Opera's New Ads?
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Deleted User last edited by
Speaking of ads, Firefox is giving them to users intentionally in the browser.
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http://www.pcworld.com/article/2848196/ads-officially-hit-firefoxs-new-tab-page.htmlAt least they're giving users a simple way to opt out of the ads: "But Mozilla is still trying to stay true to its roots of a free and open web by making it easy to opt out of the new advertising scheme."
True to its roots? Oh sure... just think how wonderfully Mozilla dealt with one of its co-founders (Brendan Eich) for making a $1000 political donation back in 2008 to campaign (successful one at that.. Proposition
that proposed that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid in California. Evidently you cannot work for Mozilla and think politically incorrect thoughts according to the Mozilla police. Ah yes... true to its roots. No thanks. -
blackbird71 last edited by...
True to its roots? Oh sure... just think how wonderfully Mozilla dealt with one of its co-founders (Brendan Eich) for making a $1000 political donation back in 2008 to campaign (successful one at that.. Proposition that proposed that only marriage between a man and a woman is valid in California. Evidently you cannot work for Mozilla and think politically incorrect thoughts according to the Mozilla police. Ah yes... true to its roots. No thanks.I can't quarrel at all with your observations, but (for the record) my PCWorld quote was included for its next-to-last clause "... making it easy to opt out... ," with its preceeding quoted text simply there for context.
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Deleted User last edited by
I can't quarrel at all with your observations, but (for the record) my PCWorld quote was included for its next-to-last clause "... making it easy to opt out... ," with its preceeding quoted text simply there for context.
I understand. I'm not taking issue with your post, Blackbird. I'm upset with Mozilla's treatment of Eich.
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lem729 last edited by
Firefox is still getting the the best reviews, and Opera, though, not bad, is still in catch-up mode.
www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2365692,00.asp
That was written before the Firefox ads, though, blackburd71 is right -- you can get rid of them easily enough for the moment. If it's the wave of the future though, and they become mandatory, it would be bad.
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blackbird71 last edited by
I don't want to take things too far OT, but this goes right to the heart of an intrinsic problem with the "free" software concept, browsers included. That is, how to cover at least the costs (and perhaps make profit) for developing, distributing, and supporting one's software product - particularly when it involves something so easily pirated or reverse-engineered as digital material? If it's free, the only real pirating risk is from hackers pretending to be you, in order to distribute their malware... but as soon as a price is affixed to the item, it becomes a target for pirating (all the years of clumsy copy-protection/registration schemes notwithstanding) or for copying by erstwhile competitors.
The bottom-line question facing users is whether they will adopt:
- free software with paid ads that produce revenue for the software maker
- free software that has some kind of "hook" to produce revenue for the maker (as a loss-leader for other paid services/products from the maker, as a portal to acquire marketable user data, or that comes pre-packaged with other software which pays for that placement)
- low-cost software that has a low paid ad presence in it
- high-cost software with no ads or hooks attached
- some combination of the first three
There are few, if any, other choices, since the costs of the software have to be covered or the maker will eventually burn out or fail as a business. TANSTAAFL applies here as it does everywhere. Right now, the digital universe has settled largely on 1. and 2. for browsers.
Personally, and with my other software, I prefer to choose 3. or 4. ... but I realize and understand why most folks probably won't. And, with browsers, there seem today to only be options 1, 2, or their combination. But what is frankly unrealistic is for users to believe there is some magic, durable option 7: totally free software, with no price, hooks, or ads involved. It's unrealistic, because such an option simply cannot recover its cost... hence such products quickly evaporate from the marketplace. I just wish more software companies would provide users the option of paid-software in return for greatly reducing or eliminating ads and/or 'hooks'. I don't want ads or hooks... but I also don't want software makers to go out of business.
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Deleted User last edited by
This is a good analysis of the software situation. I am also inclined towards paying for my software (option 4) which is why I use paid-for AV as well as my Office software (Office 365). Years ago I paid for Opera and I would be willing to do this again but I suspect most today would refuse. There is an entitlement philosophy held by many of the younger generation and I see this all the time in comments here regarding Opera's new direction wherein many believe Opera has no right to mess with "their" browser.
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Deleted User last edited by
There are some disadvantages of being open-source which was said here. And it is easy to see. Except Chromium, Mozzila, LibreOffice etc the updates are not very often.
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lem729 last edited by
I thought they also make money based on the number of people who use the browser -- more hits on sites. And selling space for the search engine. Firefox just entered a long term five year relationship with yahoo, dropping google.
So these extra ads aren't necessarily an essential. And if they drive people away from the browser, they can hurt browser share, and negatively affect revenues that way.
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blackbird71 last edited by
@lem729, you make good points. But in my thinking, I tend to lump renting 'favored' placements in a browser (search engines, news feeds, etc) in my category 2. I believe such rented placements equate to somebody paying the software maker for the user data which indirectly derives from the use of such a feature (which is the only real way the placement-renter can derive tangible benefit from such placements).
I strongly doubt that click-count rebates by themselves can financially underwrite the cost any software product for very long... which is why so many "free" software products are being driven to find stronger revenue-raising methods, be they bundled tie-ins, ads, placements, or whatever.
In some ways, I think Opera stands closer to Microsoft and Apple in all this, in that they have long utilized their desktop browser product to enhance the positioning of their other, more-profitable products. Whereas, Google uses Chrome to enhance its main business of harvesting/marketing user data and Mozilla is trying to largely go it alone with mainly just a browser product.
I agree that the presence of ads devalues a product in many users' eyes... but that remains relevant only so long as they have effective alternative browsers without ads, an option which seems to be teetering on the edge of extinction. Conversely, there are also many users who simply don't care all that much about ads... a fact borne out by the nature of all kinds of print media, in which "users" seem to willingly accept far more ads than genuine content - even when they're paying for the product. I hesitate to describe this all as a "dumbing-down" or desensitizing of the user population regarding ads... but it does seem to be a direct consequence of cost realities resulting from the "free" software product paradigm.
