Why the recent Mozilla news isn't actually a big deal
Why the recent Mozilla news isn't actually a big deal
Everyone here has been overreacting about the Mozilla layoffs, but they only laid off poeple working on the metaverse, ai, and their VPN and stuff. They're actually refocusing on Firefox. People have been freaking out about them working on ai now, too, but theyve been doing ai for a while (Mozilla common voice anybody?)(Firefox's translation feature?) And it's always open source, and runs offline, they're not gonna add a shitty internet-connected ai sidebar.
Here is the entire internal memo fore the interested:
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Scaling back investment mozilla.social: With mozilla.social, we made a big bet in 2023 to build a safer, better social media experience, based on Mastodon and the Fediverse. Our initial approach was based on a belief that Mozilla needed to quickly reach large scale in order to effectively shape the future of social media. It was a noble idea but one we struggled to execute. While we resourced mozilla.social heavily to pursue this ambitious idea, in retrospect a more modest approach would have enabled us to participate in the space with considerably greater agility. The actions we’re taking today will make this strategic correction, working through a much smaller team to participate in the Mastodon ecosystem and more rapidly bring smaller experiments to people that choose to live on the mozilla.social instance.
Protection Experimentation & Identity (PXI): We’re scaling back investment in some of our standalone consumer products in the Security and Privacy space. We are reducing investment in market segments that competitors crowd and where it is challenging to deliver a differentiated offering. Specifically, we plan to reduce our investments in VPN, Relay, and Online Footprint Scrubber. We will maintain investment in products addressing customer needs in growing market segments.
Hubs: Since early 2023, we have experienced a shift in the market for 3D virtual worlds. With the exception of gaming, education, and a handful of niche use cases, demand has moved away from 3D virtual worlds. This is impacting all industry players. Hubs’ user and customer bases are not robust enough to justify continuing to dedicate resources against the headwinds of the unfavorable shift in demand. We will wind down the service and communicate a graceful exit plan to customers.
Right-sizing the People Team
Given the reduction in staffing and lower headcount budget moving forward in MozProd, some roles have been consolidated in the People and other support services orgs so that we are offering the right level of support to our product portfolio. Optimizing our org to sharpen focus.
In 2023, generative AI began rapidly shifting the industry landscape. Mozilla seized an opportunity to bring trustworthy AI into Firefox, largely driven by the Fakespot acquisition and the product integration work that followed. Additionally, finding great content is still a critical use case for the internet. Therefore, as part of the changes today, we will be bringing together Pocket, Content, and the AI/ML teams supporting content with the Firefox Organization. More details on the specific organizational changes will follow shortly. Within MozProd, there are no changes within MDN, Ads, or Fakespot. There are also no changes to Legal/Policy, Finance & Business Operations, Marketing, or Strategy & Operations.
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Any layoff is serious to me. I think they should reform thise people to be able to contribute to firefox.
But what if they don't need that many people working on Firefox? What if AI, VR, and Network programmers are fundamentally different in skills from a web browser programmer, and don't want to change their career trajectory?
What if, by not firing these people, Mozilla folds in 3 years and everyone ends up without a job?
Not every project makes 2x the money with 2x the people. It's the "Why can't 9 Mom's give birth in 1 month" problem. Hell most projects will slow down significantly with an influx like that.
Look, layoffs suck, but it's quid-pro-quo. Employees can leave at any time too. If a company isn't abusive or arbitrary with their layoff decisions, has decent layoff benefits, and doesn't refuse to give job recommendations, it's hard for me to hold it against the employer.
How about they cut executive pay instead of fucking the rank and file over
The reason people are talking about this in such a negative light is because it did not occur in a vaccum. Nothing but mildly and moderately bad news over a swath of time adds up quickly. If there was no other bad news it could be written off, but this bad news bears the wight of all the other bad news as well.
"We're scaling back in crowded market segments and instead focussing on AI! A totally not crowded segment."
I would've actually been interested in Mozilla's VPN/Footprint scrubbing services as a "trustworthy" company, but they're not even available here yet and by the sound of it never will. Now instead they'll be playing catch-up in another market.
It's difficult to remain excited with news like this, but I want there to be alternatives to Chromium so I'll keep using Firefox.
Considering the news about OneRep... Definitely steer clear of Mozilla's scrubbing service.
When they sacked the servo team years ago I realized they had totally given up on revolutionizing the browser ecosystem.
Ever since then every bit of news I hear is yet another deviation from the one thing people actually need from them (the browser).
While I'm happy they are spending googles money on interesting things, their mission is so diffuse now it's hard for me to get excited and support them.
I guarantee you at least 75% of the histrionics are coming from astroturfing competitors.
The people who make up the 2% market share using Firefox overlaps with the people tired of AI - specifically LLMs - being shoved into everything.
Mozilla just released a LLM-driven website generator a few months ago. Why are we assuming they won't add something similar to Firefox?
If Mozilla wants to use machine learning, awesome. But how about we treat the techies who support them like adults and say "machine learning" instead of using the AI buzzword which is overloaded.
And another 75% are from people who just like being part of an angry mob.
Hubs could have been good, but it was half baked and they didn't really support self hosting.
Nice try mozilla employee. Your company went to shit the moment you started focusing on political bullshit. No one cares about your woke agenda or deplatforming. Just focus on your sole product that is firefox. The only reason you are relevant besides google is because firefox is the only non chromium engine. Take pride and honor in the fact that you are basically the only major browser against google and apple rather than wasting time on pride month bullshit.