Indirect advertising just feels right

Phil over at ZDNet points out that the Mozilla foundation is making incredible bank with their awesome Firefox browser. In fact, it sounds like they made close to $200 million in cold hard cash during 2006! Best of all, Firefox accomplished this feat without being annoying - that little Google search bar in the upper right hand corner does a great service to the end user, and Google pays Firefox a share of what they make when a user clicks through to use their search engine. Everyone wins in this scenario and it’s a thing of beauty.

I’m not sure Phil’s right that indirect advertising will dominate in the future, but I sure understand why he’s excited about it, and I wish it would dominate. Think of the implications: free services that make money without using advertising in an annoying way. I wish leaders in the social networking space (*cough* MySpace especially) would take a hint and at least figure out a way to display less ads and thus be less intrusive and annoying. I mean, is it really “my space” with glaring ads strewn all about? And is it really necessary to add multiple login pages just to show me more ads, when you could just remember my login like I asked you to? If sites don’t figure out how to be less annoying, I believe that users will welcome new competitors that do figure it out.

The final point is, indirect advertising just feels right, and you should try to employ it as often as possible. If you must show ads, at least do it as tastefully as possible. That’s what I’m taking away with me anyway. That, and the fact that an “open source” browser, which makes bucket loads of cash on the down low, is one heck of a business model!