Version 60 of the Mozilla Firefox browser, released on May 9, 2018, brings “something for everyone” according to the release notes. However, it is possible that the display of advertising content – the so-called “sponsored content” – when opening new tabs will cause the most excitement. It is not the first time that Firefox attracts negative attention with “creative” refinancing ideas from the marketing department, which run counter to the self-stylization as a privacy-conscious browser.

So far, however, only US users get to see the paid content – and it can also be deactivated: Since the ads are delivered via Pocket, the reading list service acquired by Mozilla, the “recommendations from Pocket” have to be turned off in the “settings for new tabs”.

The ads are personalized, but Mozilla says that no personal data is transferred to third parties. Speaking of privacy, Firefox now supports the Web Authentication API for two-factor authentication.

Interesting for corporate users: Firefox 60 has gotten an enterprise policy engine and is back in an edition with long-term support (“ESR”) for the first time since version 52. It is also the first ESR edition with the new, very performant Quantum technology, which in Firefox 60 is not only responsible for the display of individual web pages, but also designs the user interface of the browser itself.

Other than for corporate users, ESR is not particularly attractive for normal Ubuntu or Debian users, however, because the distributions anyway import every new Firefox version and because there are differences between the two versions in detail.

Visit the catalog entry for Firefox.