one passage of note:
Where does all of this leave the Firefox browser. Surman argued that the organization is very judicious about rolling AI into the browser — but he also believes that AI will become part of everything Mozilla does. “We want to implement AI in a way that’s trustworthy and benefits people,” he said. Fakespot is one example of this, but the overall vision is larger. “I think that’s what you’ll see from us, over the course of the next year, is how do you use the browser as the thing that represents you and how do you build AI into the browser that’s basically on your side as you move through the internet?” He noted that an Edge-like chatbot in a sidebar could be one way of doing this, but he seems to be thinking more in terms of an assistant that helps you summarize articles and maybe notify you proactively. “I think you’ll see the browser evolve. In our case, that’s to be more protective of you and more helpful to you. I think it’s more that you use the predictive and synthesizing capabilities of those tools to make it easier and safer to move through the internet.”
I am worried about the direction of Mozilla, it VERY FUCKING MUCH needs to invest on the browser instead of wasting time on “AI”
The conspiracy theory I’ve heard is that Mozilla is basically paid opposition to Google. Their leadership is being paid (by Google) to run Firefox into the ground without actually going out of business.
Half plausible, but honestly I’m more inclined to lean into Occam’s Razor and believe there’s no conspiracy and the CEO just got AI mind worms, which is an epidemic right now
Yes, it fucking is.
https://www.theverge.com/2024/1/8/24027112/volkswagen-chatgpt-openai-voice-assistant-cars-ces
Whats wrong with firefox currently?
Their CEO is the biggest symptom of their problem. She demands a sky high compensation despite her poor leadership. The company has been in a spiraling decline for the past decade now. Instead of focusing on bringing a great user experience, they alienated their most staunch users with things like Pocket and allowed PWAs and Electron to eat their lunch.
Their new shopping toolbar is coming next. At least Pocket was universal. The Shopping Toolbar will only be for three websites:
Amazon USA
Walmart
Best Buy
You know, the biggest brick and mortar monopoly, the biggest online sales monopoly, and the biggest tech chain.