Firefox seems to be showing ads within New Tab page

Looks like Firefox started showing ads. This was already a possible plan of Mozilla, the company behind the popular web browser, but it has not yet been implemented. Until now, because a number of users report that they saw advertisements on the New Tab page.

At least some users report that they have Firefox 64 installed on their device on the Reddit site. An advertisement appeared to booking site Booking.com, where Firefox can be found in the text. Furthermore, users report that Booking.com also has a page online where it refers to a campaign with Mozilla.

Snippet ad

Mozilla has not yet responded to the case. The advertisement as it now appears on the screen is not very penetrating. As you can see below, it is a rather small bar that shows some text. So it’s not very conspicuous. It also seems that the Snippets function of Firefox has been used for this advertisement. This function was created to show tips for various functions within the browser.

Because this is used, the advertisements can also be switched off at the moment by disabling the Snippets function. This is simply possible within the Firefox settings menu. It seems that the advertisement is only shown in the United States at the moment. It is therefore possible that this is a trial, with which Mozilla wants to see to what extent there is now support for advertisements in the browser.

In the past, Mozilla has placed advertisements in Firefox before. But every time it did, users bounced the ball back and were very critical. Mozilla is an organization that puts a lot of emphasis on privacy. Displaying advertisements goes against this in some respects, so carefulness is of great importance to the browser maker. For some users, the advertisements now fall cold on their roofs: there was no warning whatsoever that they would appear.