James Delahunty
12 May 2014 8:45
Mozilla has re-assured Firefox users that the new tab window in Firefox will not become a mess of logos as it prepares to test sponsored content.
The firm published plans for Directory Tiles tests on new tabs back in February, and it was met with a lot of criticism and questions from users. Nevertheless, Mozilla will go ahead with some testing on its pre-release channels to see whether new tabs pages can be made more useful.
Writing on the Mozilla blog, Johnathan Nightingale re-assured users that the firm is not going to, "turn Firefox into a mess of logos sold to the highest bidder; without user control, without user benefit." He added that the community found a lot of language in the original post "hard to decipher."
The upcoming tests are also not about revenue, and none will be collected. "Sponsorship would be the next stage once we are confident that we can deliver user value," wrote Nightingale.
"We'll experiment on Firefox across platforms, and we'll talk about what we learn before anything ships to our release users. And we'll keep listening for feedback and suggestions to make this work better for you. Because that's who we are at Mozilla."
Sources and Recommended Reading:
Publisher Transformation with Users at the Center: blog.mozilla.org (Feb 11)
New Tab Experiments: blog.mozilla.org (May 9)