this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025

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672

Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox (www.theverge.com)

submitted 3 months ago by azdle@news.idlestate.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

195 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Mozilla is in a tricky position. It contains both a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the internet a better place for everyone, and a for-profit arm dedicated to, you know, making money. In the best of times, these things feed each other: The company makes great products that advance its goals for the web, and the nonprofit gets to both advocate for a better web and show people what it looks like. But these are not the best of times. Mozilla has spent the last couple of years implementing layoffs and restructuring, attempting to explain how it can fight for privacy and openness when Google pays most of its bills, while trying to find its place in an increasingly frothy AI landscape.

Fun times to be the new Mozilla CEO, right? But when I put all that to Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, the company’s just-announced chief executive, he swears he sees opportunity in all the upheaval. “I think what’s actually needed now is a technology company that people can trust,” Enzor-DeMeo says. “What I’ve seen with AI is an erosion of trust.”

Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon. But there’s still an AI Mode coming to Firefox next year, which Enzor-DeMeo says will offer users their choice of model and product, all in a browser they can understand and from a company they can trust. “We’re not incentivized to push one model or the other,” he says. “So we’re going to try to go to market with multiple models.”

-_-

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[–] gravitywell@sh.itjust.works 15 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (6 children)

Ive been wary if firefox since wheneved it was they decided it was okay to shove "pocket" into the browser. These days i dont see mozilla as anything other than anti monopoly insurance for google, which they obviously dont need anymore.

Mozilla as a company has just been a decade of one poor decision after another adding more bloat and doing nothing meaningful to counter chromes near monopoly.

Vivaldi isnt perfect and brave has its baggage, but at least they actually include adblocking out of the box, a feature that just about everyone wants. Sure its easy enough to install an addon to firefox for it but the fact that you even have to do that should tell you everything you need to know about who mozilla is actually working for.

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[–] skip0110@lemmy.zip 13 points 3 months ago (1 children)

🤷‍♂️ ironfox exists

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[–] namingthingsiseasy@programming.dev 13 points 3 months ago

I was having issues with Librewolf on a work computer a few weeks ago, so I decided to try Firefox to see if it was LW's security settings.

Holy shit, what a fucking trainwreck Firefox has become! It's so bad that I can't honestly recommend anyone use it anymore. The first time I started it, I saw all kinds of ads and trashy "news" articles that had no relevance to me whatsoever. Plus I had to reinstall all my extensions because they weren't signed and there's no way to disable that requirement. I was so horrified and offended, I just dumped it immediately and tried Chrome instead. What difference is there at this point?

It's just insulting at this point. I understand that they trying to find new revenue sources, and things are still better today than they were with Mitchell Baker as CEO, but it's still horrific how poorly Mozilla is being run. I'm so grateful we still have usable forks from the amazing people running projects like Librewolf. Without them, the web would just be flat out unusable.

[–] yetAnotherUser@lemmy.ca 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

Mozilla has had decades to find a sustainable business structure that aligns with the values of its contributors and users, yet here we are...

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[–] I_Clean_Here@lemmy.world 12 points 3 months ago (1 children)

But why? Be unique! Don't just do what everyone else does!

[–] Bahnd@lemmy.world 15 points 3 months ago (4 children)

Given what Microsoft is smoking these days, no AI would be a selling point, and Mozilla does not seem to realize they are playing with fire. Their userbase chose their product instead of using the system defaults of Chrome, Safari, and Internet Exploder. Their users, just like Lemmy, are tech-litrrate and more socially concious than the masses. If an alternative or fork appears, with sufficent support, and Mozilla does not put the breaks on their AI train, were all just going to jump ship. We do it every time a new OS is installed, there is no Firefox loyalty, only lesser evils.

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[–] drath@lemmy.world 10 points 3 months ago

As per usual, Google's funding selects the music, and the music is to sink Firefox down even further.

[–] cley_faye@lemmy.world 9 points 3 months ago

At some point there'll be enough pressure for a large enough fork of Firefox and Thunderbird to exist separately from Mozilla. Keep pushing, random clueless CEO.

[–] Sunflier@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (3 children)

Can it be disabled?

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 8 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (1 children)

Who is this a signal for though? They could silently add the AI features and rally their base on aspects people actually like. It's almost like Firefox doesn't want to succeed

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[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago

I guess it is time to fully switch off of firefox then. I'm not fighting my browser turning off AI features per update.

[–] AshMan85@lemmy.world 7 points 3 months ago (5 children)

Switching browser

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[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 6 points 3 months ago

I was hopeful for thundermail.

Not any more, seeing that.

[–] FluidBeef@quokk.au 6 points 3 months ago (2 children)

Is it possible for the major forks to just go their own way, or is it more complicated than that? Obviously anyone building a new browser engine from the ground up now with complete HTML, CSS and JavaScript spec is so immense an undertaking as to sound far-fetched, so the open source community would need to leverage whatever it can.

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