The well-known not-for-profit organization Mozilla, behind the popular Firefox, seems to be constantly looking for original ways while developing and offering a complex and unique piece of software completely free of charge.
But many of its offerings seem to be met with criticism. One of them is advertising. Recently, Mozilla made a move that no one imagined and the reactions from most users were unexpected. Firefox users, who according to Mozilla only correspond to 25% of U.S. users, noticed that there were ads in the home browser but also in any new tab they opened. There, a new message appeared, thanking users who support and use Firefox daily. So in order to thank them in a more “practical” way, it gave in return a $20 Amazon gift card to book their next stay at Booking.com. This gift made users very happy, as no official announcement had been made by Mozilla. However, shortly after the release of this feature, the company made statements and said that the “not an ad” feature is definitely not an advertisement but is an experiment. The company also said it was "fun" that there was such an unexpected response, even though this is the second time Mozilla has done something like this. It should be noted that this feature only lasted for five days.
Mozilla further explained that “not an ad” was a simple way to offer more value and thank users for their support. It was also clarified that there are no advertisements and paid placements, at least with the common use of these terms. Also, the company did not share users’ personal information and data with any of its partners, so that it is legally covered.
On the other hand, there was no shortage of a relatively large number of users who were concerned about Mozilla's specific move and criticized it negatively, given that it was a new feature without prior announcement.
