And yea, having a faint through about removing adblock support, yet alone speaking it aloud is a really bad sign for Mozilla's future.
They always did, everyone does. This is not really new, and not really that harmful in itself. The deeper problem is that you need developers who are also understanding what they are doing, what people want and need, developers who are nerdy about some topic and very deep into their understanding of it. But Mozilla seems to lack this, which is also why they have to follow every fad blindly, because they just don't know it better, have no real vision and understanding which enables them to build something really worthful. Mozilla seems to be the embodiment of what happens when you have a task and your solution is to just throw money at it until something works.
And let's be fair, it is easy to be good at something, but really hard to master it and dominate the world. It's not really their fault, they are probably doing their best, they just don't know it better, and so does everyone, including fans if we are honest. Everyone has their own preferences and goals, and often they are conflicting with each other. Mozilla has to find a common ground to server as much people as possible, and IMHO they are still good at this. Firefox used to be so much worse on some aspects, Chrome and other Browser are still worse on other aspects. Getting the perfect Browser is just not realistic.
> Give us more extensibility instead.
True, it's really a joke how many of their promised APIs never were finished after they killed XUL.
> Keep supporting v2 manifest and add more.
Didn't they say they will continue with Manifest v2?
> There were genuine technical reasons for why XUL and NPAPI had to die, but we need an equally powerful alternative.
Wasn't NPAPI mostly replaced with HTML5? Most stuff done with Flash or Java-Applets is now possible out of the box. Or is something missing?
Yes and that's a good thing
> Wasn't NPAPI mostly replaced with HTML5?
It's true that what NPAPI was used for 99% of the time is better served by HTML5. But it's not like NPAPI was limited to Flash and applets. Afair NPAPI plugins can access all native resources (which is the reason why the security sucked so much), HTML5 obviously can't. E. g. runtime code generation isn't particularly usable in WASM, so no JIT other than browser JIT for you. Then there are stuff like WebUSB/WebNFC/WebSerial that Mozilla killed. Not that they didn't have good reasons to do so, but having a native-exposing plugin system (with some friction, don't just install anything with a click) would have covered most of the use cases without being that much of a privacy problem.
Ah, true, Chrome has it, but Firefox not. Coincidental, some weeks ago I had to use this, worked well, and is another reason to always have an alternative browser around. Yes, Mozilla should work to at least fix that stuff.
Unless you can't afford the split focus. If Mozilla can do 1 thing right or 2 things half-assed, and it looks like this is the case, they should stop and focus on strengthening the core before hanging more stuff around it.
Firefox is already a really good browser, Mozilla really should be focusing on that. They can design and implement an AI plugin system to go into that core. People who want AI can install an agent and enable the AI sub-system. If the AI companies won't implement it, Mozilla can do it and charge a fee for the plugin.
1. build a team in Europe to create an email service comparable to gmail/protonmail
- domains: mozmail.com, mmail.com, godmail.com, pmail.com, dogmail.com, meowmail.com
- promoted as a simple everyday email – no overly complicated/advanced federati features in order to increase inter-operability, reduce spam and dealing with federalism
- for more advanced features, integration links with something like signal, or a hosted comms platform
2. invest heavily in Firefox core development and service features
- push for system resource and performance optimizations, even if it requires extensive architectural changes
- focus on perfecting a core browser experience then developing an extension API that allows a level of UI customisations that XUL did, have unsafe/hackers warning for any extension that uses this API, even official ones
- invest in KeePassXC ux and integrate it as a first class and core feature in Firefox that is useable by hackers, consumers and enterprises – offer paid services for simple database sync/backup, as well as a decent managed solution for enterprise.
3. Expand further with a suite of other services that have both self-hosted and paid management extras
- calendar and email client, universally usable between providers, but first class with Firefox and mmail.
- integrate something like libreoffice into a desktop client that can also be embedded into a Firefox tab.
- straight forward self-hostable teams communication platform, managed cloud versions also availabe
- self-hosted / managed file storage platform with web UI with integration links to other services
- all of the above require a unified web, desktop and mobile ux
- offer further software and hardware integrations to completely streamline personal digital management
4. Extensive marketing and brand exposure over TV and social media, while staying charitably non-profit and recognizing the digital roots
- Use the firefox, gecko and other digital animals as icons
- Themes and scapes from origins such as mosaic/netscape
5. In this scene Mozilla continues knocking down the buildings of the titans.
> The problem is not AI. The problem is that Mozilla keeps jumping on fads instead of focusing on their browser core
How is this not laughable?
Now we're seeing a similar thing. Everyone is talking about fucking LLMs. What, do you think FF is going to start shipping a 100GB browser? Even Llama-8B is >15GB. That would be ridiculous!
No, what FF is doing is implementing features like Translate (an ALREADY opt-in feature[0]) and semantic search. Seriously, go to their Labs tab! They let you opt in to try a feature to semantically search your browser history. That's not an LLM, that's a vector embedding model! What are they going to do next? Semantic search of a webpage? Regex search?! Even in their announcement the other day they mention the iOS "shake to summarize" and that's not even an AI they're shipping it's just a shortcut to Apple Intelligence. The only other thing they've announced is what already exists, a shortcut to use your chatbot of choice. That's not AI in the browser it is literally a split window.
| Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon.[1]
> having a faint through about removing adblock support
They said literally the opposite[1]
| At some point, though, Enzor-DeMeo will have to tend to Mozilla’s own business. “I do think we need revenue diversification away from Google,” he says, “but I don’t necessarily believe we need revenue diversification away from the browser.” It seems he thinks a combination of subscription revenue, advertising, and maybe a few search and AI placement deals can get that done. He’s also bullish that things like built-in VPN and a privacy service called Monitor can get more people to pay for their browser. He says he could begin to block ad blockers in Firefox and estimates that’d bring in another $150 million, but he doesn’t want to do that. It feels off-mission.
Literally the opposite of what you're suggestion.
Sorry, people just want to hate on Firefox.
Look, if anyone wants to be a power user there's nothing Firefox is doing from stopping them from using a fork like Mullvad or Waterfox. Those are going to keep all these AI features out. So what do we privacy maximalists care? The forks give us exactly what we want.
Meanwhile we're just attacking the last line of defense against Google (Chromium) taking over the internet? How fucking stupid are we? We're eating our cake and what, complaining that the baker's hands aren't made of gold? It's just laughable at how much we love shooting ourselves in the foot here. We've been playing this same stupid fucking game for years and watching Chrome take more and more market share. Let FF be the browser for the masses and use a fucking fork if you care about true Scottsmen. It takes literally no technical skill to click download on a different webpage. Seriously, this is so fucking dumb.
I'm just going to link this from further down the main post. The two toots summarize it well[2]
[0] You literally have to download the translation models!
[1] https://www.theverge.com/tech/845216/mozilla-ceo-anthony-enz... (https://archive.is/20251217170357/https://www.theverge.com/t...)
[2] https://mastodon.social/@nical@mastodon.gamedev.place/115741...
But still I'm just wrenched by the dissonance in what new-CEO-guy said. 5 years ago or so I reported a serious bug in pointer events. If you move the mouse less than 1px the browser 5-10% of the time Firefox reports to JS that the you moved the cursor ~400pixels up and to the right or left.
Honestly this bug isn't super high impact for the web as a whole, but anyone who uses pointer events needs to work around it by smoothing the input stream. They confirmed the bug in their tracker and there it has sat for five years with no activity while the browser behaves in violation of the contract between the user and the web platform, putting an extra stumbling block in the way of every web application that allows drawing on screen with the mouse cursor.
To me, an issue like that is the canary in the coal mine, and the canary is dead. There's only a few reasons I can think of to leave a perfectly-reproduceable issue like that sitting for five years: 1) you don't have the energy for it, probably because so many other things are on fire 2) you don't see any value in having the trust of your users. or 3) your code is so fucked up inside that there's just no hope of figuring out why a half-pixel movement triggers a mouse would do something insane like trigger a mouse event 400 pixels away.
So now this new CEO guy comes along and says "we've lost people's trust." Wow, I think to myself, he really gets it!" Then he says: "to get trust back, our top priority will be working on AI features." WHAT THE FUCK WHYYYYY!?!?
Did you not literally just say you recognized that you had lost people's trust? Did you think that people didn't trust you because you hadn't tasked every engineer that wants to be able to get a promotion to work on AI!?
While that may describe a few people, I don't think it fairly characterizes the backlash at all.
I want to love on Firefox. I've been using it since before it was "Firefox." I've championed it among co-workers and friends tirelessly. But over time, Firefox has become more and more unlovable, getting softer on privacy, altering settings in updates, foisting 'experiments' off on us, and now this AI nonsense.
I'm part of a large makerspace and have watched their market share dwindle among the nerds. Virtually no one is left.
True. But crypto is bad publicity and everyone knows it. At that point it's no better than going out wearing a swastika sign (sorry, Poe's law triggered) and saying it's an ancient Buddhist symbol.
> No, what FF is doing is implementing features like Translate (an ALREADY opt-in feature[0]) and semantic search
Did you read my comment? The problem is that this takes focus away from the browser core. Why did they kill Servo? Were are XUL API replacements that were promised? The AI fluff could have been an extension - and that would keep everyone happy.
> It feels off-mission.
Than he doesn't need to talk about it at all. Unless that's a vibe check that's it. Somebody already posted an xkcd of it, I'm just doubling: https://xkcd.com/463/
> We're eating our cake and what, complaining that the baker's hands aren't made of gold?
Unfortunately it's pretty hard to define where "hand aren't made of gold" stops and "gotta call a HAZMAT decontamination team" starts.
> Meanwhile we're just attacking the last line of defense against Google (Chromium) taking over the internet?
The thing is: Google started as "don't be evil" as well. It didn't lasted because of inherit incentives issue. And so if Mozilla is the last line of defense it'd better have some distinguishing features other than "we are not google". Because if they keep focusing on "average user" (btw it's my firm belief that the said user doesn't exist outside management's heads) their incentives wouldn't be any different.
> So what do we privacy maximalists care? The forks give us exactly what we want.
That's what I'm doing personally. But the forks barely have resources to remove the crap, yet alone implement new features.
I witnes far more people screaming against AI.
The media started kicking this off in 2021, 2022. It blossomed into a fully distributed, organic, memetic device from there. It has a life of its own now.
Children and young people are practically indoctrinated if you look at social media comments.
I was invited to give lectures to several art schools about using Blender, Unreal Engine, and mocap software with diffusion models. The students weren't very polite. Most of the "questions" I got at each of the campuses were simply statements of affirmation about how much they hate AI.
Good looking and well-reviewed indie games that incorporate AI elements or tools are dumped on by these folks. It's like butting into conversations to say something bad about AI scores points or something.
> Mozilla keeps jumping on fads
Agreed on this point, though. They're rudderless. And Google is probably quite happy about the fact that their antitrust litigation sponge can't steal away their users.
If you shove it into people's faces, they will have knee jerk reaction and hate it.
If the AI industry didn't desperately try to push it in every possible way in desperate bid to be profitable and it was just a thing that slowly gets better and is value added, not a nagging push, there would be far less of that.
But companies like MS have idea of consent of average rapist and will not even give option "no, I don't want copilot in teams", there is only "add it now" or "remind later"
I saw a sad post on bsky today about how the joy of animal behavior videos has been destroyed for that poster, because they can no longer be sure if it's real or just a fake.
Well, I guess it does use more energy than every existing data center, driving up costs for basic electronic components and thereby making every electronic device more expensive.
And I guess the results aren't quite as good, but if you squint and don't really care about art on a human level and just want to clap like a seal at the pretty pictures then it's enough.
And I guess economic forces will mean that some of them will lose their jobs when their bosses realize that they can get away with only needing half as many prompt artists.
But hey, at least we don't have to pay humans to make art anymore. How glorious that our Silicon Valley gods have delivered us from the hell of creating economic incentives for humans to express themselves to other humans.
Yeah, those screaming, "indoctrinated" artists are so impolite and crazy, aren't they? Don't they realize what we've done for them? We made the automatic art machine! They'll never get to make art again!
I wonder what that might mean!
I want my non-tech family members/friends to install Firefox not because I come over at Christmas, but because they want to. Because it's a browser that "just works." We can't have this if Firefox stays in the pre-ai era.
I know Mozilla doesn't have much good will right now, but hopefully with the exec shakeup, they will right the ship on making FF a great browser. While still staying the best foil to Chrome (both in browser engine, browser chrome, and extension ecosystem).
I'd be elated if Firefox solely focused on "the pre-AI era", as you put it, and many other power users would, too. And I somehow doubt my non-techie family cares - if anything, they're tired of seeing the stupid sparkle icons crammed down their throats at every single corner of the world now.
And so far, we can assume that AI in Firefox will be like all the other stuff people don't care about, just optional, a button here, a menu-entry there, just waiting for interaction, but not harmful.
Without integrating metaverse and blockchain features into Firefox, Mozilla is at a significant disadvantage compared to other browsers. Don't get left behind!
> or get left behind.
Last time I heard this phrase it was about VR, and before that it was NFTs. I wished the tech community wasn't so susceptible to FOMO sentiments.
Another way to see this: Hammers can be useful, the Internet can be useful, but this doesn't mean that as a hammer manufacturer you should make your next hammer an IoT product ASAP or you will be left behind.
Does it make the world a better place, and more prosperous? Does it just move economic activity around a bit in regards to who is doing what? We'll find out in ten years when the retrospective economic studies are done.
I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones.
I recently listened to a podcast (probably The Verge) talking about how an author was suddenly getting more purchases from his personal website. He attributed it to AI chatbots giving his personal website as the best place to buy rather than Amazon, etc. An AI browser might be a way to take power away from all the big players.
> And it's not for a lack of trying, the results are just not what I need or want, and traditional browsing (and search engines, etc.) does do what I want.
I suspect I only Google for about 1/4 of things I used to (maybe less). Why search, wade through dubious results, etc when you can just instantly get the result you want in the format you want it?
While I am a techie and I do use Firefox -- that's not a growing niche. I think AI will become spectacularly better for non-techies because it can simply give them what they ask for. LLMs have solved the natural language query issue.
Sure, but people also told me I'd be using crypto for everything now and (at least for me) it has faded into total obscurity.
The biggest difference for me is that nobody (the companies making things, the companies I worked for...) had to jam smartphones down my throat. It made my life better so I went out of my way to use it. If you took it away, I would be sad.
I haven't had that moment yet for any AI product / feature.
This doesn't sound like the "free sample" model is working then? If I try the free version of product X and it's terrible, that will discourage me from ever trying the paid version.
Funnily enough, this is exactly how I justify Googling stuff instead of asking Gemini. Different strokes I guess!
For one, that way you can see that the source is dubious. Gemini gives it to you cleaned. And then you still have to dig through the sources to confirm that what it gave you is correct and not halucinated.
> I know so many people who made that same argument, if you can call it that, about smartphones.
I had to use a ledger database at work for audit trails because they were hotness. I think we were one of the few that actually used AWS QLDB.
The experience I've had with people submitting AI generated code has been poor. Poor performing code, poor quality code using deprecated methods and overly complex functionality, and then poor understanding of why the various models chose to do it that way.
I've not actually seen a selling point for me, and "because Google is enshittifying its searches" is pretty weak.
I'll have to take your word for it, I have yet to see a PR that used AI that wasn't slop.
> AI is not a hammer, it's a Lathe
I would liken it more to dynamite.
And that is tough. Chrome won because it was an, at the time, superior product, AND because it had an insane marketing push. I remember how it was just everywhere. Every other installer pushed Chrome on you, as well as all the Google properties, it was all over the (tech) news, shaping new standards aggressively etc. Not something Mozilla can match.
But they just won't give up. I don't know if I should applaud that or not, but I think it's probably the core of the disconnect between Mozilla and the tech community. They desperately want to break into the mainstream again, their most vocal supporters want them to get a reality check on their ambitions.
If I was running Mozilla, I'd probably go for the niche. It's less glamorous, but servicing a niche is relatively easy, all you have to do is listen to users and focus on stuff they want and/or need. You generally get enough loyalty to be able to move a bit behind the curve, see what works for others first, then do your own version once it's clear how it'll be valuable to the user base. I'd give this strategy the highest chance of long term survival and impact.
Mainstream is way tougher. You kinda need to make all kinds of people with different needs happy enough, and get ahead of where those wants and needs are going.
One could argue they could do both: Serve a niche well with Firefox and try to reach the mainstream with other products. I think to some degree they've tried it, with mixed results.
Strongly disagree.
Theres no expectation of AI as a core browsing experience. There isnt even really an expectation of AI as part of an extended browsing experience. We cant even predict reliably what AI's relationship to browsing will be if it is even to exist. Mozilla could reliably wait 24 months and follow if features are actually in demand and being used.
Firefox can absolutely maintain "It just works" by being a good platform with well tested in demand features.
What they are talking about here, are opt out only experiments intruding on the core browsing experience. Thats the opposite of "It Just Works".
>I know Mozilla doesn't have much good will right now, but hopefully with the exec shakeup, they will right the ship on making FF a great browser.
Its already a great browser. It doesnt need a built in opt out AI experience to become great.
More importantly, generative AI is incredibly popular with younger cohorts. They will grow up to be your customer base if they aren't already. Their expectations are being set now.
Again, I don't like it, but that's the reality.
> I love it. I love going to the AI place and knowingly consulting the AI for tasks I want the AI to perform. That relationship is healthy and responsible. It doesnt need to be in everything else. Its like those old jokes about how inventions are just <existing invention> + <digital clock>.
> I dont need AI on the desktop, in microsoft office, replying to me on facebook, responding to my google searches AND doing shit in my browser. One of these would be too much, because I can just access the AI I want to speak to whenever I want it. Any 2 of these is such substantial overkill. Why do we have all of them? Justify it. Is there a user story where a user was trying to complete a task but lacked 97% accurate information from 5 different sources to complete the task?
Being against the random inclusion of AI in the browser, isnt the same as being against AI completely. It needs to justify its presence.
What could be done in few minutes with a free program is now multiple hours with billion dollar AI tools and you have less control what the end result is.
Yes.
"It has already become the de facto standard for learning."
Maybe.
"AI in browsers is inevitable."
Why. How does that follow. It seems like ChatGPT and Gemini are already working fine, what does the integration add?
Even at work, have seen few junior developers use AI browsers to attend mandatory compliance courses and complete quizzes. Not necessarily a good thing but AI browsers may win in the end and it might be too late for Firefox.
If a global LLM becomes standard, I'd want to plug in my own local model or disable it entirely, but I don't think Microsoft nor Apple are going to open up their operating systems and make it easy to do that any time soon. The option to granularly use your own models is a plus to me in that situation.
Why does the existance of an AI chat box website mean a browser must do more than take you to that website?
The forceful inclusion of LLMs in places that have no value are simultaneously ubiquitous and obnoxious.
And in that scenario, there is a GIGANTIC need for a user-first, privacy-respecting browser using ideally local models (in a few years, when HW is ready)
You people need to be forced to use your product in the exact form your product is presented to end users. With the exact frequency it's presented to end users. In all the wrong places as it is presented to end users.
Maybe then you'll understand why shoving AI in every conceivable crevice is incredibly obnoxious and distracting and, most importantly, not useful.
Having one global AI agent per operating system or browser (where most of the digital life happens, in the case of desktop browsers), for the people that want to have an AI agent, it's probably going to be useful, if well implemented.
So truth is that privacy isn't enough to get people to switch. 5% share isn't enough to stay alive and protect privacy.
> they are blindly implementing things before they are requested
Work with customers and you'll experience this first hand... I thought it was a big enough meme that everyone knew this
Speaking about reading between the lines, the privacy community is not very good at advocating for privacy. Look at Signal, it has similar backlash to Mozilla. The community shoots itself in the foot because the products are not perfect. But here's the thing, both Signal and Firefox are not products intended to maximize privacy at all costs. They are products to maximize privacy while being appealing to the masses. Are there more secure and private solutions out there? Hell yeah. But are those tools practical for the masses? Don't fool yourselves.
So stop with this bullshit, you're shooting yourself in the foot. You don't have to use Firefox to root for them. Go use a fork like the Mullvad browser or Waterfox. If you're a power user then just be a fucking power user. I use Arch but that doesn't mean I'm going to piss on Ubuntu every chance I get. I fucking hate Ubuntu but I'm going to root for them because every new Ubuntu user is one less for Microsoft and Apple and every new Ubuntu user is a potential new <literally any other distro is better> user. So why get angry because someone is making a step in the right direction? So what if their legs aren't long enough to get all the way to where you are (which didn't take one step either!).
So let's be very clear about this. I'm not mad at you because I want AI in Firefox (I don't), I'm mad at you because you're attacking our literal last line of defense for a secure and private internet. I'm mad at you for purity testing. Stop with this "no true Scotsman" bullshit. We can have those arguments at a later date when Firefox isn't on its last leg and/or when we have a diverse choice in browsers. But at this point *all you are doing is advocating for Chrome*. Whether you realize it our not. We've been playing this fucking game for a decade now and you can either look at the results or continue to ignore them. But it didn't work, so we need to try something else.
[0] https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-20...
No its not. Engineering is about right sizing the product. This is not that. Theres no user story, theres no pressing demand. Every CTO in the world might be racing to force AI into their products regardless of utility but there's no reason to pretend this is being done for good engineering reasons.
>Work with customers and you'll experience this first hand.
Theres no customer benefit to shoving AI in every application at every layer. This is not about the customer. This is about a race to cram the feature in every conceivable space and see where it sticks. This is corporate and has no sense of good engineering. They also don't want it. What a combo. No utility and no demand. If anything its a bit like the story of fish fingers, where the pressing need, was the big warehouse full of unwanted fish bits that they wanted to move, and the innovation was productising it in such a way that people would actually purchase and consume it. In this case we have DC's full of AI cards that desperately want a market. It might be uncharitable, but I do wonder if the Mozilla Foundation has been promised some financial reward if they solve this issue.
There has not been any demonstrable requirements gathering for this change. An executive directed this, and to pretend otherwise is insane.
>Speaking about reading between the lines, the privacy community is not very good at advocating for privacy.
No they aren't very good at it at all, but that's a massive non sequitur.
>So stop with this bullshit, you're shooting yourself in the foot.
No, defending Firefox from valid criticism is the self inflicted injury.
>I use Arch but that doesn't mean I'm going to piss on Ubuntu every chance I get.
Ok, but I would think it fair and reasonable to criticise Ubuntu if they decided to randomly cram an opt out LLM into the distro, and I think your criticism of them also deserves to be heard. You dont need to be the Ubuntu or Firefox internet defense force.
>So why get angry because someone is making a step in the right direction?
I haven't been angry at a single firefox user here, I would ask you to stop making things up just to be angry about. There's not an ounce of "Boycott" or anything in my posts. I am writing this from firefox. I am permitted, to be critical of the browser I am using.
>I'm mad at you because you're attacking our literal last line of defense for a secure and private internet.
"Attacking". Its clearly necessary criticism. The devaluing of the product is coming from inside the house. Their chief rival is, critically, releasing a separate browser to test their AI features in. For Chrome itself Gemini is in the extension store. It is OPT IN, not OPT OUT. https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/gemini-for-chrome/a... Their chief rival is respecting end user consent better. If you want them to be a more popular browser, why don't you hold them to a better standard than Chrome, instead of policing the critics?
(Also boo for making me open chrome to check)
>Stop with this "no true Scotsman" bullshit.
I literally cannot identify a no true scotsman argument in my comments. Theres a difference between saying "No TRUE web browser would" and pointing out validly that there's no interest or demand in the feature being rolled out. If anything, the closest thing in this thread to a no true scotsman, while still failing it technically, is the idea that you cant be a true supporter of privacy while being critical of Mozilla.
>We can have those arguments at a later date when Firefox isn't on its last leg and/or when we have a diverse choice in browsers.
No now is a great time.
>But at this point all you are doing is advocating for Chrome.
No I am asking them to be competitive with chrome, and treat users that well or better.
>But it didn't work, so we need to try something else.
Enshittification isnt a plan.
> no customer benefit to shoving AI in every application at every layer.
Translate requires you to download the model for language pairs. That's opt-in.
The chatbots aren't chatbots, they're just a fucking shortcut to the 5th most popular website on the internet.
I hate to break it to you, but there's also a shortcut to the #1, #2, #4, #6, #7, #9, #10, and #13 most popular websites. It's the literal url bar... You can type "!w hacker news" to search wikipedia for hacker news.
Sorry, it is just as laughable to say firefox is shoving Wikipedia down your throat as it is to say they're shoving AI.
> if they decided to randomly cram an opt out LLM into the distro,
And hey, if you feel I'm wrong here go jump on a fork that isn't going to add those things like Mullvad or Waterfox. That's still supporting Firefox in the way of standing against Google while also making a clear signal that you don't want those features. Have your cake and eat it too, but I'm saying "Shut up with the talk that makes people switch to Chrome". We have to be honest with ourselves here. All this outrage at Mozilla for not being pure enough is just driving people to Chrome. That's why I'm calling all this fucking idiotic. It's a literal footgun. But don't listen to me look at what's happened in the past. Look at the comments here. Look at the comments in the past. FFS people were equating Mozilla accepting crypto donations with shipping a miner in the browser. It literally takes place in the Mastadon thread we're all talking about. Those things are wildly different and it is wildly a disingenuous interpretation.
So yeah, I'm going to keep calling this complaining idiotic and counterproductive. We've been grabbing our pitchforks for years every time Mozilla even slightly steps out of line, or even if we think they might! And for years their browser share has been siphoned off to Chrome or some painted up variant. So forgive me if I don't believe your actions align with the goals you claim. And forgive me if I cannot distinguish complaining from criticism, because as I've stated above, your evidence doesn't appear to be what you claim it is. Saying they're shipping LLMs is just as disingenuous as saying they shipped a crypto miner. It is such a grotesque mischaracterization that it is laughable.
I'm also wondering how much of what they come up with could be implemented as an addon instead of a core part of the browser.
I want an application to serve me webpages and manage said webpages. It wasn't a "non-starter" for me 2 years ago when I switched off Chrome who chose to be too user hostile to ignore. It won't be a non-starter here.
>I want my non-tech family members/friends to install Firefox not because I come over at Christmas, but because they want to. Because it's a browser that "just works." We can't have this if Firefox stays in the pre-ai era.
If "it just works" is all my non-tech family needs, I'm not really gonna intervene and evangelize for Mozilla. I don't work for them (if you do, that's fair). Most browsers "just work" so mission accomplished. These are parents who were fine paying Hulu $15/month to still see ads, so we simply have different views. I'm sure they felt the same way about my pots falling apart and insisting "well, they still work".
Meanwhile, my professional and personal career revolves around the internet, and I don't want to be fighting my screwdriver because it wants to pretend to be a drill. At some point I will throw the drill out and buy a screwdriver that screws.
Seriously, I don't get the problem here. I don't want AI in my browser either, but it is pretty simple for us who care to switch away. It's even easy for those who aren't technically skilled!
If this is what stops Firefox from drowning then I'm all for it. They are our last line of defense from a Google controlled internet. What Firefox puts in their browser isn't that critical to me (i.e. doesn't affect me) as long as it stays open source and there are forks. But Firefox dying does! So yeah, I'm gonna root for Firefox even when it does things I don't want because what I care about far more than any specific browser feature is the internet not being controlled by any single entity.
So can we make sure we're fighting the right battles?
By having the most engaged users leave and splinter the community furtehr in hopes that Mozilla out competes the trillion dollar monopoly in a war of data centers? We really will do anything except message your policy makers, huh?
I migrated several times before and am browsing around now. Id even be so bold to say that Mozilla dying will not kill the Quantum web engine scene, so I have no allegiance to rooting for yet another billion dollar corporation that has continually proven that their customers are not their interest. But I don't think "no one cares about you, just leave" is the healthiest option for your stated goals.
>Can we make sure we're fighting the right battles?
This isn't an argument, this is my statement. I don't want my tools to be bloated.
If the entire idea of a web browser collapses overnight, I'll make due. But the last thing I'll be accused of is remaining silent and having this industry bewildered on how this apocalypse came upon them. They got feedback and ignored it, stopped competing on merits over trends, and lost sight of what people actually want. That's their choice, and they will reap what they sow.
> By having the most engaged users leave and splinter the community furtehr
> We really will do anything except message your policy makers, huh?
> I migrated several times before and am browsing around now.
> But I don't think "no one cares about you, just leave" is the healthiest option for your stated goals.
> I don't want my tools to be bloated.
Seriously, I don't get the problem. As far as I'm aware the only things that are opt-out are the smart tabs. Which is a 22.6MB and 57MB vector embedding models that can be easily removed.
So what bloat?
They said everything will be opt-in and that's cool with me. If they go back on that then yeah, grab the fucking pitchforks and I'll be right there with you because fuck those lying bastards. But so far they haven't done that so put the pitchfork down. All you're doing is being over zealous and attacking the greater enemy's (Chrome) enemy. You don't have to call Firefox your ally but it's pretty clear that Chrome is significantly more misaligned with your wants than Firefox is. So stop attacking the best thing we got right now.
> this industry bewildered on how this apocalypse came upon them
I'm sorry the choices are slim. I really do wish it was better. But we're never going to get there if we kill the last thing standing against the monopoly. So yeah, pick the right fucking battle.
The programs let you outsource and automate tasks, such as online searches or writing an email, to an AI agent. The only problem is that these same AI capabilities can be tricked into executing malicious commands hidden in websites or emails, effectively turning the browser against the user.
https://www.pcmag.com/news/security-experts-warn-companies-t...
For now this is restricted to Perplexity Comet and OpenAI Atlas and only the UK has issued an official warning, but why would I, personally, want my Firefox browser with an opt-out risk instead of an opt-in?
It's not great. Great would be "we'll stop wasting money on extraneous features and we'll concentrate on making Firefox the best browser".
This is damage control.
Why though? Seriously.
Mozilla doesn't need to play that game because they're not selling any AI.
I could see describing images useful for blind or vision impaired people. Publishers often have a large back catalogue of documents where it is both impractical and too costly/time consuming to get all the images in those described with alt tags. This is one area where the publishers would be considering using AI.
Text-to-speech and speech recognition also fall under the category of AI and these have proven useful for blind/visually impaired people and for people with injuries that make it difficult to use a mouse and keyboard.
On the search side it would be interesting to see if running the user's query through an encoder and using that to help find the documents would help improve finding search results. This would work like current TF-IDF (Term Frequency, Inverse Document Frequency) techniques work.
Have you ever not understood a term or phrase on a website and had to go to wikipedia/urbandictionary/google to explain it?
Have you ever wanted to do a 'fuzzy search' of a 300 page document (where you don't know the exact string of text to ctrl-f, but want to see where they talk about a particular topic)?
Yes, I have an extension for that.
>Have you ever not understood a term or phrase on a website and had to go to wikipedia/urbandictionary/google to explain it?
I have an extension that double clicks and brings up a quick definition. If I need more, I will go to the dictionary.
>Have you ever wanted to do a 'fuzzy search' of a 300 page document (where you don't know the exact string of text to ctrl-f, but want to see where they talk about a particular topic)?
No, not really. Ctrl + F search for a dozen substrings, use table of contents if available, and I can narrow it down. This takes a few minutes.
And if I did, I'd find an extension. You see the pattern here? We solved this issue decades ago.
> You see the pattern here?
> I don't wait for them to be rained down and force fed to me.
You literally have to download the language models if you want to enable translation. That's "opt-in" not "opt-out"...
There probably is a big difference between 'do you ever' and 'how often do you'.
I very rarely visit websites that I want translated; so rarely that I can tolerate google translate, or copying and pasting a section of a page into a tab with gemini; so on its own, this feature wouldn't sell me a browser. Besides, as a sibling comment says, even the current non-AI-enhanced browsers offer, sometimes too intrusively, to translate a page in a non-matching language. At least Chrome does this to me.
Your second scenario happens much more frequently; but again, it is so frictionless to type the term or a phrase in a search box in another tab that I never find myself wishing for a dedicated panel in the browser that could do this for me.
Your third scenario, for me, is finding something in api docs. Like, what's that command again to git cherry-pick a range of commits? So far, just googling this stuff or asking copilot / gemini in a separate tab has always worked. I am not sure I would be upset at a browser that didn't have an inbuilt tool for doing this.
What I do want from a web browser is evergreenness, the quickest and fullest adoption of all the web specs, and great web developer tools.
Yes. Firefox and Chrome already offer this.
> Have you ever not understood a term or phrase on a website and had to go to wikipedia/urbandictionary/google to explain it?
Yeah. And?
> Have you ever wanted to do a 'fuzzy search' of a 300 page document (where you don't know the exact string of text to ctrl-f, but want to see where they talk about a particular topic)?
No because I ctrl-f for that topic/key words and find the text.
These are incredibly poor AI sells...
yes, both use machine learning methods to translate pages. You're already using AI and don't realize it.
> the cost of having a full LLM integrated into every browser install
There's no fucking way there's going to be a "full LLM integrated into every browser." You really think they're going to drop in a 20GB-200GB model with every browser? Mind you, Llama-8B is over 15GB.
Nah. So far they are doing about 50MB per language translation that you ask for[0]. You have to explicitly install languages to translate.
There's neither "a full blown LLM" (whatever that means) nor forcing AI onto you. You still have to download the language packs, they are just offering an extension that more seamlessly integrates with the browser.
And we know what they're building too! Go look in the "Labs" tab and you'll see an opt-in for testing a semantic search of your history. That doesn't take an LLM to do, that takes a vector embedding model. What next? Semantic search in page? How terrible of a feature! (But seriously, can we get regex search?)
[0] https://hacks.mozilla.org/2022/06/neural-machine-translation...
For practical purposes though I like being able to have a conversation with a language translator: if I was corresponding with somebody in German, French, Spanish, related European languages or Japanese I would expect to say:
I'm replying to ... and want to say ... in a way that is compatible in tone
I didn't expect to see ... what does that mean?
When the story says ... how is that written in Japanese? > most people interpret that as "LLM integration", not the page-translation feature that's been around for ages.
I mean a Firefox download is 150MB, not 16GB...
Plus, we know what Firefox is looking to do. In their labs tab they let you opt into trying out semantic search of your history. So that's a vector embedding model, not an LLM.
Edit:
Okay, they have "Shake to summarize". But that's a shortcut to Apple Intelligence. Nothing shipped with the browser. Similarly I don't understand how the chatbot window is so controversial. I̶'̶m̶ ̶n̶o̶t̶ ̶s̶u̶r̶e̶ ̶w̶h̶a̶t̶ ̶t̶h̶e̶ ̶s̶h̶o̶r̶t̶c̶u̶t̶ ̶i̶s̶ ̶o̶n̶ ̶l̶i̶n̶u̶x̶ ̶o̶r̶ ̶w̶i̶n̶d̶o̶w̶s̶,̶ ̶but are people really pressing <C-x> on a mac or ctrl+alt+x on linux/windows? It's not a LLM shipped with the browser, it is just a window split ("shortcut") to literally one of the most popular websites on the internet right now (ChatGPT is literally the #5 most visited website and you all think AI is unpopular?!). Adding shortcuts isn't shoving AI down your throat. Are they shoving Wikipedia down your throat because you can do "!w hacker news"? Give me a break guys
https://blog.google/products/search/gemini-capabilities-tran... [Dec 12, 2025]
Machine translation is a research topic in AI because translating from one language to another is something humans are good at while computers are not traditionally.
More recently, the machine learning (ML) branch of AI has become synonymous with AI as have the various image models and LLMs built on different ML architectures.
Most importantly it’s far more difficult for a bad actor to abuse language translation features than agentic browser features.
- it will pop up when it senses a webpage in a language you don't speak.
- it will ask if you want to translate it. You have options to always translate this language or to never do it.
- it will respect your choice and no pop up every-time insisting "no please try it this time". Or worse, decide by default to translate anywyay behind my back.
- There are settings to also enable/disable this that will not arbitrarily reset whenever the app updates.
There are certainly environmental issues to address, but I've accepted that this US administration is not going to address this in any meaningful way. Attacking individuals will not solve this issue so I'm not doing this. So for now, my main mantra is "don't bother me". the UX of much AI can't even clear that.
This feature doesn't seem like it needs a "first class agent mode."
>Have you ever not understood a term or phrase on a website and had to go to wikipedia/urbandictionary/google to explain it?
I already have right-click for that the old-fashioned way. Not sure how an "AI mode" would make it meaningfully better.
>Have you ever wanted to do a 'fuzzy search' of a 300 page document (where you don't know the exact string of text to ctrl-f, but want to see where they talk about a particular topic)?
This feature is the most usefully novel of the bunch but again doesn't seem like it needs a "first-class-citizen agent mode."
I have a hunch that the "first-class-citizen AI features" that instead will be pushed on us will be the ones that help Google sell ads or pump up KPIs for investors; Firefox doesn't need to jump on that hype train today.
Agent mode feels more like "Let the agent mode place your food delivery order for you?" No thanks, I don't think that's actually gonna give me my first choice, or the cheapest option...
You can still easily visit chagpt via web if Gemini or whatever
It’s so nice just to be able to ask the browser to summarize the page, or ask questions about a long article.
I know a lot of people on Hacker News are hostile to AI and like to imagine everybody hates it, but I personally find it very helpful.
Why? Is there evidence to back this up? Are there massive customer write in campaigns trying to convince browser companies to push more AI?
>I know a lot of people on Hacker News are hostile to AI and like to imagine everybody hates it, but I personally find it very helpful.
I love it. I love going to the AI place and knowingly consulting the AI for tasks I want the AI to perform. That relationship is healthy and responsible. It doesnt need to be in everything else. Its like those old jokes about how inventions are just <existing invention> + <digital clock>.
I dont need AI on the desktop, in microsoft office, replying to me on facebook, responding to my google searches AND doing shit in my browser. One of these would be too much, because I can just access the AI I want to speak to whenever I want it. Any 2 of these is such substantial overkill. Why do we have all of them? Justify it. Is there a user story where a user was trying to complete a task but lacked 97% accurate information from 5 different sources to complete the task?
And a copy paste task isnt necessarily going to be aided by a pop out sidebar running a local LLM chewing up already precious RAM. There's no guarantee its going to integrate correctly with the users chosen LLM provider.
Like we are looking at having LLM's inserted into almost every customer facing application. At some point, they will want a subscription for each of them or they are all going to need local resources. They are all going to have to be interoperable and run off the same account. Or you are going to have to have something that just works with the whole stack.
It doesn't make a lick of sense to try and preempt that situation, with mainline features pushed to all customers.
Googles approach, having a separate AI enabled browser makes the most sense. If it takes off its because of affirmative user consent and they can merge it into chrome. If it doesn't work they can silently discontinue it like so many other things.
They’re still very compelling as a user.
They’re still very compelling as a user.
Options are nice. They were (and poteitally will) not making it optional and if people like me weren't "hostile to Ai" they wouldn't have had to back-track with this.
It's doubt based on previous actions.
I just think the average browser user in 5-10 years will expect the AI features. And plenty of others won’t want to use those features, and that’s fine.
Of course, I have opinions on other ways it could make money instead of jumping on the latest hot thing (pocket, fakespot, VPN, etc) without actually truly building the ecosystem but at least they are trying.
The confidence with which people say these things...
s/AI/NFT and I've heard this exact sentence many times before.
I've never seen a technology so advanced be so dismissed before.
Browsers without metaverse integration will be a non-starter.
Crypto has shown people are willing to use it as a currency for investment and day to day transactions. Its held value for a significant amount of time. The tech is evolving still and people see a lot of value in having a currency that operates outside of Governments in a decentralized way even if some people will misuse that freedom.
Where is this happening?
Black market goods? Of course.
Avoiding taxation? Absolutely.
Day to day purchases? Not that I've seen.
But as a protocol it has legs and is still used under the hood in projects.
Cryptokitties was always the best monetisation use case for NFTs, and its still going.
At least with AI I do get some value out of asking Gemini questions. But I hardly need or want my web browser to be a chatbot interface.
LOL
Imagine you have an AI button. When you click it, the locally running LLM gets a copy of the web site in the context window, and you get to ask it a prompt, e.g. "summarize this".
Imagine the browser asks you at some point, whether you want to hear about new features. The buttons offered to you are "FUCK OFF AND NEVER, EVER BOTHER ME AGAIN", "Please show me a summary once a month", "Show timely, non-modal notifications at appropriate times".
Imagine you choose the second option, and at some point, it offers you a feature described as follows: "On search engine result pages and social media sites, use a local LLM to identify headlines, classify them as clickbait-or-not, and for clickbait headlines, automatically fetch the article in an incognito session, and add a small overlay with a non-clickbait version of the title". Would you enable it?
Ideally the user interface for any tool I use should never change unless I actively prompt it to change, and the only notifications I should get would be from my friends and family contacting me or calendars/alarms that I set myself.
Do we have to re-tread 3 years of big tech overreach, scams, user hostility in nearly every common program , questionable utility that is backed by hype more than results, and way its hoisting up the US economy's otherwise stagnant/weakening GDP?
I don't really have much new to add here. I've hated this "launch in alpha" mentality for nearly a decade. Calling 2022 "alpha" is already a huge stretch.
>When you click it, the locally running LLM gets a copy of the web site in the context window, and you get to ask it a prompt, e.g. "summarize this".
Why is this valuable? I spent my entire childhood reading, and my college years being able to research and navigate technical documents. I don't value auto-summarizations. Proper writing should be able to do this in its opening paragraphs.
>Imagine the browser asks you at some point, whether you want to hear about new features. The buttons offered to you are "FUCK OFF AND NEVER, EVER BOTHER ME AGAIN", "Please show me a summary once a month", "Show timely, non-modal notifications at appropriate times"
Yes, this is my "good enough" compromise that most applications are failing to perform. Let's hope for the best.
>Imagine you choose the second option, and at some point, it offers you a feature described as follows: "On search engine result pages and social media sites, use a local LLM to identify headlines, classify them as clickbait-or-not, and for clickbait headlines, automatically fetch the article in an incognito session, and add a small overlay with a non-clickbait version of the title". Would you enable it?
No, probably not. I don't trust the powers behind such tools to be able to identify what is "clickbait" for me. Grok shows that these are not impartial tools, and news is the last thing I want to outsource sentiment too without a lot of built trust.
meanwhile, trust has only corroded this decade.
sure, you can imagine Firefox integrating a locally-running LLM if you want.
but meanwhile, in the real world [0]:
> In the next three years, that means investing in AI that reflects the Mozilla Manifesto. It means diversifying revenue beyond search.
if they were going to implement your imagination of a local LLM, there's no reason they'd be talking about "revenue" from LLMs.
but with ChatGPT integrating ads, they absolutely can get revenue by directing users there, in the same way they get money for Google for putting Google's ads into Firefox users' eyeballs.
that's ultimately all this is. they're adding more ads to Firefox.
0: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/leadership/mozillas-next...
but.. why? I can read the website myself. That's why I'm on the website.
I've already hit that option before reading the other ones.
> "On search engine result pages and social media sites, use a local LLM to identify headlines, classify them as clickbait-or-not, and for clickbait headlines, automatically fetch the article in an incognito session, and add a small overlay with a non-clickbait version of the title"
Why would you bother fetching the clickbait at all? It's spam.
The main transformation I want out of a browser, the absolutely critical one, is the removal of advertising. I concede that AI might be decent at removing ads and all the overlay clutter that makes news sites unreadable; does anyone have the demo of "AI readability mode"? Crucially I do not want it changing any non-ad text found on the page.
I'm also now imagining my GPU whirring into life and the accompanying sound of a jetplane getting ready for takeoff, as my battery suddenly starts draining visibly.
Local LLMs for are a pipe dream, the technology fundamentally requires far too much computation for any true intelligence to ever make sense with current computing technologies.
And whatever accelerator you try to put into it, you're not running Gemini3 or GPT-5.1 on your laptop, not in any reasonable time frame.
I'm happy to say that LLM usage will only actually become properly integrated into background work flow when we have performant local models.
People are trying to madly monetise cloud LLMs before the inevitable rise of local only LLMs severely diminishes the market.
You dont need to run GPT5.1 to summerize a webpage. Models are small and specialized for different tasks.
And the examples being given of why you'd want AI in your browser are all general text comprehension and conversational discussions about that text, applied to whatever I may be browsing. It doesn't really get less specialized than that.
You also don't need Gemini3 or GPT anything running locally.
I've got Nemo 3 running on an iGPU on a shitty laptop with SO-DIMM memory, and it's good enough for my tasks that I have no use for cloud models.
Similarly, Granite 4 based models are even smaller, just a couple of gigabytes and are capable of automation tasks, summarization, translation, research etc someone might want in a browser.
Both do chain of reasoning / "thinking", both are fast, and once NPU support lands in runtimes, they can be offloaded on to more efficient hardware.
They certainly aren't perfect, but at least in my experience, fuzzy accuracy / stochastic inaccuracy is good enough for some tasks.
An 8B Ollama model installed on a middle of the road MacBook can do this effortlessly today without whirring. In several years, it will probably be all laptops.
Plus, the latency on current APIs is often on the order of seconds, on top of whatever the page load time is. We know from decades [0] of research that users don't wait seconds.
well, 2/3 is admirable in this day and age.
For example: I was browsing a Reddit thread a few hours ago and came upon a comment to the effect of "Bertrand Russell argued for a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviets at the end of WWII." That seemed to conflict with my prior understanding of Bertrand Russell, to say the least. I figured the poster had confused Russell with von Neumann or Curtis LeMay or somebody, but I didn't want to blow off the comment entirely in case I'd missed something.
So I highlighted the comment, right-clicked, and selected "Explain this." Instead of having to spend several minutes or more going down various Google/Wikipedia rabbit holes in another tab or window, the sidebar immediately popped up with a more nuanced explanation of Russell's actual position (which was very poorly represented by the Reddit comment but not 100% out of line with it), complete with citations, along with further notes on how his views evolved over the next few years.
It goes without saying how useful this feature is when looking over a math-heavy paper. I sure wish it worked in Acrobat Reader. And I hope a bunch of ludds don't browbeat Mozilla into removing the feature or making it harder to use.
Why waste time and energy on the lying machine in the first place? Just yesterday I asked "PhD-level intelligence" for a well known quote from a famous person because I wasn't able to find it quickly in wikiquotes.
It fabricated three different quotes in a row, none of them right. One of them was supposedly from a book that doesn't really exist.
So I resorted to a google search and found what I needed in less time it took to fight that thing.
It cited its sources, which is certainly more than you've done.
Just yesterday I asked "PhD-level intelligence" for a well known quote from a famous person because I wasn't able to find it quickly in wikiquotes.
In my experience this means that you typed a poorly-formed question into the free instant version of ChatGPT, got an answer worthy of the effort you put into it, and drew a sweeping conclusion that you will now stand by for the next 2-3 years until cognitive dissonance finally catches up with you. But now I'm the one who's making stuff up, I guess.
Judging by your tone and several assumptions based on nothing I see that you're fully converted. No reason to keep talking past each other.
I think we've all seen plenty of hallucinated sources, no argument there. Source hallucination wasn't a problem 2-3 years ago simply because LLMs couldn't cite their sources at all. It was a massive problem 1-2 years ago because it happened all the freaking time. It is a much smaller problem today. It still happens too often, especially with the weaker models.
I'm personally pretty annoyed that no local model (at least that I can run on my own hardware) is anywhere near as hallucination-resistant as the major non-free, non-local frontier models.
In my example, no, I didn't bother confirming the Russell sources in detail, other than to check that they (a) existed and (b) weren't completely irrelevant. I had other stuff to do and don't actually care that much. The comment just struck me as weird, and now I'm better informed thanks to Firefox's AI feature. My takeaway wasn't "Russell wanted to nuke the Russians," but rather "Russell's positions on pacifism and aggression were more nuanced than I thought. Remember to look into this further when/if it comes up again." Where's the harm in that?
Can you share what you asked, and what model you were using? I like to collect benchmark questions that show where progress is and is not happening. If your question actually elicited such a crappy response from a leading-edge reasoning model, it sounds like a good one. But if you really did just issue a throwaway prompt to a free/instant model, then trust me, you got a very wrong impression of where the state of the art really is. The free ChatGPT is inexcusably bad. It was still miscounting the r's in "Strawberry" as late as 5.1.
And here you get back to my original point: to get good (or at least better) AI, you need complex and huge models, that can't realistically run locally.
They basically already have this feature: https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/use-link-previews-firef...
Especially since we know very well that they won't be locally running LLMs, everyone's plan is to siphon your data to their "cloud hybrid AI" to feed into the surveillance models (for ad personalization, and for selling to scammers, law enforcement and anyone else).
I'd prefer to have entirely separate and completely controlled and fire-walled solutions for any useful LLM scenarios.
That pretty much sums up the problem: an "AI" button is about as useful to me as a "do stuff" button, or one of those red "that was easy" buttons they sell at Home Depot. Google translate has offered machine translation for 20+ years that is more or less adequate to understand text written in a language I don't read. Fine, add a button to do that. Mediocre page summaries? That can live in some submenu. "Agentic" things like booking flights for an upcoming trip? I would never trust an "AI" button to do that.
Machine learning can be useful for well-defined, low-consequence tasks. If you think an LLM is a robot butler, you're fundamentally misunderstanding what you're dealing with.
Specifically, the AI does not generate text for me to read. All it does is decide which parts of the text that already exists on the page to show me. (It is allowed to interact with the web page to get past any modal windows or gates.)
> any user
If you read the Mozilla and Firefox related threads over the past week, you'd think Mozilla was the scourge of the internet, worse than DoubleClick in their heyday and worse than Google's hobbling of Chrome.
That said, the AI options for Firefox are opt-in. If you don't want them, don't use them. You are correct in that this is where software is heading, and AI integration is what users will expect going forward.
> In politics, a reactionary is a person who favors a return to a previous state of society which they believe possessed positive characteristics absent from contemporary society.
But I guess HackerNews is infamous for being conservative, so it's not too surprising.
The only "standard" expected from them is the same as any other for-profit company - "stick to your stated values and don't be duplicitous". For example, Apple, Meta, Microsoft are all lambasted here when they claim to "respect" user privacy and their products do the opposite.
Also, you should note that unlike these BiGTech that make multiple products and services, the company behind Firefox (and Thunderbird) makes only a few products and earns 100's of millions of dollars in annual revenue from it (some here in HN say they currently make more than a half a billion dollars a year now!). That's a lot of money. And yet, most of their products continues to be "shitty" (i.e. subpar). That's why they are losing user base. Instead of really improving their core product, the company just continues to seek new avenues of creating revenues. That's the "MBA CEO mindset" that everyone here in HN usually complain about. Do you want a browser that's faster and light on resources, or a browser that would display even more ads to you right in the browser? (Guess what Firefox prioritised?). Every user of Firefox can already avail ChatGPT (or some other AI service) if they want to. The only reason to embed it onto Firefox is to just make extra money by violating user privacy (we all know AIs are now personal data harvesters), without adding any real value to the browser.
Now, consider the opensource philosophy they espouse. Again, with the 100's of millions of dollars they have in hand, Gecko, the rendering engine of the browser is still not a truly modular piece of code that can be easily used in other projects. And that's by design (this is why most of the browsers that use the Firefox-Gecko codebase are just Firefox clones with superficial changes to the UI and config). If I remember right, Nokia spent considerable effort to try and reuse Gecko (make it modular?) - https://web.archive.org/web/20180830103541/http://blog.idemp... - and Sailfish OS now uses that fork in its mobile browser. (It was only when Mozilla feared that they were losing the mobile browser war that they decided to offer Gecko as a hacky modular codebase for only the Android platform, to be used as webviews or create other browsers. Similar options for Desktop platforms still don't exist).
Isn't all that a valid criticism, whether you are a capitalist or an opensource developer?
The non mozilla people in that thread are so petty. Maybe it'd be better to have them go use another browser and stop dragging down firefox's reputation.
We need more control over the feature. Even just the ability to select text, right click, and have a "Translation" menu would be huge. Looks like there is such a feature, but it doesn't let you pick the language pairs, which is the most basic requirement of translation.
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/website-translation has the text: "A new Translate selection feature has been added starting in Firefox version 128, that enables you to highlight and translate selected text."
Edit: Sorry, I misread the comment to say that there was no such menu item. Edited to reflect this.
The UX is not polished, and not responsive. No indicator that translation is happening, then the interface disappears for the translation to materialize, with multisecond delays. All understandable if the model is churning my mobile CPU, but it needs a clear visual insicator that something happening
Those are all features using AI and features I consider to be useful
EDIT: Oh, I've found a context menu item-list.
Another problem for Mozilla:
- If they don't pivot to AI people will leave it. Yes, some hardcore RMS fans will use some clone of Firefox - all others will not
- If they adopt modern AI people scream
- Same happened when Mozilla accepted DRM (for Netflix etc). Many tech writers, commentators were against that. But if Firefox did not adopt it then all those tech writers would have used Chrome to see Netflix. No one of these commentators say they will boycott Netflix.
1. build a team in Europe to create an email service comparable to gmail/protonmail
- domains: mozmail.com, mmail.com, godmail.com, pmail.com, dogmail.com, meowmail.com
- promoted as a simple everyday email – no overly complicated/advanced federati features in order to increase inter-operability, reduce spam and dealing with federalism
- for more advanced features, integration links with something like signal, or a hosted comms platform
2. invest heavily in Firefox core development and service features
- push for system resource and performance optimizations, even if it requires extensive architectural changes
- focus on perfecting a core browser experience then developing an extension API that allows a level of UI customisations that XUL did, have unsafe/hackers warning for any extension that uses this API, even official ones
- invest in KeePassXC ux and integrate it as a first class and core feature in Firefox that is useable by hackers, consumers and enterprises – offer paid services for simple database sync/backup, as well as a decent managed solution for enterprise.
3. Expand further with a suite of other services that have both self-hosted and paid management extras
- calendar and email client, universally usable between providers, but first class with Firefox and mmail.
- integrate something like libreoffice into a desktop client that can also be embedded into a Firefox tab.
- straight forward self-hostable teams communication platform, managed cloud versions also availabe
- self-hosted / managed file storage platform with web UI with integration links to other services
- all of the above require a unified web, desktop and mobile ux
- offer further software and hardware integrations to completely streamline personal digital management
4. Extensive marketing and brand exposure over TV and social media, while staying charitably non-profit and recognizing the digital roots
- Use the firefox, gecko and other digital animals as icons
- Themes and scapes from origins such as mosaic/netscape
5. In this scene Mozilla continues knocking down the buildings of the titans.
I should have to manually install this AI stuff.
Have recommended extension sets ([uBlock, Sponsorblock], [Containerise, Sideberry, Decentraleyes], [AI translation + Dictionary/Thesaurus]).
Make me want to use your AI features, don't just slap them on my face wishing I'll do more than get mad and try to get rid of them.
Forcing everyone to by default use AI isn't freedom. I might as well just use Chrome.
A large percentage of users, particularly Firefox users , don't want this AI stuff built in.
Where does this AI even run. Does it have to make an API requests to send all of the webpages I view somewhere else ?
Is it even my computer anymore, my browser, or am I sharing it with people who want to extract more money from me.
As is Google forced me to view often incorrect AI summaries when I have no interest in them.
Do I want the only real Chrome competitor to also force bad ai content in my face ?
Language models are like Hello, Pocket, and Sync. Core browser features one and all that must silently run by default unless explicitly disabled.
Edge has a larger market share (4%-7% depending on who you ask)
Firefox has (2%-6%, similar issue). Firefox mostly scores well among Wikimedia users and tracking. (High as 15% recently) Firefox barely even registers with Mobile users (0.5%-1.5%).
And. They both pale in comparison to Chrome (56%-69%) and Safari (14%-24%) in terms of user base / market share. People can argue and rant about Firefox doing something, yet they're arguing about 2%-6% of the WWW users currently.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
https://radar.cloudflare.com/reports/browser-market-share-20...
https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php
https://kinsta.com/browser-market-share/
https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share
https://www.statista.com/statistics/545520/market-share-of-i...
Normal users install Chrome.
If Firefox can provide a more anonymized gate to these providers and guarantee that prompts are not used for training, this would be a net win for people who want to use AI but doesn't know better, i.e. the "normal" users.
Telling Firefox to not to move and get out of the place where it currently is a great contradiction in itself.
Many potential Chrome users were not users, and now they are. You can change public opinion by putting your money where your mouth is, and being persistent about it.
Also, let's not forget that Firefox is kinda preventing itself being detected via standard mechanisms so global analytics show its numbers a bit low than the reality, as well.
I should have to manually install this search bar stuff.
I should have to manually install this FTP client stuff (okay that last one is the case)
"All AI features will also be opt-in"
That way, the users who want them can download them, and the users who don't, don't.
because no one in right mind, would opt-in AI seriously. and definitely never on corporate machine
I suppose if - after you click away the popup that says "Thank you for loving Firefox"(1) - a popup shows that says "Hey, hey, look at me, look we have this new feature, it'll blow you away. Do you want to enable it?" would be obnoxious but satisfies the idea of "opt-in".
(1) https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1791524 - I still remember how icked I was seeing this popup.
If it's off be default it will stay off unless the user is somehow made to try it. Default opt-in is one option to do that, the simplest one, but it's not the only one. The rest require explaining clearly what the user will get out of enabling it ... and that often is difficult to do succinctly, or convincingly. So shovelling it down everyone's throat it is.
Why exactly should I, a user, care about this? I don't want useless crap shoved in my face, period. I don't care that people might not turn on someone's pet feature if they don't enable it by default.
I want the AI agent to act more like a fiduciary, an independent 3rd party acting in my best interest. I don't need an AI salesman interjecting itself into my life with compromised incentives.
OpenAI was already taking steps to integrate ads, amd Grok shows how much we should be trusting AI as some impartial 3rd party. The goal was always about control and profiting off of said control. Pretty much the antithesis of hacker mindsets.
(I mean, that could still steer it toward places that have affiliate programs, but if you're running a local AI tool to help you search for these things that seems like something you should reasonably be able to toggle on and off/configure in a system prompt/something.)
(The Mullvad guys took Tor browser for its resistance to fingerprinting and removed the connection the Tor network. You don't need Mullvad VPN to use the browser)
There are more, those are just the ones I can recall.
Waterfox, Librewolf and Mullvad Browser are worth considering.
Librewolf is nice but breaks a lot of stuff, sites that use webrtc or canvas related things, lots of banking sites refuse to load, and some other issues I can't remember.
https://sizeof.cat/post/web-browser-telemetry-2025-edition/
As for webapps breaking in Librewolf, IME those can be fixed by selectively unblocking canvas (or whatever) for the site in question.
At least when I last checked (months ago), none of those features that involve communicating with external servers would work unless you configure them to (i.e. provide credentials to an LLM provider).
Was I wrong? Have things changed?
Getting to the discussion at hand, which of those pings are AI related? I didn't say FF isn't making network calls.
How is it "easy" if nothing is sent unless you configure the AI?
What I'm asking is: If I do a brand new profile, default configuration, how can any AI related feature send anything that is of privacy concern? If you don't set up an LLM provider, it has nowhere to send to.
I may be wrong, which is why I'm asking in the thread. So far, no one has shown what the problem is.
But it also doesn't matter, because that's the kind of distinction that I've seen go back and forth elsewhere.
I agree with:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46316763
278 comments, many very angry, and no one can clearly articulate how privacy is being compromised because of the AI features.
On a project whose source is available.
Insane.
Whereas providing an option or a setting that the user must locate and change doesn't really mean much. Few users will ever see it let alone decide to change it
For example, why pay 22 billion to be "the default" if users can just change the default setting
Kagi. Zed. That's it, that's the list.
Not a chat bot. Not an “ask ai” button, just those things.
I've been toying with that for ages on and off. Finally now a paid up user due to the fact that their guesswork engine (or makey-upy machine, or your preferred name) can be easily turned off, and stays off until requested otherwise.
That’s like saying if a car manufacturer adds a "Sport Mode", the steering wheel and brakes suddenly become an afterthought.
Being AI-available means we'll welcome more Firefox users who would otherwise choose a different browser. Being AI-optional means we won't alienate the anti-AI crowd. Why not embrace both?
It's really great when your opinions are aligned with those of the designer. If they're not, you're straight out of luck and you're stuck with something that isn't really for you.
This is why I love software that gives as much choice as possible. Like KDE for example. Because I have pretty strong vision myself and I respect my tools to conform to that, not the other way around
Though not so much trust as an option to enable AI features would build.
If they're breaking their usual silence to talk about it on Mastodon via an employee/developer, they should better keep their word, because they're on a razor's edge there, and they'll be cut pretty badly if they slip on this one.
edit: the original post ended with words to the tune of "Totally unrelated, but I run [insert newsletter here]... "
They literally shipped an AI sidebar nobody asked for.
https://vivaldi.com/blog/technology/why-isnt-vivaldi-browser...
If it was an extension it would be nice if people could fork it with other models. Just like their AI Tab Grouping feature would be much better forked with a deterministic non-AI grouping system.
>We didn't make the back button an extension even though we could have.
The back button isn't even a KB of extra data and and I'd put navigation as the primary job of a web browser.
I'm not against a built in translator, but it's a strange comparison to a back button.
On a slight tangent, I think there's an under talked about boon yo machine translation: it's widely agreedbti be a comoromise and not a source of truth. That wariness has been missing as of late.
Index of /pub/firefox/releases/
https://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/
A LITTLE HELP:
How do I revert Firefox to a previous version and keep my profile intact?
https://superuser.com/questions/1643618/how-do-i-revert-fire...
https://youtube.com/shorts/FObvkFtr2ZU?si=U6fCphjmGcNMb5ac
Until they change this back they are not trustworthy at all.
If you don't like AI you need to seek legislation and pressure your local politicians. It's the only way to stop it.
Yup. So we're screwed for up to 3 years. Maybe much less depending on nature or the result of certain hot topic issues.
That might be a minor factor why we seem to be speedrunning everything in 2025. Get ahead of the crash, of the legislation, of the wool coming off the common citizen's eyes.
I don't use bookmarks. Should those be opt-in? What about the other 85% of the browser's features I don't use?
The supposed local-only features like translations will download at least model updates and configuration, which leaks metadata.
You can choose not to use bookmarks, remove the bar reserved for it, and it’s taking up kilobytes in the background. Can’t say the same about shoving an LLM in a browser.
But sure, I’m much closer to the extreme of “make bookmarks a plug-in” than “make everything a default”.
Honestly, is anybody reading what's getting written anymore? If it gets taken seriously it would ship with an enable-AI button, not the other way round.
Whatever they do, they simply cannot win. I'm personally starting to suspect the main issue with Mozilla is its users.
When they re-wrote Firefox for Android, they were unable to give the simple, obvious answer to the effect of "yes, we understand extensions are a core feature of our browser and we plan to fully support extensions on Fenix and won't consider it done until we do". Instead, they talked about whitelisting a handful of extensions, and took three years from shipping Fenix as stable before they had a broad open extension ecosystem up and running again.
Earlier this year Mozilla couldn't provide the simple, obvious response of "we will never sell your personal information". Instead, they tried to make excuses about not agreeing with California's definition of "selling personal information".
A few days ago, we find out that their new CEO can't clearly and emphatically say "we would never take money to break ad blockers, because that goes against everything we stand for".
Now, they seemingly can't even realize that having a "kill switch" calls into doubt whether they actually know what "opt-in" means.
Even when they're trying to do the right thing, they're strangely afraid to commit to doing the right thing when it comes to specifics. They won't say "never" even when it should be easy.
That answer is not as obvious to me as you claim it is. I don't use any browser extensions except 1password, which I would have no reason to use on a phone (at least assuming Android has builtin password manager functionality like iOS does).
I think you overestimate what fraction of people care about extensions.
I would guess that of people that would ever go out of their way to use a non-Chrome browser on Android, the fraction who care about extensions is pretty significant.
> Has Add-on shows the percentage of Firefox Desktop clients with user-installed add-ons.
> December 8, 2025
> 45.4%
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/usage-behavior
Note that language packs are counted as extensions.
Some have disabled telemetry, of course, but how many? Here we can only rely on our own observations, and of all Firefox users I know, it's zero.
(I keep it enabled because I want my voice to be counted — people who have never lived in an autocracy tend to have peculiar views on this.)
I keep lean and only look for an extension or install amd app when it’s clear what problem I have and want to solve.
Honestly, and it's hard for me to say this: I've come around. I still use and love Firefox, but emotionally I'm detaching from it, because fundamentally: all the other FOSS I use is an actual, factual, open source project. And Firefox the browser is FOSS, but Firefox the corporation isn't, and the problem is the corporation seems to be in charge, not the project, which means all their priorities are to make money and drive donations, not what's best for the user necessarily. It means all their communications are written in Corporatese, with vague waffling about everything they're asked and non-committal statements because the next quarter might demand they about-face, as they've done numerous times.
I love the browser. I increasingly find myself disillusioned with the business entity that rides on it's back, and frankly wish it would sod off. Take the money they're getting, and give it to the people actually building the product. Defaulting AI features to off costs Firefox absolutely nothing and they still won't do it, because of this irrational FOMO that has gripped the entirety of the executive class in charge of seemingly every business on earth. It's pathetic, and it lacks vision.
I hate that I feel to be having déjà vu here. My needs are simple and I’m surrounded by software wanting to inflate itself more and more. And being hostile about it, to boot.
New CEO says they've run the numbers and decided to not kill adblockers, leading to people asking why exactly they were running those numbers (if it was an actual ideological commitment, the numbers wouldn't matter).
> Mozilla says they'll add a killswitch for all AI features (so that the tiny but vocal anti-AI minority will be happy), and people blame them for not having it as an enable-switch.
Yes, opt-in vs opt-out is kinda an important distinction. And you're assuming that opposition is a "tiny but vocal", which - especially among people bothering to use firefox - seems unfounded. Which brings use neatly to,
> Whatever they do, they simply cannot win. I'm personally starting to suspect the main issue with Mozilla is its users.
Well, yes. If you build a userbase out of power users and folks who care about privacy and control... then you have a userbase of power users and folks who care about privacy and control. If Mozilla said up front that they were only interested in money and don't care about users, then fair enough, but don't go trumpeting how you fight for the user and then act surprised when the user holds you to that.
Communicating about what you're knowingly rejecting is a point of pride, not a confession. But since there's no such thing as an OBS, or Nextcloud, or VLC Derangement syndrome, nobody grabs the pitchforks in those cases.
The second one doesn't sound like real conviction.
Real argument: "they said they're doing "privacy preserving" ads, look at this post where they announce it". Real argument "they say they're putting AI in the browser, I don't like that. Here's the statement!" Real argument: " they purchased Anonym and are dabbling in adtech, here's the news article announcing the acquisition!"
Not real argument: "They said they didn't want to take money to kill ad blockers but if you squint maybe it kinda implies they considered it, at least if you don't consider other reasons they might be aware of that figure." At best it's like 0.001% circumstantial evidence that has to be reconciled with their history of opposing the Manifest changes. If reading tea leaves matters so much, then certainly their more explicit statements need to matter too.
The thing that's unfortunate here is I would like to think this goes without saying, but ordinary standards of charitable interpretation are so far in the rear view mirror that I don't know that people comfortable making these accusations would even recognize charitable interpretation as a shared value. Not in the sense of bending over backwards to apologize or make excuses, but in the ordinary Daniel Dennett sense of a built-in best practice to minimize one's own biases.
Their history is less relevant now because it's a fresh CEO that came up with this statement on his first day. New leaders often means a change in direction and this is a worrying sign. Also the number he quoted is far too explicit. Doing something like that would instantly move Firefox to be the absolute worst browser possible considering even advertising- and tracking-loaded crap like Chrome and Edge don't go that far.
Clearly they have been running the numbers and clearly he feels fine talking about it which is a pretty strong departure of previous values.
Of course I'd not continue using Firefox in this case, and I'm sure it would get widely forked. I found it pretty shocking.
The other examples don't reassure me one bit because they're not the same teams and in many cases they were simply external pushes like offers that were rejected. Here it's a different team that already has been changing direction for the worse recently (e.g. PPA, purchasing Anonym), and came up with this without external pressure. There's also plenty of situations where FOSS projects did go full evil.
Anyway I don't really have any better options than firefox and I'm sure that it would get heavily forked if they started siding with the advertisers, but it is worrying to me especially coming from a new leader on his very first day. Not only because it's about ads. Just because it removes user freedom of choice completely if they were to enforce this.
In all of those examples, the devs note that people have reached out to them, unprompted, to try and get them to sell out. That's materially different from a company proactively looking into the payoffs of selling out. The only question is whether the latter is what's happening; I'm having trouble tracking down the actual thing that was said (I think in an interview?).
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Graham%27s_Hierarchy...
> But since there's no such thing as an OBS, or Nextcloud, or VLC Derangement syndrome, nobody grabs the pitchforks in those cases.
qualifies as name-calling.
Is that their core user base, or just the vocal user base online? Only 5-10% of their user base have UBO installed (FF has almost 200 million users, extension store reports ~10 million UBO installs).
Firefox isn't LibreWolf, it's user base are just average people, not much different than that of Chrome, Safari, or Edge.
> Firefox: Get the gold standard for browsing with speed, privacy and control.
I hadn't actually seen that when I wrote "power users and folks who care about privacy and control", but that's even mostly the same words, let alone intent.
But they've never done this. There is a very vocal group of Firefox power users but the browser has always targeted a general audience, marginalization by Chrome over the years not withstanding.
If you have any ambition to regain some of that market share listening to the average vocal Hackernews or Reddit commenter, who is not the median user, even just among the current ~150 million users is not a good idea.
What I honestly fear is that while AI-features are disabled, popups inviting me to enable them again. That, or them auto-enabling them on every update like sometimes has happened with `browser.ml.enable` flag on `about:config`.
It's because he has obviously been thinking about it. That $150M number didn't just come out of nowhere. Someone at Mozilla modelled this. The resulting analysis made it into the CEO's mind so far he even mentioned it without being asked.
This is something that's unthinkable to most of the Mozilla users. That's why it's so shocking.
It's like your son making dinner conversation like "hey I was thinking, if I would sell drugs at school I'd make at least 500$ a week! But don't worry I'm not going to do that!".
How many times does a scorpion need to sting the frog for the frog to be justified in being wary of “ I definitely won’t sting you this time!”
I guess we shouldn't worry though, just some random law thought that what they were doing was "selling personal data" but we shouldn't think that it was. No further explanation required.
But as an old-school Firefox user, with a slieu of mobile extensions installed and a healthy cynicism about our swan dive into the dark sea of AI ... I have no problem at all with the statements from Mozilla. Outsiders can argue all day about intent, it's the actions that count.
This is not true, and is easily verifiable for yourself.
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/hardware
The vast majority of Firefox usage is on Windows.
Arch pkgstats (opt-in): ~64% FF, ~41% Chromium, ~17% Chrome
https://pkgstats.archlinux.de/fun/Browsers/current
Debian popcon (opt-in): 2.2% Firefox, ~10.3% Chromium
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=firefox
https://qa.debian.org/popcon.php?package=chromium
Flathub installs: 10kk Firefox, 10kk Chrome, 1.8kk Chromium
https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.mozilla.firefox
https://flathub.org/en/apps/com.google.Chrome
https://flathub.org/en/apps/org.chromium.Chromium
snapcraft statistics isn't public, afaik.
That's not the fault of their users, at least not directly. If you want to argue that Firefox users are stifling innovation or trying to steer the product in a direction that would threaten the future viability of Firefox/Mozilla, I would be open to hearing that argument out even though I don't think that's the issue.
Mozilla is the equivalent of a petrostate in the tech sector. They have a bunch of revenue coming in that they didn't really earn, and they have no idea what to do with it to improve their current condition. To me, that's the core issue.
A lot of people remember the Mozilla of old, and are just completely depressed at the state of where it has ended up over the last 10 years. They were once a non-profit founded to promote the web and put users first. Now it's just this weird zombie company monetizing the work and good will of a prior generation of engineers that cared about that mission.
The thing they can do to win is to start acting like they maintain a free/libre open-source software project. It should be completely fine for Mozilla to make a grand total of $0.00 off of Firefox.
Think of Linux (specifically the kernel) or Python. Sure there's a person whose opinion holds more weight than everyone else's (at least for the kernel), but they typically focus on delivering general guidance to a group of people who are free to create features on their own and present those to leadership. If it's quality and fits what the general purpose of the project is, it gets merged into the trunk, and released with everything else.
That needs to be how Mozilla handles Firefox at this point. If some working group of contributors wants to start an implementation of GenAI in Firefox, let them do so and let the community hash it out. If the community doesn't feel the need to create it, well, then Firefox won't have it... and that's fine.
So many of these free software projects try to do too much and change what the core output of the project is in the process, and they lose sight of what the project is.
Look at the point that op made instead of the tone: the AI feature should be opt-in not opt-out.
That's a good point. Let's talk about that. It seems like it's a simple thing to do to show good faith that this won't be a normal corporate AI push.
[citation needed]
And then others wonder why customers are frustrated.
What numbers? Have Mozilla published any numbers showing their AI experiments have been warmly received by users?
The past 15 years has been a slow decline while they were trying to prove some relevancy outside of their core product. With mobile browsers being locked down a decline was going to happen anyways but if they stuck to their guns at least they wouldn't have wasted a bunch of money and maintained more of their base.
Who knows, their position sucks, but they're not going to win anyone by being the worst AI focused browser which happens to have an off switch.
With the bonus that you also get a set of great (and per fork different yet handy) features.
These include:
Waterfox (Firefox) - https://www.waterfox.com/
Zen Browser (Firefox) - https://zen-browser.app/
Librewolf (Firefox) - https://librewolf.net/
Helium (Chrome/Chromium) - https://helium.computer/
Ungoogled Chromium (Chrome/Chromium) - https://github.com/ungoogled-software/ungoogled-chromium
Also as one of the major players, Vivaldi already made a stand against AI and forcefully including (agentic) AI in the web browser: https://vivaldi.com/blog/keep-exploring/. It's a Chromium based browser with a lot of nice features and deep customization options: https://vivaldi.com/
Like the one described in the subsequent toot?
> All AI features will also be opt-in. I think there are some grey areas in what 'opt-in' means to different people (e.g. is a new toolbar button opt-in?)...
It's not a gray area, and "opt-in" isn't something to be weasled-worded around. If the browser has the capability, I don't want it. I want to be able to add it with a plugin, and that's it. Plugins should have full control to whatever is necessary (same as adblock stuff; plenty of security but enough "user beware" to allow truly useful utilities). And AI features should all be plugins. Separate ones, if I had my way, but bundles if that makes more sense. I do not and will not need AI to browse. It's an enhancement. The core product (or at least ONE OF the products offered) should allow me to do without the enhancement. And opt in if I want to. There's nothing gray there, and I'm so fucking sick of mozilla trying to pull this "we disagree with common terminology" horseshit.
How about "Translate" button?
And, if I'm being honest, "translation" is the only feature I would even consider splitting the builds for. At least in that feature I can see why a "default" version of the browser might benefit more people than not by including it. But that doesn't mean that a "clean" version shouldn't be provided. Build the core app, and then include as many plugins as you think "average users" will benefit from in the "default" version. I don't mind being the minority, I just don't think it's inappropriate to ask for only what I need instead of "all the bullshit you want to force me to have".
This seems like special pleading. The browser (and any software package) is full of features that some people use and others don't. Just off the top of my head, these include: the password manager, PDF viewer, dev tools, and the extensions store. Each new SKU that the vendor has to provide is additional effort to build and test, and the result is that it's more expensive to produce the product. Moreover, it makes it harder for users to discover new features what they might want (oh, you wanted view source, you needed Firefox developer edition).
On the specific case of translation, I don't really see much of a distinction between "I need to browse" and "I want to read content that is not in a language that the content provider has supported for me". In both cases, I want to get the content on the site and I'd like the browser to help me do it.
> I don't mind being the minority, I just don't think it's inappropriate to ask for only what I need instead of "all the bullshit you want to force me to have".
And you can have that by building it yourself. It's open source software. What you're really asking for is for Mozilla to build a version of the software that has only the features you personally want.
But, sure, I need to go build it myself because I had the gall to ask "can't I just have the parts I need?"
This is in fact you asking for two SKUs, one with all the plugins (what you call the "default download") and one without ("let me have a download that doesn't include them.")
As for "really is that easy", as usual, it's easy in some cases and not others. To the extent to which things are already modular and developed separately, then yes, it probably is easy. To the extent that things are not currently modular, then it's separate engineering effort to make them so. In some cases that effort might be small (e.g., the new module is all in HTML/JS) and in some cases that effort might be large (e.g., there is extensive C/C++ code that needs to interface with the browser core). I don't know how much about Firefox's AI features to know which category they fall into. But it's almost certainly not zero effort in any case.
whatever you say
That's why it should ask - once. And offer a "FUCK OFF NEVER ASK ME AGAIN" button rather than "Ask me again later".
I'm still waiting for the polls and statistics and feature requests of this. The "without asking" is the primary problem.
./configure --disable-ai1. Pocket/etc is not even ancient history,
2. At this point I don’t think Firefox or Mozilla ought to be taken without a truck of salt.
A bonus third :D
3. People bleeding their hearts out for Mozilla and calling others out for constantly criticising Mozilla — it’s history baby, history!