Firefox in a delicate position, so an Internet browser with ads is one of the few ways to make money.

"Suggested Tiles is an advertising experience that delivers content recommendations that are relevant for the user in a transparent way while at the same time respecting their privacy, and giving them complete control over the experience.  As a tester, you should be able to identify clearly what is promoted or sponsored content, understand why you're seeing it, interact with it and be able to change your settings with ease.  If you want to opt out entirely of Tiles, you may do that effectively and easily," said Mozilla's Kevin Ghim.

Even if Mozilla marks the ads as clearly as possible, they might provoke a much bigger effect in the long run. They are losing users, and they need money, but adding ads will probably cause them to lose even more users.

In any case, it looks like ads in Live Tiles are here to stay. The company also said that it won't stop ad-blocking add-on from interfering with Live Tiles and that users will be able to opt out. It remains to be seen if ads are going to become a source of money or a source of more grievances.