Mozilla Wants to Expand from Firefox to Open-Source AI and Privacy-Respecting Ads (omgubuntu.co.uk) 32
On Wednesday Mozilla president Mark Surman "announced plans to tackle what he says are 'major headwinds' facing the company's ability to grow, make money, and remain relevant," reports the blog OMG Ubuntu:
"Mozilla's impact and survival depend on us simultaneously strengthening Firefox AND finding new sources of revenue AND manifesting our mission in fresh ways," says Surman... It will continue to invest in privacy-respecting advertising; fund, develop and push open-source AI features in order to retain 'product relevance'; and will go all-out on novel new fundraising initiatives to er, get us all to chip in and pay for it!
Mozilla is all-in on AI; Surman describes it as Mozilla's North Star for the work it will do over the next few years. I wrote about its new 'Orbit' AI add-on for Firefox recently...
Helping to co-ordinate, collaborate and come up with ways to keep the company fixed and focused on these fledgling effort is a brand new Mozilla Leadership Council.
The article argues that without Mozilla the web would be "a far poorer, much ickier, and notably less FOSS-ier place..." Or, as Mozilla's blog post put it Wednesday, "Mozilla is entering a new chapter — one where we need to both defend what is good about the web and steer the technology and business models of the AI era in a better direction.
"I believe that we have the people — indeed, we ARE the people — to do this, and that there are millions around the world ready to help us. I am driven and excited by what lies ahead."
Mozilla is all-in on AI; Surman describes it as Mozilla's North Star for the work it will do over the next few years. I wrote about its new 'Orbit' AI add-on for Firefox recently...
Helping to co-ordinate, collaborate and come up with ways to keep the company fixed and focused on these fledgling effort is a brand new Mozilla Leadership Council.
The article argues that without Mozilla the web would be "a far poorer, much ickier, and notably less FOSS-ier place..." Or, as Mozilla's blog post put it Wednesday, "Mozilla is entering a new chapter — one where we need to both defend what is good about the web and steer the technology and business models of the AI era in a better direction.
"I believe that we have the people — indeed, we ARE the people — to do this, and that there are millions around the world ready to help us. I am driven and excited by what lies ahead."
Mozilla Wans (Score:1)
Sounds like a D tier Star Wars villian.
Re: (Score:2)
Mozilla Wans to Expand from Firefox to Open-Source AI and Privacy-Respecting Ads (omgubuntu.co.uk)
Really? Is that what Mozilla "Wans"?
Better idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3)
I agree... I started with Netscape Navigator way back in the dial-up days (1995) and today I use Firefox. However, if they start baking ads into my browser (privacy-respecting or not) and screwing around with AI then I'll finally say goodbye to this browser and find something that works the way a browser should.
Remember... *not* having ads and *not* having AI will soon be a powerful point of distinction and USP in the browser market. Don't give that up Firefox!
Re: (Score:2)
I'll finally say goodbye to this browser and find something that works the way a browser should.
There ain't no such animall.. Firefox is the only browser that isn't either all the way down the shithole, or spiraling down the shithole.. We lose FF, the internet is DEAD...
The Enshitification Will Continue... (Score:5, Insightful)
This is not the way (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been an exclusive FireFox user since version 1. I've been through its ups and downs but firmly believe it's the only workable browser for today's shit storm called the Internet. Focusing on AI and advertising is not the way Mark. "I am driven and excited by what lies ahead." - of course you are, you have to be. The rest of us are lamenting the eventual collapse of Mozilla. So sad.
Re: (Score:2)
Honest question: how do you propose they fund development?
Re:This is not the way (Score:4, Insightful)
Honest question: how do you propose they fund development?
For starters, stop spending millions of dollars a year on a "CEO" whose goal is to turn a profit.
Re: (Score:2)
Offer the basic browser that is user configurable for free as always. For those that don't have the technical expertise to install ad-blockers and such offer a pre-configured browser that blocks all ads for a small fee. When I set up FireFox for people with uBlock Origin and other related blocking tools installed and configured their minds are blown away. Offering this experience for a small fee, say $10, would be mind-blowing to many. The people I set this up for look at installing and setting up add-ons l
Re: (Score:2)
You can't meaningfully do bundles for profit without making it harder for people to install the bundled stuff.
There's room for for-pay extensions, though. Some of this stuff that they have pushed into Firefox which could and should have been an add-on (like Pocket) could be part of some suite of tools which was offered only to supporters.
Then everyone gets what they want, assuming anyone wants that bloated stuff. For me peak Firefox was at the very beginning. I realize the web changes and the browser has to
Re: (Score:3)
Their accounting is public for the most part. By removing some pretty dubious lobbying into non-existent business, not paying their employees and leadership millions, and stopping the acquisition of dying business, they would seriously reduce operating costs, maybe to the point were donation starts to be relevant again.
Basically, stop spending outside of their mission, in area that benefits nobody besides the board in the very short term. Seems like some pretty generic advice to begin with.
"how to disable AI in Firefox" (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:1)
Thou shalt not oppose the Cult of Woke (LGBT denomination).
End of Firefox - More Enshitification! (Score:2)
If We Must Turn the Page on Firefox, We Must (Score:2)
remain relevant? (Score:3)
Everyone else has deeper pockets and can do better AI.
Let someone else do that shit and fix the problems with the browser.
Please Explain what is wrong with their ad idea? (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Some people are ready to pay for this to be available. A pretty small cost for individuals can quickly grow, faster than the infrastructure cost if done right. Even beyond that, some business actually supports this kind of development, either because they're sort of forced to, or just because it's beneficial to them, regardless of other having access to it.
A big issue with Mozilla is that a *lot*, and by that, I mean amounts that dwarfs development and infrastructure cost, of its money goes into pure bullsh
A contradiction in terms (Score:3)
It will continue to invest in privacy-respecting advertising
I consider advertising to be an invasion of my privacy, regardless of whether or not it uses anonymization or eschews tracking. Aside from that, if I was of a mind to accept ads, there'd have to be a VERY open way of proving that it "respects privacy" - not something I have to study, dig around for, and second-guess - before I'd even consider the proposition.
I'd happily pay for a version of Firefox that:
-- TRULY respects my privacy
-- doesn't contain ads
-- gives me the kind of configurability it had 10 years ago, and
-- has a UI not designed by asshats who believe that ease of use is subordinate to their warped minimalist fashion sense
Give me those things Mozilla, and my money is yours. Hell, I'd even pay for it by subscription, which is something I NEVER do except for phone service, email service, and web hosting.
But if you insist on doubling down on the shitty decisions that have cost you most of your market share, then you're not long for this world. That would be sad for those of us who remember you before you so resolutely ignored the users who tried to warn you about the consequences of your various actions and inactions.
Cloudflare killed alternative browsers (Score:3)
Re: Cloudflare killed alternative browsers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yea, they're self-appointed internet sheriffs and among the worst - fuck cloudflare.
Sure thing Miz (Score:2)
Management needs to be fired (Score:3)
They should not be wasting money going after stupid ideas like open source AI or trying to find new sources of revenue.
Is the management getting kickbacks to explore these things or are they just trying to destroy the only competition to Chrome?
Re: (Score:2)
As far as I understand it, one of the reasons WebKit (and later Blink) became so dominant is because the Firefox browser core code is so Byzantine and near-unmaintainable that the other browser makers, rather than make Firefox good, thought it wiser to start over from scratch.
I really, really wish ... (Score:3)
I really, really wish that Mozilla would just stick with what we want/need them to work on - which is maintaining their web browser and their email client. Nothing else.
No Pocket, no VPN, no Firefox OS, no Persona, no Thimble... etc. etc. etc. ad infinitum.
They need an engineer in charge (Score:3)
I have to say it, I am a full on Mozilla defender and have been at least cautiously optimistic about everything they've done since forever but . . . they need an actual engineer in charge. Someone who can really judge what they can and can't do, and execute really well on the things they can. Instead their strategies have been like "People buy VPNs, let's sell VPNs" and "I hear about AI a lot, are we doing AI?" They don't have the kind of Google money it takes to fail at 99% of their efforts and then cash in on the 1% of huge successes.
Mozilla needs their Lisa Su or Jensen Huang. Someone who understand the technology so deeply that they can realistically set goals for Firefox and achieve them. Instead all the leadership are not very technical people who kind of sort of hope that the hundreds of developers around them will pull it off. It's not working. Until they find that person, the decay will only continue.
PaleMoon? (Score:2)
Are there any decent modern FireFox forks left out there? Do we need to switch to Pale Moon?