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Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

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Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#271

Post by glenstein »

PunchyHamster wrote: post #117
godelski wrote: post #84

Firefox does what some people want, people complain. Firefox does what other people want, people complain. Firefox does what both people want, people complain. I'm sorry, but we'll never get corporations to do what we want if we don't throw them the smallest bone when we get our way. You need positive reinforcement too, not just negative. If it's all negative they just stop caring and you get companies lot Google who…

> So what, we're just going to hand the keys of the kingdom to the guys selling artisian turd sandwiches because what, there isn't enough mayo on your ham sandwich? Because you don't like ham? Firefox is the artisan turd sandwich. They are burning dev time on features barely anyone asked, while bleeding market share for last decade

This is a narrative that got hallucinated into existence by comment sections. Most of the effort goes towards the core browser and always has, side bets have found their ways into headlines and comment sections from users overestimating the resources necessary to build them out while underestimating the scale of regular work like security patches and performance improvements.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#272

Post by sethops1 »

cl0ckt0wer wrote: post #267

Firefox already captured the developer audience, and it wasn't enough. So they pivoted to whatever they thought of to increase mainstream adoption. That is really alienating that developer audience though.

Firefox had mainstream adoption in the Firefox 2 era, before Chrome launched. What drew people to Chrome was that it was fast, efficient, and did I mention fast? Unfortunately all browsers today seem to have forgotten how important that is.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#274

Post by glenstein »

mort96 wrote: post #159
godelski wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This situation where they're the steward of the only non-Google browser is not tenable, something needs to change. So what, you're going to help Google shove the knife in deeper? Idk man, seems like a bad way to fight Google. But honestly it just feels like you didn't even read my comment. I'm sorry that it's a lot, but I'm petty sure people can handle 10-30 seconds of reading. I even said it doesn't matter if Mozi…

Letting Mozilla torpedo the only non-Google browser is also a bad way to fight Google. It's looking bleak. The only hope is that Mozilla dies and someone more serious picks up the mantle. Not sure who that would be though.

They're not torpedoing it. It's a bizarre fatalistic tone that got manufactured in comment sections.

They spend more on developing the browser now than they ever have in their history, and they remain the most successful independently financed browser in the history of ever. Other major browsers have to be financed by trillion dollar companies based on independent revenue streams.

The predicament right now is that AI might displace search, which is a problem if you make money from search licensing. It's not yet clear what the new normal is going to be in an AI first paradigm. But what is clear is that doing nothing means the world will pass you by when everything changes.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#275

Post by 3OCSzk »

setopt wrote: post #253
mfru wrote: post #243

Please let whoever steers Thunderbird development and road map also steer Firefox. Thunderbird is at the moment the pinnacle of user-centered, focused and down-to-earth development of open-source software.

That’s because Thunderbird is no longer part of Mozilla but an independent, community-developed project.

dubious, disingenuous claim.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#276

Post by glenstein »

mort96 wrote: post #214
godelski wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But that's not what happened. That's not the context of the thread. The battle was won. So celebrate. The war may not be over but it's not like we lost. > someone more serious picks up the mantle. Let's cross that bridge when/ IF we get there. But until then, maybe don't set the stage for them to take up that mantle. If all we do is complain then obviously they'll just learn to ignore us. So don't sour the victory, i…

No battle has been won. Firefox's market share is dwindling, and they're going full steam ahead with turning Firefox into an "AI browser". Yes, they are adding an option to turn off AI features, but I don't want to use an "AI browser with AI features disabled", I want to use a normal web browser. Mozilla is not delivering that. Note that just not bogging down Firefox with AI features is not enough here. Firefox marke…

This narrative gets endlessly repeated in comment sections despite not even pretending to align with the factual record. The side bets era from roughly 2020-present did not retroactively cause the market share losses from 2010-2015.

The problem with this revisionist history is that it's completely helpless to address the actual dynamics that led to the rise of Chrome, and attempts to tell the entire story in terms of add-ons tweaks to the Firefox user interface, even though that has nothing to do with the change in market share. The major drivers were the world's most visited website pushing a new browser and preloading it as a default on billions of mobile devices. Mozilla could have executed perfectly and still been sidelined.

But a few bad new cycles in the early 2020s crystallized a negative attitude that perfectly fed the hedonic skepticism of Internet comment sections, and so an echo chamber emerged of people reinterpreting that history as if purchasing Pocket or running a VPN somehow retroactively caused all the market share change.

Nobody's ever bothered to like look at the factual timeline, but once they hear it repeated enough they get confident enough to repeat it themselves and on and on the snowball goes.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#277

Post by pessimizer »

reddalo wrote: post #28
aquir wrote: post #10

I don't know...at one point I got off Firefox because it was slow and I was never able to get back to it ever again. Maybe I should try now?

Do it. It's the only truly independent browser left. It's not perfect, but it works, and unlike Chrome you can have full ad blocking with uBlock Origin.

> only truly independent browser

Only truly independent browser engine left. Firefox is entirely independent on google, but unlike its competitors this dependency is through direct cash payments.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#279

Post by zitterbewegung »

sethops1 wrote: post #272
cl0ckt0wer wrote: post #267

Firefox already captured the developer audience, and it wasn't enough. So they pivoted to whatever they thought of to increase mainstream adoption. That is really alienating that developer audience though.

Firefox had mainstream adoption in the Firefox 2 era, before Chrome launched. What drew people to Chrome was that it was fast, efficient, and did I mention fast? Unfortunately all browsers today seem to have forgotten how important that is.

The whole purpose of Chrome is to have google search by default in people's browsers. Once they have a large market share nothing else really matters. If people truly cared about speed Google would have changed it already.

Re: Firefox 148 Launches with AI Kill Switch Feature and More Enhancements

#280

Post by glenstein »

yibers wrote: post #3

Step 1: Launch AI features Step 2: Launch AI features kill switch Step 3: ???? Step 4: Profit?

Search licensing that Mozilla currently depends on might become eclipsed by AI so it's important to ahead of the game whatever it might end up being.
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