Mozilla Corporation has named its new CEO in replacing interim CEO Laura Chambers.
Anthony Enzor-DeMeo has been named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation. Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was SVP of Firefox from 2004 to July 2005 and then from July until now was the GM of Firefox at Mozilla. He's written a public message today in his first day serving as the new chief executive for Mozilla.
"People want software that is fast, modern, but also honest about what it does. They want to understand what’s happening and to have real choices.
Mozilla and Firefox can be that choice.
Few companies share our strengths. People trust our brand. Firefox brings us global reach. Our teams know how to build reliable, independent software at scale, and our business model puts the user first.
As Mozilla moves forward, we will focus on becoming the trusted software company. This is not a slogan. It is a direction that guides how we build and how we grow. It means three things.
First: Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off. People should know why a feature works the way it does and what value they get from it.
Second: our business model must align with trust. We will grow through transparent monetization that people recognize and value.
Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions."
AI is mentioned throughout Enzor-DeMeo's announcement post on the Mozilla Blog.
Honestly none of this sounds good.
Firefox will grow into a suite of software? Why?
People just want Mozilla to make Firefox fast and modern (I.e. renders their content, follows web standards correctly, is secure)
AI and whatever else is just a distraction from the one product people want.
Do you know the saying, something like "traffic engineers are paid to build roads, they are not paid to not build roads"
In line with this, MBAs will do MBA things.
My guess is that this is just a branding push. Not so much "the firefox browser will start doing all sorts of non browser things" and more like "we're going to call our non-browser things firefox".
For example:
I thought Thunderbird was a community project nowadays.
It is, but sponsored by Mozilla, so some of their staff are probably still involved. And of course is open source, so they could just take the newest release and fork it back, if they'd wish.
I thought that's what the direction a while ago was, as well. Mozilla would focus on the browser only, and make that really good. Now it's a complete 180 if we are to interpret this in the worst possible way.