I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla • Hacker News Board

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#31

Post by jillesvangurp » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:33 PM UTC

Well, there are all these alternative browsers like Comet, Atlas, and a few others that are doing similar things. And I'd be very surprised if Google isn't going to push more features via Chrome and their search engine.

I think this is more a case of there being limited appetite for what Mozilla is doing here. At least so far. I keep that stuff turned off in Mozilla and just don't see the appeal. And I'm saying that as someone who does agentic coding for some things, uses and pays for ChatGPT, uses perplexity regularly, etc. And I did install Atlas the other day. I didn't switch to it and wasn't too impressed with what it does.

I think browser makers (including the big ones) are still a bit struggling to identify use cases beyond doing search via a llm, adding side bars, and trying to find a balance between site security and giving all this full access to what's on the page.

Mozilla using their own limited models seems to have very little to add to this mix. At least my impression. But it's too early to state that user's don't want this.

Some users don't want this, clearly. And some other users really don't like any form of change. But there are other users that might want some of these things if they are well executed.

Anyway, Mozilla's attempts here strike me as yet another weak effort to do "something" that follows in a long line of half assed products and services they've developed, launched (sometimes), and killed over the last decades. I don't think they have what it takes; or at least, they have a lot to prove. And the vague hand wavy announcements for this aren't a great sign that they have this figured out beyond "doing something with AI".

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#32

Post by debugnik » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:34 PM UTC

transcriptase wrote: post #10

Nobody wants anything from Mozilla except Firefox/Thunderbird to be high-performance alternatives to Chrome/Outlook with fewer restrictions on extensions. That’s it. The rest is just activism and kids playing in a sandbox with non-profit money to pad out their resume with whatever topical keywords might land them their next gig.

> kids playing in a sandbox with non-profit money

Nitpick: Firefox is developed by Mozilla Corp., not the non-profit.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#33

Post by gbear605 » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:34 PM UTC

coldpie wrote: post #11

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.

> Does anyone want AI in anything? Yeah, they do. Go talk to anyone who isn't in a super-online bubble such as HN or Bsky or a Firefox early-adopter program. They're all using it, all the time, for everything. I don't like it either, but that's the reality.

If I talk to the people I know who don’t spend all their time online, they’re just not using AI. Quite a few of my close friends haven’t used AI even once in any way, and most of the rest tried it out once and didn’t really care for it. They’re busy doing things in the real world, like spending time with their kids, or riding horses, or reading books.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#34

Post by smodo » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:35 PM UTC

wordpad wrote: post #21

Heck yes, we want jt, can't imagine browsing without it. It's like going from YouTube to Tiktok, for most content we consume, you could cut 90% of it without losing anything of value.

Well maybe you lose your ability to focus or your sanity or your privacy but yeah.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#35

Post by jmkni » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:36 PM UTC

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.

I agree

I like to keep AI at arms length, it's there if I want it but can fuck off otherwise

Lots of people really do seem to want it in everything though

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#36

Post by joelthelion » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

I wouldn't mind being able to quickly ask an llm about the page I'm browsing or some text I select.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#37

Post by phantasmish » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:37 PM UTC

transcriptase wrote: post #10

Nobody wants anything from Mozilla except Firefox/Thunderbird to be high-performance alternatives to Chrome/Outlook with fewer restrictions on extensions. That’s it. The rest is just activism and kids playing in a sandbox with non-profit money to pad out their resume with whatever topical keywords might land them their next gig.

I would have loved to see them leverage their browser to make a distributed social network, back when they had enough market share to attempt such a thing.

An open slack-alike also seems like a good fit for them.

Alas, they have tons of cash but little capacity to do anything useful.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#38

Post by torben-friis » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:38 PM UTC

I’m currently moving from macOS to Linux, so I’m using Firefox as a daily driver for the first time in a decade.

While I really appreciate its existence, I was surprised by the amount of corporate stuff I had to remove setting it up: Frontpage ads from their supporters, search offering completions and extras that border on ads as well, the AI bar being pushed through a popup tutorial…

It definitely felt different from other free software, distinctly similar to a for-profit app in a bad way. All the crap was removable in settings, but still.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#39

Post by rwmj » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

mabedan wrote: post #13

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.

I use it for summarization constantly. I made iOS/mac shortcuts which call Gemini for various tasks and use them quite often, mostly summarization related.

How do you know its summaries are correct?

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#40

Post by dralley » Fri, Nov 14, 2025, 2:39 PM UTC

I don't even like AI (certainly don't like hearing about it), but I don't really have an issue with AI features. There, I said it.

HN spent a year discussing the threat that AI posed to Google Search. Well, if it threatens search, then it threatens the browser. They're hedging. How frequently does Mozilla get criticized for failing to do X Y or Z to change with the times (or for doing it late? for having too much ambition, or not enough, sometimes at the same time?).

The fact of the matter is that they're already struggling to remain relevant as it is, and their competitors have been dabbling in this space for a while. They're already going to have the infrastructure, because local LLMs works really well for translation (and being able to do content translation without sending all the content off to Google is obviously a sensible feature for Firefox to have). There's no reason to not at least try to match their competitors. Especially if they could potentially hit on some "killer app", which is really the only way at this point to make up any significant ground in marketshare in a market that is otherwise entirely commodified.