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Mozilla's open source AI strategy

blog.mozilla.org

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Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#161

Post by glenstein »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #131
blibble wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There are not many good revenue options available for a browser other than selling search defaults if they had set up an endowment instead of blowing it on unrelated pointless crap for decades they would have been self-funded indefinitely they were pulling in over $500 MILLION a year

500 million could net you about 50 to 70 million annually if you put it all on the S&P 500... A few years of this and you're a self-funded non-profit...

They're doing that. Their endowment is invested and it does grow by a non-trivial amount, though I don't know the exact numbers off the top of my head.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#162

Post by giancarlostoro »

steveklabnik wrote: post #156
glenstein wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, Unfortunately the side bets are disproportionately visible relative to the vast majority of what they actually do, which is ship millions of lines of code in browser improvements every quarter, keeping pace with Google despite a fraction of Google's resources. I certainly think a better strategic…

I’m not sure Mozilla has shipped more Rust code than anybody, FWIW. The obviously have a lot, but so have other companies as well.

CloudFlare relies on it in key projects, which is why I feel like if I had to pick any tech company to consider taking a hold of Firefox, they'd be my top pick. I know some people are skeptical of them, but they have not goofed yet. Maybe if the CEO ever steps down I'll change my views on CF.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#163

Post by glenstein »

dralley wrote: post #69
devsda wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is more easier to secure revenue/funding from Google once they retain existing market share and gain more. They need to improve the product for that to happen. With all the distractions they are abandoning their primary product and they are bleeding whatever miniscule market share they have. This means Google has more leverage over them and can eventually stop the funding once their market share drops beyond a thr…

If we're being completely honest, improving the quality of the product would not meaningfully improve their market share. That worked in the early 2000s when the competition (internet explorer) was utterly stagnant and the internet-using population was composed predominantly of techies willing to try new things. Browsers are commodities now, and most people aren't going to try a new browser when they're already using…

>If we're being completely honest, improving the quality of the product would not meaningfully improve their market share.

Exactly right. They did the dang thing with Project Quantum, a massive rewrite of the browser, a massive leap forward in stability and performance. The thing everyone asked for. And they..... continued to lose market share. Because there are other factors, like monopoly power, and distribution lock-in.

You don't have to imagine what it looks like for a browser company to lap the field with an excellent development team, creative revenue raising ideas, being ahead of the curve on mobile, having best in class stability and performance, and building out features that their core user base loves and swears by. Because Opera was that company in the 2000s and 2010s.

But even Opera had to sell to a new ownership group and abandon their Presto engine for Chromium. Because, like Spock said, you can make every decision correctly and still lose. Which is kind of depressing, but it at least helpfully bursts the bubble of people claiming changes in market share are a one-to-one relationship to specific decisions about which features to build in a browser.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#164

Post by johnea »

Has mozilla ever hired a CEO on the premise of "Our top priority is resolving the long standing bugs in our web and email clients"?

I'm still bitching, years later, about thunderbird failing to update IMAP folder contents (i.e. sync with server) until I click on the folder.

While it may still reign as the "capital of the industry", there's a certain kind of technical brain damage that comes from being located in the bay area.

Let's just call it "proximity to venture capital"...

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#165

Post by glenstein »

steveklabnik wrote: post #156
glenstein wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, Unfortunately the side bets are disproportionately visible relative to the vast majority of what they actually do, which is ship millions of lines of code in browser improvements every quarter, keeping pace with Google despite a fraction of Google's resources. I certainly think a better strategic…

I’m not sure Mozilla has shipped more Rust code than anybody, FWIW. The obviously have a lot, but so have other companies as well.

In the browser space they have. Google has been a lot more tentative about working it into their various toolkits.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#166

Post by criticalfault »

Vinnl wrote: post #121
giancarlostoro wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the problem many of us have is it feels like Mozilla invests more effort into everything other than its browser, we see the things they do outside of Mozilla, I mean it was so bad Thunderbird had to become its own foundation due to lack of funding! I would love for there to be a world where Mozilla maintains Firefox and can make for product projects that provide higher value. I also have a pipe dream of one d…

At the same time, Firefox last year gained tab groups, vertical tabs, a user-friendly profile switcher. Split view and tab notes are under development. It sometimes feels like it's moving faster than ever, and that's disregarding all AI features. (Disclosure: I work at Mozilla, but not on Firefox.)

all this should have been developed in 2000s

different point of view: tab grouping took 20+y to develop (since opera had it in 2000s).

in 2026 firefox should have: - fast ui - fast js - fast rendering - hw acceleration for video - same look and feel on all platforms - faster adblocker

just the basics, no? didn't add more advanced features here.

and let's see what is actually here: - UI rendered via HTML/xul. an abomination. a slow abomination at that. right clicking something can show you stagers of rendering of a menu. - check any Js benchmarks, you will see how FF stands - rendering,... there was a talk in one of the conferences explaining timing requests and time-to-picture. this may be blamed on the standards, but chrome does it better - video hw acceleration on Linux? is this actually working? and I don't mean 3/100 relevant codecs - same look and feel - done - AdBlock is the only advantage you have over other platforms. it would make sense to implement this in the browser and not rely on Js and extensions

it's sad and funny that people with only a couple million are going to soon catch up to Mozilla and make it obsolete, by building a Bowser engine, not only a shell around blink/WebKit.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#167

Post by glenstein »

Yoric wrote: post #133
encom wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a former Firefox user, I got fed up with the constant change for the sake of change. Why change the tabs? They were fine the way they were. People got mad about the addon situation since it broke their workflows because of vague technical reasons. And Mozilla usually ignored user protests while pointing at telemetry, and did whatever they wanted to, users be damned. At least that's how it looked from this side. I…

> And Mozilla usually ignored user protests while pointing at telemetry, and did whatever they wanted to, users be damned. When I worked on Firefox, most of the changes happened exactly because user research determined that users wanted them and/or that not having them hurt the product. We changed the tabs at least once because users thought that the old shape of tabs made the browser feel slow (true story, sadly). W…

Anyone can hip fire an accusation from the philosopher's chair (potty), and it's like that thing about a falsehood circling the world five times before the truth even gets out of bed.

Against the avalanche of claims that they've "done nothing", it can be tedious to pull out examples of, say, major projects achieving huge performance improvements in WebGPU, but meanwhile it costs nothing to claim Firefox has "done nothing since Quantum" which I've heard claimed in these parts in full sincerity.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#168

Post by AuthAuth »

drnick1 wrote: post #139
giancarlostoro wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

500 million could net you about 50 to 70 million annually if you put it all on the S&P 500... A few years of this and you're a self-funded non-profit...

Reminder: Ladybird is being developed by a handful of people with contributions from the community. It's far from being complete, but it clearly shows that you don't need an enormous budget to build a Web browser entirely from scratch, let alone maintain one.

Ladybird should not be in the conversation. Its nowhere near FF or even usable as a browser.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#169

Post by AuthAuth »

28304283409234 wrote: post #109

Please let me pay for Firefox and have the proceed fund Firefox directly. This is not 1999 anymore. We are all wealthy grown ups now.

Agreed, I subscript to random Mozilla products like VPN and Relay to pay them but I dont need those and would hate to have them waste extra development time on improving those services. I would rather fund the browser directly.

Re: Mozilla's open source AI strategy

#170

Post by glenstein »

criticalfault wrote: post #166
Vinnl wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the same time, Firefox last year gained tab groups, vertical tabs, a user-friendly profile switcher. Split view and tab notes are under development. It sometimes feels like it's moving faster than ever, and that's disregarding all AI features. (Disclosure: I work at Mozilla, but not on Firefox.)

all this should have been developed in 2000s different point of view: tab grouping took 20+y to develop (since opera had it in 2000s). in 2026 firefox should have: - fast ui - fast js - fast rendering - hw acceleration for video - same look and feel on all platforms - faster adblocker just the basics, no? didn't add more advanced features here. and let's see what is actually here: - UI rendered via HTML/xul. an abomi…

Look at what happened to Opera. They fell apart, abandoned their Presto engine for Chromium and sold to an outside investment group and now they serve ads based on user data.

There was, in my opinion, no better browser company past or present than Opera in the 2000s and 2010s (sorry Mozilla). But their example exposes the fallacy of assuming that building out great features guarantees market share gains.

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