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Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

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Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#881

Post by glenstein »

chrismorgan wrote: post #673
glenstein wrote: post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And just to add, I kind of mourn FirefoxOS. We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown. It would have been a great time for an alternative mobile OS 10+ years in the making, to welcome all the energy that has gone into beautiful projects like F-Droid. If I could time travel into the past, in addition to prevent…

> We couldn't have guessed it at the time, but as of 2025, Google is pushing developer verification and stepping closer and closer to ecosystem lockdown. We did guess it. Google were already past their “don’t be evil” days in 2013. They were possibly better than other companies of similar scale, but the decline was already clearly beginning. People had long warned that Google could not be trusted to keep Android open…

Fair point, I think I have to concede that you're right that it was perhaps perceivable at that time. In my defense, I will say that we are seeing some pretty concrete actions out in the wild in 2025 that we were only speculating on in 2013 heightening the urgency of the issue.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#882

Post by glenstein »

Seattle3503 wrote: post #556
glenstein wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was going to say a similar thing. I'm still not sure I have seen an example of a browser at the scale of Firefox (hundreds of millions of users, 30 million lines of code) being successfully monetized, basically ever, unless it was entirely subsidized by a trillion dollar company that was turning its users into the product. Or alternatively, succeeding by selling off its users for telemetry or coasting off of Chromi…

> Hank Green has used the term hedonic skepticism for the psychology of seeking to criticize for its entertainment value, which I think is a large part of what this is. I'm fascinated by this concept. Us it expanded anywhere?

I agree, it's fascinating and I believe a necessary term. I just recall him using it on his tik tokk. And come to think of it it might have actually been John Green (oops).

But basically his idea was that hedonic skepticism. Was this kind of like reflexive unthinking doubt of the sincerity of any institutional effort to do any form of social good whatsoever. It seems to over correct towards skepticism and is motivated, not by factual veracity but by the kind of entertainment value of being skeptical and jaded about everything. And so the idea that the center for disease control might really sincerely want to stop the spread of measles, if you're a hedonic skeptic, you laugh at how ridiculous and naive. It is to believe that they might have your best interests at heart. Which I think overlooks the simple possibility that sometimes we stand up institutions in response to real societal needs, and that you can have an appropriate and healthy skepticism of politicians and policy makers acting in their own self-interest while also appreciating that there do exist purpose-driven organizations that roll out programs and policies based on a genuine interest in solving problems.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#883

Post by mrguyorama »

stephen_g wrote: post #583
smaudet wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This really feels like the beginning of the end for Mozilla, sadly. I really feel like every time Mozilla announces something, someone gets paid to leave comments like this around. I've seen many "beginning of the end" comments like this, and so far, it hasn't happened. What I do see is a lot of bashing, and hypocrisy, and excuses for why its OK that you don't personally try to do better...

Even as someone who is still a Firefox user - the browser now has about half the browser market share as Edge... Absolutely nobody needs to be paid to write these kind of comments! Honestly the last 5-10 years has been a disaster for Firefox...

The vast majority of these people complaining are using something like Brave or just plain Chrome.

They aren't expressing genuine criticisms for the most part.

Tons of them literally work at google.

Like, there's a poster a couple threads over insisting "Brave is great, you just have to ignore the crypto shit and change a bunch of settings" and like, somehow brave doesn't get regular 600 post long threads about how it's "Dead" and "It's the end" and "I have never used Firefox in my life but I certainly wont now!"

It's absurd.

"Mozilla's CEO makes $6 million" says people who get very angry if you suggest we should pay the managerial class less of the worlds money and also never seem to complain about any other CEO making that money and don't say anything about how much the CEO of Brave makes or how much money Google as a whole sucks out of reality to do whatever they want with, including subsidizing a browser to kill any competition.

Firefox got big because every young tech nerd installed it on everyone's machine and then a few years later, google literally paid tons of installers to also bundle and install Chrome and make it the default browser and everyone here always insists that people who did not choose to use firefox and did not even notice they now use chrome are somehow going to pay real money for firefox?

Meanwhile Opera is showing how nobody gives a shit about any of this "Privacy" nonsense in the market, and the important features are things like "you can install a theme your favorite youtuber made for shits and giggles" and "Advertising to children"

You want browser engine diversity? Guess what, that's Firefox right now. There is nothing else. That's why I use Firefox. There's nowhere else to go.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#884

Post by dangus »

amrocha wrote: post #439
dangus wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly. There’s doom and gloom in this thread but the truth is that the early adopters who are using AI-integrated browsers love them. Mozilla having unique features is what made it popular in the first place (tabbed browsing versus IE6).

I’m not exactly surprised that AI grifters that have probably bet all their life savings on nvidia “love” their AI browsers.

Shit on it all you want, the utility of AI is undeniable. Laggards say exactly what you’re saying now.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#886

Post by mrguyorama »

4gotunameagain wrote: post #38
tcauduro wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Looking at their strategy doc, it doesn't seem like they hear their users at all. It's riddled with AI. In fact their aspiration is "doing for AI what we did for the web." Oh boy! https://blog.mozilla.org/wp-content/blogs.dir/278/files/2025...

I will eat my hat if Google had nothing to do with the demise of Mozilla, what an absolute disgrace. How incompetent can they be, how out of touch with their core (and arguably only) product ? Nobody wants AI in firefox.

They are looking at OperaGX and Brave selling literal spyware and still growing marketshare and correctly recognizing that the only people willing to switch browsers in the current day do not give a shit about any of that stuff and are weirdos looking for "features"

Look at all the people in this very comment section insisting that Mozilla is just the worst while using fucking chrome or chromium. Mozilla knows they will never get that market back, because that market just hates Mozilla for "reasons", usually "They fired a guy for being openly hostile"

The thing google did to cause the demise of firefox was pay to bundle chrome with tons of things users installed, and put a giant "Install Chrome for BEST EXPERIENCE" banner on every single page they control. Sane governments would have broken them up for their clear anti-competitive practices, but at the same time the vast majority of the users they "lost" never knew they had firefox in the first place and didn't notice when it got changed.

These users never even noticed when conficker changed their browsers to literal adware FFS, they certainly didn't "Choose" a browser freely.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#887

Post by WawaFin »

mkozlows wrote: post #401
WawaFin wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Chrome with uBlock Origin Lite and not even once I found a case when this version of uBlock was behaving differently (as less efficient) than the "full" uBlock Origin Maybe I'm just lucky, but even this argument is quite ... meh

How's that work for you on Android? Firefox on Android with uBlock is the huge win.

I have a device wide adblocker

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#888

Post by Rastonbury »

account42 wrote: post #816
gwd wrote: post #813

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Non-profit doesn't mean non-revenue. They don't have to pay their investors, but they certainly need to pay their developers.

Most nonprofits don't generate "revenue" from their "product". They provide a valuable service and get paid by people who agree with the mission.

Based on comments in here and people willing to pay I wonder why they haven't got the Wikipedia route of getting donations, would that piss off a lot of users? I do think most people would understand a non-profit needs donations.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#889

Post by mixmastamyk »

glenstein wrote: post #878
mixmastamyk wrote: post #557

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If they were on a sustainable trajectory they wouldn't be selling their soul for advertising money and other ill-advised revenue projects that contradict their stated mission.

Okay, but now you're changing the subject. The claim was that they don't have an endowment or that they're not investing it. But they are. The truth is the vast majority of organizations with an endowment are not able to rely on it in perpetuity, I think there's a small subset of organizations that basically amounts to a bunch of elite universities. So it's not the intended or functional or actual purpose of any endo…

No—they did not cut costs enough to build a sufficient endowment. Again, income of several billion dollars.

That is plenty for an endowment to build a browser+ in perpetuity... like an order of magnitude in excess. Ladybird/servo are successfully building on perhaps 1% of that?

I'm sure they have some money in the bank and it gets interest, but obviously not enough or handled well enough to avoid the temptation to start an advertising project due to their unsustainable spending rate.

You keep trying to make it sound like they "did everything they could." No, they did not by a long shot.

Re: Mozilla appoints new CEO Anthony Enzor-Demeo

#890

Post by endemic »

CuriousRose wrote: post #658
gkoberger wrote: post #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 m…

Fully agree with this. - Mozilla SSL Certs - for corporations that don't want Let's Encrypt - Mozilla Mail - a reliable Exchange/Google Mail alternative (desperately needed imo) - Thunderbird for iOS - why is this not a thing yet? - Mozilla Search - metasearch that isn't based on Bing/DDG/Google - Mozilla HTTPS DNS - although Cloudflare will probably always do this better All seemingly low-hanging fruit with brand al…

Re-launch FirefoxOS -- not for smartphones, but as a privacy-focused ChromeOS competitor. Give students Mozilla/Firefox brand awareness while prying them out of Google's clutches.
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