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Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#271
post #153
post #7

Does anyone else feel like the "Trust" angle is the only card they have left to play? Technically, Chrome is faster on JS benchmarks. Edge has better OS integration on Windows and comes by default. Safari wins on battery life on Mac. Firefox's only unique selling point is "We aren't a massive data vampire." If they clutter the browser with AI which inherently requires data processing, often in the cloud, they dilute…

Fitefox has faster WASM and WebGPU at least. Kind of doesn't matter since Chrome has bloated the standard so much that many websites only work in chrome

And, a different way of stating the same thing, they're actually way ahead of everybody in shipping production Rust code in the browser, which is a big part of the efficiency gains in recent years.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And people don't have to all agree on the same things. People can get together to work towards cause X and then individually believe in mutually exclusive causes alpha, beta, gamma.

Yes people can and should have differences of opinion but a line is crossed when you openly campaign to eliminate the differences of opinion by curtailing the freedoms of the people you disagree with. Brendan is the one that crossed a line.

>curtailing the freedoms you disagree with

So pretty much any law that is opposed by someone. Shop lifting shouldn't be legal because there are people who like free stuff. Curltailing the freedom of people who want free stuff improves society by protecting people's property.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#274
post #25

Dumb question: who’s Firefox target user? Chrome is able to capture the mass consumer market, due to Google’s dark pattern to nag you to install Chrome anytime you’re on a Google property. Edge target enterprise Fortune 500 user, who is required to use Microsoft/Office 365 at work (and its deep security permission ties to SharePoint). Safari has Mac/iOS audience via being the default on those platform (and deep platf…

> Dumb question: who’s Firefox target user? These days, it seems to be people who: * Don't want to be using a browser owned by an ethically dubious corporation * Want a fully functional ad blocker * Prefer vertical tabs

Brave already has an adblocker built into the browser itself and supports vertical tabs.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#275
Having worked at Mozilla a while ago, the CEO role is one I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy. Success is oddly defined: it's a non-profit (well, a for-profit owned by a non-profit) that needs to make a big profit in a short amount of time. And anything done to make that profit will annoy the community.

I hope Anthony leans into what makes Mozilla special. The past few years, Mozilla's business model has been to just meekly "us-too!" trends... IoT, Firefox OS, and more recently AI.

What Mozilla is good at, though, is taking complex things the average user doesn't really understand, and making it palpable and safe. They did this with web standards... nobody cared about web standards, but Mozilla focused on usability.

(Slide aside, it's not a coincidence the best CEO Mozilla ever had was a designer.)

I'm not an AI hater, but I don't think Mozilla can compete here. There's just too much good stuff already, and it's not the type of thing Mozilla will shine with.

Instead, if I were CEO, I'd go the opposite way: I'd focus on privacy. Not AI privacy, but privacy in general. Buy a really great email provider, and start to own "identity on the internet". As there's more bots and less privacy, identity is going to be incredibly important over the years.. and right now, Google defacto owns identity. Make it free, but also give people a way to pay.

Would this work? I don't know. But like I said, it's not a job I envy.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#276
At least he seems focused on Firefox.

Hopefully this translates into clearer direction for Firefox and better execution across the company, instead of pushing multiple micro products that are likely destined to fail, as Mozilla has done over the past 5+ years.

From his LinkedIn profile [1], his recent roles have been consistently centered on Firefox:

Chief Executive Officer

Dec 2025 - Present · 1 mo

-------

General Manager of Firefox

Jul 2025 - Dec 2025 · 6 mos

-------

SVP of Firefox

Dec 2024 - Jul 2025 · 8 mos

-------

He appears to have a solid background in product thinking, feature development, and UX. If his main focus remains on Firefox, that could be a positive sign for the product and its long term direction.

[1] https://www.linkedin.com/in/anthonyed/

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave is adware.

Only if you opt-in to that misfeature, last I checked. It's opt-in, not opt-out.

I don't know, Brave says it's every third new tab. https://brave.com/brave-ads/browser/

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To Godwin a little, sometimes the right thing is not the majority thing. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/August_Landmesser

The point was not "whatever the majority wants is therefore good". The point is that if you were to apply the "you get fired from your job for this" standard evenly, the majority of the country would've had to get fired from their jobs. That is a pretty unreasonable standard to apply, imo. Also, come on man. It's in really bad taste to compare stuff to the Holocaust. Nobody was being murdered here, it's not remotely…

There is a difference between having an opinion and spending money to promote it.

Also, beside the direct murders as @ceejayoz mentioned, the social exclusion of LGBT folks drives far too many of them to many of them to suicide.

The legalization of same sex marriage cause a noticeable drop in their suicide rate (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suicide_among_LGBTQ_people#:~:...).

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#279

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I tried Orion about a year ago. I tried using the profile sandboxing. Logging into my google account in one profile also logged me in in another profile. I can definitely excuse some bugs (there were crashes for example that I didn’t overly mind; I understand I was using prerelease software). But something like account containers should be built fundamentally to disallow any data sharing. If data sharing is a bug, an…

I'd be interested if the issue you ran into was actually due to poor architecture or just something not fully implemented in the pre-release. Unfortunately, it's closed source - so hard to tell from the outside.

Well it was definitely a bug. It worked in some cases (I think it even worked in google at first, and then a few days later it manifested). And the feature was advertised, even though, again, they never claimed the software to be release quality.

But my point is that, similar to security, you don't want to build this kind of feature piece meal. Either the containers are fundamentally walled off or they aren't.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Brave is adware.

Technically, both Chrome and Firefox are adware too, since Google's main business is ads, and Firefox/Mozilla get a lot of money from Google to display Google as a search engine in Firefox (an ad :) )

Firefox doesn't sell BATs, in-browser notification ads, or new tab takeovers. The closest you can get is a pinned site in the new tab page (new installs only) and ads in Pocket, or whatever they're calling that new tab thing these days.

https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/advertising/solutions/

https://brave.com/brave-ads/browser/

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