Mozilla's New CEO Bets Firefox's Future on AI 114
Mozilla has named Anthony Enzor-DeMeo as its new chief executive, promoting the executive who has spent the past year leading the Firefox browser team and who now plans to make AI central to the company's future.
Enzor-DeMeo announced on Tuesday that an "AI Mode" is coming to Firefox next year. The feature will let users choose from multiple AI models rather than being locked into a single provider. Some options will be open-source models, others will be private "Mozilla-hosted cloud options," and the company also plans to integrate models from major AI companies. Mozilla itself will not train its own large language model.
"We're not incentivized to push one model or the other," Enzor-DeMeo told The Verge. Firefox currently has about 200 million monthly users, a fraction of Chrome's roughly 4 billion, though Enzor-DeMeo insists mobile usage is growing at a decent clip.
He takes over from interim CEO Laura Chambers, who led the company through a major antitrust case and what Mozilla describes as "double-digit mobile growth" in Firefox. Chambers is returning to the Mozilla board of directors. The new CEO has outlined three priorities: ensuring all products give users control over AI features including the ability to turn them off, building a business model around transparent monetization, and expanding Firefox into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Mozilla VPN integration is planned for the browser next year.
Enzor-DeMeo announced on Tuesday that an "AI Mode" is coming to Firefox next year. The feature will let users choose from multiple AI models rather than being locked into a single provider. Some options will be open-source models, others will be private "Mozilla-hosted cloud options," and the company also plans to integrate models from major AI companies. Mozilla itself will not train its own large language model.
"We're not incentivized to push one model or the other," Enzor-DeMeo told The Verge. Firefox currently has about 200 million monthly users, a fraction of Chrome's roughly 4 billion, though Enzor-DeMeo insists mobile usage is growing at a decent clip.
He takes over from interim CEO Laura Chambers, who led the company through a major antitrust case and what Mozilla describes as "double-digit mobile growth" in Firefox. Chambers is returning to the Mozilla board of directors. The new CEO has outlined three priorities: ensuring all products give users control over AI features including the ability to turn them off, building a business model around transparent monetization, and expanding Firefox into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Mozilla VPN integration is planned for the browser next year.
Why on earth?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I use Firefox and Thunderbird. They're nice. I'm not interested in AI, and I don't get why the org would bet the farm on it. I get that it's hard to keep Mozilla funded, and they may need to get creative somehow, but this isn't the way. It's not what people use Firefox for, and it's not exploring an obviously profitable direction.
Re: (Score:3)
I use Firefox and Thunderbird. They're nice. I'm not interested in AI, and I don't get why the org would bet the farm on it. I get that it's hard to keep Mozilla funded, and they may need to get creative somehow, but this isn't the way. It's not what people use Firefox for, and it's not exploring an obviously profitable direction.
I'll add that I have zero issues with using "not the most popular" browser and email. I long ago learned that popularity doesn't mean best.
And I have too much of Google locked out to use Chrome anyhow.
Re: (Score:2)
-insert just about obligatory mention of using Pale Moon as daily browser for years to great satisfaction, running fast on older hardware.*-
* Using Firefos ESR as backup for three or four badly coded but needed sites.
Re: (Score:2)
-insert just about obligatory mention of using Pale Moon as daily browser for years to great satisfaction, running fast on older hardware.*-
* Using Firefos ESR as backup for three or four badly coded but needed sites.
If a person makes websites, they really need to have multiple browsers to check the different displays out. There are sites you can use to check multiple browsers, but ya gotta remember that you are looking at it in a particular browsers.
Anyhoo, since I won't use Chrome, I use Firefox, Safari, and Opera just as a sanity check. I didn't know Pale Moon was still around.
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Why on earth?! (Score:5, Insightful)
As we watch CoPilot failures, AI browsers no one wants, a change for Firefox users to AI would be plainly a solution looking for a problem.
If Firefox can be successfully forked to a non-AI version, I'll go with that. Libre-stuff would get a great boost by navigating around the inevitable wasteland that Firefox will become.
Strangely, products taking an anti-AI stance are starting to thrive again. I hope their board notices and changes direction towards optimizing Firefox, getting rid of their new mercenary telemetry stance, and gets back to the basics of just doing an open good job.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
I use LibreWolf on a couple of machines. It's OK, but it evolves slowly. They deserve the money I donated to Mozilla. But the distros don't include the LibreWolf version; Ubuntu as an example, puts in a godforsaken package island.
If the LibreOffice folks could somehow hug the LibreWolf people, distros could take a turn for the better.
Re: (Score:2)
WaterFox works well and (so far) hasn't leaned into the AI crap. My guess is it'll strip that out but we'll see.
Re: (Score:2)
Damn, I was a happy Firefox user for years... now I'll have to try and avoid AI using some other browser.
Don't you think a smart company would have surveyed their market before making such an announcement?
It's much easier to keep customers happy and attract new ones if you give them what THEY want, rather than what you think they want.
Re:Why on earth?! (Score:5, Insightful)
I get that it's hard to keep Mozilla funded
No it is not. The Mozilla foundation has pissed away tens of millions of dollars on "features" nobody asked for and which have since been removed, like Pocket which cost US$20M alone. What's hard is to keep the CEO's multi million dollar salary funded while also enabling them to waste money on things no one wants, which in turn is only done to justify their salary by looking busy.
This is like claiming it's hard to keep Wikipedia funded. Again, no it is not, because they have somehow spent millions of dollars producing multimedia bullshit that hobbyists could have done for free if there was any demand. Simply don't do that and funding is no problem.
The problem as ever isn't the thing, it's the people managing the thing and claiming that their malicious interference is necessary. It's only necessary for their yacht-buying capabilities.
Re: (Score:3)
Does anyone remember the Firefox phone OS debacle? I'll bet that one cost them tens of millions.
Re: (Score:3)
That wasn't as terrible of an idea as this though. A browser based phone OS that works much like ChromeOS would be useful for budget phones, and also a good thing for the open web. Existing phones and phone makers try to funnel everything into their app ecosystem instead of the web, and all of those phones come with a proprietary browser bundled with them. Trying to keep the mobile space more open and keep Firefox relevant in that space wasn't a terrible move for a browser company to make.
But much like the
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
The Mozilla foundation has pissed away tens of millions of dollars on "features" nobody asked for
I liked and used pocket.
I can't believe how angry people are about an online bookmarking and tagging service integrated into a browser.
Re: (Score:2)
I liked and used pocket.
How nice for you and the other guy.
I can't believe how angry people are about an online bookmarking and tagging service integrated into a browser.
It's a collecting information about your activity service. It's not for you, it's for them.
Re: (Score:2)
How nice for you and the other guy.
We were both fans. But allegedly it had a low number of tens of millions of users, but then firefox has a decent number of tens, so the percentages weren't terrible.
It's a collecting information about your activity service. It's not for you, it's for them.
yeah yeah if you're not paying you're the product yada yada.
Cool. But it was also useful to me. The bookmarking and tagging was very useful. The recommended articles were really good. And I shouldn't use it because?
Re: (Score:2)
And I shouldn't use it because?
That's not the argument. The argument is (actually, arguments are):
1) It wasn't worth $20M, they could have done the same thing in house for less
2) It shouldn't have been built in, it should have been an add-on, they could have shipped it with the browser.
1 is the most pertinent given the story we're discussing, but 2 is also important. By putting it into the browser instead of making it an extension when there's absolutely no need for it to be built in, they forced it on users. They also have a Microsoftes
Re: (Score:2)
I guess I'm "the other guy" because I also liked Pocket (originally Read It Later), though I stopped using it a few years before it got killed. I agree that Mozilla buying it was a mistake, though I try to be charitable and hope it was partly because they wanted to improve the privacy and openness of a product that could, as you suggest, be used to harvest user information. An open web is their mission, if you believe it.
I've looked around to see how much Mozilla paid for it and can only find "an undisclo
Re: (Score:2)
The $20M number was from an article circulated here. No clue how to find it today given how shit all the search engines are now.
Before Pocket existed I was using Scrapbook+ to store web pages as displayed. I am now using Singlefile because they destroyed the functionality Scrapbook+ used to access the filesystem. (It also gave a browser and a search for the stored pages.)
Re: (Score:2)
Glad it worked for you, seriously.
The problem is that Pocket should have been an extension, not a new feature the rest of us have to turn off. Then it would be built/maintained by someone who cares, not by Mozilla and save some serious money (or maybe it would die because so few care).
Re: (Score:2)
I get that it's hard to keep Mozilla funded
No it is not. The Mozilla foundation has pissed away tens of millions of dollars on "features" nobody asked for and which have since been removed, like Pocket which cost US$20M alone.
You don't want them to stagnate either. They need to innovate and sometimes innovation doesn't pan out. They can't keep making the same browser forever.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't want them to stagnate either.
I want them to keep the software working and supporting current standards. I don't want them shoehorning things into it which don't make sense. And because I actually remember what was promised when the project began, I also want it to be an extensible platform which things are added to using extensions, not to have everything shoved into it in the first place. There's a ton of stuff in Firefox which has no business being in the base install, like the stuff that used to be in the Web Developer extension. Th
Re: (Score:2)
They've also removed, or made more difficult to use, features that I depend on. Probably to satisfy the phone market.
Re: (Score:2)
You don't want them to stagnate either. They need to innovate and sometimes innovation doesn't pan out. They can't keep making the same browser forever.
I'm fine with stagnation. This isn't the 90s, there is more value in existing technology working reliably.
Re: (Score:2)
Because money. For years, where has most of Mozilla's revenue come from? Default search deals.
When you read:
"We're not incentivized to push one model or the other,"
You just have to understand that what's implied is:
"Yet. But we'd like to be, it's for sale."
And then, unfortunately, it makes perfect sense.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
They haven't got any other ideas to reverse the falling user numbers, and apparently neither does anyone else. Firefox is a decent browser, with some of the best privacy protection features. The Android version needs some work, but it's better than Chrome. HDR doesn't work, but how many people care?
So why do people abandon it? Some sites don't work, but without simply becoming a Chrome skin they can't do a huge amount about that.
Aggressive marketing by Google? Can't stop that either.
AI isn't actually the wo
Blaaargh (Score:2)
Guess I'll have to switch to a de-mozillaed version of Firefox without the AI crap... or hope that the LadyBird browser takes off real fast.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
You might like WaterFox better.
Re:Blaaargh (Score:5, Informative)
As least as of today, the AI slop in Firefox is restricted to a slide out menu on left hand side that brings up a console for your LLM of choice. If you don't like it, just close the side menu and be done with it.
It's not nearly as obnoxious as Chrome or Edge, where they have a Gemini or Copilot agent reading everything on screen, eagerly waiting to offer "suggestions". I'm not sure what's done with the data they're scraping, but I can't imagine that they are just tossing it out without feeding at least some of it to an ad targeting mechanism.
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah. I am maintaining my own list of privacy and convenience settings for Firefox and I must say all the AI stuff is opt-in on first use. You either first need to configure a provider to be able to do anything at all (sidebar), or get asked "Would you like to have summaries?" and have a no button that disables the AI feature before even downloading the required model. No idea what their AI mode will be like, but current AI integrations are unobtrusive opt-in features.
Re: (Score:2)
There's also a local LLM for link previews of dubious accuracy. And another for suggesting and naming tab groups.
No Longer an Optimist (Score:5)
Re:No Longer an Optimist (Score:4, Insightful)
Same here. I've watched (and participated in) tech get developed that was awesome to morphing into the slop we have today. It used to be fun and fascinating. Now I loathe what's coming next. I don't want "AI" in my FireFox or Thunderbird. I'm so tired of a few asshole tech giants being able to steer tech off the cliff.
Re: (Score:1)
Computer stuff used to be done and managed by engineers, nerds, people with a passion. But now it's big money and is being managed by greedy psychopaths.
Re: (Score:2)
Not psychopaths. Those use axes and chase down teenagers at camp. You are thinking of Sociopaths. Those see other people as tools to be used for gratification, or worse as non sentient objects that are provided for their amusement. The US president Trumplstiltskin is a prime example.
Re: (Score:2)
It suddenly occurs to me how bizarre this discussion really is and it is the PotUS we are speaking of...
I hope God is listening and she hasn't given up on us yet...
Re: (Score:3)
I would venture that you, like me, formed that opinion in regard to the old not-for-profit internet. It's the commercialization and unbridled greed that destroyed that vision.
Why ? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
I have been using Firefox for more than 20 years. Please explain me why my browser needs an AI mode.
Someone needs to train the AI to click around the web like a user, so that the web companies can keep their ad revenue up once they've knocked us pesky humans off the web.
Re: (Score:2)
Someone needs to train the AI to click around the web like a user, so that the web companies can keep their ad revenue up once they've knocked us pesky humans off the web.
There used to be a plug in for that. At the time it was intended to obfuscate the user's actual browsing habits, and to make any data collection worthless. It would operate in the background and "click" on random links so that nobody could tell if ad views etc were real.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Please explain me why my browser needs an AI mode.
To introduce new security vulnerabilities!
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
I used Gemini in Chrome just yesterday.
My son was signing up for his company's health insurance plan. He had three choices, and the options weren't easy to decipher, and the text was long. AI was able to show me a nice three-column comparison of what was different in the three plans, just by reading the text on the page. I spot-checked its findings, they were right on.
Despite the backlash from many, there are many ways in which AI helps people in very tangible ways.
Re: (Score:2)
I used Gemini in Chrome just yesterday.
My son was signing up for his company's health insurance plan. He had three choices, and the options weren't easy to decipher, and the text was long. AI was able to show me a nice three-column comparison of what was different in the three plans, just by reading the text on the page. I spot-checked its findings, they were right on.
Despite the backlash from many, there are many ways in which AI helps people in very tangible ways.
I'm probably just being pessimistic, but it seems like a very small step to have the AI in cahoots with the insurance companies to make sure the summary tells the customer to select the plan that is most profitable for the insurer.
Re: (Score:2)
It didn't tell me what to select. It did a side-by-side comparison of the various attributes of each plan, comparing things like deductibles, coinsurance, max out of pocket, etc. While I don't doubt that Gemini and its kin will offer product placement, it's a whole other thing to distort such a comparison.
Re: (Score:2)
It didn't tell me what to select. It did a side-by-side comparison of the various attributes of each plan, comparing things like deductibles, coinsurance, max out of pocket, etc. While I don't doubt that Gemini and its kin will offer product placement, it's a whole other thing to distort such a comparison.
I'm not saying it told you what to select in your case, I'm just saying it would be a fairly small step if Gemini's owners ever decide to do so. Of course, it wouldn't be so blunt as to say "buy this one." The summary would just use biased words when describing the prices, or exaggerate the uncertainty of the potential costs of a given plan
At first glance one might think "numbers don't lie" but I'm sure we have both seen enough advertising to know that numbers can be misused to promote one view over another
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Of course, you have to understand what you can and can't trust. That's why I spot-checked the findings.
Can you trust what Wikipedia says? Can you trust what the New York Times says? Fox News?
All repositories of information have inaccuracies. The trick is to understand what kinds of inaccuracies are likely. AI, Wikipedia, and news websites are all still useful, despite their flaws.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm inclined to agree, but thinking about it there might be some things that an "agentic" AI could help with. Like "fill out my timecard for today" or "every time Outlook web logs me out, log back in with my credentials." You know, the things that would give the bureaucrats a heart attack if they knew I could do them instead of wasting my time.
Assuming I trusted the AI enough, of course.
Looks like a feature you have to choose (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
They HAVE a choice: Chrome!
AI go home!
Leave Firefox alone!
Re: Looks like a feature you have to choose (Score:3)
Execubot override (Score:5, Interesting)
So Tony here sees the rush to turn everything into an LLM front end and it is literally a no-brainer to him. Doing otherwise means answering questions about why he's ignoring 'the biggest tech story since" whatever. It literally has nothing to do with the user.
Re: (Score:2)
"None of us is as dumb as all of us." [despair.com]
What a f@#^wit (Score:1)
Well, time to look into the FF forks (Score:4, Interesting)
I've been a user since it was still called not firebird but phoenix and I'll be sorry to let it go, but if they insist...
Re: (Score:2)
Quite late (Score:2)
It is never too late (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
"Slop" was beaten out by "rage bait" in the polls of "word for 2025".
So long (Score:4, Interesting)
Guess I'm moving to Vivaldi then. https://vivaldi.com/ [vivaldi.com]
Yeah, that's what will make Firefox user base grow (Score:2)
Every time they release an "AI" feature or comment they'll use the tech, user opinions are awful everywhere: on their forums, on the linked article comments, on comments from news aggregators, on social networks... But yeah, let's bet the future of the browser already on a really difficult situation on the tech nobody wants on a browser.
Good thing it's open-source (Score:2)
So that someone motivated enough will inevitably fork it without this AI shit.
Getting ready (Score:2)
idiot (Score:4, Informative)
He's an MBA with degrees in forensics. MBAs invariably just jump on the latest trendy bandwagon.
The good news is that I can stop updating FF all the time on my devices.
AI to spy on people? (Score:2)
Slashdot Poll please (Score:1)
AI in Firefox is;
A bad Idea
An Always Ignored option
A reason to create a fork
Re: (Score:1)
two more option;
Awfully Irrelevant
An Intentional sabotage
Message him on LinkedIn (Score:3)
Anthony Enzor-DeMeo [linkedin.com]
betting the farm. (Score:2)
Nice knowing you, FireFox (Score:2)
It was a good run, but ultimately Google's giant stomps plus your ability to get distracted has ended the party. I'm not cleaning up the puke.
What an idiot (Score:2)
If they made a pledge to never add AI to Firefox, they would instantly gain the entirety of all internet-using women in the world because women hate AI.
And yet, still no way to turn off notifications (Score:2)
There was a time when a single checkbox would get rid of any notification of updates in Firefox. Not any longer. For years we are plagued with harassment if we don't update two seconds after the newest release is out.
For all the time, effort, and money Mozilla keeps wasting, it would be such a simple task to put back what was in the software from its beginning days.
Oh, crap... (Score:2)
Am I going to have to find another browser? One with NO chatbot functionality? Maybe there'll be a non-AI fork of firefox.
Oh well ... (Score:2)
This should be optional in Settings (Score:2)
I'm all for AI in Firefox if it's optional. There should be explicit settings to disable it -- but also, to fine-tune its behavior. And, it needs to be well and properly tested.
They may be able to utilize a performant local LLM that is smaller and efficient at certain tasks, that wouldn't use up tons of resources. If they want to start outsourcing requests to cloud providers, then that should be optional as well. Lots of privacy concerns there.
On MacOS Sequoia, I've seen Firefox slowing down considera
To Mozilla's CEO (Score:1)
I've used Firefox since 0.7. At no point do I want AI buried in my browser. Thank you.
Phoenix FTW (Score:2)
I remember when Firefox came out (first as Phoenix), it was the light and simple browser separated from the huge Mozilla suite. If Mozilla wants to slop it up with AI, they might as well change the name. I know, nothing about web browsers has been simple and light for at least a decade, but we could at least pretend.
Time to fork it (Score:2)
Has the Netscape trademark been declared abandoned yet?
How to make Firefox worse? (Score:2)
Lets add AI!
In a time, long, long ago now.... (Score:2)
I used Firefox and Thunderbird and was quite happy with both. Then I noted a bit in the config (using about:config in the address field) about sending data to google. I disabled those unwanted bits and kept a wary eye on things. Mozilla continued to "new and improve" both applications and eventually reached a point where I went looking for alternatives. I landed on Palemoon and FossaMail, which I'm still using (for now).
Every so often I think about migrating back and then I read stuff like this and ther
New Extension APIs (Score:2)
So what's he's saying is they're adding AI related hooks to their extensions API so anyone can add whatever AI they want to whatever aspect of the browser they want? Right? Right? And they're going to drop the random sidebar AI and right-click AI entries which seem to be a strictly limited to whatever limited vision they have for what a browser AI should be? Or is this new corporate bullshitter just as bullshitty as the normal bullshitters?
building a business model around transparent monetization, and expanding Firefox into a broader ecosystem of trusted software
I think the summary ignored the more important 2/3rds of the ann
Just went from questionable to No future now. (Score:2)
- Throttle Down!
So, Ladybird? (Score:2)
It's good to have a second engine but it sure sounds like Gecko isn't long for this world.
Re: (Score:2)
You could also try one of the Servo browsers.
Noep (Score:2)
Mozilla is a gambling addict (Score:2)
They sold their future long ago and yet next time it will be different. Just get back to a nice, simple but extensible browser that doesn't get in the user's way with arbitrary constraints or continuous god-awful re-designs.
Stop it, Just Stop! (Score:1)
Next Up: Félim Spontaneously Combusts (Score:1)
Will it make local LLM use any easier? (Score:2)
My chatbot provider is located at 127.0.0.1:8080. The browser is actually responsible for the context window and conversation history, as I found out the hard way the first time I had to restart and lost my history and context window. I thought this was a llama.cpp problem but no, it was the fact that I have my cookie policy set to discard all cookies at the end of each session. I had to add 127.0.0.1 as an exception.
If they're somehow going to add more functionality onto that, good. I'd like to see what th
Oh no, really? (Score:1)