That is revisionist history. Firefox succeeded because MS was sitting on their hands with IE, and it was stagnating. Firefox didnt do the opposite of what IE - you could argue Mozilla was doing what MS should have been.

It wasnt about "respecting users", or "agency" but simply implemented standards properly.

And that's going to be a hard problem with Chrome because you're up against a browser that is moving very, very, fast.

The extension ecosystem, tabs, plugins, and notably whatever effort they did behind the scenes to ensure that companies that did streaming video etc. would work with their browser all played out really well.

I think the ultimate problem is that Mozilla's mission of a standards-compliant web with open-source browsers everywhere ultimately did get achieved. The era of "Works with IE6" badges has ended and the top browsers run on open-source engines. Despite our enthusiasm at the time for it, I think the truth is that Firefox was probably just a vehicle for this, much bigger, achievement.

Now that it's been achieved, Mozilla is in the fortunate place where Firefox only needs to exist as a backstop against Chrome sliding into high-proprietary world while providing the utility to Google that they get to say they're not a monopoly on web technologies.

Mozilla's search for a new mission isn't some sign of someone losing their way. It's just what happens to the Hero of Legend after he defeats the Big Bad. There's a post-denouement period. Sam Gamgee gets to go become Mayor of the Shire, which is all very convenient, but a non-profit like Mozilla would much rather find a similar enough mission that they can apply their vast resources to. That involves the same mechanics as product development, and they're facing the same primary thing: repeated failure.

That's just life.

The AI stuff is the perfect example. Are there people who like AI? Certainly. Will they use firefox? Probably not.

At this stage firefox is the anti-establishment choice. That crowd hates AI. Betting on AI might make sense if you are chrome. It doesn't make sense if you are firefox.

XUL was very good, but then it was no more. And as soon as it was gone, Electron apps appeared. It's a tragedy. Mozilla had everything to be in that place instead, with a better product.

Once that was gone, Firefox became just another browser, doing what any browser does. It's still very good, and my first choice, but damn I miss XUL.

Opting out of AI would be like saying that you don't use JavaScript because you don't like the moral position of the guy who wrote it. That's a reasonable moral position to take (I totally get not wanting to use LLMs for reasons of copyright, art, or even just capability), but a completely unreasonable technical position to take, functionally impossible.

Why does Mozilla not give you a convenient opt out? Because it's hard, low impact, and functionally no-one wants it.

https://kb.mozillazine.org/Prefs.js_file

I guess everyone would agree that web browsers would come to our mind when we hear "user-agent" in general context. After years of forward and backward evolution of web extensions, AI powered web browsers inevitably will move forward the meaning of the term "user-agent" and deliver the value it actually promises.

Together with the advance of "browser-use" optimized local LLMs, current M4 powered Macbook Air can provide enough juice to aid users' web browsing needs. I believe soon AI hubs installed at homes, or cloud based private AI inference engines will become much more accessible offerings to help with mobile browsers as well. Overall, I think it's ridiculous to criticise Mozilla for introducing optional AI features on Firefox.

Out of the five options available, only one is European (the one I am using). What I don't like is how I cannot add my own custom endpoint. What if I run Mistral locally (with Ollama, for example) and want to use that?

Also, I really do think there should be a fat warning about uploading data from browser to a third party. Yes, every bloody time. Not everything the browser shows is publicly available data. There are people who are going to break the law with this tool (ie. using PII with LLM), and the people who are damaged are going to be innocent third parties who didn't opt-out or opt-in anything.

The BS with not being easily able to disable a feature like this is probably to deter, or because 'user studies' showed people don't want to disable it. Well, fuck that. It isn't rocket science to have a checkbox which just deals with these values in about:config.

I'm still a happy Firefox & Thunderbird user because ultimately it's still the only one that has at least a modicum of respect for its users, but all the recent AI pushes is making me annoyed with Mozilla because it's just so pointless.

when the AI tab/sidebar appeared, I just closed it. that's it. and it never appeared again. I didn't need to change any special setting.

maybe there was another dialog or two which asked me to enable AI something which I answered No and dont remember.

this article is written in bad faith, Firefox is not pushing AI at every opportunity like Edge for example

Here are instructions on how to disable all of it:

https://github.com/Aetherinox/firefox-telemetry-block

(and no, you can't do it with just a few checkboxes in the prefs, you have to go into the advanced pref editor and look up some stuff.)

I now see there's also a "Create alt texts automatically" for pdfjs. This actually seems one of the more useful AI features I've seen. But I've never noticed it exists as I don't need this accessibility feature. You can disable it in the pdfjs (no about:config needed).

In short, Firefox is not forcing anyone to use AI and ways to disable it are not that obfuscated.

https://youtube.com/shorts/FObvkFtr2ZU?si=U6fCphjmGcNMb5ac

Needs to cease to exist at this point. It is part of the cancer.

Citation definitely needed. ChatGPT has almost a billion users.

I do agree with the main point that this should be easy to turn off, but let's not pretend that everyone hates AI as much as the average HN nerd.

Also, you could argue that Firefox's only remaining users are the average HN nerd and therefore it shouldn't pursue AI, but that's exactly the problem.

The author claims to be an "IaaS engineer", surely, he can figure out how to write a firefox plugin, that can do what he wants, and use that to help non-technical users, and if it becomes popular enough will probably effect the change he wishes to see.