zlacker

>>airhan+(OP)
Makes you wonder how someone thought this was a good idea in a browser that was an early pioneer of popup blockers. Imagine if Firefox in the 2000's had seen popup ads and said "Yeah let's get in on that action!"

At least it was a small scale experiment and not something that rolled out to the whole install base, I use Firefox on a couple of computers and didn't see it myself. But should you really need user feedback to know that inserting an overlay that looks like in-page ad content is a bad idea?

>>wlesie+93
This ad overlay shows such a fundamental lack of understanding on what Firefox was built on that the people who greenlighted this need to go immediately.

They are completely out of their depth and not fit for their job.

>>shares+Zb
The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted those who built Firefox. The current crop of "leaders" have a vision that does not include Firefox being the best browser it can be.

Trust me, they're politically aware of what they are doing, and are only gauging outrage now. Give it some time and they'll figure out how to leverage the outrage, as they did before.

Never let a good crisis go to waste, and all that.

>>lelant+Od
> The people who greenlighted this were the people who ousted those who built Firefox.

Mozilla got rid of their founder, Brendan Eich, for donating to a California initiative against gay marriage. Now we see what that costs us.

>>Animat+Iq
There would have been a cost to keeping him as well. There is a significant percentage of tech workers who are gay or trans, which would have reduced the hiring pool available to Mozilla.

>>Sunspa+bs
> There would have been a cost to keeping him as well. There is a significant percentage of tech workers who are gay or trans, which would have reduced the hiring pool available to Mozilla.

Having the best pool of workers in the world aren't going to make a difference[1] if they are working for power-mongers who use outrage to achieve a coup.

The reverse is not true - having fewer skilled workers to choose from can be irrelevant when they are working for someone who is focused on goals that are aligned to the user.

IOW, there's no point in having the absolute best and the brightest people employed by self-serving schemers who wanted to use firefox as a vehicle for their political/virtuous ambitions.

There might be, however, a point in having "only" the 90% best people employed towards making firefox better.

[1] And, it looks like it didn't make a difference.