Mozilla is a sinking ship.

It's too bad making a decent web browser is such a massive undertaking so there aren't literally thousands of alternatives to choose from. :/
- And they're all chromium under the hood. The illusion of free choice.
  As it stands today Mozilla is the only thing keeping google from being labeled a browser monopoly, but man can Mozilla let go of the footgun for once.
  
  Mozilla and Safari.
- I feel like you'd be interested in Ladybird. It's a fully independent web browser under development, it's still in its very early stages but they seem serious about it.
  
  We need a better funding model for open source.
  Praying that people will donate enough to support your browser isn't exactly great and really doesn't work for most open-source projects.
  Unless they are doing something new in that space, it'll just he smooching up to big donors in back rooms.
  At least Firefox is open about their deal with Google.
  
  The challenge for Ladybird and other independent browser projects is the enormous size and scope required of modern browsers, which is also still growing. Web browsers are now probably second only to operating systems in complexity in the personal computing space.
  Plus even if they do reach technical maturity, they still have to convince people to use it. That’s not been going very well for Mozilla, and they already have a working browser.
- We need the Swiss gov to step in and start developing their own browser lol
- What's a good alternative that isn't chromium? I'm on Mozilla mobile
  
  LibreWolf is a Firefox fork that is not affiliated with Mozilla.
  
  Sorry, I missed the mobile part of your statement
  For mobile I would recommend duckduckgo private browser.
  
  At this point, Safari lmao
- What would it actually take? Google did it. Apple did it with WebKit.
  Do you have to be as big as google, apple, or microsoft to make a browser? Is a browser as labor intensive as a whole-ass operating system? Or does it have to do with proprietary/patented tech roadblocks?
  
  Please remember that Webkit is based on KHTML, the browsing engine that Konqueror, the webbrowser in the KDE suite, used.
  So Apple forked KHTML, made WebKit, Safari, Chrome and loads of other browsers used it and improved it, then Google forked WebKit, and made Blink, their current browsing engine
- What’s hard to do is the engine, you can just take gecko or webkit and make your own browser. I doubt Mozilla’s AI ventures will affect gecko, probably just the browser itself.

This is such a braindead fucking take. Companies should explore new technology not just take a look at the current popular opinion and run with it as absolute fact. The majority of this post is literally just using AI as a boogieman, oh no they're creating jobs that relate to AI! The company is over!!!
They saw three roles that mentioned AI and took that as absolute proof that Mozilla has "fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads". Grow the fuck up. The internet takes money to run, ads are an inevitability so no shit a major browser company has someone managing that aspect of their browser.....
I see they have fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads
oh, but they had 9 open listings for AI!!!!!! THat's a THIRD of the cOmPaNy's listings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Are you not aware of how big Mozilla is? https://leadiq.com/c/mozilla/5a1d88fe2400002400628c85/employee-directory
N. America: 1.5k Asia: 468 Europe: 378 Africa: 86 South Africa:44 Oceania: 25
That alone shows how insane this take is. Mozilla dipping their toes into the water with a handful of roles doesn't mean mozilla is focused on it alone (or even at all!). Secondly, there is a lot of value that can be taken from AI (both server and client-side), without even touching the subject of generating images/video/text/etc. Things like auto-transcriptions, summaries for the seeing impaired, etc.
But then we get these posts essentially fear mongering any perceived interest as slight as it may be into AI. Absurd.
- I'm ok with them chasing ethical applications of AI. I'm more tired of their half-assed efforts to chase every shiny new object over the last few years. It feels like as a non-profit, they should be comparatively immune to chasing the same transitory trends that other shareholder-owned companies are obsessed over. But it seems like for Mozilla, they have an even shorter attention span than their corporate competitors. We've seen them chase after crypto, metaverse, augmented reality, Firefox OS, and now AI. All of those efforts fizzled out with a whimper.
  
  That crypto one isn't even a project, just that they used some service to handle crypto donations for them. It is weird though that they think they can just walk into a successful space without offering anything new and still expect to get users.
  
  Sure, but the only way to counter AI spam in the dead internet might be to have your own local AI model to filter junk out. And that has to be with the browser.
  There is also cookie consent spam, ads and newspaper "notify me" shit that probably can only be fixed with AI.
  Your take is that Mozilla doesn't think before they adopt, except people here don't think about what not to adopt either.
- That is the first time I've seen South Africa listed separately from Africa
- The brain-dead take is that companies should explore new technology. Without any qualifiers on it (i assume there aren't because you didn't add any and you applied it to ai). That's how we've ended up with such a huge amount of waste, pollution and theft from small independents.
  Even if we just narrow it to the field of AI, the waste and environmental damage from just this kind of tech is just absurd.
  Let's add to the downsizing ai causes, the pathetic service disruptions and inevitable decline of a company's reputation from using such a thing and its nothing but a waste.

Hate to say it but can not realy blame them. They need to make money somehow. And Google wont pay 80% of their bills forever.
- Watch them still not making money in 10 years.
  
  At the moment, I have a hard time to imagine them even surviving that long. But "Totgesagte leben länger".
  But this is not a Mozilla-exclusive problem. Open source in general has a massive funding problem.

I mean, I understand this argument, but Mozilla is still vastly superior to the alternatives. And as others have pointed out, even if Mozilla kicks the bucket, Firefox is open source and forks exist.
Mozilla has been making a lot of questionable decisions, but they are nowhere near the point-of-no-return yet. Mozilla is still a company, and companies make corporate decisions.

god this is depressing.

Mozilla has been a sinking ship for decades now.
There's a reason Chrome was able to steal the alt browser market from Mozilla at a time when even laymen understood that IE was awful - Mozilla stopped innovating the second they were winning. They had tabs! What more could you want?
Chrome came along at a time when browser performance wasn't a focus, when JavaScript meant websites were slow, and said "fuck that, let's make it fast". Say what you will about Chrome or JS, Google was on to something and the modern web today is 95% thanks to Chrome pushing things forward.
Everyone jumped to Chrome and Mozilla fucked around for literally years before they got the memo that actually browser performance matters. They were once the best browser tools on the market until once again Chrome pushed the envelope, and once again developers switched while Mozilla sat back and did nothing.
Mozilla meandered back and forth, releasing shitty products nobody wanted (like pocket and send) instead of focusing on the most important thing: the browser.
Yet they're somehow still here, hobbling along, doing fuck knows what instead of making a better browser and innovating to beat Chrome.
- Stopped innovating? Just because the user interface didn’t change much? They’ve contributed a ton to web api’s and the open web in general. They also contributed massively to rust, and private / secure browsing standards. It has absolutely not been left to languish. Now I prefer some other UI’s but you won’t catch me claiming Mozilla ceased innovation.
  They’ve also contributed in general to JavaScript. So yeah, Google definitely pushed the envelope there, but Mozilla didn’t just watch it all happen. Also, factor in that they were key contributors to web assembly.
  
  Yes they contributed a lot to web standards, bit they didn't contribute to actual user experience which is why people install a web browser in the first place.
  Mozilla consistently gets complacent.
  
  Ok. Now pretend you're me, a normal person who doesn't even know what Rust is.
  How has Firefox improved for me? The browser is clearly an inferior product.
- The problem is that browsers aren't profitable. Mozilla need a revenue source other than donations, and that's why they're trying to make another product that'll stick. They need to make money somehow. If Google stops paying them because of the antitrust lawsuit, Mozilla will probably disappear in a few months.
  
  Browsers are profitable, Mozilla only exists because of the money the browser brings in.
  Yes, it's true that the money is currently coming from Google but only because Google is willing to pay more than other search providers. If Google stopped paying, someone else would pay instead.
  To put it another way, Google isn't forking out millions to Mozilla out of the goodness of its heart
  EDIT: to everyone down voting this, please explain to me why Google also pays Apple an obscene amount of money to be the default search engine on iOS if there's no competition in this space?
- Chrome came along at a time when browser performance wasn't a focus, when JavaScript meant websites were slow, and said "fuck that, let's make it fast". Say what you will about Chrome or JS, Google was on to something and the modern web today is 95% thanks to Chrome pushing things forward.
  That's where the web started getting worse.
  
  Yeah.
  Everything gets made for IE and people scream like its the end of life on the planet, and still ridicule it to this day.
  Everything gets made for Chrome and people cant slobbing knob over how glorious and great it is, and how good its been for everything, and blah blah blah.
  Chrome is worse than IE ever was.
- I never switched to Chrome and never really noticed any performance issues. If a page took half a second or a second to render, it was an absolute non issue to me.
- I think performance was part of Chrome's success, but there was also all the memes in 2010 about installing chrome to replace IE, and the ads that Google ran on their search page. I don't think Pocket came out until Firefox was already deep into the decline. I do think Chrome held onto those users because of their ram efficiency at the time, and nice features like built-in translate. Now, users can't switch because the web depends on Chrome, just like back in the IE days.
  
  Despite my above rant, I still use Firefox as my primary browser. The web works absolutely fine on it. I think I've encountered one site that required chrome to work correctly in the last year and that's a huge improvement over where we were back in the early 2000's with IE.
  No, there's other reasons why people don't switch, compatibility is not the issue.
  
  I think performance was part of Chrome’s success
  I don't think I fully believe that, normies don't care about how fast a page loads and the proof of that is that they were using IE for so long.
  Now, users can’t switch because the web depends on Chrome, just like back in the IE days.
  What? I've been using FF since 2006, or something like that, how is the web dependent on chrome?
- Decades? Slowest sinking ship in history.
  
  The two slowest trends in tech: the fall of Mozilla and the rise of Linux
- There’s a reason Chrome was able to steal the alt browser market from Mozilla at a time when even laymen understood that IE was awful - Mozilla stopped innovating the second they were winning. They had tabs! What more could you want?
  That's part of the story, but even more important is that they shoved it down everyone's throat.
- Mozilla was doomed from the start.
  Netscape Inc. wanted to sell browsers eventually, which makes sense. It's product which requires a massive amount of engineering effort. But, when Microsoft started tying IE to Windows and giving it away free, there was no way that Netscape could actually make any sales. The bigger reason their business was crushed was that Microsoft was also giving away their web server (IIS) away for free, while Netscape was charging for theirs.
  Some kids today are too young to know that Microsoft was sued by the US government over this and lost the case (along with what was very likely Microsoft falsifying evidence). But, then Bush Jr. took office and the government basically took a case they had won and effectively threw out the win.
  When it was clear that Netscape was going to fail as a business they open-sourced the browser either as an act of charity or spite. The problem is that it's still a massive and expensive project to build a web browser. That's especially true in a world where standards keep evolving and the browser has to keep having new features added.
  Since making a browser was so expensive, they needed financial support, and eventually that came from Google. At first Google just wanted Firefox to exist as a hedge so that Microsoft wouldn't dominate the browser market. But, once Google came out with Chrome it was both a way to keep directing traffic to Google search, and a way to pretend they don't have a monopoly on browsers.
  But, if 90% of the funding of your project comes from Google, there are some obvious lines you can't cross. So, Mozilla has to keep doing this dance where they make a browser that competes with Chrome, but one that doesn't cross certain lines that would make Google mad and result in them shutting off the funding.
  Google would shut off the funding to Firefox in a heartbeat if they took ad blocking and privacy too seriously. But, Google doesn't care too much if Mozilla messes around with AI or ads.
- Didn't expect to see Lemmy defending privacy raping mega corp Google today...
  
  You can disapprove of their privacy practices while acknowledging its innovations. There's a reason Chrome got a stranglehold on the market.
  
  Hey can we save the word rape for actually important shit instead of privacy concerns, thanks.
  Wooooords have meeeeeanings, pleeeeeease don't misuse them for emphasis.

A few days ago there was a thread that was talking about fingerprinting.
I started playing with cover your tracks by the EFF.
https://coveryourtracks.eff.org/
It turns out that Firefox was routing all my browser DNS traffic around my pi-hole. (It is called DNS over HTTP or DOH)
I had no clue.
- My user.js has over 400 lines now and is almost the same as Arkenfox' user.js.
- That's supposed to keep you from being monitored by bad actors over public Wi-Fi, iirc.
  
  Makes sense. It really needs to be a network dependent setting.

AI + Ads = AIDS.
Just say no, kids.

Damnit. I love Firefox. What is the best alternative?
- There really isn't one. The closet would be Konqueror with KHTML and one of Mozilla's discarded projects called Servo (which is a beta project now run by the Linux Foundation). The rest are Chrome in a wig and Safari.
  
  There is also this which might be viable in the future, https://ladybird.org/
  
  FYI: KHTML became Safari that became WebKit that became Chrome.
- Reports of its death are GREATLY exaggerated. I would suggest continuing to simply use firefox and disable any future crap you don't prefer.
  That said librewolf which is intended to be firefox with stronger privacy settings by default that said
  Default settings break more websites
  You have to get extensions manually from for instance github because it doesn't use mozillas addon (it can probably be enabled)
  It doesn't use the built in password manager which is in fact privacy preserving so you have to enable it or use something else
  you don't get syncing via firefox sync which is in fact already privacy preserving so you have to enable it if you want it
  It doesn't remember cookies without manually adding an exception to each site this is extremely obnoxious. I'm sure its configurable though
  At this time it is far easier to disable the few things that may be undesired from firefox vs turning librewolf into an acceptable option.
  
  I experience little breakage with Librewolf, and when I do, maybe 75-85% of the time it is because the site only works with Chromium. I get extensions directly through the browser, I have not enabled anything as far as I am aware. And of course you can configure the cookie clearing. I quite like it, there are (in my case at least) not many exceptions you need to add before it works quite smoothly, but of course that depends on your usage.
- Forks of it.
  
  Fireforks
- Im using LibreWolf. Its a fork of firefox. For me its the perfect balance between compatibility and privacy friendliness.
  
  Is it a true fork, or is it a project that follows the Firefox tree and builds a customized browser from it?
  The difference being, if it's a true fork, they have to do all their own browser engineering starting at the time it was forked off. That sounds like a monumental effort.
  
  I started using librewolf about a month ago but I've (unfortunately) switched back to Firefox because of multiple compatibility issues.
  Edit: I should add that I switched from Firefox to Fennec (a fork of Firefox) on my phone and that has been working fine.
  
  Someone should ship librewolf with less stupid defaults
- All browsers are either based on Chrome or Firefox. There's no alternative.
  
  Doesn't Safari use a different codebase? It's not available on non-Apple platforms, but it's good to know that there are still engineers working on a different codebase.
  
  All browsers are either based on KHTML or Netscape. There's no alternative.
  You see that's a sort of weird way of looking at it?
  
  Well, there’s Chromium and then there’s Chrome.
- I love it too. No chance I'm changing any time soon
- Google Chrome! It’s nice that it syncs with my existing Google account instead of needing a new one, plus it has updates built in!
  
  Are you paid by Google? That's what we're trying to escape by using Firefox.
  
  And it blocks adblockers! I can't know what to spend my money on without ads!
  
  🤮
  
  As I notice this comment is satirical, unlike the (currently) 49 plebeian downvoters, I feel my massive genius brain undulating and pressing upon my skull.

Unfortunately OP is right.
Here's some alternatives that use the same base as Mozilla, and maybe they might pick up the shards soon: Waterfox, LibreWolf, Mullvad Browser
Considering Manifest V3 in Chromium and how the browser kit is forcing quite a few things on us there's also a solid chance people will independently rework the chromium base into a new web browser toolkit soon, but we'll have to see. Either way, next few years will undoubtedly bring a lot of change to the browser landscape.
- librewolf for when the site NEEDS javascript to run and icecat for everything else, trying out mull browser
  (yt-dlp for youtube lol)
- It might be time to sync everything over to Mull Browser. I've been dabbling using it but just haven't committed to switching over completely.
- A browser tied to a VPN provider would probably harm adoption in the wider scheme of things. That would be a next-to-impossible sell for business IT for one thing, but also the optics generally aren't great at all, especially if said VPN provider finds itself in hot water related to the primary usecase for commercial VPNs (illegal activity)
- I'm personally using Vivaldi until the adpocalypse next year
  
  Wait, did I miss something? I was under the impression that Vivaldi wouldn't be affected by the Manifest v3 change since their adblocker is independently developed... is that not the case?

So they probably scrolled through a page of job ads and cherry picked a few so they could talk smack..
You can do this with any company
- I looked at their jobs list and counted 35 jobs. Of that I count 9 that are AI-related and 4 that are ads-related. The list also includes a few generic jobs like "Chief of Staff", "Client Analytics Manager", "Staff Test Engineer" or "Fixed-Term Social Media Trainee".
  Basically at least 1/3 of the jobs they're advertising that have a specific team mentioned are AI or ads jobs.
  You can't do this with any company. The correct number of ads people working at Firefox is 0.
  
  First off, keep in mind the post we're all responding to is trying to use these listings to paint the entire focus/future of this company with a single brushstroke, as that is relevant context.
  I see they have fully pointed the ship towards a future of AI and Ads
  that statement right there.
  Basically at least 1/3 of the jobs they’re advertising that have a specific team mentioned are AI or ads jobs.
  oh, but they had 9 open listings for AI!!!!!! THat's a THIRD of the cOmPaNy's listings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  Are you not aware of how big Mozilla is? https://leadiq.com/c/mozilla/5a1d88fe2400002400628c85/employee-directory
  N. America: 1.5k Asia: 468 Europe: 378 Africa: 86 South Africa:44 Oceania: 25
  That alone shows how insane this take is. Mozilla dipping their toes into the water with a handful of roles doesn't mean mozilla is focused on it alone (or even at all!). Secondly, there is a lot of value that can be taken from AI (both server and client-side), without even touching the subject of generating images/video/text/etc. Things like auto-transcriptions, summaries for the seeing impaired, etc.
  But then we get these posts essentially fear mongering any perceived interest as slight as it may be into AI. Absurd.
  The correct number of ads people working at Firefox is 0.
  Here you are telling on yourself. Ads, whether you like it or not, are a huge piece of how the internet funds itself. As Mozilla is essentially the second largest browser after chromium-based ones, you absolutely need someone managing how ads integrate with your browser.
  For example, there is a HUGE amount of people that don't want to mess with ad blockers and such and want a browser to protect them outright, Mozilla can do this with things like privacy-preserving attribution to protect user data while still serving ads in good faith.
  Yes, it is so very easy to say FUCK ads, they don't belong on the internet.... until you want to host something and suddenly the costs can get real big real fast.
  And another thing, you say "correct number of ads people working at firefox is 0"
  You can’t do this with any company.
  by this, do you mean cherry pick open listings by a company and pretend that those open listings are indicative of not only the companies focus but also their general distribution of efforts? Because that's all you're doing with this comment.
  
  0 would mean they already have all those positions filled

The tech world is steaming Full Ahead toward an inflatable Gibraltar.

Only a good AI can stop a bad AI with a pun

has anyone tried zen browser? it looks so good. I'm not used to open software looking good so I'm a bit skeptical, especially since no one's talking about it. but i started using it along with librewolf and I'm thinking of switching completely.
- no one's talking about it
  Because it's sort of new. Look at how the star count boomed in early September.
  
  i appreciate the effort on that site that went into making sure the graph would look like an xkcd panel
- Yes. Zen is really impressive given the small team and early stage.
- It is another Firefox fork. If Firefox is in trouble, so is this project.
  
  In the worst case scenario all these forks can work together and improve the engine (web and JS).
- I'm running Zen Optimized as my daily driver and quite like it, closing tabs was irritating at first but I figured out the shortcut and its been smooth sailing ever since
- Yes, and I loved it at first sight--it's the only version of Firefox that feels modern and delivers competitive performance in terms of resource efficiency. I'm backing the project via Patreon and really hope it develops into something even better... though I have to admit that I've mostly switched back to Vivaldi because of its greater customization ability and mobile browser (Zen is desktop only) as well as its built-in adblocker, which even works in iOS, unlike uBlock Origin.

No, worries. We will always have forks. Mozilla wins simply by having their only competitor be Google.
- The problem is they have to come up with a new source of income now that it looks like Google's payments to be the default search engine to them are illegal.
  That's like 90% of their revenue, so they're panicking.
  
  They could make a web server and sell support for it.

people been saying the ships been sinking since netscape. version 130 now
- It has been sinking. Adtech is cyber warfare. They sold out. https://make-firefox-private-again.com/ everybody be sure to change your settings in about:config to disable that Anonym bullshit. No, we're not the 'product' we're human beings.

AI -> ADS
AIADS
AIDS

If firefox becomes worse or starts lagging behind more, I'll stop using it. It doesn't seem all that useful to attempt to predict 5 years into the future Firefox's state and therefore decide to switch away now.

Just wait until they start serving ads for things that don't exist and then throwing manufacturing together to make them on demand.
- that's exactly what AI will accomplish, can't wait them to start making "Skibidi Toilets" because the algorithim told it to

We need to either make a WebKit-based privacy browser, or try and bring Goanna more up to date with modern web standards.
- GNOME Web / Epiphany?
  
  It doesn't really resist fingerprinting that well. Also, theming GTK4 kinda blows.
  Still, 'tis an option.

RIP Mozilla. Glad all their shit is open source.

The only thing I don't like about Firefox (other than no PWA capability) is the 'dark pattern' of how when the home page loads, the first three of the six items shifts to the right after the page has started loading, and are replaced with sponsored links. So, if I go to click on YouTube when I launch Firefox, there's a fair chance that by the time I get to click there it'll suddenly jump over to the right and I'll end up clicking some other link.
To me, that's sketchy behaviour.
- You can disable those ads though...
  
  I don't mind the ads. I just don't like the 'trickery' of them shifting the existing shortcuts after the page has already loaded.
- No PWA capability?
  At least on mobile, I have multiple PWAs installed via Firefox.
  
  Not on desktop though.
- Check this one: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/pwas-for-firefox/ It doesn't have super advanced capabilities of PWAs however the "pwa creators" already assume one is using Chrome etc.
  
  Yes I'm using that. It's fine if you only have one pc, but a pain having to set it up every time you set up another Linux install etc.

Why doesn't Mozilla move to a Wikipedia model and ask for donations? I would certainly rather donate than be served ads by Firefox.
- Because the CEO of Wikipedia doesn't get paid $2.5 million a year. She only makes $450k.
  
  I'm OOTL, the CEO of Mozilla makes $2.5 million a year? Or am I misunderstanding it?
  
  hahaha, "only"

God damn it I just switched from chrome to fire fox 😮‍💨
- I'd argue that's probably still for the best. Unless there's a usable third party I'm unaware of, it's all just Chrome/Chromium and Firefox, both of which are leaning hard into AI and ads.
  At least Firefox doesn't have a huge monopoly like Chrome, so I'll be supporting the smaller guy in the meantime.
  
  Ice weasal

Clown graphics reminds me of the alt-right trolls who hate Mozilla for their stance on diversity and freedom. They are even late to the AI party, there isn't a single "free as in freedom" AI around, are you aware of it?

Feels like most things are lately

Any day now...

You were supposed to be the CHOSEN ONE

Why do people feel the need to police Mozilla so heavily when they're nowhere close near the alternatives? It's just toxic and disingenuous.

So?

The real clowns are you goons who a few months ago when I shamed mozilla for AI integration white-knighted them and downvoted me to the ground. Who's laughing now, you retarded buffoons?
- Ya know that you seldom interact with the same people, thread to thread, instance to instance?
  
  Idk Lemmy's pretty small.
  For example, I know for a fact a lot of these clowns were cheering OpenAI's capitalist takeover.

Now we hate mozilla? AI is the future deal with it
- AI is just the latest hype cycle that appears to finally be in a cooling off phase. Just like Blockchain 5? years ago, and mobile a decade ago