Google is testing Shopping ads on new Chrome tabs

Google is experimenting with showing Shopping ads on new tab pages that Chrome users open. The idea is that users will see personalized products from web stores on the browser tabs.

The function for showing Shopping items on new tab pages can be activated by means of a flag in the Canary version of Chrome, Techdows discovered. The flags NTP Modules and NTP Shopping Task Module can be activated via chrome: // flags, where NTP stands for New Tab Page.

If you choose ‘Enabled-Fake Data’ in the Shopping module, you will, for example, see office chairs via the Shopping results on a new tab page. The results are clickable and the explanations on the window state that the idea is that users will see results based on previous activities when using Google services.

This is an experimental feature that does not have to come to the stable version of Chrome. Mozilla also seems to be experimenting with commercial expressions on new Firefox tab pages. There are indications that Firefox will show sponsored sites on the tabs during a test.