- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- memes@lemmy.world
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Mozilla chose to waste most of it.
Right? I don’t need AI BS. I just want a solid browser.
What do you mean, you don’t want an opt-out ad tracker?
I kinda get why they (and other companies) have to try AI at the moment though.
It’s not what people claim it is, but it could end up being an essential tool for the modern world, and if they don’t invest in it early their business might end up getting left behind.
We’ve certainly seen companies fall because they’ve not tried to stay on the cutting edge before.
But is a bullshit generator even cutting edge in terms of web browsing? Feels like solutions without a problem.
Netscape navigator ftw
I still have a retail copy somewhere on a CD. I wonder if it’ll even load on a modern OS.
What AI bullshit? I didn’t get the memo.
There’s no mention of adding AI to the browser. It’s just an AI platform or ecosystem for development.
Mozilla has a finite amount of money. If they’re (as far as I’m concerned) wasting it on AI nonsense, that’s less development funds that can go toward Firefox.
I don’t know. I think for them it’s an opportunity to draw more attention and investments. Especially now with how hot AI is at the moment.
I think people are overreacting a bit.
While ML does have legit uses in many specific cases, this whole “throw ‘AI’ into everything” hype/trend is just blockchain all over again. IMO, the ones who are overreacting are the ones swept up in the hype.
In that there is a finite amount of money, there is also a finite amount of development that can go on at once. If they just pile tons and tons of bodies on what you might call useful endeavors, it can lead to bloat and the right hand not knowing what the left is doing.
I hate to see AI (I suppose we mean specifically GPTs in this instance) trashed all the time, just because companies use it incorrectly. They shove it in every hole they can to hike the stock price. But it’s a great tool, that arguably needs more time in the oven, which has legitimate helpful uses. Especially in the context of a browser.
For example, in Arc Browser I can semantically search the page/article for anything and it will show me the location of the information I need (ever tried to find the recipe itself in an article about the recipe?). I can also do some obvious stuff, like summarize and translate sections, which I could do by copying it into a dedicated service, but it’s definitely much more convenient being built-in.
Would be much better if it ran locally off the NPU, but we are not there yet.Downvotes from the people who believe that all “AI” is an LLM/GPT that must be trained on the collective stolen works of all humanity and requires all of South America’s collective power supply for just a day’s worth of queries
No one is protesting machine learning.
Yeah, lots of people are.
The lemmy community “Fuck AI” literally has
A place for all those who loathe machine-learning
as a description.
…compensating their CEO of all people doing good work in there
Maybe that’s not bad for firefox.
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects and just focus on delivering a good browser.
Algo the lack of google as financial support means they’ll rely more on donations, which would mean that they really need to focus on offering a good browser.
I’ll gladly donate to firefox if I would see they are really focusing on it.
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects
Like Firefox?
It really seemed like it’s been a bit of a side project those last few years…
Maybe less money means less ridiculous side projects
Like Rust?
For userland code that basically fingerbangs every server on the web, some forced memory-safety might not be a bad idea
I really hope that’s sarcastic, because Rust is one of the most valuable additions to the whole IT field in a good while.
Entire industries have been stuck on C/C++ for decades. Industries, which are normally extremely late to any form of modern software development, are now practically jolting to get Rust integrated into their toolchains.
Similarly, languages without runtimes allow for building libraries that can be called from other programming languages, which so far meant C/C++. That’s a big reason why many widely used open-source projects like OpenSSL, SQLite, OpenGL etc. are written in those.
Even if, for whatever reason, you think Rust is awful, getting a third language into the mix will allow many more people to build similar libraries, which is again really good for everyone.
In reality it means they’ll have to focus more on monetization, which will create more enshittification and not less.
What they need is to focus on enterprise functionality and privacy services. Maybe they could even do some sort of consulting
The problem is that building a plain simple browser doesn’t pay.
Maybe they can stop paying their CEO 7 million per year
That CEO quit earlier this year.
Maybe they can stop paying the next CEO 7 million
Maybe that CEO will also quit, because other companies offer them a higher salary.
It’s so easy to say they should just pay their CEO less. I mean, I get it, it’s a ridiculous amount of money that no one needs. But few people, who are qualified for that job, will just do it out of the goodness of their hearts for a salary far below industry standards.
what the fuck could the CEO possibly do for a company that seems to just fucking zombie its way along, it does literally nothing and hasnt died, what could the CEO possibly be qualified for, it’s not like they’re gaining more market share from having a good product
This shit right here is why we have capitalism and classes, peolle believing a ceo does something so special no one could possibly do it.
Shit might be true for things like software development, science stuff not some overpaid C level exec.
But few people, who are qualified for that job
CEOs do nothing. They rake in millions, and hire advisors to tell them what to do
Literally the “consulting” industry. Making millions off of boneheaded C-suites who only know how to pay others to think for them.
Then go be a CEO
When did I say I want to be a parasite? I want to abolish CEOs, not become one of them
Oh noo.
So anyway
Oh no, I’m sure there won’t be anyone else who would like to be CEO if they quit.
Define “qualified”. Seriously try.
What I primarily meant by that, is that you do need some knowledge about financials. Which isn’t hard to learn, but the group of people willing to learn about it has very little overlap with the people willing to do something out of the goodness of their heart.
Solution: H1B visa CEO
Too expensive. Just get someone undocumented to do it for pennies, then threaten to deport them if they ask for a raise.
All it takes is one person
Maybe they can stop fiddling around with A I.
I know many of us don’t really like AI stuff. But it is just a door opener - and Mozilla needs funding like any company.
The product we sell at our company also has AI features. So far AI got us to talk to many more customers. So far none of them bought the AI stuff - even if in my opinion it would provide productivity increases. For us AI is a net positive: it cost us 2 weeks of writing gluecode, didnt sell at all, opened many doors for selling the main product.
- Mozilla will take money from Microsoft
- Firefox gets Office 365, Exchange, and Azure AD integration
- Netflix partners with Microsoft for advanced HD and DRM
- Microsoft and Mozilla partner to deliver Microsoft-enhanced Firefox for Windows
- ActiveX 2.0
- Firefox requires an account to use
I threw up in my mouth a little
On what planet?
The one where it is controlled by Microsoft
Okay, Satan.
Microsoft is declared a monopoly (again). Firefox has to find new funding (again)
You should clarify which Mozilla you are mentioning. Mozilla Foundation or Mozilla Corporation?
Mozilla chose a stupid business model. 🤷
They’ve undoubtedly been preparing for this day in some capacity. If they didn’t and collapse then yes they chose a stupid business model. But until that happens I think this is a premature statement.
It is shocking to me how many people on Lemmy hate Firefox, which is basically the only real non-chromium alternative that most people can use with minimal compromises. So many people hate Google here yet y’all seem to hate the only viable competitor even more. It’s bizarre to me.
It is shocking to me how many people on Lemmy hate Firefox
Although some people are Google fanbois or reactionary dumbasses, I think most of what you’re misinterpreting as “Firefox hate” is actually love for Firefox and hate for what Mozilla has done to it.
Most Firefox-critics’ feelings towards it are more like this:
Love the browser, hate the corpos desperately trying to fuck it up because that’s the cool thing to do to your software now days.
I remember building Phoenix from source when it was basically still an experiment to decouple it from the suite. Good times.
this does mystify me. only time I nearly dropped firefox was when they did the big change that broke add ons but firefox with the addons I like is the best browser for me. nothing they have done has been consequentially bad. philosophically maybe but the actual effect is not bad compared to any other options.
I think people make a way too big of a deal out of the “Google is the default search engine” thing. If you are worried about that, you can turn it off with like two clicks. For the money they are (were I guess) handed to set that it’s clearly worth it and I would’ve done the same exact thing.
Besides that I just don’t think there is enough reason to be so anti-Firefox. Especially given our current internet climate. And for those who really are that adamant, there are plenty of forks.
oh yeah. duck duck go is for my firefox. duck duck go is another one with a lot of drama that amounts to nothing. have tried a few alts but went back.
Same. DDG is fine/flawed, google is terrible (morally and otherwise) and the results are actively getting worse.
I always got the opposite impression: people here love Firefox. But it seems that’s part of why they’re critical of its shortcomings.
At least for me, if I’m criticizing something, it probably means I care at least a little bit about whatever I’m criticizing. Not worth time talking about things I actually dislike.
I don’t think people hate Firefox as much as people hate Mozilla and what they’re doing with Firefox.
its an emotional reaction. google has always been bad, them doing a bad thing is just business as usual. who cares
but when mozilla does something bad? mozilla is supposed to be the good guy! they betrayed us!
I’d like you to show me how Mozilla is operating on the same evil level as Google. There’s no way you can make that argument. And yes “less bad” by orders of magnitude is way better and enough for me to use Firefox over Chrome.
its an emotional reaction, not a rational one. i know mozilla, despite its problems, is faaaar from being as bad as google
to be clear i don’t hate mozilla, i do hate google, and i feel like the hate mozilla gets is way overblown, even if their actions are disappointing
Only viable competitor is a bizarre thing to drop when browsers like Opera exist.
Built on chromium.
Don’t you think they dabbled on stupid projects and acquired some companies like pocket precisely because just a browser wasn’t enough to pay the bills?
That’s why Mozilla Foundation shouldn’t have created Mozilla Corporation in first place.
Meh. It’s just Monopoly money /j
I hope Mozilla put most of that Google money into index funds or something. At least it didn’t go into paying the developers.
Oh for fun! I don’t want Mozilla to go down, Firefox is one of the few non-Chromium web browsers; I’m glad that Google is pronounced as a monopoly, as it is true. However, for every good thing, there is a terrible curse that shows how much our system needs to be changed. It will be so heartening to not have Apple using Google Search by default, as the results are fucking shit. They could survive the lack of Investor Daddy’s cash.
I wonder if it will make apple create it’s own search engine or?
I suspect that Apple will choose to open up the choice of what search engine a user would like to use instead of Google. To avoid playing favorites or getting into an oversaturated market.
They could piss all their competitors off by investing a bit into a FOSS add-free search engine (and hosting it) and putting that as default
ROFL This is Apple we’re talking about, the slowest to innovate in the tech space. That would be a Samsung maneuver, in my opinion (if that giant tech corpo would even consider a FOSS ad-free search engine). Apple is just now getting some customization options this September with an update, something Samsung and third party launchers have pretty much solved years ago.
Let me live in my fantasy land okay?
😂
I’ll let you stare at the stars and imagine a better world then. 😂
It really is bizarre that they did Apple Maps before an Apple Search.
I don’t know, I think they wanted that Google money so much they didn’t bother! It might have been in the cards, but perhaps Google beat them to the punch and evaporated their desire to create a search engine. Search engines are likely not a business that Apple wants to get too involved in as well, that’s something to consider. Sometimes it’s better to use what is already out there and not sink too much capital in something so uncertain. I doubt Apple would’ve seen a serious amount of success with Google being the top dog in search.
Firefox is open source, we don’t need Mozilla.
Bro thinks he made a point💀
If you disagree, why not share your opinion instead of just downvoting? Why do you think Mozilla is the only organization capable of supporting Firefox?
There needs to be a willing organisation with large amounts of funding in the first place because a browser is a full time job.
Also, others have already said why the spirit of RMS can’t will a browser into a usable application and I just wanted to meme.
Provided that someone with enough skill takes up the mantle of maintaining a fork…I’m sure it will be fine!
Welll yeah, obviously. I wasn’t suggesting Firefox would somehow become sentient and develop itself.
ROFL I wasn’t suggesting that you were suggesting that. Like any open source project, uh, talent tends to pick up important things that get abandoned. It would be an amusing turn of events, probably in the distant future when AI becomes a thing. That a program can start its own journey of self-improvement. 😂
I know, I was just being hyperbolic. Not sure why my OC is so downvoted, I’m pretty sure people don’t think Mozilla is the only org capable of leading the project.
LOL Yeah, I get it…Thus my non-serious response. Who know why people do anything? Personally, I can’t downvote, as it seems to be disabled by my current server. There have only been a few times that I’ve seen a post or comment really need a good old downvote. There are capable orgs out there, for now, I suppose in their perspective it is only Mozilla who could handle it. However, open source code can be read and seen by anyone, so that means there are people out there familiar enough with Firefox to take it on if needs must when the devil drives.
In my utopia, Google would be forced to continue to pay out the current annual contract sum, at a decreasing percentage every year, for some number of years, to all affected companies, giving them the opportunity to divest and pivot.
The root problem doesn’t get fixed if the company with enough money to be a monopolist still has the money when this is “resolved.”
That is actually fairly smart. That way you don’t shock the ecosystem and effect the economy.
If tech giants such as Google cannot be broken up, then their services should be required to be compatible and all data exportable to competitors. See the EFFʼs “Competitive Compatibility” concept. Buy a movie off Google’s YouTube but Google misbehaves? It must be exportable to a market competitor that you do support. Don’t like how Google handles your email? You should be able to switch your email address to a competitor just like you can change phone companies without losing your phone number.
Basically, if the US Federal government cannot discipline monopolies by breaking them up directly, they should break up the moats and walled gardens the monopolies built to keep customers locked in to maintain their monopolies. See Chokepoint Capitalism by Rebecca Giblin and Cory Doctorow.
Firefox; being open source as it is; is not in danger.
Should we buy Mozilla?
Sure, how much could a web browser cost anyways? Here’s $20.
I would actually like to know how much it cost. And how much each user “should” pay so it becomes viable.
Though I would really think that public institutions should use firefox as a base browser instead of edge/chrome as being open source is usually a big plus for public agencies that need to really control what’s going on in their computers. And thus being a big source of financial support for firefox.
Someone above posted that they have a revenue of 593 million dollars per year. Presumably somewhat below that is going to be their yearly costs.
And according to this, they have around 160 million desktop Firefoxes showing up, which is going to be roughly how many active users there are.
593 / 160 would be $3.71 per user.
Maybe ad-supported version?
Like the Opera browser in 2000s.
Yes. Can we ? Eh …
I have a very mouthy Jackson who says no.
I’d pay for a browser if it wouldn’t sell my data.
I wouldn’t mind paying for a browser, but I’m not thrilled with the idea of subscribing to a browser.
people pay for a search engine, they would subscribe for a browser if it does what they want
if Mozilla bundles a private, secure and well packaged browser with a good search engine and this browser performs well while still providing the current version for free, there’s a certain minority who would be compelled to pay for it
atm, a browser and search engine is the major gateway to the internet, google has always done that at the cost of the user being a product, but it is now fucking that up and an alternative is needed, Mozilla could and should step in for that
If a product requires constant maintaining and updates through out its lifetime (like a browser) then it’s make sense for a subscription model.
If a product is released in a defective or malfunctioning state, it makes sense to assign liability to the manufacturer.
if it’s a single player game or a mp3 converter software, then what you’re saying is true.
But the internet is ever changing, new exploits and security vulnerabilities are discovered almost every day. New standards, new formats, new features released so often, even after the full release it still requires a full development team instead of just a few core maintenance staff.
Unless you want to pay for every major version upgrade or risk using an outdated browser, a browser subscription model doesn’t sound so bad.
the internet is ever changing
We have standard protocols for communication that are system agnostic and simple to implement.
Claiming you need a subscription to your browser to use the Internet is akin to claiming you need a subscription to your radio to listen to music.
Radio gets revenue from advertisers, just like Firefox gets money from Google. If you cut off that revenue and move the cost to the consumer, then there’s no “one time payment” that could support a radio station indefinitely, so does Firefox.
Radio gets revenue from advertisers, just like Firefox gets money from Google.
Private For-Profit Radio Stations get revenue from advertisement. But Sony and JBP and Bose aren’t advertisement based. Mozilla isn’t a content provider, its an application developer.
there’s no “one time payment” that could support a radio station indefinitely
There’s no “one time payment” that supports radio manufacturers indefinitely, either. So the companies develop new models and improved features, then retail them as replacements to the old device. But I’ve got an old machine from the 1980s that picks up AM/FM just fine. Sony isn’t out of business because it continues to exist.
maybe firefox forks already do the trick for you, i’ve heared there are plenty free ones. no need to pay, but maybe donations are very welcome. also a complete open source solution that is ready to be compiled by anyone could also be patched by anyone for himself to disable a feature heshex dislikes or such.
welcome to free adult world ;-)
Am I the only one who never realized how dead inside the lady looks in the first slide?
Which would ironically give even more monopoly over how the web is viewed to Google. Chrome and Firefox are just about the only two players in that space right now.
