Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

manualdousuario.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

611–620 of 782 posts

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#611

Post by glenstein »

nativeit wrote: post #479
forgotpwd16 wrote: post #273

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>refocus on the one thing that still gives the organization a reason to exist: building a great browser Considering their existence depends on Google's money, it's to their best interest for the browser to lag behind Chrome.

I keep hearing this, but I haven’t seen any convincing evidence there are no alternatives.

I think it would have to be alternative search licenses, crowdsourced fundraising or some new product offering.

There's little precedent for crowdsourced fundraising on the scale of what Mozilla gets from its search deals. The examples I hear are Wikipedia and Tor. Wikipedia is the largest of its kind, I suspect the largest year-by-year internet crowdsourced project in existence and it gets half of what Mozilla's operations cost. Tor even less. So Mozilla would have to have more than double the largest crowdsourcing effort in history. So there goes crowdsourcing, at least as a primary option.

I don't think there's other licensing opportunities that pay out as much as Google, so there's strike two.

So then it's a matter of dabbling in side bets, which risk being inconsequential, compromising core mission values (e.g. adtech), or user backlash (VPN, Pocket) and stand accused of losing track of their mission. I personally wouldn't mind doing what Proton does and offering a drive/calendar/email suite but, again they would get accused of losing sight of their mission and I don't know how much they would stand to make from it. Nevertheless I do think continuing to experiment in side bets is worth trying.

Lastly, and perhaps most interestingly imo, they do some Ycombinator-style VC funding, which I believe are done out of the returns on their endowment. That might be one of the most intriguing directions over the long term, but again I have seen people on HN and point to that as yet another example of Mozilla supposedly failing to stay focused on their core mission.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#613

Post by standardly »

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.

Imagine putting down your AI-assisted smartphone to look up at the computer screen and minimize your AI-assisted vscode, glance past the Windows-integrated Copilot AI, open up firefox and move your mouse past the built-in AI search... only to go to chatgpt.com

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#614

Post by guestbest »

I looked at the top 25 grossing apps on iOS and Android. There is only one explicitly ai app and it’s the one that ran a Super Bowl commercial, ChatGPT. I don’t see the demand from regular consumers. When or if it grosses top in the charts then it arrived. It’s more windows 3.0 than windows 95.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#615

Post by MetaWhirledPeas »

krick wrote: post #504
nerdjon wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes and no and this is the problem with the current marketing around AI. I very much do want what used to be just called ML that was invisible and actually beneficial. Autocorrect, smart touch screen keyboards, music recommendations, etc. But the problem is that all of that stuff is now also just being called "AI" left and right. That being said I think what most people think of when they say "AI" is really not as be…

> what used to be just called ML FWIW, 10+ years ago I was arguing that your old pocket calculator is as much of an AI as anything ever could be. I only kinda stopped doing that because it's tiring to argue with silly buzzwords, not because anything has changed since. When "these things were called ML" ML was just a buzzword, same as AI and AGI are now. I'm kinda glad "ML" was relieved of that burden, because ultimat…

"AI" is the only term that makes sense for end users because "AI" is the only term that is universally understood. Hackernews types tend to overlook the layman.

And I hope no one gets started about how "AI" is an inaccurate term because it's not. That's exactly what we are doing: simulating intelligence. "ML" is closer to describing the implementation, and, honestly, what difference does it make for most people using it.

It is appropriate to discuss these things at a very high level in most contexts.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#616

Post by ericmcer »

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.

We are just in a weird transitory period right now so it is all shitty implementations replacing what we are used to.

I am semi-confident that LLM backed interfaces will be the future of many UIs though. When it works it just is a way better UX. A smart chat instead of a or crawling through pages of search results is just nicer.

It is bridging the gap between the hard data computers use and the generalized way humans communicate.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#617

Post by shawnz »

stogot wrote: post #610
shawnz wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here are some of the things that make Firefox the best browser for me: - An extension system more powerful than Chrome's, which supports for example rich adblockers that can block ads on Youtube. Also, it works on mobile, too - Many sophisticated productivity, privacy, and tab management features such as vertical tabs, tab groups, container tabs, split tabs, etc. And now it also has easy-to-use profiles and PWA suppo…

When/where was the PWA support added? I tried to test that this week and their docs say to use a third-party extension.

They're calling it taskbar tabs and it's behind a feature flag in nightly currently: https://windowsreport.com/firefox-is-bringing-web-apps-to-wi...

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#618

Post by 1718627440 »

AlecSchueler wrote: post #341
isodev wrote: post #330

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> according to free market theory Not once in the history of tech “the free market” has succeeded in preventing big corps or investors with lots of money from doing something they want.

I'm actually leaning towards the above comment being satire, it's hard to believe anyone on HN could believe in a free market in 2025.

This is yet again confusing a free market with an unregulated one. A free market is a market, where all costs are included (no external costs), so that market participants can make free decisions that will lead to the best outcome. To price in all external costs, regulation is needed.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#619

Post by everfree »

nativeit wrote: post #495
Krssst wrote: post #449

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 disabl…

How about it leaving it disabled and letting me enable it immediately if/when I choose.

This is a strange concept to me.

When companies add additional features to a product I use, I generally want to be notified about them so that I can make an informed decision about whether I want them enabled or disabled.

Re: I think nobody wants AI in Firefox, Mozilla

#620

Post by godelski »

ajkjk wrote: post #524
godelski wrote: post #457

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are plenty of us that have no problem with Firefox and use it. But I notice people love to hate Firefox. You also get a lot of people complaining who've never used it. Truth is it's a perfectly fine browser and the average person doesn't really notice the difference when you switch them over. Okay, "you" might be special and we're on a tech forum but most people don't. But we're also on a tech forum where peopl…

they hate it because all the news about it is bad, and falls cleanly into the unignorable modern narrative that "everything is being corrupted and turning against users over time". Embedding corporate interests in a browser that was supposed to be for people (see: all the examples of them doing that) is morally disgusting and everyone hates it. The repulsiveness of it is more about the trend that it represents than t…

Are you sure this isn't perception bias?

Mozilla does good thing: doesn't make news and everyone carries on as doing good things is expected and "normal"

Mozilla does bad thing: people get upset and this drives more attention and discussion.

We live in a world of social media where it's absolutely obvious what drives "engagement". Why would this be any different here? I mean we even see the inverse side where Google is expected to be evil so it's just stats quo. People then complain about how helpless they are to fight off these monopolies and yet are looking for excuses to not do something as simple as changing a browser. Is Firefox perfect? Of course not. The perfect browser does not exist. But browsers are pretty feature rich and fairly on parity these days. But let's not pretend that these complaints are more driven by our want to complain or our need to justify our current choice than it is about the actual impact of these things. I mean here we are talking about an optional feature and we're pigeonholing it into the optional AI quick tab while ignoring other useful things like translation. And let's not pretend like that quick tab is a crazy thing. We're on Hacker News and we all are quite aware at how often people are using LLMs. You think suddenly in this thread everyone is anti-LLM? Or maybe it's perception bias. I for one quite like the quick tab because I can just press to open up Claude instead of pinning a tab or navigating to their site. I don't use it to read my websites and it doesn't have to. Everything here is 100% optional.

Post reply on HN