[lmorchard]

FWIW, I work at Mozilla, but I don't work on this particular project. But, I care because I <3 the web.

What I think a lot of folks are missing here is that this is an attempt to change how ads are done. Whether you like it or not, ads are how most of the web gets funded right now.

Yes, funding Mozilla would be nice. Even better would be if ads on the web in general were less intrusive and better respected privacy.

One of the things this does not do is send your browsing history to remote servers. Instead, the remote server sends you a pile of ads roughly based on your location & language. The browser decides locally what to show. That's a big change, shifting the bulk of the sensitive stuff to your own computer instead of black boxes in the cloud.

This isn't just your usual "slap a banner on it" ad network used in all the free mobile apps. And, if the model works in the browser, it might work on the web too.

[_up]

Why not go further and give the money earned with ads in firefox to the user. Who can then use this to directly buy webservices. This could also automaticly be brokered by the browser. This could make webservices a comodity and give back power to the user.