Mozilla lays off 60 people, wants to build AI into Firefox

Things to add to your product when you want to look hip and trendy, but dont have any real ideas how to make your product better:

• 1990s: visitor counter
• 1995: Popups
• 2000s: flash intros
• 2005: stock photography
• 2010: local weather widget
• 2015: share to social media widgets
• 2020: fullsize 4k background stock videos
• 2024: AI assistant

uggggggggggh. I'm using Firefox because chrome is really going too far with it's manifest v3 garbage killing decent adblockere and Firefox is basically the only non chromium based option. Please for the love of everything that is holy. Just. Make. Your. Browser. Better. Don't need ai gimmicks. Definitely don't need to lay people off. You need to get back on track. Holy heck. This is the worst.

FUCKING NO MOZILLA YOU WERE OUR LAST FUCKDAMN HOLDOUT

Gonna have to pass on that one good buddy. Don't shit up Firefox.

why the fuck would I need an AI in a browser? 0 fucks given for this "feature". firefox is devolving into an edge.

You were the Chosen One! It was said that you would destroy the Sith, not join them! Bring balance to the browsers, not leave it in darkness!

From what I understand, they're divesting resources that aren't in Firefox or at least involved in a trustworthy/open source AI project.

I see a lot of people in this theead are upset at this, but I'm tentatively excited. If they can pull off a good AI engine, especially built into the browser, that would be nice. If it had offline capabilities, that would be amazing.

Even if they can pull off a good AI solution that's not built into Firefox but it's offline, I'd be really excited. I'm not crazy about having especially detailed and intimate information being thrown to some vendor out there, not knowing where it's going. Modern AI can do some amazing things, but a lot of them reserve the right to have a human read whatever you put in them and warn you about that. This is too limiting to me for my preferred use-cases.

One concern I have is that Firefox and its engine are one of the last non-chromium browser platforms that have a household name and are FOSS. So to me, that has to be the first goal to keep healthy. Maybe the AI thing will help in this respect

Enshittification continues.

I wonder when Steam will go.

Fuck sake. Sick of ai being added into everything. Please dont ruin firefox

Whyyyy Mozilla? I want to love you, rally, but you wont let me.

I want a upvote for sharing, down vote the concept button. I hate it.

As much as I hate it, think it's a terrible part for a free, open, and secure web; it's probably a solid business move based on the hype.

This is a pretty effective ad for LibreWolf

What a sad day to be alive. I want to believe nothing bad will happen but this is scary

as Firefox is the only browser that can't trace its lineage back to Apple and WebKit

What a slap on Konqueror's face.

I hate that they are laying people off. I do however want to use some machine learning powered adblock, for those harder to block ads. otherwise I don't feel like every app needs an AI assistant. It's bad for the Internet generally and for the power grid.

That's a very good way of me leaving Firefox behind...

The paradox of tech right now "we are going to build the most complex technology known to man into our product in the next 12 months. Are we hiring record numbers of people to get it done? No. We fired a bunch of people and everyone else will just have to be extremely hardcore."

I hope the folks laid off land on their feet.

I'm starting to think FF is being deliberately run into the ground by the higher ups. It would be good to hear from some of the devs about their thoughts on all this.

And I’m still waiting for them to open source Pocket. Silly me.

Okay, well I'm ready to write a angry email now who's with me? Anybody know the best address?

An exclusively locally running, opensource LLM might be a good thing though. In my amazing dreams where that's what they're planning to do.

This surprises people? Mozilla has always been Mozilla's biggest enemy.

This is how you lose. I only use FF. I will switch to another browser if they enshittify with AI.

Well guys we had a good run, free and open source software is officially over

oh fuck off Mozilla....

Honestly, it sucks, but I expected hundreds in line with the other huge layoffs we’ve seen. It being 60 seems more reasonable

This world blows

It’s remarkable really. They are competing against another browser which users have to actively go out and find, then install.

Some people are used to how chrome looks and that’s powerful glue, of course, but very few normal users (ie almost none of us in here on Lemmy) needs things beyond what both Firefox and Chrome does equally well.

The simple difference in adoption rate is this: Google pushing Chrome through people’s use of Google. Diminish the need for Google, diminish people’s discovery of Chrome.

Also, I cannot understand why they need this many people. If 5% of their workforce is 60 people, they have 1200 people employed. I can almost guarantee that Google’s Chrome team isn’t 1200 people strong.

Maybe Firefox would be better being smaller and more nimble. Maybe they should stop pretending they’re a company and start pretending they’re a foundation (which is what they are). 300 people working on a core browser seems a lot of full time people, still, and that’d be a quarter of what they are today.

Also, Mozilla’s inability to produce a simple interface for embedding Firefox is simply baffling to me. The reason so many other skin-browsers are built on chromium is that it’s a LOT easier to embed.

I speak as someone who’s run Firefox since the day it was born.

They've said they want to do local AIs though. If that's the case I'm all in.

Why Mozilla? You had so much good faith

Lol when that airbnb fuck took over I knew things were going to go south.

Tell me you don't understand your userbase without telling me you don't understand your userbase

90% of these comments didn't even read the article. Its local only, and doesn't even send data to mozilla.

oh good firefox. Wonder what other browser i can use, oh wait...

Can someone just make a minimalist browser that isn't chrome/firefox based?

Yeesh people here are salty.

Honestly, if they make it optional and/or give the option to run it locally, I could see this being a good thing.

Lord knows the competition is going full bore on AI, and if FF wants to stay relevant with the mass market they'll need to keep up.

Long time FF user, things really aren't looking good for Mozilla as a whole.

Looks like I'll need to switch to one of those browsers that only take and show characters I can type on a keyboard. Like F and U.

So frustrated to see how this conversation is playing out. This is exactly what people have been asking for but all anybody can seem to see is "AI" in the headline.
This pivot is about refocusing on:

• The Browser
• Privacy
• Ethical AI

This seems like a much better position for Mozilla to operate from, particularly because they've excelled at producing ethical SOTA ML for YEARS before ChatGPT. In all, this seems far more forward looking than the previous strategy of "make weird little web tools to make money maybe" and it's an absolutely massive untapped niche, that they already have the talent to tap into. If we punish the players best positioned to shift the industry standard away from extreme and exploitative data collection, we will end up in exactly the Orwellian AI hellscape that we're all so afraid of.

i thought mozilla new CEO would be better but heck no, sounds like i'll be hoping around in webkit browsers

Oh god dammit

Firefox on Android doesn't support keyboard shortcuts - for the last 12 years. Sooo - let's add the bloody AI, that is going to help

Plz not you mozilla, you are one of the last good guys that remains from the early days

FF no !

I get that people are upset, because this fucking buzzword is haunting us. I'm just hoping that they don't jump on that BS-bandwaggon and create something actually useful. But we'll see I guess ...

And the fanboys will still eat this up. "BECAUSE IT'S NOT CHROME!1!" - their reason.

I would fucking rather pay not to have AI in my browser, FFS…

ew.

Well it'll be fun trying to find a replacement that doesn't small use anything made by Google, like Opera does.

LoL, and I had been contemplating switching to Firefox on my phone. Fucking nope! Not gonna board a ship that has decided to follow the pack into the ice...

This is the best summary I could come up with:

A TechCrunch report has a company memo that followed these layoffs, detailing one product shutdown and a "scaling back" of a few others.

reads the very top of the page; it then goes on to detail a lot of projects that aren't in line with Mozilla's core work of making a browser.

These non-browser projects could be seen as a search for a less vulnerable revenue stream, but none have put a huge dent in the bottom line.

TechCrunch managed to get an internal company memo that details a few "strategic corrections" for the myriad Mozilla products.

Mozilla seized an opportunity to bring trustworthy AI into Firefox, largely driven by the Fakespot acquisition and the product integration work that followed.

Mozilla paid an undisclosed sum in 2023 to buy a company called Fakespot, which uses AI to identify fake product reviews.

The original article contains 731 words, the summary contains 140 words. Saved 81%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!

Could we just have the AI part separately? I want an AI that can help me around the house by learning all my books and documents in case someone needs a specific photo of the babies or maybe needs to know a derivation of greens theorem or a recipe for kombucha.

https://lunduke.substack.com/p/firefox-money-investigating-the-bizarre

So, what is else out there? Can the guys making adblocker just make a browser or so?