“Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch”
Going forward, the company said in an internal memo, Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.”
Well fuck. That’s my preferred browser going down the toilet.
@baldur Why can't they 'refocus' on a browser, FFS (for Firefox's sake)? Part of me thinks "why are they always chasing after the rear-end of someone else's race?" and part of me thinks "I bet if they didn't do this they wouldn't be able to hire any bright young developers with heads full of buzzwords". Either way, not great.
@pimoore @baldur @writingslowly I’ve long suspected that the Google search deal directs investment away from Firefox.
@mcg how would that work in practice? I mean, it’s also been said that Firefox has become a kind of ‘Potemkin browser’ for Google to point to if anyone accuses them of monopolising. But in practice, how does the disinvestment you mention work?
@baldur Is it worse than the direction they've been going for many many years? (Not exactly happy argument, but I kinda feel like Firefox lost their soul years and years ago).
Actually, I guess MI stuff really does make it worse.
@writingslowly How Mozilla works today. Wasting effort and money on projects that don’t advance the core browser. Firefox needs to be around it, Google doesn’t want it to beat Chrome.
@mcg @writingslowly Google doesn’t want anything to beat Chrome, not just Firefox. We cannot allow the web to lose to that monopoly, under any circumstances.
@faraixyz @baldur It's a good question - how does a browser stay solvent if it's not attached to a megacorp? One answer might be better features as with Brave, Vivaldi etc., although it's an increasing struggle to devise anything other than Chromium as the base (as evidenced by Microsoft Edge). Another answer might be fewer features as with any number of disruptive IT newcomers generally. A third possibility is technological breakthrough, in which the browser as we know it, and maybe the Web itself, becomes obsolete or subsumed into another paradigm. Meanwhile, there's continued pressure to by-pass the browser and do everything in apps. I just want Firefox to keep up.
@mcg "Wasting effort and money on projects that don’t advance the core browser.' - That's it exactly, and it's so frustrating!