And now get ready for ads on Mozilla's Firefox browser

Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox Internet browser, will start selling ads as it tries to grab a larger slice of the fast-expanding online advertising market.

The company said in a blog posting on Tuesday that it has reached out to potential corporate sponsors about its fledgling “Directory Tiles” program, targeted at first-time users.  The blog post says that Directory Tiles will suggest pre-packaged content for first-time users.

Currently first time Firefox users now see nine blank tiles when they open up the browser, which fill in over time with their most-visited or recently visited websites.  In place of this they will start seeing Directory Tiles. It’s not clear if this feature will also be rolled out to mobile versions of the browser as well.

The blog post adds, “Some of these tile placements will be from the Mozilla ecosystem, some will be popular websites in a given geographic location, and some will be sponsored content from hand-picked partners to help support Mozilla’s pursuit of our mission. "

The sponsored tiles will be clearly labeled as sponsored, promises Mozilla.

“While we have not worked out the entire product roadmap, we are beginning to talk to content partners about the opportunity, and plan to start showing Directory Tiles to new Firefox users as soon as we have the user experience right,” Darren Herman, vice president of content services, wrote in the blogpost.

The nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which oversees the Mozilla Corp business that develops the Firefox browser, currently gets revenue from a search agreement with Google Inc. But Firefox, once the most popular alternative to Microsoft’s Internet explorer, has been slowly ceding share to Google’s Chrome browser.

With inputs from Reuters