• Hubi@feddit.org
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    2 months ago

    Why? Doesn’t look like there’s any explanation for this move.

    • Tamlyn@lemmy.zip
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      2 months ago

      The new CEO of Mozilla, Laura Chambers, already said on march she want to reduce investment for mastodon and other products (VR, VPN, Relay). So this is just another part in reducing cost on section that doesn’t produce money. I’m not surprised. Sadly i have only a german source for that and the soure of them, bloomberg has a paywall.

      • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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        2 months ago

        Good. They should focus on their browser. No one wanted their side projects. It was scope creep and took away resources from their main product offering. Sounds like the right move.

        • asdfasdfasdf@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          But then how do you make money with a browser if you aren’t getting Google money and don’t spy on users?

        • Monument@lemmy.sdf.org
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          2 months ago

          My understanding is that they are focusing on adding in “AI” features in a big way, and that’s why they cut development on the other work. 🫤

            • barsoap@lemm.ee
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              2 months ago

              There’s already AI in firefox: The integrated translator. From what I’ve heard they’re looking into ingesting browsing history locally so that you can find stuff again easier.

              • FeelzGoodMan420@eviltoast.org
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                2 months ago

                What do you mean ingesting browsing history locally? For AI? I don’t want that. But I’d interested in your opinion and explanation though!

                • barsoap@lemm.ee
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                  2 months ago

                  So you can find things by “that spicy chicken recipe” instead of having to remember what it was actually called, or slog through a gazillion chicken recipes in your history when you realise that “spicy” was nowhere in the name. Basically stemming/thesaurus search on steroids.

                  It’s quite likely to be opt-in as I imagine ingesting the sites you’re looking at is a significant computational load. The translators are also opt-in, there’s enough stuff inbuilt to detect languages but not to translate, you have to download those models first. And they’re quite good btw.

                  Another thing I could see them offering is stuff like tl;dr bot. It’s probably not for everyone, but I definitely can see that it can be a useful feature for many people.

                • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  Think like Microsoft recall for your browser history. Yeah that sounds awful, it’s not surprising why people would not want it. Just goes to show that Mozilla is dumb and blind like all other companies.

        • unexposedhazard@discuss.tchncs.de
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          2 months ago

          I hope thats what they will do but i very much doubt it. Looking at her track record makes me think that she has no good intemtions with mozilla.

          • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            They’re going to continue chasing the AI trend right up until the bubble bursts. At which point they’ll continue wasting money on the next big trend, assuming that the bubble bursting doesn’t kill Mozilla in the process.

      • Lvxferre@mander.xyz
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        2 months ago

        So this is just another part in reducing cost on section that doesn’t produce money.

        That’s what I immediately thought - they’re cutting corners to decrease dependency of googlebux, as depending on how things go those bux will go dry.

        • Tamlyn@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          So far it’s still online right, as well as vpn. At least those both service maybe generate money. Not sure what it means to invest less in those services.

        • Tamlyn@lemmy.zip
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          2 months ago

          Maybe, not sure how much they have to pay to mullvad to use their server and developement. But hard to imagine vpn couldn’t generate money. (not sure about relay). Ant it’s still online. But at least, it doesn’t seem to be a priority.

    • Draconic NEO@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I think it’s to be expected with their current decisions of chasing the AI trend and buying an advertising company, but mostly from chasing the AI trend. After all as much as the few AI-bros here would like to claim most of Firefox users are not happy about the idea of AI chatbot integration into Firefox, and especially aren’t happy about AI search history integration into Firefox.

      Many people think that Mozilla is trying to cut off communication with their customers or move to more corporate social media like threads or Twitter since their AI efforts are not being well received in this community. And will I definitely can say it’s more complicated than that, that’s not a wrong idea either, since their AI efforts are absolutely not well received by this community.

  • Eldritch@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Well running a server and no longer interacting with a service can be two different things. From an organizational standpoint I could absolutely understand them not wanting or needing the expense of another service to maintain. Even for just their own use. As long as they still have accounts and post to the fediverse. I don’t see a big issue

    • barsoap@lemm.ee
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      2 months ago

      They’ll probably still have an instance in the sense that mozilla folks with have @mozilla.social addresses. That’s the kind of thing their hosting staff can easily administer on the side, and moderation is already covered by HR.

  • johnassel@discuss.tchncs.de
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    2 months ago

    I hope that means that they can and will put more power into Firefox development - to concentrate on their main thing.