From TFA, the services:
* Fakespot
* Deep fake detector
* Orbit
I feel that this is a good thing. Have not used any of them, have been annoyed by Pocket integrations, just want a browser.
Mozilla-the-company is, in the end, mainly about Firefox. These other projects sound more like hobby-projects, at best something to do in someone's spare time.
Governance is the job of the foundation. Thunderbird has been spun off. So why does Mozilla need 750 employees? Correct me if I'm being naive, but that seems like 10 or even 20 times the number of employees they ought to have.
This is a win. Mozilla should focus on their core product, Firefox. Even though I'm a fan of Thunderbird, still Firefox is much more important
All the other services always seemed like somebody wanted to add a bullet point to their CV
A thing like Fakespot existed? And it was by Mozilla? I would have LOVED to use it.
Maybe if Firefox' new tabs would suggest useful ethic things like this instead of clickbait and spam, Mozilla would be more successful in its goals.
I would love that Firefox focuses on the browser. I think I wouldn't oppose some monetizing strategy like DDG based on affiliate sales, or even a realistic affordable subscription model (10€/year?). They should put the efforts on privacy and good website usage, maybe include an ad blocker.
But we'll have to wait until Google finally stops paying them for the default search engine. Maybe diverting resources on the Firefox Focus brand will be a transition phase.
From 136 on it seems you need to about:config to turn off the integrated AI. Just connects to gemini by default so some kind of funding deal?
This should be OPT IN, not out.
Also, long live udm14.
> This brings us to the AI tools. Following the pattern, the Orbit website was updated with a banner that announced the service would shut down by June 26 ... Orbit's private, self-contained setup can be replaced with the new sidebar built directly into Firefox, letting you connect to third-party chatbots like ChatGPT and Gemini.
Orbit served me well for summarizing pages and videos. I tried to ask the ChatGPT in the sidebar to do the same, but it seems to lack the browsing context. Any idea how to achieve similar one click experience Orbit used to provide?
I wish Firefox existed in a world of 'perfect competition' where multiple independent browsers existed, with none of them able to out-compete the others, and with all of them implementing the HTML and CSS specs as quickly as possible, in order to escape 'perfect competition'.
But we went beyond 'perfect competition' and now have Chrome or Safari, with Firefox as this poor kid that we have to cater for too. The problem with Firefox is that they have just enough users to be a blocker on features such as scoped CSS, which we really should be implementing right now, as it is the way to go. However, Firefox are not planning to do scoped CSS urgently.
Without them then we could go back to the IE6 days of no innovation, and I think we have that with Safari, which is also slow to implement some cool things that have been in Chrome for a while.
I used to use Firefox but nowadays it is the IE6 of the browser world, it still has to be accommodated, even though the world has moved on.
Most of these make sense. I never liked the creepy style of the orbit plugin (though I like that they hosted their own llm). Deep Fake Detector seems like a lost cause? And pocket was never truly integrated, had to keep logging in again and again even though I was logged into my browser. It's good that they can try things and know when to stop.
OTOH, are there currently any Firefox-related services that make money? Like a service I (or a company) can pay for to get something slightly-useful but the money goes to Firefox development?
I am very disappointed by most comments here. Firefox is not a simple product. Mozilla funded Rust because it could help their other products (specifically Firefox). Mozilla has, depending how you count, 4 engines to support for all their target platforms.
They have a bunch of frameworks to deal with networking, layouts and JS. They maintain the second most used repository of Root CA. And all those projects all work towards the betterment of the browser, Firefox. If people think that MS with all their resources decided to use Chrome because it was cheaper, you will be missing the full picture: browsers are very complex beast that have to deal with swats of devices, platforms, interactive code, and all of that while being the biggest surface of attack for all your users. That's not easy, nor cheap.
Mozilla seems to slowly be fading. Ladybird browser will hopefully come right in time.
Mozilla stated that they sell user data, so I assume that many stopped using their products:
https://adguard.com/en/blog/mozilla-deletes-promise-to-never...
The trust is gone.
Mozilla and Elon Musk are learning the hard lesson. Elon will weather this storm; he's well beyond cancelling.
Mozilla's marketshare has rather dwindled and i dont see them recovering.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HeikdFrx78k
https://www.mozillafoundation.org/en/campaigns/platforms-pro...
Mozilla is doubling down on their mistake.
I think they should cancel all those BS Firefox-the-browser unrelated project, and then use the resources to fork chromium while still developing Firefox as their main project. I would use Mozilla-maintained chromium fork (with manifest v2 and ublock origin) rather then using Google's Chrome. I tried FF but it's just too slow. I really want just chromium from trustworthy organisation.
Not to defend Mozilla (they have lots of issues), but it feels they're in an impossible position:
* their revenue comes mostly from Google, they need to diversify
* but nobody will pay for a browser, so they need to offer other services
* then everyone criticises that they shill their other services and should instead focus on the browser
Realistically, what should they do to stop relying on money from their competitor and be continue their mission?