As part of Firefox 93.0’s release, Mozilla added a new suggested search result feature to the address bar. That shouldn’t come as a surprise because Firefox Suggest, the company’s functionality for “uncovering relevant information and websites that help users solve problems,” works like the ones provided by other web browsers. Nevertheless, as How-To Geek discovered on the company’s support site, it also contains content from third-party sponsored advertising.
“When contextual suggestions are enabled, Firefox Suggest uses your city location and search keywords to make contextual suggestions from Firefox and our partners, while keeping your privacy in mind,”, according to the help page. When you run a search, you’ll see “relevant suggestions” from “trusted partners” at the bottom of the results, which are based on your bookmarks, browsing history, and currently open tabs. This is an improved version of the search ad, but it is still an advertising medium.
This new recommendation service from Firefox does not involve any additional data collection, storage, or sharing, and the firm only works with partners who comply with Mozilla’s privacy rules for Firefox, according to the company’s support page. Even though it initially appears in the current version’s release notes, the feature has been around since at least the 92.0 release before that.
Firefox may show you a pop-up asking if you want to enable “contextual suggestions” or change your settings once you update to the most recent version of the browser. The Firefox Suggest features can still be disabled if they were mistakenly enabled by mistake:
- Go to the hamburger menu and choose Settings.
- Scroll down to Address Bar — Firefox Suggest and choose Privacy and Security in the sidebar.
- Turn contextual suggestions on or off by checking or unchecking the box.
- Uncheck the option that says “occasional sponsored suggestions” if you don’t want them.
It’s a little discouraging to be in command of something like this. Firefox is a popular browser option to Google Chrome since it is more private and less data-hungry for its users in general. Using Firefox Suggest isn’t a big deal if you like and trust Mozilla. It’s also not the first time Mozilla has dabbled in advertising – in 2018, the firm introduced sponsored advertiser links and Pocket article reading suggestions in new tabs.
