Mozilla’s greatest struggle is its quest for revenue. While this might seem like a struggle that is shared by virtually all profit making entities around the world, in the case of Mozilla it tends to be an even greater uphill struggle than might have been the case otherwise. Mozilla’s forays into the world of VPNs as well as its lucrative search deal with Google are all examples of the company’s attempts to maintain a consistent source of revenue, and to its credit it has managed to hold its own against much larger competitors that have access to far greater resources as well.
If you’re one of a select few US based users, you might start seeing a new addition under your address bar by the name of “Firefox Suggest”, as reported by TechDows. This section will basically recommend sites for you based on your previous search queries. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the sites that will be recommended here will have gotten there through some form of sponsorship. Hence, you should look at these suggested search results in the same way that you might look at any other kind of sponsored search result.
This is quite similar to what Google does, but since Mozilla needs to generate revenue through its browser Firefox and can’t really sell sponsored search results in the same way that the single biggest search engine provider in the world can, the implementation of this feature is obviously going to be a little bit different.
Every click that you make on a search suggestion would send data back to Firefox’s adMarketPlace partner. However, Mozilla is assuring users that their data is going to be secured, encrypted and totally private because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allaying several user concerns during a period of time wherein many consumers are quite worried about the manner in which their data might be collected and used online. There also won’t be any personally identifiable information that would be collected here at all.
However, even though users don’t have to worry about identifiable data getting out, this new feature might be a little annoying to some. The good news is that you can turn it off quite easily by going into settings. There is an option that can allow you to toggle these suggestions on or off. It seems unlikely that most users are going to want search suggestions because these types of sponsored contents are usually seen with no small amount of suspicion. It remains to be seen whether this move will provide Mozilla with the profit that it desires.
Read next: Google Takes On A lot Of Privacy And Leaves The Users With Nothing
If you’re one of a select few US based users, you might start seeing a new addition under your address bar by the name of “Firefox Suggest”, as reported by TechDows. This section will basically recommend sites for you based on your previous search queries. With all of that having been said and now out of the way, it is important to note that the sites that will be recommended here will have gotten there through some form of sponsorship. Hence, you should look at these suggested search results in the same way that you might look at any other kind of sponsored search result.
This is quite similar to what Google does, but since Mozilla needs to generate revenue through its browser Firefox and can’t really sell sponsored search results in the same way that the single biggest search engine provider in the world can, the implementation of this feature is obviously going to be a little bit different.
Every click that you make on a search suggestion would send data back to Firefox’s adMarketPlace partner. However, Mozilla is assuring users that their data is going to be secured, encrypted and totally private because of the fact that this is the sort of thing that could potentially end up allaying several user concerns during a period of time wherein many consumers are quite worried about the manner in which their data might be collected and used online. There also won’t be any personally identifiable information that would be collected here at all.
However, even though users don’t have to worry about identifiable data getting out, this new feature might be a little annoying to some. The good news is that you can turn it off quite easily by going into settings. There is an option that can allow you to toggle these suggestions on or off. It seems unlikely that most users are going to want search suggestions because these types of sponsored contents are usually seen with no small amount of suspicion. It remains to be seen whether this move will provide Mozilla with the profit that it desires.
Read next: Google Takes On A lot Of Privacy And Leaves The Users With Nothing
