Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery
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That is disingenuous.
People underestimate the cost of building a fucking browser, it's not the equivalent of maintaining a array sort app on fucking github.
Some random dude promising to "donate from time to time" is not a valid business model.
I wish they'd strip down and just focus on the browser, but fund it HOW? Ads? Subscription?
The reason a lot of companies are doing AI shit is essentially RD shooting in the dark, hoping something will pan out.
You have to do this if you are a tech company and want to survive in the future.
It's fun to meme on ai and but that shit is coming and pretending it doesn't exist or has no value simply isn't true.
So I ask everyone again, what business model exists for a software company to make money without ads or charging a monthly subscription.
Bless your heart.
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I could not disagree more.
Mozilla has used the most powerful cheat code in history: infinite money for free.
Google cannot let Mozilla go under or they would become an actual monopolist, triggering a lot of laws that would force them to diversifying/selling the browser.
They don't want any of that headache so they're pumping Mozilla full of money, making sure that they can always operate as "the other browser engine".
The issue is that Mozilla's management seems to be completely incapable of doing anything interesting. Instead of ensuring that Firefox is the lightest, most optimised browser on the market while also being packed full of features (or at least full-fledged add-ons, not this crap they have), they do... mostly nothing.
Their last major update was "vertical tabs", something that Chromium-based browsers had for around a decade.
Their previous major update was integrating Pocket...
Meanwhile, PWAs still barely work, add-ons are still dependent on the website being loaded instead of working on the browser level, the whole thing still feels bulky.
Mozilla management needs to be replaced and then we might see some movement on the market.
You're forgetting the fact that laws are currently only being triggered if said company slanders dear leader.
If Google kisses ass you best believe they would completely allow them to be a monopoly and would ignore any laws being violated
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That's basically what LibreWolf does.
Yep, and it still works great. I even use LibreWolf on my work machine, and since it's running Linux I need to use all the Microsoft 365 stuff, like attending meetings via Teams, in my web browser. I just let it persist and share some site data to make things run smoothly. (which is a compromise, yeah)
The only real issue I had was when I installed the flatpak version, and it was the flatpak permissions screwing with me. Most of the time though I have been using the version from their repo.
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I thought mozilla was a non profit?
wrote last edited by [email protected]Profit can be distorted based on how much employees are being paid.
They're a "non-profit," but their CEO makes millions of dollars per year. I'd say that's a profit.
Believing otherwise is just falling for rhetoric that exists to take advantage of our naivete so people richer than us can be even richer.
Many of you will disagree with this (because you're greedy consumerists), but their employees also typically don't need to be paid nearly as much as they are. Their employees are also working to maximize profit, albeit from a different, less-effective angle.
Money brings out the worst in people. I don't really value the input of people going to bat for the businessmen taking their money. Too often I see useful idiots proud to be ripped off and getting angry whenever someone points it out. It's really the norm at this point, which is sad.
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How do you think they will do that without any money?
It's always "just do the browser" , ignoring the fact that everything you listed doesn't matter at all to the general public who are likely using Chrome because it's the default on their device.
Mozilla is trying to find revenue sources but people just complain about it.
The AI integration is clearly attempting to be a new search box.
Look at the executives pay of Mozilla, there is a lot of money there to start with.
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If a browser only aims at tech savvy people, practically no one will end up using it.
Yeah, a good browser should probably take an approach similar to Linux Mint.
It has to be easy to install and it has to work great for like 99.9% of normal uses without changing a single setting.
But, being free and open, if you are tech savvy then you can change and customize whatever you want. Sometimes it means I can lock down the privacy and data storage in my browser, and sometimes it means I can change the icon on my work computer's "start" button to be a check engine light. It's all just part of being able to use your computer the way you want to.
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I thought mozilla was a non profit?
Mozilla is a bizarre Matryoshka doll with a for profit company inside of the nonprofit. If anything, I believe this structure is responsible for Mozilla's problems
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Here I am using browsers like apps. Chrome is my facebook app. I do zero else with it lol.
but really, my solution works fine. Is another 200MB on your SSD really that big of a sacrifice? I have Firefox, Chrome(in a fucking container where it belongs) and Librewolf installed lol.
I have sort of the same three browsers on all my machines.
LibreWolf: to use
Firefox: it's the default browser and feels like it should still be installed. And just a couple times a year some website has a strange issue in LibreWolf but will work in Firefox. Honestly I'd rather do it this way than start weakening LibreWolf's settings to make outlier sites work.
Ungoogled Chromium: I'm sure it will come in handy some day.
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I just want a web browser that's not based in the USA.
ecosia and qwant are german and french respectively :3
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ecosia and qwant are german and french respectively :3
Those are search engines though, not web browsers.
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Those are search engines though, not web browsers.
on android theyre browsers :3
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It's also an example of a smaller company trying fight a mega Corp with infinite money, gained via unethical means.
People are shitting on Firefox while ignoring what they are up against.
I have no solution for their funding issue, what are they supposed to do? Charge for the browser or ads? There's literally no other alternative and I don't know what the solution is.
What I do know is that once FF dies and chrome fully owns the web we are well and truly fucked.
Honesty it might already be too late.
Basically, Firefox only crushes a handful of elderly cats while everyone else crushes kittens by the shipload.
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ecosia and qwant are german and french respectively :3
I mean truly independent of USA code base. Everything is still relying on upstream Chromium or Firefox with superficial tweaks and gimmicks. The maintainers of LibreWolf and Fennec which are what I'm using are more like game mod devs.
If ecosia+qwant actually forked from either and broke compatibility going their own path I'd consider them non USA. I know those two are working together on a search indexer and I'm very excited about that coming to fruition because that's more what I'm talking about and eager to support.
I realise what a mammoth challenge this is
Probably needs EU funding like the search indexer. -
I love Zen.
Zen user here also. Awesome project. Beautiful and useful browsing experience.
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Why not add this features as browser extension?
Facebook Container comes to mind, they've done this before already.
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browser.ml.chat.enabled falseI hate how many of these you have to do on any new installation of Firefox.
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I just want a web browser that's not based in the USA.
RIP the old Opera before they went Chromium.
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It's definitely an issue with the culture among tech companies.
They're all regurgitating each other's shit, so whenever a bad idea gets passed around, they all jump on board.
Every ignorant, fearing for their bonus CEO: "If we dont do that, we'll get left behind!"
Feh! Feh I say!
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Are we pretending that lots and lots of people aren't incredibly horny for AI right now?
Actual users hate AI. Shareholders love it. It’s a bubble and the business world is trying to force it everywhere they can to create a dependency.
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It's also an example of a smaller company trying fight a mega Corp with infinite money, gained via unethical means.
People are shitting on Firefox while ignoring what they are up against.
I have no solution for their funding issue, what are they supposed to do? Charge for the browser or ads? There's literally no other alternative and I don't know what the solution is.
What I do know is that once FF dies and chrome fully owns the web we are well and truly fucked.
Honesty it might already be too late.
They could stop paying their CEO so much and hire a few more devs, refocus their identity on privacy and performance (their offline ai translation is actually really useful), and actually give people the sense that their donations will be well spent.
