Mozilla's new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox
theverge.com
theverge.com
The seeming double down makes no sense to me. It won’t suddenly make Mozilla more popular. It could be useful, yes, however I doubt it’ll be radically different from other implementations of AI + Browser in such a way that it stands above the others.
What I wish they would realize in the Mozilla C-Suite is that there is real appetite browsers that get out of people’s way and focus on productivity. Given their small market share they could stand to grow by addressing that part of the market. Look at the previous success of Arc.
They keep chasing trends instead of creating them. And while it is a hard job to do that, I feel they haven’t given it an earnest attempt in some time
Firefox is still my daily browser of choice. I really want to see it do better and succeed
One of the findings Google shared as evidence in the DoJ's antitrust litigation was that Google's users consume "AI"-generated results more readily than "non-AI" results
Mozilla gets paid by sending search query data to Google
More user-facing "AI" potentially means more search data will be generated by (from) Mozilla's users
The number of gratuitous HTTP requests generated by mobile Firefox is, to me, nothing less than astounding. All this traffic is blocked from reaching the internet on the computers and networks I own but I would imagine most Firefox users allow this traffic to escape. I suspect "AI" will only increase the number of automatically-generated HTTP requests even further
"It won't suddenly make Firefox more popular."
Perhaps the goal is not necessarily to increase the number of Firefox users but to "extract" more data from existing users
"I really want to see it do better and succeed"
For Mozilla's CEO and senior management it looks like Mozilla is succeeding
Look at the steady increase in pay for Ms Baker
https://projects.propublica.org/nonprofits/organizations/200...
https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2024/b200-mozilla-fo...
Primarily, Mozilla serves website operators, advertisers and Google
Generally, Firefox users are data sources and ad targets
Mozilla distinguishes itself by allowing to use any AI, including open source private, local LLMs in their chatbot, not only proprietary Gemini like Chrome or Copilot like Edge. This is privacy-friendly.
You cannot sell what cannot be seen. Business 101.
It was good enough for Atlassian to buy the whole company for a good chunk of cash too, if I recall correctly.
The abrupt ending of Arc's development has now left a hole in the market that Firefox could fill and gain marketshare.
Atlassian bought Arc to put AI in it by the way; "Welcoming The Browser Company to Atlassian Building the AI browser for knowledge workers"
https://www.atlassian.com/blog/announcements/atlassian-acqui...
Your cars are computerized death traps? Advertise their reliability.
Your OS sends endless information back home to Apple? Advertise its privacy features.
Your AI hallucinates? Advertise how useful it is for summarizing data.
Both of those require convincing people to use the browser, which is "selling" in the sense of persuasion even though there's no exchange of money at that point.
By "sell" I do not mena to make a profit, I mean, make it visible to the market.
If firefox did its job and got out of the way, who would notice Firefox? It is hard to sell something with no "bells and whistles". Do you think it is a mistake that Liquid Glass exists? No. LG is there so you notice you are on an iPhone which uses to just get out of the way but now is just in my way all the time.
Adding AI to Firefox is to make it visible in the market.
I think their logic is a bit wrong here. Microsoft is a "trusted" entity. Trust doing a lot of heavy lifting here, and even they had to roll back their AI ambitions after seeing the lackluster adoption rates of people using their AI features. The trust part just doesn't matter. It's the principal that we've had browsers for over 20+ years and we never needed AI in our browsers. I would quickly abandon Firefox for an alternative in a heartbeat that doesn't include AI in it.
The uncomfortable truth for all these companies though is that most people simply do not need AI in the places they are shoving it into. Like why does notepad need AI?
So they want to monetize the browser somehow outside of the Google deal. Future does't look good for Firefox
- password manager with team and enterprise features that natively integrates with the built in firefox password manager
- hosted private addon store that gives employers more control over what plugins employees install, and can easily host internal addons
- enterprise grade "zero trust" solution with native browser support.
- related to the above, something like Mozilla VPN, but for connecting to a corporate network, possibly with split tunnel features.
Etc.
However, we've got a new CEO, and one from the Firefox side who openly talks about Firefox being the core focus for Mozilla. This is exactly what we've been asking for! I think we should give them a chance.
On the AI thing - I don't personally want AI in my browser. However, I do see some inevitability there, and I appreciate the stated approach:
> there’s still an AI Mode coming to Firefox next year, which Enzor-DeMeo says will offer users their choice of model and product, all in a browser they can understand and from a company they can trust.
If I can easily turn it off or point it at my own provider, this seems fine to me (maybe even good). I'm quite hesitant to let AI take any actions, but if there is sufficient user control/configurability then it could end up being a useful feature. If it's programmable through an API (such as with extensions) I could see some real personal use for that!
Let's not forget that Mozilla is one of the most important players in the open web. They made some big mistakes, but if they course correct and become what we need them to be, they could be one of the most important heroes of the time.
Leaving XSLT in web standards and in Firefox would let it keep some comfy useful niche ("resilience" ?).
Is that right if Google don't want to keep it - then no one can have it ?!
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the truth is static and non-profit, but calculating something can be sold again and again, if you have a hammer (processing) everything looks like a nail, to sell well the word thinking had to be used instead of excuse for every time results being different - then, we can have only things that let someone else keep making profits: JS, LLM, whatever.. (just not.. "XSLT" alike) ? - mind work done already (once is enough) by non-profits or users just outpriced from the market for next few years.
You know the saying “fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me”? Mozilla is well beyond a count of 2 for me and I assume everyone else who is generally pessimistic about every new plea for giving Firefox another chance. While I understand the angle you’re coming from, I think this argument will read as disrespectful to those who have given Firefox multiple chances.
Actions speak louder than words. I think that Mozilla has to make multiple moves in the right direction before this type of plea can be made.
Their AI solution is all about trust, he says, and we can trust Mozilla because they're not incentivized to push any particular provider. But all we're trusting them with is a frontend for other AI providers, which really doesn't help much since the backend provider also needs to be trusted.
But wait! Since Mozilla is trusted, they're also going to provide their own AI backend service. And they're going to do placement deals with AI providers. Which of course incentivizes them to favor their own services and their partners, which nullifies the CEO's stated basis for trusting them, which makes the whole thing pointless.
I used to think that, but they no longer have as much of that trust, and announcements like this are part of the reason.
My project ToyBrowser[1] got to the stage that it is able to render some very simple web pages and post on the Internet.
The size of the Internet standards for technologies is immense, but a million people contributing a few hours of GPU time might be enough to code it up if it is distributed in small and clear parts.
The result could be entirely in the public domain and people could have it do whatever they want. We are already collecting feature ideas here [2]
would you contribute a few hours of your gpu to make it a reality?
[1] https://medium.com/@rviragh/our-new-ai-generated-browser-bar...
Browser monoculture is bad for the open web and if all we have is Webkit (Safari on iOS, Macs) and its fork Blink for all the Chromium browsers, then the web will start becoming a mess of proprietary extensions instead of open standards.
I see this claim often. As someone who learned web dev during the days of IE dominance, I don't understand it.
Internet Explorer never kept up, especially after IE6 reigned supreme. They weren't "a little behind" or didn't have some more niche APIs missing or implemented in a buggy or proprietary way. It actively ignored standards, it didn't receive real updates for a long time (IE11 being the fruition of what the best they could offer was) and generally with few exceptions (namely, the invention of CSS Grid and XMLHttpRequest) generally degraded the ecosystem for over a decade. It actively held back companies from adopting new web standards. Its why polyfilling became as proliferated as it is now.
Safari / WebKit has not induced any of this. Yes, sometimes Safari lags behind in ways that are frustrating. Yes, sometimes Apple refuses to implement an entire API for political rather than technical reasons (see the FileSystem API), but largely it has managed to stay up to date with standards in a reasonable time frame.
While their missing or subset implemented APIs can feel really frustrating, they haven't actively held back any work nor the mass adoption of newer browser APIs.
Apple has their faults, but this isn't even close to the drudgery that was the IE heyday era.
and, again, riddled with vulnerabilities.
More stuff like that would be appreciated, though I don't know if their plans for the future will fit that definition.
Bold words from a browser whose finances hinge almost entirely around pushing one search engine over others.
Eh yeah, killing the #1 reason why people still use your product is pretty much off-mission yes. I don't really understand how this would make money for them but either way it is the worst idea possible.
I understand more that he wants to be all in on AI. It's the big thing now. Billions are splashing around and Mozilla badly needs money. But everyone is doing AI browsers now. What would make Firefox so different from the rest? What is their moat? Better to focus on what makes it different rather than trying to play the same game as everyone else.
And yeah the web is in an existential crisis, but that's not really up to Mozilla to fix. I definitely won't stop adblocking that's for sure.
It also seems at odds with the user being in control of their own data, which he says "there is something to be said about". Mozilla wouldn't be able to impose that sort of restriction on the user if the user were really in control, so I suppose that's why he only voices weak and vague support of user control.
What a deeply weird thing to even bring up, under those circumstances. Why was that kind of a thing even kicking around in his head?
I think Firefox is not alive based on being "a better product" in most respects, it's alive because it's the anti-Chrome, I mean, that's why I run it. In the early 2000s I despaired for the future because I was afraid it would be impossible to browse the web without Internet Explorer and thus, Windows -- Mozilla and Firefox kept hope alive.
Mozilla might not be happy with it but a large chunk of their user base are the kind of anti-big tech people who will explode on Mastodon if you confess that you make an AI generated image once in a while. It might not be rational, but the fury is deep. The thing though is that people's connection to Firefox is not rational it's about wanting to feel you have some choice, control and agency in technology. This article which is the top story on HN expresses this sentiment and it's success shows that a lot of HN users [1] feel this way
https://blog.mathieui.net/this-is-not-the-future.html
Firing your customers so that you can get some imaginary new customers is a story that rarely has a happy ending.
[1] who I think like those Mastodonsters are inclined to like technology but want to be in control, like political Linux enthusiasts.
Edit: and I'm not on some cheap MVNO, I'm paying over $80 a month with AT&T on their post-paid plan. The phone gets unlimited data but any other device I may need to share that connection needs to be as efficient with bandwidth as possible. Only Firefox and derivatives provide proper ad blocking at this time.
I'm pretty sure that's what the quote is a reference to.
The core value for Firefox users using Firefox is that it's a no-nonsense browser that protects you from ads, obnoxious popups, cooky hoarding social networks looking to sell your data, etc.
AI is not a core browser feature. Nobody is waiting for a Mozilla sanctioned or hosted AI model. Some AI companies are building their own browsers. Given how OpenAI has stopped talking about theirs, you might conclude it is not that successful though. Google is vaguely threatening to add some Gemini stuff to Chrome (not Chromium). The point here is that all the AI browsers are Chromium based.
That points to a problem in Firefox: it's a monolith that is hard to use as the basis for specialized applications that use it as the application runtime. That would be the core problem to fix for Mozilla. Not just cherry picking a particular application and doing a "me too" version of that without any obvious added value whatsoever. Which is what Mozilla is doing here and why it is obviously doomed to fail. Again.
For some reason, Mozilla ceded the whole bespoke application on top of the browser market to Chromium and Electron, even though the starting point of Mozilla was actually to be a generic application platform with things like Xul. Xul kind of flopped but otherwise it was the right move.
Instead of chasing this AI stuff without a coherent plan, which is what this looks like, that would be a more coherent plan.
Rather, we all talk about people being in a bubble. (and these days, everyone is in a bubble) The PMC is for certain in their own bubble and I really have no idea what the inputs are. They're totally alien to me.
The managerial class found my LinkedIn findings irritating
I just got a job recently after getting laid off three years ago
I spent a lot of time in the San Francisco Bay Area talking to people
That data is simple:
100% of the people excited about the prospects of AI are currently employed.
And even then, I do sense a wavering in the voice where they’re making sure to tell their manager that they use ai just enough to not need to be replaced by a different person or the machine they’re training.
Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano was written for this current moment
Mozilla Appoints New CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo
The reality is that even the most ardent supporters of AI want it only in a single web page or in their IDE and that's about it.
I'm so tired of this bullshit. I can live with tweaking flags to remove the AI "features" in Firefox but I'm not going to use a fucking AI or "Agentic" browser. That's not what I or a significant chunk of your users want.
Sigh...
(And yeah, I know, Degoogled Chromium, *Fox, curl... But viable is not only doing heavy, but required lifting here...)
It's almost impossible for people to prevent themselves from saying "we could do just a _bit_ more here" until over time they've built something complex enough they cannot manage it.
Brave got it right and then got it wrong with pushing crypto and its buggy.
2. Push for local AI. local tooling is going to get big when we get past the current drought. We need fast reactive systems not dependent on servers. Chatgpt is like gaming on the cloud - its still bad even when its good. Need to learn the meta and understand why people are buying 5090’s just to run agents.
3. Remove everyone that wont follow good engineering or otherwise is using your cashflow as jump. This means no diversity hiring. No h1b’s, no cultural or ethnic political warring. Ignore the fake resumes go for git history only. If its mass firing so be it theres no shortage.
4. youre going to make everyone very upset to get anything of value done.