> 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.
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.
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.
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.
The browser situation grows more grim by the day.
[1] https://www.waterfox.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/
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.
I guess they will get a lot of interest after this new round of Mozilla bullshit.
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!
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.
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.
So if I don't have any such provider, am I safe from AI?
And what about local models?
Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46288491
Is Mozilla trying hard to kill itself?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46299934
No AI* Here – A Response to Mozilla's Next Chapter
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46295268
Make Me CEO of Mozilla
Is it that nobody wants code bloat? There are already many features in firefox I don't use and don't want. I don't understand that argument. Mozilla would need to make sure firefox isn't downloading GB-sized models that are unwanted and go unused, but that seems obvious and easy.
Is it fear that firefox will have AI features that cannot be disabled? What are the chances of that, honestly?
How they go about it will matter a lot, but complaining about this at such an early stage seems like complaining about a code editor proposing AI integration. Is it a core function necessary for programming? No, it's not. Nevertheless, whether built-in or as a plugin, integration with copilot and friends has become essential for any code development environment, from vscode to neovim, and as more ways to integrate AI become available, "text editor" support for them will only expand.
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.