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I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

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Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#441

Post by ryandrake »

andy99 wrote: post #70
everdrive wrote: post #4

Does 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.

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…

The pushiness is just insane. These companies are totally out of control. I just want to use your software the way I've used it for the past decade. Stop getting in my face. I get it--you're so excited that you just launched this new AI feature and you really, really want me to know about it. How nice for you. Now leave me alone! Stop putting it on every screen, making every button invoke it, interrupting me with popups designed to wear me down and give in... It's so pathetic and desperate!

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#442

Post by mattthebaker »

simianparrot wrote: post #335
DeusExMachina wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am not a Firefox user, but I am baffled by the fact that every time I see news about it is because its developers are trying to push something that users dislike. All the comments I read always highlight how they keep wasting time and money instead of working on more important things. My impression is that this is the reason why they keep losing market share. I never see any positive news about Firefox or Mozilla,…

Every time I try Firefox it’s slower than Chrome or Safari. Every time. And since that never seems to improve, I suspect that’s why its market share keeps dropping because all the fluff doesn’t matter if the core feature is just worse.

Personally, I don't really see the value proposition in being able to load and serve you ads faster, compared to a browser with a proper ad blocker.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#443

Post by everfree »

ineptech wrote: post #369

The #1 thing I want from Firefox is for it to keep existing in the long term, as a hedge against Google's monopoly. Burning capital on hardware-intensive AI features to get FF from 1% market share to 2% market share would endanger that, no matter how useful the features might be.

Firefox development is funded almost entirely out of Google's massive donations to Mozilla. For Google, it's no more than a regulatory hedge - something they can point at and say that Chromium and Webkit are not a duopoly. But the flip side is that if Firefox were to ever become a real threat, Google pulls funding and Firefox is toast.

So if we want Firefox to ever seriously compete with Google products, the first thing we need to do is fund Mozilla. When a company's entire capex comes from a monopolistic competitor that would rather see it dead, any talk about capex is bikeshedding.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#444

Post by godelski »

CjHuber wrote: post #225
railka wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am a regular Firefox user; it is literally the tool I use most often during my working hours. I like it more than Chrome. Firefox is steadily losing market share, and any attempts to do something about it are met with negativity. The 2-4% of users who use it care about their privacy. But they are not being deprived of it; the AI tab is optional, and no one is removing the regular tab. (Of course, it would be better…

I don’t know. I‘m always a bit appalled that getting privacy in firefox requires you to disable so many flags in the user.js or use something like arkenfox. It feels kind of dishonest of them that they don‘t surface those settings when they‘re enabled by default. Of course there is librefox, but still I feel like there shouldn’t even have to be reason for an extra fork like that.

You mean the standards that Google adds to chrome and then turns into standards?

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#445

Post by notepad0x90 »

moffkalast wrote: post #380
notepad0x90 wrote: post #110

I think "nobody i know" and nobody are different things. Mozilla wants more firefox users. there are "AI browsers" and ai integrated browsing is becoming more and more the norm. Mozilla is doing the right thing here, the features are there but unobtrusive. But down the road, I fully expect Mozilla to do whatever they have to do to remain in the game. Their small market share is hurting the entire internet, they can't…

Mozilla really just needs to do three things: allow adblocking, have feature parity with Chrome, and render HTML correctly. Currently they've at least got one of the three.

They also need to integrate with windows/enterprise setups better, that's one of the main reasons people use chrome based browsers.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#446

Post by paradox460 »

toomuchtodo wrote: post #407
PaulHoule wrote: post #382

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

My two cents is Mozilla should be in a European tech hub, with some component of their funding coming from the EU, where the EU's belief in regulation and nation state efforts to protect humans exceeds that of the US.

Europe had a potential Mozilla: Opera. They let it flounder and Chinese investors bought it.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#447

Post by tim333 »

everdrive wrote: post #4

Does 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 actually use Chrome over Firefox largely because of a couple of 'AI' features though they aren't really chatbot slop AI. Google translate built in is very handy - I know there are add ons for Firefox but they don't work well for twitter etc, and Google Lens is also very handy especially for text in image format.

I guess they key is not in your face when you don't want them and actually useful.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#448

Post by dwheeler »

I love having built-in local natural language translation implemented by AI, which Firefox provides. Local models have different properties than remote properties, and natural language translation is a useful thing. AI should be added when it solves a real need, and the risks can be minimized (or at least controlled). The goal shouldn't be to use AI, the goal should be to solve problems for humans.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#449

Post by Krssst »

everfree wrote: post #409

I use AI in Firefox all the time. Obviously it seems like I'm in a minority. * I summarize articles. * When I need more context to understand an article, I ask AI what I'm missing. * When I'm writing up something important, I ask AI to proofread it for me. * When I'm using productivity web apps, I ask AI to help me learn the features. * When I'm filling out convoluted forms, I ask AI what the writer could have possib…

> The Mozilla team seems to have struck a perfect balance with that so far, even going so far as to add "turn this off permanently" options directly in every AI-related shortcut and menu.

It's weird that so few people point this out and instead go straight to about:config. I don't use LLMs and I think too that is the best approach they could take: those that want to use AI can, and those that never want it can disable it immediately.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#450

Post by everfree »

maerF0x0 wrote: post #421

Doesn't torbrowser use firefox? I wonder how a journalist could trust it if there's some obscure llm/ai involved?

Torbrowser is a fork of Firefox, not a user. I'm not going to bother looking this up because pigs aren't flying yet, so I'll just state it as fact: the torbrowser fork does not include any of Firefox's AI code or functionality.
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