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Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"
- camillomiller 10mo agoWell, that’s terrible. And honestly a quite ill-informed bet that could destroy Firefox’s reputation.
- hx8 10mo agoThis is dumb, not because the idea is particularly bad, but because the idea is not something that benefits from Firefox's current market position.
- kennywinker 10mo agoYikes. I do not want this.
- al_borland 10mo agoI’m not sure he knows the type of person that actually uses Firefox. > Enzor-DeMeo says it is important that AI features in Firefox are “something people can easily turn off”. It seems like it should be opt-in instead of opt-out. At the very least, ask up front, and have a single switch to make it like it’s not there at all.
- taurath 10mo agoIf they go in this direction they're going full bore. I love how with tech, now the only future that anyone can imagine is one that nobody but tech executives want.
- al_borland 10mo agoWe can only hope the market lets their preferences known. Also, that the executives don’t assume it’s a victory because people begrudgingly use the stuff, because there are no other options.
- asdff 10mo agoHow? Everyone is doing this crap. There is no alternative.
- Incipient 10mo agoIsn't Brave the go-to for a good techie/privacy browser?
- asdff 10mo agoIt is a crypto browser
- nickthegreek 10mo agothere are forks of firefox that are privacy focused. personally, I use zen.
- skywal_l 10mo agoThe only fact that there is a "CEO" of Firefox is in itself asinine.
- popalchemist 10mo agoMozilla is a large organization that produces many products.
- nickf 10mo ago...which is arguably the problem. Firefox. Thunderbird. That should be it. According to their own site, beyond that they have the browser app for mobile devices. A VPN service, an email-forwarding service, and MDN. Hardly 'many products'.
- al_borland 10mo agoOne could argue that the only product that really matters is the ability to have a default search engine. I checked out their Wikipedia[0] article and their financials table has a column dedicated to the percent of revenue derived from Google—81-95%, depending on the year. It feels a little like when Microsoft invested in Apple back in the 90s. Microsoft needed Apple so they didn’t look like too much of a monopoly. Google has been funding Mozilla’s whole existence for at least 20 years. At first it may have purely been do dominate search, but at some point I think the incentives shifted to Google needing Firefox so they can claim they aren’t a monopoly in the browser space and competition exists. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
- popalchemist 10mo agoYou've clearly never built a product. One product alone requires a CEO. More than one, much more so. And anyway you're factually wrong. They produce much more than what you listed, many of their undertakings are contributions to open-source, the development of web standards, underlying technologies that browsers (not just Firefox) use to render the web, etc. You're being childish and somewhat absurdly so. Mozilla and Firefox are a large part of the reason the modern web is usable (in the technical sense - usability for the deaf and blind, screen readers, etc)
- bruce511 10mo ago>> I’m not sure he knows the type of person that actually uses Firefox I'm sure he does, but he is trying to get different users. The problem Firefox has is that it has accumulated "problem" users who are only there because they've left everywhere else. In other words, people didn't choose Firefox cause its better, they chose it because it "wasn't x". They were offended by some action of their last browser, and left. This is the worst user demographic to have. They'll only hang around till you do something that offends them. Which will inevitably happen. With 2% market share the goal of the new CEO is not to pander to existing users. It's to convince new users to switch because Firefox is better.
- jval43 10mo agoI'm still here. But it hurts to see Mozilla shoot themselves in the foot again and again. They just don't get it, and they won't survive. I was even a Pocket user when they acquired it, immediately stopped using it at that point because it was clear as day how stupid that integration was. It's death by a thousand cuts, all to get some "other users" while alienating all the existing ones. I'm even for all the AI features, but please let me add my own self-hosted LLM. Currently you can only set one via about:config, and as soon as you use any other LLM, the settings are lost. If I wanted everything locked down I could just use Chrome instead.
- 7bit 10mo agoI think you're wrong and people choose Firefox because they believe it's better.
- intothemild 10mo agoYou're both arguing the same thing. It's not X is the same as it's better than X. Just because someone chooses something because it isn't the other thing isn't saying both suck.
- qbrass 10mo agoThey didn't accumulate "problem" users, they drove off everyone else. Throwing their fans under the bus to try and get new users has been Mozilla's tactic for the last 15 years. Which is why they're down to 2% market share. Doing it harder isn't going to help them.
- ccakes 10mo agoI use Firefox personally, where do people who care about privacy go? For those of you who’ve already given up on Firefox (I can understand why..), where did you go?
- pilaf 10mo agoI'm also still a FF user, but I'm eyeing Waterfox [1] and Floorp [2], both FF forks. Waterfox has the stronger privacy focus out of the two, but Floorp doesn't strike me as being any less private that vanilla FF. 1: https://www.waterfox.com/ https://www.waterfox.com/ 2: https://floorp.app/ https://floorp.app/
- _lvbh 10mo agoI'm surprised nobody has mentioned Librewolf. It had sensible defaults and just works. I barely care about the privacy aspects. I just don't want to touch the settings
- gkhartman 10mo agoWelp, I guess Firefox forks are gonna get a lot more users in the near future. Hopefully turning off the ai features will be an available option as mentioned, but hopefully they'll be off by default.
- pdpi 10mo agoAt this point, is there any full-featured browser that is neither Blink-based nor burdened by a metric tonne of junk? With the way Firefox is going, Safari might well be the sole survivor, which is not a state of affairs I'm particularly happy with.
- m4rtink 10mo agoThere is the Ladybird browser project: https://ladybird.org/ https://ladybird.org/ I guess they will get a lot of interest after this new round of Mozilla bullshit.
- pdpi 10mo agoYeah Ladybird is interesting, and might become the answer to my question at some point in the future. Unfortunately, it's not a good-enough answer today.
- rererereferred 10mo agoCan we make it good-enough? And not by adding features to it but by making websites that don't need them? I'd rather browse the kind of web that browsers like Dillo and Ladybird can browse.
- altairprime 10mo agoSponsorship tiers start at $1000/year, which is one sfbay mocha to go every weekday. For those that can afford that, perhaps it’ll help make the future you desire come true sooner.
- airstrike 10mo agoI've been on Firefox for decades and I'm 100% ready to jump ship. Tried Zen today and it didn't feel right—felt too much like it wanted to be Arc but ended up a bit frankenstein-y in the process. Open to suggestions that aren't Arc or Brave, if anyone has them!
- alisonatwork 10mo agoWhat platform are you on? I use Ungoogled Chromium on desktop (uBlock Origin still works if you install it from GitHub) and Cromite on mobile (some AdBlock built-in), mainly because both of these just give you a clean and compatible browser without any frills. I noped out of Firefox back whenever it was that they started prompting me to make an account to sync every time I opened it, but I still use LibreWolf at work to test compatibility.
- airstrike 10mo agoI'm on macOS. I'm kinda strictly against Chromium because I first installed Chrome to break up a browser monopoly that threatened the long term future of the web. I uninstalled it once it flipped from "the browser that's making the web better" to "the browser that's making the company Google better at the expense of the web" It's not really a political stance, but a pragmatic one. I appreciate that makes it hard to find alternatives, but I can't logically justify using Chrome.
- marcyb5st 10mo agoI jumped to Vivaldi. I was drawn to it by the amount of personalization it offers and after spending a bit of time setting it up to my liking it is now my daily browser. I don't use the integrated calendar or mail client, just the browser and you don't notice these features are even there since they don't spam you. It is chromium based however.
- mikragor 10mo agoAnd propietary freeware.
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- taurath 10mo agoWell folks, there's very few places to go now.
- wuiheerfoj 10mo agoI‘ve been a happy user of https://helium.computer https://helium.computer for a few months now after a previous Mozilla faux-pas. So far I don’t miss Firefox in the slightest
- protocolture 10mo agoI use firefox for work, and I am pretty cool with that. The other "approved" browser we have is edge which is fine, and edge actually replaced Chrome entirely when it was approved. I cant remember what caused Chrome to be dropped, but I imagine it was less impressive than a boatload of opt out AI features. Now I am going to have to propose the canonisation of one of Firefox's forks, which will be difficult because we are sensitive to supply chain issues.
- sylos 10mo agoEdge is just a chrome skin at this point no?
- protocolture 10mo agoEdge is just chromium, but there's enough difference between chromium and chrome to make decisions worthwhile.
- Squeeze2664 10mo agoI was going to switch to Waterfox in light of this news, but a cursory search revealed that it, too, was sold to an advertising company not long ago. While they have published a blog post opposing Mozilla's AI stance, I'm really past the point of giving ad companies any benefit of the doubt. I'm looking into Librewolf now. The browser situation grows more grim by the day.
- elashri 10mo agoAnd after the acquisition it seems they abandoned the browser and it is independent again since 2023 [1] [1] https://www.waterfox.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/ https://www.waterfox.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/
- gudzpoz 10mo agoYour cursory search likely provided outdated info. [0] Quoting from it's maintainer: [1] Waterfox is independent again: [0] And System1 are an “ad-tech” company but the term should be used loosely. The ownership made sense as they are a search engine aggregator and they own a bunch of old school search engines like DogPile, InfoSpace etc. Nothing to do with what people associate ad-tech with, i.e. tracking you across the web or collecting personal data. [0] https://www.waterfox.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/ https://www.waterfox.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/ [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37435511 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37435511
- nickthegreek 10mo agoI recommend you check out Zen.
- buggymcbugfix 10mo agoNow this makes me genuinely curious: is there a browser which respects privacy, that is usable?
- asdff 10mo agoProbably lynx. If a website doesn't work on lynx it probably doesn't respect you either.
- vkou 10mo agoIf I only ever had to interact and transact with people and organizations and services that respected me, my life would be amazing. Unfortunately, life is not a song.
- nickthegreek 10mo agofirefox has several privacy focused forks. waterfox, librewolf and zen are options.
- buggymcbugfix 10mo agoWhich one of these is most trustworthy in terms of 1. doesn't (and won't) munge personal data 2. will be available in 2035 ?
- nickthegreek 10mo agoProbably librewolf. I use zen as it has a nice ui, vertical tabs and isn’t overly hardened.
- harshreality 10mo ago[flagged]
- asdff 10mo agoIt was that coupled with his oddly specific statement of banning ad blockers bringing in $150mm like they modeled it already. Two exact opposite statements you'd want from the CEO of the last bastion of sanity in the internet browser landscape.
- idle_zealot 10mo agoI can't speak for everyone, but as a certified Firefox Preferrer my concern is this: One day I will update my browser (after putting it off for a few days since the "restart Firefox to apply updates" button appears) and my user chrome will be moved around to make room for some new star/diamond-shaped button or additional side-panel, then I'll have to dig around in the settings or about:config to disable it and maybe even tweak my userChrome.css to accommodate it. From then on my list of things to do every time I set up Firefox on a new device will be one item longer, and I will feel ever more like my core tools do not have my interests at heart as I have to hack away at extraneous bits and pop open the hood to fiddle with knobs to get them to work normally without looking like a billboard for useless and half-abandoned features.
- 7bit 10mo agoExactly this. Every second update, there is something new that I typically disable or revert. The amount of stuff that is added and not opt-in in the last few years is just tiring.
- rrgok 10mo agoCEO's job has become easy. Just slap AI in the product and profit millions in bonus.
- m4rtink 10mo agoFor a few quarters until it kills the product. A golden parashute I guess ?
- IAmBroom 10mo agoAs always, incentives must be intelligently made. I worked for a branch where the manager's bonus was tied to gross sales. So what did he do? Prioritize a product line that sold well, with low (actually negative!) profit margins. He didn't sail blindly into icebergs; he targeted them like our factory was his personal pinball. In this case, CEO compensation should have carefully nuanced incentives, not simply quarterly increments in stock price.
- gaws 10mo ago> For a few quarters until it kills the product. Or the company gets acquired.
- nirui 10mo agoIdeally, you don't need a "turn off" button. If you find the need to add a Disable button, the feature you're adding maybe already too on-the-nose. How about if I need an AI to read the page, I could just right-click and select? It's the same way how the screenshot feature currently works. (Wait, I just right-clicked and discovered there's a AI item on the menu. Maybe it's already how it works? If so, then it's not very on-the-nose and I can accept it existing) > The bulk of Mozilla’s revenue coming from its Google search deal. Just show a donation message already. If Wikipedia can collect that much donations just for hosting a set of websites, Mozilla, who's doing some really important work for the Internet and maybe humanity at this point, can only collect more.
- cowboylowrez 10mo agoThe thing is, market share reports don't show evidence that Mozilla is doing really important work. From reading the comments here, firefox's literal reason for existing is ad blocking and "not chrome". Compatibility with websites is on the decline, websites breaking on firefox are on the increase. Rust is one of the few positives that I can see yet Mozilla has transferred trademarks and "infrastructure assets" to a new rust foundation of some sort that seems to mean that they're now independent of Mozilla. The internet market makers think that ad blocking is antisocial, so in fact mozilla's firefox only reason for being is that its not the internets favorite browser which is a hell of a mission statement to offer, but thats as generous an assessment as I can make with those fellows, hell I still use firefox out of habit but I always keep a chrome install for the times firefox just doesn't work, but even then I'm just lazy and even when running firefox I've never installed an ad blocker which seems to increasingly be firefox's reason for existence.
- Kim_Bruning 10mo agoIf I find another browser that runs Readability and Tree Style Tabs, I'd be very tempted to switch by now!
- ChrisArchitect 10mo ago[dupe] Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288491 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288491 Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299934 No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295268 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295268 Make Me CEO of Mozilla https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46303809 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46303809
- IAmBroom 10mo agoThose are related, not duplicates.
- ruicraveiro 10mo agoHere's my answer to this: sudo apt remove firefox-esr Done.
- classified 10mo ago> a prompt-driven interface powered by a cloud AI provider of your choice So if I don't have any such provider, am I safe from AI? And what about local models?
- burnt-resistor 10mo agoFuck these private equity, corporate douchebags who never listen to users and do dumb shit "their" way.
- aedC0fGXvjdxa 10mo agoI’m a heavy user of Firefox and AI, and I believe that close collaboration between browsers and AI is a must-have feature. The only question is: can I trust Firefox to do it right?
- dSebastien 10mo agoCan't they bring people like Tristan Nitot back? :(
- milliams 10mo agoIt bothers me that it's not even a "AI web browser", but an "AI browser". I don't want to browse "AI", I want access to the web.
- Sabinus 10mo agoI've used Firefox for decades, and use Nightly as a daily driver to contribute to development testing. I like and regularly use the AI sidebar, and I'm interested to see that Firefox does in the AI space. While I agree that Firefox has wasted time on non-core browser features, AI is not one of those. Browsers are information retrieval and display programs, and AI as a revolutionary information transformation technology is a natural part of that.