Mozilla to Shut Down Solo, Deleting Users' Websites and Data

Mozilla is shutting down Solo, its AI-powered website builder and hosting service, on November 30. A notice on the Soloist.ai homepage reads: "We've made the difficult decision to close Solo. We have appreciated all of your support building and growing this product, and the feedback we've received from all of you. Solo will cease operations on Nov 30, 2026." The Register reports: Mozilla launched Solo in December 2023 as a "Mozilla Innovation Project," aimed at helping sole traders to build themselves a webpage for their services. Some 54,000 people used its LLM to build pages, and relied on Mozilla to host them -- complete with custom domain names. Users now have just over two weeks left to find a new home for their pages, although Mozilla says it first notified them on October 1. According to the support FAQ, users can download a ZIP containing an HTML export, contact form and newsletter submissions, and a CSV linking to their images. The images themselves must be downloaded separately. Domains purchased through Solo Domains must also be moved to Name.com, with Mozilla handling the transfer after users create an account and supply its code.

"Difficult" decision

[xack]

Translation: We spent all our $400 million Google sugar daddy money on Nova redesigns and Overly Attached Girlfriend meme adverts.

Re:

[Anonymous Coward]

Brandon invented that piece of shit called Javascript.

Thank goodness for NoScript.

Mozilla got enterprise wrong

[trip23]

Mozilla in it's current form should be dismantled. They had one mission: produce a browser for the users, free of ad-targeting and big tech. Instead they perform like overlords, killing projects, that should never existed luring users in a dead end.

Re:

[metac0rtex]

They took money from Google and it completely compromised the mission. Just like journalism, religion, government ... as soon as money gets involved all other concerns go by the wayside.

Re: Mozilla got enterprise wrong

[FudRucker]

Yup, you nailed it, the Mozilla organization lost their way a long long time ago

Re:

[pla]

You misunderstand their actual raison d'etre: Serving as a counterexample to Chrome having a monopoly.

Sure, we only care about exactly one of their products, particularly since Manifest V3 made Chrome unusable on the public internet. But let's be serious, you can only do so much gratuitous fiddling with one browser before people rightly start complaining about issues as petty as themes. Mozilla, accordingly, keeps trying to find some not-quite-browser niche to make them relevant as more than Google's cove

Re:

[noshellswill]

Your criticism of Moz is actually kind-hearted. As you say, Mozilla had one historically well-defined task. They retained the architects, coders and money required to excel at that task. For reasons having nothing to do with superb code, evolving function or userland "joy" they pissed it all away.

So lo nobody heard it...

[outsider007]

Maybe have a marketing budget next time.

I anyone amazed

[thegarbz]

How many more stories are we going to run about services no one has heard of shutting down? I mean I'm only a Mozilla customer, running multiple of their products, and this is the first I've heard of this product / service. Have they ever considered spending some of that Google money on actual Google adverts or some other form of basic marketing?

Mozilla forgot the mission.

[couchslug]

The single core mission stopped being the browser and the results speak for themselves. This may be painfully difficult for ideologue grifters to understand, but focus matters.

The people happy with Mozilla miss the point. Browsers require general user mind share. That requires computer enthusiast mind share because WE are who recommend and often installed Firefox so new users could enjoy it which they did in those days so long ago.