Post
Mozilla announces more AI in Firefox, still failing to understand that at this point their market share is made of tech savvy people who do not want that.
Mozilla, please. Stop chasing the fads. Get your own values.
People use Firefox to get access to an open web, use a sturdy browser, and not to be tracked. Build in that direction and that direction only.
Nobody from your current user base will recommend Firefox with AI to their friends.
I'm part of their userbase and I wouldn't mind if they were useful features that advance open source AI. Some of the stuff they've done, like llamafile, is useful in that respect.
So far all the _browser_ features I've seen that have shipped were half-baked, buggy, and without a clear user story, and I've disabled them all.
The "AI Window" concept sounds like they're trying to reinvent Open WebUI. That's a very high bar to clear.
@thibaultamartin The worst part is, the Mozilla foundation is big and fat. Switching away from Firefox (or codebase), requires similar means and resources. At least, if you want to keep the engine alive.
I’m not digging the chromium engine, but Firefox for me switched from preferred browser to least-awefull-until-something-better-arrives browser.
they should do things that enhance the web because that's where they are planted. they had so much money flowing in, never managed to put any of it to good use.
@thibaultamartin Nothing good will come from AI.
@thibaultamartin I recommend Firefox to non-techie friends who want AI browser :P
@thibaultamartin Jeez, Glad I've been moving things off Firefox this past week, and adopting #Waterfox. Without any hiccups so far, so it seems to be stable and useful as a daily driver.
They're digging themselves into a hole.
@thibaultamartin
The only thing I want to know about AI in Firefox (or anywhere else) is how to turn it off so it stays off forever.
@thibaultamartin It is sad. I used to tell people to not move to Vivaldi because it is Chromium and closed source. Mozilla is making it harder for advocates to not get laughed out of conversations.
@thibaultamartin
AFAIK their Ai will be local so it won't track anyone
@thibaultamartin Not sure if that is the majority of them, it's certainly at least a fair chunk of the user base. I'm also not sure if that wouldn't result in crystallizing the user share on a very small part of web users, and therefore preventing Mozilla's mission.
What they are failing to understand and do is to adopt this with the correct tone and possibly correct priority on the UX. The blog doesn't even mention the users who don't want AI as existing, and that's offensive.
Mozilla sprouted Rust and Servo. They can do cool things that make the world a better place, even if it takes more work to extract a marketing argument for an investor brochure.
It's frustrating to see Mozilla dig its own hole of irrelevancy.
@thibaultamartin Agreed, I am still using FF because it's still the least bad and most maintained browser but this will be what makes me jump ship eventually. Lots of people are less tolerant than me and already have. If at least they had one master switch to disable all that, but no, it's like 7 settings at this point and they tend to reset when it updates...
@thibaultamartin Forum users are quite vocals on this too
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/building-ai-the-firefox-way-shaping-what-s-next-together/td-p/109922
What a waste of time and resources
A space for Bonfire maintainers and contributors to communicate
