There is no escape from consumerism: Mozilla has announced that it is going to start experimenting with promotional tiles in its ‘new tab’ page.
Usually when you open a new tab in Firefox you’re presented with your most-visited websites. When you’ve cleared your history or are starting with a fresh installation, those tiles simply appear blank. From now on, though, those blank panels will be replaced by Mozilla links and sponsored tiles.
The ads will mercifully be clearly labelled as such, and they’ll disappear as a browsing history builds. But, as TechCrunch suggests, it’s likely that this is a trial to see how users react to the ad invasion, which could then be rolled out so that all new tab pages display some sponsored content.
The goal, obviously, is for the organisation — which currently sees 90 per cent of its revenue come from Google — generate a little more cash. Which is fair enough; it’ll no doubt end up providing better products as a result. It’s just a shame that it means yet another pane of our windows into the internet is now obscured with people trying to sell us stuff. [Mozilla via TechCrunch]