Earlier quoted context omitted.
You didn't even read 6 sentences into TFA. 52/52 of the closed-beta testers of this feature want it removed.
how is 52 users representative??
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I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
381–390 of 782 posts
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#382Earlier quoted context omitted.
> All companies push an agenda all the time, and their agenda always is: market dominance, profitability, monopoly and rent extraction, rinse and repeat into other markets, power maximization for their owners and executives. I'll bear that in mind the next time I'm getting a haircut. How do you think Bob's Barbers is going to achieve all of that?
It was a sloppy statement, but is broadly speaking, true. For overwhelming citations, https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu... (HN Search of posts from Matt Stoller's BIG Newsletter, which focuses on corporate monopolies and power in the US). https://www.thebignewsletter.com/about > The Problem: America is in a monopoly crisis. A monopoly is, at its core, a private government that sets the term…
That geographic concentration is a real thing.
I think part of the Mozilla problem is that they are based in San Francisco which puts them in touch with people from Facebook and Google and OpenAI every frickin' day and they are just so seeped in the FOMO Dilemma [1] that they can't hear the objection to NFT and AI features that users, particularly Firefox users, hate. [2]
I'd really like to see Mozilla move anywhere but the bay area, whether that is Dublin or Denver. When you aren't hanging out with "big tech" people at lunch and after work and when you have to get in a frickin' airplane to meet with those people you might start to "think different" and get some empathy for users and produce a better product and be a viable business as opposed to another out-of-touch and unaccountable NGO.
[1] Clayton Christensen pointed out in The Innovator's Dilemma that companies like Kodak and Xerox die because they are focused on the needs of their current customers who could care less about the new shiny that can't satisfy their needs now but will be superior in say 15 years. Now we have The FOMO Dilemma which is best illustrated by Windows 8 which went in a bold direction (tabletization) that users were completely indifferent to: firms now introduce things that their existing customers hate because they read The Innovator's Dilemma and don't want to wind up like Xerox.
[2] we use Firefox because we hate that corporate garbage.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#383Contrarian here. I've fell in love with Firefox's AI Chatbox sidebar. It's extremely helpful to have Gemini immediately available to help with translating and summarizing text.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#384Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I can’t use a google product without being harassed (...) You can disable AI in Google products. E.g. in Gmail: go to Settings (the gear icon), click See all settings, navigate to the General tab, scroll down to find Smart features and personalization and uncheck the checkbox. Source: https://support.google.com/drive/answer/15604322
This is correct but also a little misleading: Google gives you a choice to disable smart features globally, but you end up tossing out things you might want as well, such as the automatic classification into smart folders in Gmail. It feels very much like someone said " let's design a way to do this. That will make most people not want to turn any of the features that will make most people not want to turn it off bec…
This toggle _still_ doesn't turn off all the bs.
Google now "helpfully" decides that you must want a summary of literally every file you open in Drive, which is extra annoying because the summary box causes the UI to move around after the document is opened. The other day I was looking at my company's next year's benefits PDFs and Gemini decided that when I opened the medical benefits paperwork that the thing I would care about is that I can get an ID card with an online account... not the various plan deductibles or anything useful like that.
I turned off the "smart" features and the only thing that changed is that the nag box still pops up and shifts the UI around, but now there's a button that asks if you want a summary instead of generating it automatically.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#385I've been a Firefox user for 5 years or so and I can tell you: yes no one needs AI in Firefox especially that Firefox users tend to be on the privacy conscious side of things
But I don't blame Mozilla though, cause are loosing market share, and maybe they think this is a way to gain more market share?
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#386Earlier quoted context omitted.
You'd think so, but you also need to set browser.ml.chat.menu to false to remove a context menu item.
Looking at https://searchfox.org/firefox-main/source/browser/components... it is a bit weird, that there isn't a general check for browser.ml.enabled true/false.
Yeah, there should really just be one global setting.
Also note that it's browser.ml.enable (no "d") vs. browser.ml.chat.enabled, to make matters even more infuriating.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#387If it's really hidden in its own special tab and NEVER comes out unwanted, I can see some benefits.
It's just not a very good fit for Firefox. I assume it would run on a cloud service, which is very much a privacy issue. Especially because it appears to be something "free", making my data the product.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#388Does anyone want AI in anything? I can see the value of navigating to an LLM and asking specific questions, but generally speaking I don't want that just running / waiting on my machine as I open a variety of applications. It's a huge waste of resources and for most normal people is an edge case.
I believe there are good targeted tasks. One Chrome plug-in called 'Tweeks' is a reimplementation of Grease monkey user scripting where you can make changes by posing natural language to an LLM that changes the page for you. It was posted here in hn the other day. [0] Also I believe some agentic tasking can make sense: scroll through all the Kindle unlimited books for critically acclaimed contemporary hard sci-fi. Bu…
Slight correction: the LLM doesn't change the page for you, the LLM creates sort of a mini-extension (like GreaseMonkey) that changes the page for you. This means you only make one request to the LLM and it creates something to modify the page from that point on.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#389Nobody wants anything from Mozilla except Firefox/Thunderbird to be high-performance alternatives to Chrome/Outlook with fewer restrictions on extensions. That’s it. The rest is just activism and kids playing in a sandbox with non-profit money to pad out their resume with whatever topical keywords might land them their next gig.
I see this sentiment a lot, but I never agree with it. Sure, some of their projects seem very odd for them to lead, but given that they are completely reliant on their competitor for cash -- a revenue source that has been threatened several times by anti-trust cases against Google -- they should be looking to branch out. Firefox alone won't pay the bills, so they need to try and find some other revenue source. Plus,…
> Chrome has essentially won. ... Sitting around quietly isn't going to get people to switch
You hit the nail on the head with this one
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#390Earlier quoted context omitted.
The existence of the features doesn’t bother me. It’s the constant nagging about them. I can’t use a google product without being harassed to the point of not being able to work by offers to “help me write” or whatever. Having the feature on a menu somewhere would be fine. The problem is the confluence of new features now becoming possible, and companies no longer building software for their users but as vehicles to…
It's a problem in the software industry today that is bigger than AI, probably the greatest controversy in software marketing. Part of the model of products like Adobe's Creative Suite [1] is that they are always adding new features -- and if you want people to keep renewing their subscription you want them to know about new features so they feel like they are getting more out of their product. Trouble is using a pro…
> Part of the model of products like Adobe's Creative Suite [1] is that they are always adding new features -- and if you want people to keep renewing their subscription you want them to know about new features so they feel like they are getting more out of their product.
This is the fundamental problem and it has nothing to do with AI. Just look at the recent iOs 26 release. I am not convinced that any of the actual functional changes warranted a release or that they needed to be released at that point if a new release was needed. New software to justify new phones.
You get lots of features but performance takes a second seat. And sadly, I feel it works. I feel most would balk at paying a monthly subscription if only performance related improvements were made