this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025

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706

Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox (www.theverge.com)

submitted 1 week ago by azdle@news.idlestate.org to c/technology@lemmy.world

273 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Mozilla is in a tricky position. It contains both a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the internet a better place for everyone, and a for-profit arm dedicated to, you know, making money. In the best of times, these things feed each other: The company makes great products that advance its goals for the web, and the nonprofit gets to both advocate for a better web and show people what it looks like. But these are not the best of times. Mozilla has spent the last couple of years implementing layoffs and restructuring, attempting to explain how it can fight for privacy and openness when Google pays most of its bills, while trying to find its place in an increasingly frothy AI landscape.

Fun times to be the new Mozilla CEO, right? But when I put all that to Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, the company’s just-announced chief executive, he swears he sees opportunity in all the upheaval. “I think what’s actually needed now is a technology company that people can trust,” Enzor-DeMeo says. “What I’ve seen with AI is an erosion of trust.”

Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon. But there’s still an AI Mode coming to Firefox next year, which Enzor-DeMeo says will offer users their choice of model and product, all in a browser they can understand and from a company they can trust. “We’re not incentivized to push one model or the other,” he says. “So we’re going to try to go to market with multiple models.”

-_-

(page 3) 50 comments

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[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Who is this a signal for though? They could silently add the AI features and rally their base on aspects people actually like. It's almost like Firefox doesn't want to succeed

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[–] Sunflier@lemmy.world 8 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (3 children)

Can it be disabled?

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[–] Suavevillain@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago

I guess it is time to fully switch off of firefox then. I'm not fighting my browser turning off AI features per update.

[–] AshMan85@lemmy.world 7 points 1 week ago (5 children)

Switching browser

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[–] Digit@lemmy.wtf 6 points 1 week ago

I was hopeful for thundermail.

Not any more, seeing that.

[–] FluidBeef@quokk.au 6 points 1 week ago (2 children)

Is it possible for the major forks to just go their own way, or is it more complicated than that? Obviously anyone building a new browser engine from the ground up now with complete HTML, CSS and JavaScript spec is so immense an undertaking as to sound far-fetched, so the open source community would need to leverage whatever it can.

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[–] selokichtli@lemmy.ml 6 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago) (1 children)

Gaaaaaaaahhhhh, phase make it stop!

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[–] snoons@lemmy.ca 5 points 1 week ago

🤮

[–] itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml 5 points 1 week ago

Best mobile browser replacement? Fennec?

[–] enthusiasm_headquarters@lemmy.world 4 points 1 week ago

Firefox doesn't really need to make money so long as Google has to worry about being broken up by the Fed for antitrust reasons... Obviously so long as there is a national socialist/Trump regime in place that's not really something they have to worry about. Why, Goog even donated $5m to Trump's little Whitehouse evisceration/ballroom project, and will get their very own plaque in the ballroom that all the ballpeople can look at.

Google has donated over $USD 1B to Mozilla. The standard conspiracy fud is so that it can sink its claws into its open source competition, corrupting it with its omniscient googliness, but FIrefox barely blips on the radar of browser use, not even including Tor, Waterfox, Librewolf (which I'm currently using), and other forks. It's just not going to threaten any of the megas any time soon.

The actual motive for giving Mozilla so much money is simply to deflect any accusations that they're a monopoly that hurts market competition.

[–] gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 1 week ago

will offer users their choice [...] “We’re not incentivized to push one model or the other,” he says. “So we’re going to try to go to market with multiple models.”

it could be worse

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