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Given that this whole "AI" integration shtick is minimal effort thing with negligibly small value (if any), I suspect it was either an attempt to just ride on "
by drdaeman 2y ago
Given that this whole "AI" integration shtick is minimal effort thing with negligibly small value (if any), I suspect it was either an attempt to just ride on "AI" hype (certainly didn't work, feedback comments are virtually univocally "AI" hate), or attempt to find new monetization source (e.g. for a default provider).
My own thoughts on the AI feature: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/share-your-feedback-on-the-ai-services-experiment-in-nightly/m-p/70100#M26342 https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/share-your-feedba... - LLM integrations can be useful and actually supporting end-users, but it must be based on entirely different paradigm (all about user agent automation, not a website in a sidebar) and it's probably best left out of the core application itself and rather be a external co-program.
As for the alternatives - to be honest, I don't really see much difference beyond various cosmetics. Both Zen and Floorp are basically the same Firefox for me, containing all the things I hate about Firefox ("sponsored" stuff everywhere, Firefox Account and Sync overengineering abomination, all the "safety" features that "protect" browser from its users, hardcoded built-in things that should be pluggable rather than fixed), while bringing nothing I actually care about and want to see (such as decluttering websites aggressively minimizing all the noise I don't care about - kinda like improved reader mode for everything by default, flexible automatic workflows for personal routine things, advanced history with optional content indexing for finding back things I vaguely remember seeing somewhere, automatic tab management to solve 100 open tabs problem, removal of tightly integrated bits like password or download management in favor of replaceable classic UNIX-way style external programs so I can use any tool I want while feeling those tools are properly truly and fully integrated and aren't some hacks like those password manager extensions messing with HTML).
Honestly, I'm sad that niche stuff like surf and Uzbl had essentially died, instead of evolving towards a pre-packaged "batteries included out of the box, but you can replace everything with your own" suites. I wished for a non-monolithic browser for technical/power users, with replaceable components for about a decade now - don't think I'll ever see it happening.
- SlackingOff123 2y agoThere are sooo many AI chat options to choose from[1] that I don't need my browser to provide one too. I just want my browser to be a good browser. [1] I've been enjoying my self-hosted instance of LibreChat a lot, but I also started using Kagi's assistant lately. Besides those two I'm also using 'aichat' cli tool for quick queries, particularly for helping with cli commands since the context is already there.
- drdaeman 2y agoExactly! I wouldn't mind a good novel application of machine learning that does something that can benefit me. But a dedicated chatbot button to open a website in a sidebar, or, worse, spending resources on proxying requests to OpenAI/Anthropic/whoever, or even worse, running yet-another-GPU-cluster... all that doesn't make any sense to me (firefox "AI" integration is the first option). It's not something I actively want, and not even something that feels useful - it's rather a net negative as it distracts developer resources from doing something meaningful. If Mozilla wants to tick some "AI" upper management bingo checkbox, at least please try doing something actually useful with it.
- Dwedit 2y agoFirefox has a local AI translator, AI isn't all low-effort third party services.