From InfoWorld: Mozilla last week said it would press forward on plans to put advertisements on Firefox's new tab page, but reassured users that the browser would not become "a mess of logos."
In a May 9 blog, Johnathan Nightingale, vice president of engineering at Mozilla, acknowledged that the February announcement that it would insert ads in its flagship browser had not been well received. But the company has no intention of dropping the idea.
"We will experiment," Nightingale said. "In the coming weeks, we'll be landing tests on our pre-release channels to see whether we can make things like the new tab page more useful, particularly for fresh installs of Firefox, where we don't yet have any recommendations to make from your history. We'll test a mix of our own sites and other useful sites on the Web. We'll mess with the layout."
Three months ago, Mozilla announced a project it called "Directory Tiles" that would put pre-selected tiles, some of them sponsored -- advertisements, in other words -- on the browser's new tab page. For long-time Firefox users, that page, which has room for nine thumbnails, shows each user's most-frequently-visited websites. Someone new to Firefox would see nothing, so to jump-start the experience Mozilla will fill the spots itself.
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