Affected versions

• Fx90.0a1

Affected platforms

• Windows 10

Steps to reproduce

1. Launch Firefox.
2. Go to about:config and set browser.search.region to CA.
3. Restart Firefox.
4. Add the NordVPN addon and set it to Canada region.
5. Input a search term that generates ads in the address bar and hit enter.
6. Go through the google verification process. (After the verification process is completed the search result page is displayed)
7. In the search result page click on an ad result.
8. Navigate to about:telemetry, open the Raw JSON and click on the 'raw data' section.
9. Search for "browser.search.withads" and "browser.search.adclicks".

Expected result

• For both ad telemetry pings, the SAP is correctly listed (in this case urlbar).

Actual result

• Both pings will list an 'unknown' SAP telemetry ping.

Regression range

• This might a recent regression, as the ad telemetry was recently connected to SAP. Due to the difficulty of getting to the verification page realiably, getting a regression range might be close to imposible.

Additional notes

• This is fairly hard to reproduce as there is not realiable way to get the 'google verification' process from step 6.
• This occurred ONLY when the intermediate 'verification process' was received.
• This can occur on other config settings (other regions), as long as the verification from step 6 is received.

I suspect what is happening, is that the Google verification process is loading a different page (e.g. different URL). Once the process is complete, the result page is then loaded.

Please can you confirm that this is what is happening?

If it is, then there isn't much we can do about it. If the verification process is handled via page navigations, then although we know that a search initiated the load of the first page, we cannot be sure that how the user got to the search result page, hence why we put it as unknown. Whilst we could take note of how the verification process works, I think that would be complicated, and not really necessary for this telemetry.

Hey Mark,
As per our discussion, I'm gonna drop a line here as well. Indeed, once the process is complete, the result page is loaded without any issues.

I cannot get a regression range because of the low repro rate.

Thank you. We don't need a regression range here, since this would have been introduced with the telemetry addition.

Unfortunately unless we special-case the google verification process or other things, we're not able to track the source through.

Since this is quite rare, I suspect that it would not significantly affect the stats. Hence marking as won't fix, though it is more can't easily fix.