> 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.
I love how with tech, now the only future that anyone can imagine is one that nobody but tech executives want.
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.
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)
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.
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.
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.
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.