Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch
techcrunch.com
Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago. Mozilla will also shut down Hubs, the 3D virtual world it launched back in 2018, and scale back its investment in its mozilla.social Mastodon instance. The layoffs will affect roughly 60 employees. Bloomberg previously reported the layoffs.
Yo, wtf. Their VPN, Relay and Monitor are basically the only Mozilla services I'd use and pay for. To me this sounds like this is the wrong direction. What do you guys think?
Honestly I'm actually a little happy about this. I feel Mozilla needs to focus on its core job of advancing its browser and web standards so we don't get stuck with Chromium-only world (like when us old timers had to deal with Internet Explorer holding the majority market share).
These side projects like running VPN services and social networks may have the best intentions but have had to pull from their limited resources. I would prefer they get spun off as separate projects instead of pulling resources from the parent company.
It's the other way around - the side projects were intended to diversify revenue so they're not comprehensive dependent on google for funding. If they're canning them then they haven't been profitable.
Shitty position to be in, where you are dependent on your competitor to foot the bill.
That may have been the intention but I can't find any which have panned out. Mozilla is straddling that weird line of operating both a non-profit and for-profit entity... and as a for-profit incubator for the next big thing, they have a pretty terrible track record.
This is management speak for... our shit isn't working, we're trying to diversify our revenue but so far just wasted heaps of money. We're going to cut everything to extend the curve but this marks the start of our death spiral.
This is a bit left field but... my big idea is that mozilla should become a payment gateway for donating to other opensource projects. They can skim a few percent off everything. Great alignment with Mozilla's values & history. All open source projects will end up promoting mozilla. Mozilla has the right brand and user-base to leverage.
Suppose my new tab page showed me a bit of an overview about some opensource project, the people involved, and the people who use the project, and suggested a donation of $1. I would genuinely like that. After a few small donations they could suggest I charge my account with $50 which I can then donate to whatever projects in the coming months as the mid takes me.
That one's good enough to suggest to them!
Can see why they'd maybe be wary of getting into appraising open source projects if taking payments, but maybe something they could collaborate on with EFF & others. Maybe also that "alternative to" project, which doesn't currently focus on open source stuff but naturally covers quite a lot of it.
Holdup! I genuinely like this idea! On first startup it could ask for it, whether you would like to see this or not.
What they could do as well, is host their on git (forgejo is the name i think) and this donation built in. Basically what github is doing but without microsoft.
If the "'d" means that you're not paying for it... That might be the problem 😢
I'm already paying for Mullvad, the VPN service Mozilla is whitelabeling, so Mozilla VPN is unattractive to me. I'm already using Relay, but not to the extent that any paid features would make sense for me (yet). Monitor, I think, is a great tool, but I don't feel comfortable with giving data brokers all of my PII just for them to delete SOME of my PII. Maybe this will change, though.
So you're not paying and this is the problem. That's why they're refocusing.
If I'm the sample size, then they are entirely refocusing on the wrong things, because I've never wanted Pocket, I don't know what Content is even supposed to be and I can forego the use of AI in my browser.
Oh god, AI into Firefox? What's the reason?
I'm a bit confused what's the cost of shipping a rebadged version of an existing VPN service is.
Article quote "Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.” To do so, it will bring together the teams that work on Pocket, Content and AI/Ml."
Does not scream privacy friendly, imo
In the past, they've often spearheaded privacy-friendly solutions, like the translation feature in Firefox, which is already today 100% offline. It's possible to run LLMs offline, too, for simpler workloads. For example, they could probably use an offline LLM to have that translation feature form readable sentences more often.
on the one hand i agree: trustworthy does not mean privacy. but on the other hand: ai does not necesaarily mean privacy invasion (though experience might tell us otherwise)
In theory there should be an acceptable balance, somewhere. What this would look like I do not know.
AI seems like the latest shiny object they're chasing. I wish they'd focus on building the most usable browser. I subscribe to the VPN, Pocket, and Relay, but I guess I'll have to start looking for alternatives? I suppose Mullvad, Omnivore are the way to go, not sure about alternative to Relay.
Instead of relay, just get your own domain like whatever.com and redirect anything sent to any user name to your real email address.
For example, I'm just in my podiatrists waiting room. I have them podiatrist@whatever.com as my email address. You don't need to configure new fake addresses just make up whatever you like.
That doesn't work for phone
What do you mean?
I think that we don't know the whole picture but if they're canceling VPN, Relay and Monitor it's because they're not making enough money on those services. I also think the new CEO feels they're spread too thin and need to focus resources on core products, which might be a good thing. They've gotten a lot of flak for trying different things.
In what way did they invest anything significant in the mastodon instance? I had been sort of waiting for them to do something interesting with it after all the fanfare with which it belatedly arrived. As far as I could tell last time I looked it was just a bog-standard and rather small instance that hadn't visibly changed since some engineer took a day or two to set it up last year. What'd I miss?
I think they figured out that its unlikely to make any money. I'm not sure what there plan was as social media companies can do nothing without it being controversial
I don't like it either, but if focusing on Firefox lets them market Firefox and somehow win back user-share, then maybe it'd be worth it…
And what did it cost?
VPN, Relay, and Online Footprint Scrubber, apparently. We'll see what else, in time.
Edit: Oh, and downsizing, fuck. Forgot about that part, that really sucks. :(
They are having the wrong direction since years. If anything, this is the same direction.
this sounds like a cookiecuter CEO who only focuses on hype topics like mobile and ai instead of privacy services has taken the wheel, sad news. thats why i have trust issues when it comes to companies
Well shit, I guess I’m never getting off that waitlist. Of all the services being effected by this news the mastodon instance is a relatively minor loss but I was really hoping it’d work out and thrive in a similar manner to Vivaldi’s instance.
Yeah I had hoped it would kind of create a focal point around which mozilla supporters could gather.
Company I don't like lets go of employees: ❌❌LAYOFFS❌❌😡😡
Company I like lets go of employees: ✨✨downsizing✨✨😇😇
I wish they would compete with Kagi and give us a paid search browser.
Their bread is buttered by Google, so that seems unlikely.
God no, that's a privacy nightmare
seemingly VERY common mozilla L.
This sucks to hear as I've been paying for their relay service for a while now. I'm wondering if I should work to transfer all emails over to another service...
I was also considering signing up for Mozilla monitor, but now I'm not so sure if it's just gonna get canned soon or not.
Mozilla monitor is not a great deal
That's fair I would've used it more for supporting Mozilla and because I trust them with that data.
Thanks god
This is the best summary I could come up with:
After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product strategy, TechCrunch has learned.
Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago.
Going forward, the company said in an internal memo, Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.” To do so, it will bring together the teams that work on Pocket, Content and AI/Ml.
Mozilla started expanding its product portfolio in recent years, all while its flagship product, Firefox, kept losing market share.
And while the organization was often sharply criticized for this, its leadership argued that diversifying its product portfolio beyond Firefox was necessary to ensure Mozilla’s survival in the long run.
Firefox, after all, provided the vast majority of Mozilla’s income, but it also meant the organization was essentially dependent on Google to continue this deal.
The original article contains 234 words, the summary contains 166 words. Saved 29%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Honestly adding more features and services is the wrong answer. They need to strip down Firefox in terms if UI and software bloat. A smaller (ish) codebase would be easier manage.
I have a bad feeling about this... guess it's time to learn about possible alternatives :/
There really aren't any alternatives. Everything else is chromium.
chromium is based on a fork of webkit; webkit proper does remain -- I don't know how much of an influence google has on it though; all I 'know' is that it's Apple's adoption of a KDE project.
You've got WebKit, and Chrome/Chromium. WebKit began as a fork of KDE KHTML, and Chromium then started as a fork of WebKit.
Firefox's Gecko engine is the only other major alternative to those two.
Alternative to what? Firefox?