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Mozilla under fire for Firefox AI "bloat" that blows up CPU and drains battery (www.neowin.net)
submitted 1 year ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 82 points 1 year ago (11 children)

Instead of capitalising on Google pissing off power users with its crusade against adblockers, why the hell is Mozilla fucking up so hard here? Seriously, which chain of command green lit all of this and didn't even think this would be remotely an issue?

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  • [–] 55 points 1 year ago

    it might have been Laura Chambers, who is CEO since early 2024.

    It has been less than a week since the new interim CEO took over the reigns from long-time Mozilla CEO Mitchell Baker. Today news broke that Mozilla is changing its product strategy going forward. The organization plans to focus on bringing "trustworthy AI into Firefox" and to scale back some of its other products and services.

    Breaking: Mozilla changes strategy, focuses on Firefox and AI

    She used to work for McKinsey according to her Wikipedia which explains a lot if you ask me.

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  • [–] 28 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Sadly this is nothing new for Mozilla. It's easier to count the decisions they've made that aren't terrible than the ones that are. Their history is a long series of fuckups occasionally punctuated by a decent decision.

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  • [–] 21 points 1 year ago

    Because of this, I've always had 'mixed feelings' (to put it mildly) towards Mozilla, and sometimes I really struggle not to hate them. They're (yet) not Google or Microsoft and that's cool, but besides that, I also cannot think of more than a handful of good decisions against a ton of pretty awful ones, so right now I've settled for 'a necessary evil', which is pretty sad considering their potential.

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  • [–] 11 points 1 year ago (6 children)

    Even if they wanted to bank on the adblocker thing I imagine they can't because they have to stay in Google's good graces. Like 90% of their revenue was google money, and has been for years now.

    At this point I'd honestly even pay for a privacy focused mozilla browser that is clean of all this crap, just to keep them afloat, but fat chance of that happening.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (5 children)

    At this point I'd honestly even pay for a privacy focused mozilla browser that is clean of all this crap, just to keep them afloat, but fat chance of that happening.

    As much as I'd love for something like that I don't think it's even remotely possible. I don't think enough people are willing enough to pay for a browser that respects them, heck the amount of people who remain on Chrome shows that people aren't even willing to take a small step to stop using a browser that's actively working against their interests. I'd love to be proven wrong though.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

    This. It costs hundreds of millions per year to develop a web renderer. The security expertise required in particular is immense.

    People have made clear they will not pay for browsers. At the same time, Mozilla doesn't want to hoover up mountains of personally identifiable information like Google and MS do.

    People hate Mozilla for doing what they can to make money, and they also hate the idea of paying.

    I understand the frustration, but I genuinely don't know what the community expects.

    Don't get me wrong, I don't agree with or see sense in every Mozilla decision, but people act like they're satan incarnate and it's just ridiculous.

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  • [–] 5 points 1 year ago (1 child)

    Honestly if that is it, it is understandable. This AI nonsense, however, is plainly a waste of money and resources, Mozilla's and their users'.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Depends what you mean by this AI nonsense. Some of it is great. Offline translation in Firefox is great, as is the enhanced screen reader for blind people.

    Chat bot integration less so, but it's opt-in so I don't bother getting myself worked up about it.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    The community are idiots.

    They just want free shit. They claim they would love to pay but look at the percentage of donations things like VLC get, they won't pay.

    Google likely spends over a billion dollars a year developing Chrome and everyone likes to talk about how AI might upset web search forgetting that what is where Mozilla's money comes from.

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  • [–] 1 point 1 year ago

    Developing from scratch yes, but several decent open source renderers exist. I'd love to see someone grab Servo and polish it to a fully usable state (I think it's something like 75% of the way there).

    The issue also isn't Mozilla trying to make money, it's Mozilla trying to make money in the stupidest way possible, or even worse actively wasting money like with this AI slop. There's also the issue of what Mozilla is spending on. It came out a little while back how much their executives are making and it's completely ridiculous. They could afford multiple full time devs with just the money the CEO makes for making the worst decisions imaginable.

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