?????????????

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:

• jump directly into the oncoming traffic of the market dominance strategy of that very same google, trying to compete on the sheer accumulated goodwill associated with your brand (which is evidently massively overestimated, internally) as "the good AI." Zigging while everyone else zigs. Late and dad cringe in a crowded market. But not only that, you take the bold strategy of specifically and directly alienating the only people that care about your flagship product or soul as an organization. You make a truly bizarre and hard to read amicus plea to the courts to save your soul: "we hate the monopoly power of google too, but this particular monopolistic behavior is paradoxically good for reasons that we won't explain except to say that google has been so successful in building the browser monopoly that we barely even exist. and by the way google is very good! and if we somehow make it out of this alive, they should keep paying us!!"

or....

• recognize that it's do or die, and you have a small but dedicated group of people that are very clear about their reasons for using your product being antagonism to the tech monopolists. you come out guns blazing and say to the courts "yeah that's right fuck Google. Their browser monopoly has put us in this position we absolutely hate where we are dependent on exactly the company that has crushed the life from our organization and keeps us alive as a corporate human shield to deflect accurate claims that they have swallowed the internet whole. The only way out is to cut them to ribbons, but since we doubt the court will have the courage to do that, we now need everyone who wants to see a free internet to put their money where their mouth is and fund us as we go to the mattresses to keep the internet alive. No AI bullshit, no bizarre doublespeak, pay up or we're dead." It's not unprecedented. Meredith is over there giving the finger to surveillance capital every day and ramping up the donation nagware for Signal users, which they gladly do, because Signal fucks. and Mozilla used to fuck.

@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.