9 mo. ago • 98%

Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch

techcrunch.com Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch

After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product

56 comments

This just screams "stupid new CEO obsessed with trying to implement AI into everything".

104
- I wouldn't dismiss this just yet. Mozilla has already been doing some open source AI work, specifically their speech offerings. If they invest in these and they get better I think we all stand to gain from having good text to speech and speech recognition available outside of Apple/Amazon/Microsoft/Google
  
  66
  
  Also my understanding is they’d use AI for local language translation so it doesn’t have to connect to some external server to do it.
  
  Just cause for-profit organizations are heavily pushing AI doesn’t mean there aren’t unskeezy uses for it…
  
  30
- Im so sick of AI being inserted into every inane thing. Next it will be AI lego, AI gaming chair, AI toilet seat. Its just so fucking droll at this point. There is literally no technology I want to use less than your idiot pet AI project you just came up with. Everything now has AI in it yet nothing feels revolutionary or interesting. Its all just worse. Everything is just worse but with AI in it. Its just CEOs piling shit on top of shit on top of shit and expecting something beautiful to come out the other end. Drives me nuts.
  
  21
  
  The worst part is they still barely understand how to get AI to actually do anything. So it's always just "yo dawg, we heard you like ChatGPT, so we put ChatGPT in your car so you can chat while you drive"
  
  7
- The only good use I can think of is generating simple readable summaries of ad and picture heavy pages.
  
  A bit like spam filters, to make the Web usable.
  
  Could be an advantage similar to what Opera had in olden days.
  
  5
- Or "fresh new CEO without baggage who sees where the future of the technology is heading."
  
  -29
  
  More like “new CEO knows how to chase the latest shiny fad”
  
  Where tech is going, that couldn’t be more absurd. When you’re done bootlicking, that taste takes a while to clear out.
  
  22
Compared to the blockchain type train, I thought this whole AI thing was quite cool and actually useful, but it feels more and more similar to the blockchain hype, where companies tried to solve every problem with some form of blockchain (for example in-game items).

The same is kind of happening with AI now.

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- Also, a large amount of those NFT bros have lately been pushing to allow AI companies to steal artist's works and otherwise generally licking big AI companies' collective boot, so not exactly a great look for the future of the industry
  
  25
  
  Define "a lot"? Or better yet, sources?
  
  -7
- The same is kind of happening with AI now.
  
  Time and time again a certain intellectual category of people believes that they have found perpetuum mobile in their lives.
  
  And some others make money on that, of course.
  
  2
- It's just to boost investor confidence. It'll take a few years before it dies down, the true value is understood and the next buzzword takes hold. Sad state of tech these days. Many grifters, many more losers.
  
  1
They will be shoving AI / ML into Firefox. FFS.

62
- Please God no.
  
  39
- Guess what, the local private translations feature depends on AI/ML. All this blind hate for AI is so stupid.
  
  18
  
  The new translation feature is quite awesome.
  
  11
  
  People are incapable of not thinking in binary terms.
  
  10
  
  It's the new cool thing to hate it.
  
  5
- Time to fork it.
  
  18
  
  Or, you know, clicking a button in the settings to turn it off.
  
  36
  
  Librewolf
  
  5
  
  Hell yes
  
  3
At least the code is open, and Librewolf works great.

32
- Edit: I'm going to rephrase this so as not to divert it on the misinterpretation of a particular case.
  
  Librewolf doesn't check anything, it just applies patches automatically. That's why sometimes bugs happen, like corrupting the user profiles of all flatpak users a year ago; entirely the fault of librewolf for not updating a line of code, and not of any third party.
  
  6
  
  If you read into it, it was because the users Software Manager chose to downgrade from v108 > v107. I wouldn’t knock this on the Librewolf team, although I don’t use it, so there could be other issues I wouldn’t know about.
  
  10
Man fuck AI

32
- Absolutely, but probably not until they have figured out how to make soft androids.
  
  24
  
  You'll still have to wash it and maintenance it after, eh, spikes in usage.
  
  5
You know, I’m surprised they haven’t launched a paid for, privacy centric email service like Proton or FastMail. They can give basic service for free and then charge a nominal fee for more storage like the others do. It seems like a simple way to drum up some revenue and rely a little less on the payment from Google.

25
- From everything I've heard about running a reliable and trustworthy email service, it sounds like a fucking nightmare. I'm glad to pay something like proton to handle it for me.
  
  7
  
  Yep and making basic accounts free means that you either have to cripple them, ad-finance the whole thing, and/or sell private data.
  
  A posteo account costs an euro a month and even if you don't care about your privacy it's one of the places you can be sure of to not shut down or alter the deal: A euro is sustainable for them and it means that you're a customer, not the product.
  
  1
- Wouldn't really consider Fastmail privacy centric, but Proton sure. And a definite step up from Gmail.
  
  3
So Thunderbird is super dead this time huh?

19
- Isn't Thunderbird completely self-managed? I don't think they have anything to do with MozCorp.
  
  26
  
  Yes. MZLA Technologies Ltd. is separate from Mozilla Corporation.
  
  14
- I'm hoping the K-9 Android thing still happens.
  
  6
- I think they may be dumping all the rest of the code on the FOSS team.
  
  5
Welp, using the internet was fun while it lasted. I'll still use Firefox for all my browsing until I can't anymore and after that I guess I'll go fuck myself for entertainment instead of internet browsing.

13
- Gemini still exists.
  
  1
This is the best summary I could come up with:

After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product strategy, TechCrunch has learned.

Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago.

Going forward, the company said in an internal memo, Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.” To do so, it will bring together the teams that work on Pocket, Content and AI/Ml.

Mozilla started expanding its product portfolio in recent years, all while its flagship product, Firefox, kept losing market share.

And while the organization was often sharply criticized for this, its leadership argued that diversifying its product portfolio beyond Firefox was necessary to ensure Mozilla’s survival in the long run.

Firefox, after all, provided the vast majority of Mozilla’s income, but it also meant the organization was essentially dependent on Google to continue this deal.

The original article contains 234 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 29%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

9
I don’t get the hate. Browsers are one of the few places LLMs make actual sense.

5
So, how much time do I have before I have to switch to Servo?

5
I didn't think they were trying to hide it?

5
Mozilla Corp. acting as any other Corp. Unbelievable /s

2
And yet still no HDR support

1
Oh gawd. Keep your fucking AI out of my fucking browser!

1

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