Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch
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After installing a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product
    • AlteredEgo@lemmy.ml
      42·
      9 months ago

      A browser AI to detect AI shenanigans on websites would be awesome. Let the AI wars begin!

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
      114·
      9 months ago

      She spent 2 yrs at McK 20+ yrs ago - hardly a personality-defining milestone, given how a lot of business students start their career in consulting.

      • anachronist@midwest.socialEnglish
        101·
        9 months ago

        I mean that’s pretty standard for a McKinsey ghoul:

        • Step 1: go to an ivy league college, get a business degree
        • Step 2: work for McKinsey for a few years as an associate
        • Step 3: get a job at a McKinsey client leapfrogging everyone else into management/c-suite
        • Step 4: hire McKinsey to bring their arrogant children into your org and screw things up

        Everything about her subsequent career has been going from one upper management/c-suite role in a tech company to another. This is not the resume of a person who should be running a nonprofit that controls the most important open source project on the internet. But beyond that just look at what she’s done in her one month at Mozilla:

          1. Massive round of layoffs
          1. “Focus on {buzzword}” where {buzzword} in this case is AI

        That’s straight out of the McKinsey playbook.

  • FlumPHP@programming.dev
    13·
    9 months ago

    While we resourced mozilla.social heavily to pursue this ambitious idea,

    How many people do you need to administer a Mastodon instance? I’m pretty sure infosec.exchange is like one dude.

  • sub_ubi@lemmy.ml
    102·
    9 months ago

    Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago.

    I just purchased an annual plan for Monitor, partially to help Mozilla. I guess this is my thanks

    • RedNight@lemmy.ml
      2·
      9 months ago

      Monitor is something different than mentioned. Based on this article, that product is still good. See the correction at the bottom

  • nephs@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    9 months ago

    So… Who’s the board of mozilla hiring the ceo, again? How did this board come to be?

  • feoh@lemmy.ml
    52·
    9 months ago

    Kinda disappointing how much of the community just takes a giant 💩 on Mozilla whatever it does these days. Funding open source is super crazy hard folks. Notice that the really successful well funded projects are fueled by megacorps?

    Offering constructive criticism is great but if you don’t have better ideas around how to fund an open browser without selling your soul to GOOG or MSFT then perhaps your energy might be better spent elsewhere.

    • Fungah@lemmy.world
      12·
      9 months ago

      Train ai to I filtrate Google and kill sundar prichai.

      It won’t help anyone’s bottom line but then at least sundar prichai would be dead.

  • Political Custard@lemmygrad.ml
    3·
    9 months ago

    Focusing on the core business (the browser) and dropping products (that are already done better by others) seems like a very good idea. I have seen zero people on Mastodon on a mozilla.social account and I’ve never seen their VPN appear in a list of top/recommended VPNs. I just want a world class browser that pounds the competition and regains browser market share. If Firefox dies, we are f’kd.

  • Nina@lemmy.mlEnglish
    1·
    9 months ago

    A reminder that there are many firefox forks that exist if base firefox is adding unwanted things or you might have different wants, but sites will still “see” firefox in terms of compatibility. I’m using Librewolf with some annoyances (it doesn’t let things fingerprint to the point that it can’t even get your current time), but overall I like it.

  • echo64@lemmy.world
    1·
    9 months ago

    At the very least I don’t feel like I need more out of Firefox than it has today. If it all goes to shit, then a free Firefox Ala chromium would do fine.

    • anachronist@midwest.socialEnglish
      6·
      9 months ago

      I remember what happened last time. Gradually the web will become unusable if you’re not using Chrome. That’s how it worked back in the day with Internet Explorer. Microsoft even began hooking things into IE that can only work on windows (activex controls) and then getting websites to support them.

      When I first started using Linux I had to switch to Netscape 4.7 because it was the only browser available and the web barely worked. I remember thinking “well, the web sucks on Linux but I guess I can live without it.”