4 ms·

Why does Mozilla always spin their wheels releasing random side projects? Cloud-hosting an outdated tiny LLM that you can't swap out or run locally, to do basic

Why does Mozilla always spin their wheels releasing random side projects? Cloud-hosting an outdated tiny LLM that you can't swap out or run locally, to do basic summarization? This just doesn't feel like an area of strategic focus that makes sense for Mozilla. GPUs are expensive, talent to do inference well is expensive, and the actual product they're shipping seems pretty marginally useful at best. If they shipped vertical tabs I'd probably switch back to Firefox. But that would require focusing on actual browser UX instead of random offshoots. What's their actual product differentiation from Chrome these days?

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago
> What's their actual product differentiation from Chrome these days? Not being the progenitor and linchpin of surveillance capitalism.
- slowmovintarget 2y ago
  That and Firefox can run a full-grown version of uBlock Origin that actually works... at least for now.
  - janfoeh 2y ago
    uBlock Matrix, not Origin, if you actually want fine-grained control.
    - minitech 2y ago
      *uMatrix is unmaintained, and uBlock Origin can do fine-grained control – it just requires the “advanced user” setting for some reason, even if you expand the panels all the way. https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/quick-guide:-popup-user-interface#the-overview-panel https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/quick-guide:-popup-us... (see “I am an advanced user!” expanding section at the bottom)
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- mdaniel 2y ago
  And I can actually build and package it from source in about 2 hours, unlike the other monstrosity, which surely must lower the barrier to contribution. Almost as much as Bugzilla raises it, I guess :-(
hussi 2y ago
Zen Browser is based in the newest Firefox version and does have vertical tabs
likeabatterycar 2y ago
> Why does Mozilla always spin their wheels releasing random side projects? Because some project manager had "AI" on his performance goals this year. Firefox is buggy as hell - which is incomprehensible given its age, but older brother Netscape had the same problem 20-ish years ago. The Netscape 4.x days were absolute hell and you could go hardly a day without the browser crashing. Despite this, it's packed with nonsense no one asked for like Pocket. Which is a coincidence because "AI assistant for Firefox" is the dictionary definition for redundant things no one asked for, with better alternatives preexisting. At this point Firefox needs to die and something new and manageable - with energetic developers - needs to take its place. Maybe Microsoft could open source the original Edge engine? The one before they bent over for the long dick of Google Chrome.
- brailsafe 2y ago
  > Because some project manager had "AI" on his performance goals this year. Same reason Logitech did it, it's a totally arbitrary waste of resources
- mdaniel 2y ago
  > Firefox is buggy as hell Don't you worry, I'm sure their new AI Assistant will generate a ton of bugfix code!!11 AI gonna take all teh jobs, or so I hear But, as a more serious contribution: the sentiment "At this point Firefox needs to die and something new and manageable" is the same one which generates the infinite JavaScript treadmill akin to: "I don't like all those bloated JS frameworks, I want one slim and fast and manegable ... well, except this one other feature ... and this other ... oh, shit, this needs to die and have something new and manageable take its place ..." It's not that I think Gecko is the bees knees, but I do think it has stepped on more than its fair share of real life landmines, and the Great Rewrite Theory means someone needs to spend all that time re-discovering them
- amlib 2y ago
  As a counterpoint I'm a heavy firefox user and haven't had crash in many months, and even that was because I was testing some experimental webgpu thing which I had to manually enable. It has its fair share of odd bugs but what kind of big piece of software nowadays hasn't? It's honestly no less cromulent than Chrome.
pier25 2y ago
It's such a waste of resources. They should just focus in making a better browser.
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  It should be clear that Mozilla Co has far more interest in social issues and galas than browsers. Truly one of the most self-sabotaging companies I’ve ever seen.
NotYourLawyer 2y ago
Surely there’s an extension that does vertical tabs…
- reissbaker 2y ago
  There is, but hiding the tabs on top — IMO the entire point of vertical tabs, since almost all screens have more horizontal than vertical space — isn't supported without maintaining your own custom CSS. It's a pain.
  - jpeloquin 2y ago
    If anyone is curious, the following seems to work: 0. Install the Tree Style Tab extension (or whatever vertical tabs extension you prefer). 1. Enable userChrome.css: set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets=true in about:config. 2. Set browser.tabs.inTitlebar=0 in about:config so the title bar buttons (and, on some OS's, the title bar itself) remain visible. 3. Create =chrome/userChrome.css= in your Firefox profile folder and write the following to it: @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* hides the native tabs */ #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; }
- nickthegreek 2y ago
  I use sideberry. Once you get it set up (not super user friendly) it’s amazing.
zitterbewegung 2y ago
They seem to feel that they will be marginalized if Google stops paying them to set their default search engine to Google but, the way they have handled it is to focus on everything else other than their browser. At this point since browser engines are dominated by Blink and Webkit what exactly does Mozilla have? Their market share just keeps on going down.
- echelon 2y ago
  They should have become the Rust company and built services around it.
  - rumdz 2y ago
    Whatever happened to Servo?
    - jsheard 2y ago
      Mozilla laid off everyone they had working on it. The project is still going on a volunteer basis, but it's obviously not progressing anywhere near as quickly as it was when it had people working on it full time.
    - dralley 2y ago
      Some parts of it, the parts that were production-ready, were merged into Firefox years ago and live on there. Other parts that weren't production-ready were canned and the staff laid off.
- ec109685 2y ago
  Someone will pay to be the default though. Browsers print money.
brokencode 2y ago
Mozilla is almost totally dependent on payments from Google to survive. If Google stops the payments, Mozilla probably goes out of business. I think it’s pretty clear why they keep on doing this type of side project. They are trying anything they can think of to diversify revenue.
- teruakohatu 2y ago
  > from Google to survive. If Google stops the payments, Mozilla probably goes out of business. > I think it’s pretty clear why they keep on doing this type of side project. It’s not clear to me. I agree they would have some problems if Google declined to pay them because the next best offer would be lower. But the best way to keep these payments, or to increase them, is by making a better browser and giving people a reason to use Firefox. After spinning off Servo I lost the last hope I had. It seems everyone is stuffing AI summary tools into everything, is this something that will retain users or bring in new users? I doubt it.
  - soulofmischief 2y ago
    Browsers are a means to an end for other major providers excluding for Opera. They can be loss leaders even, as long as they do their job of steering users towards proprietary ecosystems
  - dralley 2y ago
    Most non-tech "normies", which is to say 95% of the population, barely know what a browser is. They couldn't describe the function of one, or discriminate what makes one better than another. They certainly won't give a crap about Servo, or extremely marginal improvements in page load time (at best).
    - teruakohatu 2y ago
      Given that web browsers are the heaviest application most users are running, and they are running them on low end 10yr old laptops with 8gb of RAM, I think an ultra modern lightweight web browser would be noticeably better. Web browser crawl on these low end laptops. This is how Firefox became popular in the first place, by being better. The “we need an alternative to the “WebKit/blink/chromium” monopoly is what the majority of people will never care about.
Duwensatzaj 2y ago
> What's their actual product differentiation from Chrome these days? Providing monopoly protection to Google. They have no interest in actually competing for market share.
- drdaeman 2y ago
  Firefox has only a few percents of market share - how is it a protection?
  - SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
    The swindled their 90% share down to <9%, but Google can point to Firefox and try and claim they aren’t a monopoly.
- VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
  The monopoly protection is provided by Apple and to a lesser extent Microsoft. Mozilla is completely irrelevant at this point.
denismi 2y ago
> If they shipped vertical tabs I'd probably switch back to Firefox. about:config, sidebar.revamp = true, sidebar.verticalTabs = true It's getting there.
afavour 2y ago
I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint but the idea that Mozilla would attract more users via vertical tabs than by an AI assistant strikes me as flat out wrong. Mozilla's brand is "pro privacy", it does make sense for them to launch an AI product with that brand position. I doubt it'll be successful because I don't think enough people actually care about privacy, but still. I feel like it's a common HN sentiment to say "why don't Mozilla just focus on the browser?!"... the answer is because barely anyone is using it and there's very little they can do to move the needle on that. IMO they're an organization looking for a purpose.
- dralley 2y ago
  Depends. If they start with this and then use it as iterative development before going local-only as the models and hardware improve, that could be a good move.
forgotmypw17 2y ago
For me, the product differentiation of Firefox is a bunch of small convenience features which Chrome in its monolithism refuses to provide, such as: Allowing Backspace to go back a page. The built-in screenshot tool. Being able to turn off smooth scrolling. Support for a menubar, so that I can navigate the features I want quickly. Being able to choose page encodings (I use a non-Latin charset language). A usable/useful bookmark manager with things like sorting, tags/labels, timestamps, etc. "Restore Previous Session" feature. These are just a few features off the top of my head, I know there are many more. Of course, for certain sites like Google Docs and YouTube, I have to use Chrome for obvious reasons, but for most browsing I use Firefox (and qutebrowser.)
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  Don't forget the option for sane, standard behavior with shift+tab. Chrome refuses to let you customize shortcut behavior like that
- mrec 2y ago
  Out of curiosity, what "obvious reasons" issues have you had with Docs and YouTube. I use Firefox for everything, including those, without problems. (Though not in any kind of advanced way.)
  - forgotmypw17 2y ago
    Depending on how beefy of a machine you're using, they're much slower in Firefox.
  - wpm 2y ago
    I use Firefox on my HTPC, running a 6700K with 24GB of RAM. Not new, but not “slow”. Clicking a YouTube video will cause a three second page load, even if the actual “page” says it’s finished loading. Videos will start to play audio before the page is rendered. Navigating back and forth causes issues like this too. Sometimes I can get it to show a video but not change the title or comments that it renders. If I accidentally click the “Shorts” hyperlink I basically have to close the tab to stop it from endlessly playing shorts in the background of the SPA. It’s awful. The best example I experience on a day to day basis that the SPA as a concept is utterly flawed. YouTube is a fucking webpage that fails to work like a webpage and an app that behaves like a students rough alpha. An utterly painful experience, continually made worse by likely skilled devs who are managed by complete bozo losers. But at least the progress bar has an ugly pink hue now.
bee_rider 2y ago
What are vertical tabs? Firefox has some tab reorganizing extensions, FWIW. Agreed that it would be nice if they had better focus though.
mouse_ 2y ago
Google doesn't pay them to be competition. Only to appear as such to keep regulators distracted.
askvictor 2y ago
I've been using Zen recently - it's a fork/skin of Firefox that includes vertical tabs.
batata_frita 2y ago
Looks like money washing lol
devvvvvvv 2y ago
Sidebery does vertical tabs on Firefox better than any other browser/extension imo
nixosbestos 2y ago
Well, you're in luck, sort of. Mozilla has vertical tabs in a new sidebar experience. It's the worst implementation of vertical tabs and a sidebar I've seen in a browser. Complete with typical Firefox UX, it's completely inconsistent and unintuitive to disable. A complete farce compared to Sidebery.
keerthiko 2y ago
For me: - continued support for manifest V2 (primarily because ublock origin would stop working if forced to V3 only) - the firefox address bar is way smarter for any given string i type in than chrome's. it's ability to surface the most relevant deeplinks from my history, vs top level site, vs perform a web search, is night and day difference from the randomness that other browser search bars offer. - I have the opportunity to use Zen (a Firefox fork) [0] and it's 100% interoperable with my vanilla Firefox instances across devices -- i can even send tabs from my Firefox Nightly on Android to my Zen instances on Windows or Mac. BTW Zen has vertical tab support, (more) first-party multi-profile support, and preserves the address bar behaviors of vanilla Firefox. [0]: https://zen-browser.app/ https://zen-browser.app/
wpm 2y ago
Their product differentiation is that they aren’t fucking Chromium.
yonatan8070 2y ago
Sidebery does just that, and works super well!
notatoad 2y ago
Building a browser is hard. Building a proof of concept of the current tech fad is easy and fun. Sometimes developers need to do easy and fun things to keep themselves motivated and happy. You could build an AI Assistant, or you could spend a month bikeshedding some design details of vertical tabs.
- chamomeal 2y ago
  Yeah I doubt this took a huge amount of resources away from other development. It’s a fun little optional feature that might end up being cool.
- Ylpertnodi 2y ago
  >Sometimes developers need to do easy and fun things to keep themselves motivated and happy. I tried this line on my boss. Didn't fly. Back to bikeshedding with the rest of the team. I wonder if the difference is we have to earn our money, and our customers expect an roi. Or, at least something that doesn't mess up what already exists.

add-sub-mul-div 2y ago

> What's their actual product differentiation from Chrome these days? Not being the progenitor and linchpin of surveillance capitalism.

slowmovintarget 2y ago
That and Firefox can run a full-grown version of uBlock Origin that actually works... at least for now.
- janfoeh 2y ago
  uBlock Matrix, not Origin, if you actually want fine-grained control.
  - minitech 2y ago
    *uMatrix is unmaintained, and uBlock Origin can do fine-grained control – it just requires the “advanced user” setting for some reason, even if you expand the panels all the way. https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/quick-guide:-popup-user-interface#the-overview-panel https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/quick-guide:-popup-us... (see “I am an advanced user!” expanding section at the bottom)
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
mdaniel 2y ago
And I can actually build and package it from source in about 2 hours, unlike the other monstrosity, which surely must lower the barrier to contribution. Almost as much as Bugzilla raises it, I guess :-(

hussi 2y ago

Zen Browser is based in the newest Firefox version and does have vertical tabs

likeabatterycar 2y ago

> Why does Mozilla always spin their wheels releasing random side projects? Because some project manager had "AI" on his performance goals this year. Firefox is buggy as hell - which is incomprehensible given its age, but older brother Netscape had the same problem 20-ish years ago. The Netscape 4.x days were absolute hell and you could go hardly a day without the browser crashing. Despite this, it's packed with nonsense no one asked for like Pocket. Which is a coincidence because "AI assistant for Firefox" is the dictionary definition for redundant things no one asked for, with better alternatives preexisting. At this point Firefox needs to die and something new and manageable - with energetic developers - needs to take its place. Maybe Microsoft could open source the original Edge engine? The one before they bent over for the long dick of Google Chrome.

brailsafe 2y ago
> Because some project manager had "AI" on his performance goals this year. Same reason Logitech did it, it's a totally arbitrary waste of resources
mdaniel 2y ago
> Firefox is buggy as hell Don't you worry, I'm sure their new AI Assistant will generate a ton of bugfix code!!11 AI gonna take all teh jobs, or so I hear But, as a more serious contribution: the sentiment "At this point Firefox needs to die and something new and manageable" is the same one which generates the infinite JavaScript treadmill akin to: "I don't like all those bloated JS frameworks, I want one slim and fast and manegable ... well, except this one other feature ... and this other ... oh, shit, this needs to die and have something new and manageable take its place ..." It's not that I think Gecko is the bees knees, but I do think it has stepped on more than its fair share of real life landmines, and the Great Rewrite Theory means someone needs to spend all that time re-discovering them
amlib 2y ago
As a counterpoint I'm a heavy firefox user and haven't had crash in many months, and even that was because I was testing some experimental webgpu thing which I had to manually enable. It has its fair share of odd bugs but what kind of big piece of software nowadays hasn't? It's honestly no less cromulent than Chrome.

pier25 2y ago

It's such a waste of resources. They should just focus in making a better browser.

SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
It should be clear that Mozilla Co has far more interest in social issues and galas than browsers. Truly one of the most self-sabotaging companies I’ve ever seen.

NotYourLawyer 2y ago

Surely there’s an extension that does vertical tabs…

reissbaker 2y ago
There is, but hiding the tabs on top — IMO the entire point of vertical tabs, since almost all screens have more horizontal than vertical space — isn't supported without maintaining your own custom CSS. It's a pain.
- jpeloquin 2y ago
  If anyone is curious, the following seems to work: 0. Install the Tree Style Tab extension (or whatever vertical tabs extension you prefer). 1. Enable userChrome.css: set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets=true in about:config. 2. Set browser.tabs.inTitlebar=0 in about:config so the title bar buttons (and, on some OS's, the title bar itself) remain visible. 3. Create =chrome/userChrome.css= in your Firefox profile folder and write the following to it: @namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* hides the native tabs */ #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; }
nickthegreek 2y ago
I use sideberry. Once you get it set up (not super user friendly) it’s amazing.

zitterbewegung 2y ago

They seem to feel that they will be marginalized if Google stops paying them to set their default search engine to Google but, the way they have handled it is to focus on everything else other than their browser. At this point since browser engines are dominated by Blink and Webkit what exactly does Mozilla have? Their market share just keeps on going down.

echelon 2y ago
They should have become the Rust company and built services around it.
- rumdz 2y ago
  Whatever happened to Servo?
  - jsheard 2y ago
    Mozilla laid off everyone they had working on it. The project is still going on a volunteer basis, but it's obviously not progressing anywhere near as quickly as it was when it had people working on it full time.
  - dralley 2y ago
    Some parts of it, the parts that were production-ready, were merged into Firefox years ago and live on there. Other parts that weren't production-ready were canned and the staff laid off.
ec109685 2y ago
Someone will pay to be the default though. Browsers print money.

brokencode 2y ago

Mozilla is almost totally dependent on payments from Google to survive. If Google stops the payments, Mozilla probably goes out of business. I think it’s pretty clear why they keep on doing this type of side project. They are trying anything they can think of to diversify revenue.

teruakohatu 2y ago
> from Google to survive. If Google stops the payments, Mozilla probably goes out of business. > I think it’s pretty clear why they keep on doing this type of side project. It’s not clear to me. I agree they would have some problems if Google declined to pay them because the next best offer would be lower. But the best way to keep these payments, or to increase them, is by making a better browser and giving people a reason to use Firefox. After spinning off Servo I lost the last hope I had. It seems everyone is stuffing AI summary tools into everything, is this something that will retain users or bring in new users? I doubt it.
- soulofmischief 2y ago
  Browsers are a means to an end for other major providers excluding for Opera. They can be loss leaders even, as long as they do their job of steering users towards proprietary ecosystems
- dralley 2y ago
  Most non-tech "normies", which is to say 95% of the population, barely know what a browser is. They couldn't describe the function of one, or discriminate what makes one better than another. They certainly won't give a crap about Servo, or extremely marginal improvements in page load time (at best).
  - teruakohatu 2y ago
    Given that web browsers are the heaviest application most users are running, and they are running them on low end 10yr old laptops with 8gb of RAM, I think an ultra modern lightweight web browser would be noticeably better. Web browser crawl on these low end laptops. This is how Firefox became popular in the first place, by being better. The “we need an alternative to the “WebKit/blink/chromium” monopoly is what the majority of people will never care about.

Duwensatzaj 2y ago

> What's their actual product differentiation from Chrome these days? Providing monopoly protection to Google. They have no interest in actually competing for market share.

drdaeman 2y ago
Firefox has only a few percents of market share - how is it a protection?
- SV_BubbleTime 2y ago
  The swindled their 90% share down to <9%, but Google can point to Firefox and try and claim they aren’t a monopoly.
VWWHFSfQ 2y ago
The monopoly protection is provided by Apple and to a lesser extent Microsoft. Mozilla is completely irrelevant at this point.

denismi 2y ago

> If they shipped vertical tabs I'd probably switch back to Firefox. about:config, sidebar.revamp = true, sidebar.verticalTabs = true It's getting there.

afavour 2y ago

I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint but the idea that Mozilla would attract more users via vertical tabs than by an AI assistant strikes me as flat out wrong. Mozilla's brand is "pro privacy", it does make sense for them to launch an AI product with that brand position. I doubt it'll be successful because I don't think enough people actually care about privacy, but still. I feel like it's a common HN sentiment to say "why don't Mozilla just focus on the browser?!"... the answer is because barely anyone is using it and there's very little they can do to move the needle on that. IMO they're an organization looking for a purpose.

dralley 2y ago
Depends. If they start with this and then use it as iterative development before going local-only as the models and hardware improve, that could be a good move.

forgotmypw17 2y ago

For me, the product differentiation of Firefox is a bunch of small convenience features which Chrome in its monolithism refuses to provide, such as: Allowing Backspace to go back a page. The built-in screenshot tool. Being able to turn off smooth scrolling. Support for a menubar, so that I can navigate the features I want quickly. Being able to choose page encodings (I use a non-Latin charset language). A usable/useful bookmark manager with things like sorting, tags/labels, timestamps, etc. "Restore Previous Session" feature. These are just a few features off the top of my head, I know there are many more. Of course, for certain sites like Google Docs and YouTube, I have to use Chrome for obvious reasons, but for most browsing I use Firefox (and qutebrowser.)

soulofmischief 2y ago
Don't forget the option for sane, standard behavior with shift+tab. Chrome refuses to let you customize shortcut behavior like that
mrec 2y ago
Out of curiosity, what "obvious reasons" issues have you had with Docs and YouTube. I use Firefox for everything, including those, without problems. (Though not in any kind of advanced way.)
- forgotmypw17 2y ago
  Depending on how beefy of a machine you're using, they're much slower in Firefox.
- wpm 2y ago
  I use Firefox on my HTPC, running a 6700K with 24GB of RAM. Not new, but not “slow”. Clicking a YouTube video will cause a three second page load, even if the actual “page” says it’s finished loading. Videos will start to play audio before the page is rendered. Navigating back and forth causes issues like this too. Sometimes I can get it to show a video but not change the title or comments that it renders. If I accidentally click the “Shorts” hyperlink I basically have to close the tab to stop it from endlessly playing shorts in the background of the SPA. It’s awful. The best example I experience on a day to day basis that the SPA as a concept is utterly flawed. YouTube is a fucking webpage that fails to work like a webpage and an app that behaves like a students rough alpha. An utterly painful experience, continually made worse by likely skilled devs who are managed by complete bozo losers. But at least the progress bar has an ugly pink hue now.

bee_rider 2y ago

What are vertical tabs? Firefox has some tab reorganizing extensions, FWIW. Agreed that it would be nice if they had better focus though.

mouse_ 2y ago

Google doesn't pay them to be competition. Only to appear as such to keep regulators distracted.

askvictor 2y ago

I've been using Zen recently - it's a fork/skin of Firefox that includes vertical tabs.

batata_frita 2y ago

Looks like money washing lol

devvvvvvv 2y ago

Sidebery does vertical tabs on Firefox better than any other browser/extension imo

nixosbestos 2y ago

Well, you're in luck, sort of. Mozilla has vertical tabs in a new sidebar experience. It's the worst implementation of vertical tabs and a sidebar I've seen in a browser. Complete with typical Firefox UX, it's completely inconsistent and unintuitive to disable. A complete farce compared to Sidebery.

keerthiko 2y ago

For me: - continued support for manifest V2 (primarily because ublock origin would stop working if forced to V3 only) - the firefox address bar is way smarter for any given string i type in than chrome's. it's ability to surface the most relevant deeplinks from my history, vs top level site, vs perform a web search, is night and day difference from the randomness that other browser search bars offer. - I have the opportunity to use Zen (a Firefox fork) [0] and it's 100% interoperable with my vanilla Firefox instances across devices -- i can even send tabs from my Firefox Nightly on Android to my Zen instances on Windows or Mac. BTW Zen has vertical tab support, (more) first-party multi-profile support, and preserves the address bar behaviors of vanilla Firefox. [0]: https://zen-browser.app/ https://zen-browser.app/

wpm 2y ago

Their product differentiation is that they aren’t fucking Chromium.

yonatan8070 2y ago

Sidebery does just that, and works super well!

notatoad 2y ago

Building a browser is hard. Building a proof of concept of the current tech fad is easy and fun. Sometimes developers need to do easy and fun things to keep themselves motivated and happy. You could build an AI Assistant, or you could spend a month bikeshedding some design details of vertical tabs.

chamomeal 2y ago
Yeah I doubt this took a huge amount of resources away from other development. It’s a fun little optional feature that might end up being cool.
Ylpertnodi 2y ago
>Sometimes developers need to do easy and fun things to keep themselves motivated and happy. I tried this line on my boss. Didn't fly. Back to bikeshedding with the rest of the team. I wonder if the difference is we have to earn our money, and our customers expect an roi. Or, at least something that doesn't mess up what already exists.