I've tried the Perplexity browser and... I can't figure out what it does or how it is better?
I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
541–550 of 782 posts
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#542Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Chrome has essentially won. Not necessarily for any engineering reason, at least not these days, but from continued momentum of being the market leader. Ah, how the young forget... Mozilla became popular precisely due to their willingness to challenge the market leader at the time [1], namely, Internet Explorer. Going against the market leader should be in their DNA. The fight is not lost just because there's a mar…
They were losing because MS bundled IE with every device. Eventually they MS lost an anti trust case against it and it opened up the market, which is before that graph begins. Well 30 years later we are back where we started. Chrome is where it is because it is preloaded on most phones on the planet (the other ecosystem has a different preloaded browser). The other thing is that it was advertised on the most visited…
> They were losing because MS bundled IE with every device.
They weren't losing, they had 10x the market share they have now. MS lost an antitrust case, they weren't forced to do anything even after they lost, and big tech learned (correctly) that there was not ever going to be any serious antitrust enforcement on platforms.
Chrome came out with a heavily marketed browser that some people liked (but was far more marketed than loved.) Firefox then intentionally destroyed its own browser to make it a wonky clone of Chrome, even down to trivial cosmetic features and version numbering. Firefox's strength was its extensions ecosystem, so it took special relish in destroying that, and joy in painting the users that were bothered by this as stochastic terrorists. They claimed that the perpetual complainers just didn't understand the "normal users" of the market while Firefox shrunk from 30% of it to 2.5% of it. Meanwhile, they took to forcing bizarre, unhideable features that should have been extensions, and doing bizarre marketing experiments.
> Most internet users don't even use desktop/laptops, they use mobile devices and likely have no idea there is any other option than chrome.
Firefox gets all of its margin from Google, and is 2.5% of the market. There isn't really another option, no matter what Mehta says. Firefox gets more than all of its margin from Google - Google cash allows it to blow money on goofy money-losing projects that look good on resumes. Meanwhile, Wikipedia has 100x what it needs to run in the bank, entirely from donations, still keeps dishonestly begging, and still keeps collecting.
But Firefox claims that's impossible. It has to be fully dependent on Google because reasons, and those reasons are that it chooses its direction based on Google's desires.
edit: the craziest part of this common argument about Google bundling is that Google doesn't have anything like the monopoly that Microsoft had, Microsoft bound its browser to everything it could figure out how to, and Microsoft was still losing a huge section of the market to Firefox. The idea that Google is some special impossible challenge when Microsoft owned every computer is insane. It's impossible to beat Google when they pay your salary.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#543Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
The average user does not care about ads being present. Speed is paramount .
You are radically underestimating how much slow web performance is caused by the massive volume of ads and user tracking data attached to each site.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#544Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Does anyone want AI in anything? I want in Text to speech (TTS) engines, transliteration/translation and... routing tickets to correct teams/persons would also be awesome :) (Classification where mistakes can easily be corrected) Anyways, we used TTS engine before openai - it was AI based. It HAD to be AI based as even for a niche language some people couldn't tell it was a computer. Well from some phrases you can…
Automatic captions has been transformative, in terms of accessibility, and seems to be something people universally want. Most people don't think of it as AI though, even when it is LLM software creating the captions. There are many more ways that AI tools could be embedded "invisibly" into our day-to-day lives, and I expect they will be.
I doubt that people prefer automatic capitations over human made, no more than people prefer AI subtitles. The big AI subtitle controversy going on right now in anime demonstrate well that quite a lot is lost in translation when an AI is guessing what words are most likely in a situation, compared to a human making a translation.
What people want is something that is better than nothing, and in that sense I can see how automatic captions is transformative in terms of accessibility.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#545Does 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.
> Does anyone want AI in anything? Well, if you phrase it this way, then yes, people want this. AI can be useful, and integration is beneficial. But if we are talking about the momentary hype, then no, most people are against stupidly blindly shoving AI into something and getting annoyed with it the whole time. Personally, I would prefer for apps to safely open up for any kind of integration, and AI being just one au…
> Well, if you phrase it this way, then yes, people want this.
No? If anything, adding AI features to something is just driving away your user base. No one asked for a built-in AI. Why not provide an extension?
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#546Earlier quoted context omitted.
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,…
The amount of money they get from Google is vastly more than it takes to hire a few dozen people full-time to develop a web browser and email program. People in the organization are trying to use what's left of the name recognition and all that money to benefit their own initiatives.
What would you say is the most costly initiative that's siphoning money away from core browser development right now?
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#547Does 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 web is extremely user-hostile. The necessity of ad blockers is just one example of this. Social Media feed algorithms that maximize engagement at the cost of mental health and political unrest are another I think there is a ton of potential for having an LLM bundled with the browser and working on behalf of the user to make the web a better place. Imagine being able to use natural language to tell the browser to…
We both know this is never going to happen on mainstream browsers, they'll just keep shoving AI into your face until you become dependent to it.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#548Speak for yourself, I do want to see Mozilla experimenting with new features and functionality opened up by new technology. Politically motivated technological stagnation is little more than a slow death, Mozilla should at least be trying new things. And yes, they will get some of it wrong. It's new technology, nobody really knows how to use it yet. Mozilla should be on the forefront of figuring it out.
AI overuse drives me crazy but the steelman is that new technologies often involve a cringe experimentation phase before they find their "killer apps."
E.g. they tried to put steam engines on everything. Steam powered wagons that tore up roads, steam powered rowing machines, steam powered legs for amputees. All really dumb uses of technology. But steam engines on trains, ships and factories changed the world.
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#549Ugh I hate it. The amount of times I accidentally trigger the ui to summarize the page is so annoying
Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla
#550Earlier 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…
That's where I'm at with these. I don't personally care if a product includes AI, it's the pushiness of it that's annoying. That, and the inordinate amount of effort being devoted to it. It's just hilarious at this point that Microsoft, for example, is moving heaven and earth to put AI into everything office, and yet Excel still automatically converts random things into dates (the "ability" to turn it off they added…
>I don't personally care if a product includes AI, it's the pushiness of it that's annoying.
I agree with you in principle, but in practice these two are currently inextricable; if there's AI in the product, then it will be pushed / impossible to turn off / take resources away from actual product improvement.