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Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

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Re: Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

#21

Post by elashri »

Squeeze2664 wrote: post #12

I was going to switch to Waterfox in light of this news, but a cursory search revealed that it, too, was sold to an advertising company not long ago. While they have published a blog post opposing Mozilla's AI stance, I'm really past the point of giving ad companies any benefit of the doubt. I'm looking into Librewolf now. The browser situation grows more grim by the day.

And after the acquisition it seems they abandoned the browser and it is independent again since 2023 [1]

[1] https://www.waterfox.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/

Re: Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

#22

Post by skywal_l »

al_borland wrote: post #5

I’m not sure he knows the type of person that actually uses Firefox. > Enzor-DeMeo says it is important that AI features in Firefox are “something people can easily turn off”. It seems like it should be opt-in instead of opt-out. At the very least, ask up front, and have a single switch to make it like it’s not there at all.

The only fact that there is a "CEO" of Firefox is in itself asinine.

Re: Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

#23

Post by alisonatwork »

airstrike wrote: post #9

I've been on Firefox for decades and I'm 100% ready to jump ship. Tried Zen today and it didn't feel right—felt too much like it wanted to be Arc but ended up a bit frankenstein-y in the process. Open to suggestions that aren't Arc or Brave, if anyone has them!

What platform are you on? I use Ungoogled Chromium on desktop (uBlock Origin still works if you install it from GitHub) and Cromite on mobile (some AdBlock built-in), mainly because both of these just give you a clean and compatible browser without any frills. I noped out of Firefox back whenever it was that they started prompting me to make an account to sync every time I opened it, but I still use LibreWolf at work to test compatibility.

Re: Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

#25

Post by idle_zealot »

harshreality wrote: post #16

[flagged]

I can't speak for everyone, but as a certified Firefox Preferrer my concern is this:

One day I will update my browser (after putting it off for a few days since the "restart Firefox to apply updates" button appears) and my user chrome will be moved around to make room for some new star/diamond-shaped button or additional side-panel, then I'll have to dig around in the settings or about:config to disable it and maybe even tweak my userChrome.css to accommodate it. From then on my list of things to do every time I set up Firefox on a new device will be one item longer, and I will feel ever more like my core tools do not have my interests at heart as I have to hack away at extraneous bits and pop open the hood to fiddle with knobs to get them to work normally without looking like a billboard for useless and half-abandoned features.

Re: Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

#26

Post by gudzpoz »

Squeeze2664 wrote: post #12

I was going to switch to Waterfox in light of this news, but a cursory search revealed that it, too, was sold to an advertising company not long ago. While they have published a blog post opposing Mozilla's AI stance, I'm really past the point of giving ad companies any benefit of the doubt. I'm looking into Librewolf now. The browser situation grows more grim by the day.

Your cursory search likely provided outdated info. [0] Quoting from it's maintainer: [1]

    Waterfox is independent again: [0]

    And System1 are an “ad-tech” company but the term should be used loosely. The ownership made sense as they are a search engine aggregator and they own a bunch of old school search engines like DogPile, InfoSpace etc. Nothing to do with what people associate ad-tech with, i.e. tracking you across the web or collecting personal data.
[0] https://www.waterfox.com/blog/a-new-chapter-for-waterfox/

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37435511

Re: Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

#27

Post by popalchemist »

skywal_l wrote: post #22
al_borland wrote: post #5

I’m not sure he knows the type of person that actually uses Firefox. > Enzor-DeMeo says it is important that AI features in Firefox are “something people can easily turn off”. It seems like it should be opt-in instead of opt-out. At the very least, ask up front, and have a single switch to make it like it’s not there at all.

The only fact that there is a "CEO" of Firefox is in itself asinine.

Mozilla is a large organization that produces many products.

Re: Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

#28

Post by nirui »

Ideally, you don't need a "turn off" button. If you find the need to add a Disable button, the feature you're adding maybe already too on-the-nose.

How about if I need an AI to read the page, I could just right-click and select? It's the same way how the screenshot feature currently works.

(Wait, I just right-clicked and discovered there's a AI item on the menu. Maybe it's already how it works? If so, then it's not very on-the-nose and I can accept it existing)

> The bulk of Mozilla’s revenue coming from its Google search deal.

Just show a donation message already. If Wikipedia can collect that much donations just for hosting a set of websites, Mozilla, who's doing some really important work for the Internet and maybe humanity at this point, can only collect more.

Re: Mozilla's New CEO Confirms Firefox Will Become an "AI Browser"

#30

Post by bruce511 »

al_borland wrote: post #5

I’m not sure he knows the type of person that actually uses Firefox. > Enzor-DeMeo says it is important that AI features in Firefox are “something people can easily turn off”. It seems like it should be opt-in instead of opt-out. At the very least, ask up front, and have a single switch to make it like it’s not there at all.

>> I’m not sure he knows the type of person that actually uses Firefox

I'm sure he does, but he is trying to get different users.

The problem Firefox has is that it has accumulated "problem" users who are only there because they've left everywhere else.

In other words, people didn't choose Firefox cause its better, they chose it because it "wasn't x". They were offended by some action of their last browser, and left.

This is the worst user demographic to have. They'll only hang around till you do something that offends them. Which will inevitably happen.

With 2% market share the goal of the new CEO is not to pander to existing users. It's to convince new users to switch because Firefox is better.

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