https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/building-whats-next/
?????????????
Users can export saves anytime until October 8, 2025, after which their data will be permanently deleted. [...]
Meanwhile, new features like Tab Groups and enhanced bookmarks now provide built-in ways to manage reading lists easily. [...]
This shift allows us to shape the next era of the internet – with tools like vertical tabs, smart search and more AI-powered features on the way. We’ll continue to build a browser that works harder for you: more personal, more powerful and still proudly independent.
"We are stopping the thing that lets you make and share curated collections of offline pages with a little algorithmic affinity recommendation overlay because people don't want to manage reading lists and want to only have algorithmic recommendations.
Don't worry we basically fully replaced them with bookmarks (??) and a different tab orientation (??) because people still want to manage reading lists (??). But you can't actually import your pocket export to those things, and since they don't actually replace them we won't just move your data to them and will just delete it in a few months.
In conclusion, this is why pivoting to focus on the same gimmicks everyone else is focusing on and transitioning your personalized collections to generic AI slop reflects our being the most independent organization ever (???) Which lets us prioritize personalization (????)"
excuse me can you repeat that? blink twice if you need someone to come get you
I wouldn't say I know a ton of people, but I know enough, and none of them use Firefox unless they are a privacy wingnut or otherwise have some specific reason to hate Google and Apple. It just isn't a better piece of software than Chrome, it can't be and never will be, Google has infinity dollars, it competed on a different axis and that was fine for the people the use it because privacy is more important than perf or ux. The 2% of browser share that use Firefox are those privacy Wingnuts.
The one moz employee that frequently wanders into these threads once promised to show us the user research that is informing them and making them think "people who use Firefox are fine with ads, love them, don't mind having surprise advertising tech running in the browser that explicitly tells them it won't do that, and are apparently now clambering for more AI in their browser" and I suspect we probably won't. There just is no way that someone who thinks that the series of bad calls Firefox has made recently are actually fine would use Firefox.
i don't mean to spend multiple days ragging on mozilla, but reading this:
https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/internet-policy/amicus_brief/
and it's hard for me to express how i both feel for them and do not love the idea of firefox revenue going to zero, but also can't help but laugh at how this is pure slapstick and they are the clown trying to beg the rakes to stop hitting them in the face.
ok in this RPG you are mozilla. the federal government pursues google for antitrust finally (this is good). the federal government zeroes in on exactly your funding mechanism as one of the major remedies it seeks (this is bad). you are in a pickle. you need to hedge, you need to diversify, you need to abandon ship. everyone who cares about you knows that, but what do you do?
do you:
or....
@jonny it occurs to me that they could possibly use the current AI era to play catch up by ignoring it while everyone else is obsessed with it.
Then again, is they are under contract to not disparage Google, they're possibly required to use and hype AI.
I am absolutely one of the privacy nuts that used Firefox while everyone else was ditching it for Chrome, but the goodwill has been burned for years, IMO. It's hard to look Firefox in the UI.
@plaidtron3000 ta-da! the shit was just shit!
[echoing ha ha ha ha ha ha ha until all lungs flatten into a single sheet, incapable of laughter, smudged against the vacuum collapse radiating from the heart of a new physics]
@jonny @plaidtron3000 i ended up watching this entire thing from beginning to end. amazing
also when commenter said “When he said "I am the creator of all ukelele-whistling music heard in every advertisement throughout all of time I am sad" I felt that. Relatable af” I felt that. Relatable af.
*Pushes through the crowd at the recruiting desk like a pre-serum Steve Rogers*
Where can I enlist?
@jonny also all of this happened because they jumped the gun on "let’s do a US non-profit organisation because it’s the best way to do things according to (shitty lawyer #452)" instead of settling in like EU where a lot of the FOSS community is
Mastodon is guilty of the same thing btw
@jonny yeah at this point can the signal foundation adopt Firefox please
I already donate monthly for signal I'd donate a lot more for signal-flavoured firefox
@jonny Karen Sandler gave an excellent talk at #FOSDEM on saying no to funding: https://fosdem.org/2025/schedule/event/fosdem-2025-6481-when-is-it-right-to-say-no-to-funding-/
What I took away is that compromising your values for funding is always a mistake. Every time you dilute what you stand for, your biggest supporters and believers turn away from you.
I would love to throw money at Mozilla, if only the money went to the browser, and they stood up for the open web.
@jonny
To write a good sci-fi/fantasy/whatever story, you first get people to swallow just one lie. A big whopper, like timetravel, ftl travel - anything. Then you just stick to that one lie and pretend it's true for the rest of the story - it's important not to add on any more lies, or people won't find the story credible.
Just that One. Lie. Is. Enough.
> Mozilla has spent over two decades fighting for an open and healthy internet ecosystem.
Or! Did mozilla ceo's of the mozilla CORPORATION, hiding behind a non-profit Foundation, simply accept millions and millions of dollars in payment from google and, in turn, shoot firefox in the foot over and over and over again as we gazed on in horror and cringed at their apparent stupidity?
Not realizing why they were behaving so stupidly. Because papa google is pulling the strings on that puppet.
Duh.
Disgusting.
In fiction writing this is well-examined. The phrase is "a willing suspension of disbelief.' It is a very fragile thing, that contract between the storyteller and the audience. Mozilla lost it for me decades ago.
Because it is not just the browser.
Think about how awful Thunderbird is. Pigeon.
Is.
It was a direct descendant of Netscape, and included an IRC client, a calendar system, a few other trinquets depending upon the generation. For a long time it was known as Sea Monkey or something.
The only recent email client in the open source market I know of, and I am only commenting on the GUI, is Geary. Last I checked into the project was a few years ago, and it did not support encryption at that point which was a requirement.
@giantpinkrobots
Sure, there are many strategies that would be better.
They should've done more to differentiate themselves.
It turns out that they already were uniquely differentiated, and that differentiation was:
being the private/FOSS alternative
@jonny This tiny niche being "theirs" means zilch if they can't make any money out of them.
It also doesn't help that this niche userbase, being so passionate about their stance, is perhaps the worst type to have for a company. How many people cried for years when FF got Pocket integration because "Mozilla is shoving it down out throats" and how that's unacceptable and they're moving to LibreWolf immediately and F Mozilla.
Your highly disingenuous reply here is a perfect representation.