Mozilla Names New CEO, Firefox To Evolve Into A "Modern AI Browser"

https://www.phoronix.com/news/Mozilla-New-CEO-AI

Mozilla Corporation has named its new CEO in replacing interim CEO Laura Chambers.

Anthony Enzor-DeMeo has been named the new CEO of Mozilla Corporation. Anthony Enzor-DeMeo was SVP of Firefox from 2004 to July 2005 and then from July until now was the GM of Firefox at Mozilla. He's written a public message today in his first day serving as the new chief executive for Mozilla.

Third: Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions."

225 points · 70 comments · view on lemmy.world

70 Comments

Vendetta9076@sh.itjust.works · 113 pts · 250d

Well it was fun while it lasted I guess

monovergent@lemmy.ml · 77 pts · 250d

Another common mozilla L

deadbeef79000@lemmy.nz · 40 pts · 250d (27 replies)

OK peeps, crowd sourcing time.

What other gecko (or non-webkit) browsers are out there?

SwooshBakery624@programming.dev · 44 pts · 250d (19 replies)

Desktop:

Android:

ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml · 25 pts · 250d (5 replies)

Except that *Fox, *Fennec and *Wolf are downstream to Firefox, so if the main trunk goes shit, they will become outdated soon.

Creat@discuss.tchncs.de · 14 pts · 250d

You kinda want it to be based on Firefox, as the only other option is chrome. The forks already strip out all the mozilla bullshit, it'll just be more work to strip out all the AI nonsense.

I'm mainly familiar with librewolf, it's not just stripped of nonsense but also hardened by default. Actually so much so that I stayed on Firefox as it was too much effort (so far) to "unharden" all the aspects I didn't want or need.

Tenderizer78@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 250d (3 replies)

We'll cross that bridge when and if we come to it. Or rather we won't, but the devs behind these projects will.

ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 250d (2 replies)

FOSS to thrive needs people who can afford to spend time and energy on it. With the recent enshittification of workers collective power, developers have less of both, and the trend is pessimistic.

ByteJunk@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 250d (1 reply)

The answer is, and always has been, unions and strikes.

Do your part.

ThirdConsul@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 249d

Are you telling that to someone on a .ml instance?

Huh. :P

(This is of course a joke)

GammaGames@beehaw.org · 13 pts · 250d (3 replies)

There’s also Zen, which is Firefox based and will be disabling ai features!

https://zen-browser.app/

Still in beta though

JayGray91@piefed.social · 2 pts · 250d

I've played enough perpetually Early Access / beta vudeo games, beta web browser is just another software to me 😅

OrganicMustard@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 250d

It's in beta but I daily drive it and I would say is basically as functional as Firefox already

silentjohn@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 249d

I found zen to be too busy for me, ironically. Maybe I should give it another go

davel@lemmy.ml · 9 pts · 250d (6 replies)

Aren’t these all soft forks of Firefox? What we need is a hard fork with the funding and team capable of sustaining it.

SwooshBakery624@programming.dev · -1 pts · 250d (5 replies)

Not really. Mullvad Browser is a Tor Browser fork. WebLibre is a Gecko-engine based Flutter browser written from scratch.

who@feddit.org · 7 pts · 250d (1 reply)

Tor Browser is a modified Firefox ESR, which is just Firefox with less frequent releases.

upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 246d
[ removed ]
upstroke4448@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 5 pts · 250d (2 replies)

Mullvad Browser is literally based on Firefox ESR. Which they clearly state.

For example: "Mullvad Browser 14.0, based on Firefox ESR 128"

https://mullvad.net/en/blog/mullvad-browser-140-released

SwooshBakery624@programming.dev · 1 pts · 250d (1 reply)

Yes, but they and the Tor Project are making enough changes that Mullvad Browser can be considered a hard fork rather than a soft fork.

Auli@lemmy.ca · 2 pts · 249d

No they still base it off of Firefox so it's a soft fork. Hard fork is when you branch off and don't do a resync again.

illi@piefed.social · 1 pts · 250d (1 reply)

Might be I'm dumb, but I don't see any Waterfox downloads for Android?

jwt@programming.dev · 18 pts · 250d

If you want to sidestep firefox, all firefox descendants would eventually pose the same problem. So I think many options others provided are suboptimal in that regard.

I'm keeping my eyes on ladybird: https://github.com/LadybirdBrowser/ladybird https://ladybird.org/

But it still is in its early stages.

ArmoredThirteen@lemmy.zip · 7 pts · 250d (1 reply)

Not gecko but Ladybird is hopefully around the corner. Github

Jumuta@sh.itjust.works · 3 pts · 249d

Alpha in 2026!

Peffse@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 250d (2 replies)

I had to switch away because of incompatible websites (Cloudflare hates it) but Pale Moon is still hanging around.

Source available here.

gtr@programming.dev · 1 pts · 250d

Looks nice. First thing I noticed is that their homepage works without JS. However I am surprised that they didn't remove the account syncing stuff, which could also be achieved with an extension.

not_me@piefed.social · 1 pts · 250d
[ removed ]
RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz · 4 pts · 250d
yaroto98@lemmy.world · 36 pts · 250d (4 replies)

Ummmmm, what is an AI browser? I mean, other than something I don't want.

Does it browse AI generated content? Does it generate AI web pages for me? Does it just set chatgpt/copilot/grok/gemini as the homepage/default search? Does it use AI to customize content to your language/reading level? Does it flag non-AI content as potentially malicious like an http site?

I'm so lost.

RheumatoidArthritis@mander.xyz · 14 pts · 250d

You made me read the Comet browser review, as I did not have the courage to install it myself.

Seems useful if done privately and under supervision:

  • has an AI chat sidebar that can interact with what you're viewing
  • can fill out forms (eg. you can dump unstructured text and have it fill, instead of copying field by field)
  • it can browse the internet for you - you ask it a question and watch it browse pages to find one with an answer
  • it can summarize the currently watched page. Which at first I thought was ridiculous but sometimes you need to get information from shitty bloated articles with 10 paragraphs of introduction

As long as it's optional and done right (eg. It can fill the form but it's me who submits it, and the model is running locally), sounds very useful. Also no reason why it can't be a Firefox addon instead of built in.

actionjbone@sh.itjust.works · 11 pts · 250d (2 replies)

It AI's the AIable content that AI hasn't already AI'd.

curious_dolphin@slrpnk.net · 9 pts · 250d (1 reply)

yo dawg, I heard you like AI 😆

helix@feddit.org · 4 pts · 250d

Weird Al Yankovic

Jean_le_Flambeur@discuss.tchncs.de · 30 pts · 250d

No, Pleaso no, god no

NuXCOM_90Percent@lemmy.zip · 24 pts · 250d (6 replies)

So I'm not ready to burn it all to the ground just yet. Mostly because chromium is still so much worse but also because, at least so far, I can disable that and I understand that "ai is money" for fundraising.

But... anyone have any thoughts on the various forks like waterfox and the other one? I don't mind grabbing the extensions I need on a new install but I DO need a way to be able to send tabs between devices. In theory that is something I can selfhost but I am not aware of a good solution.

Neptr@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 250d (2 replies)
yaroto98@lemmy.world · 7 pts · 250d (1 reply)

Yea, hopefully downstream browsers can remove that AI garbage.

Neptr@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 9 pts · 250d

They have so far.

SendMePhotos@lemmy.world · 8 pts · 250d

That's actually a decent take on it.

Damage@feddit.it · 3 pts · 250d

Mostly because Mozilla is terrible at achieving its goals, so this will probably result in nothing

JayGray91@piefed.social · 3 pts · 250d

Tldr: Zen is Arc Browser before they went AI brain worm but firefox based.

I like Zen browser because of their workspace thing. There's pinned tabs, but with zen each workspace can have its own pinned tabs. I still van set a global pinned tabs for all workspaces. And they work great with firefox containers. Each workspace can have a default container. So that way my work workspace can have only my work google account signed in, and my personal only with ny personal etc.

But ine of the major bugs though is that sometimes your tabs can just go poof. Had it happened to me earlier in the year, managed to restore my tabs somehow. Reported the bug but I don't see progress on the issue tracker as far as I ca understand.

If syncing netween desktop and monile is a concern, zen still uses firefox sync.

dinozaur@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 23 pts · 250d (2 replies)

so long as it's optional, local, and private.

CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 16 pts · 250d

I'm sorry, but it's not going to be. Mozilla set the stage of this when they changed from FOSS to source available.

I made this prediction right when this was announced.

utopiah@lemmy.ml · 16 pts · 250d

so long as it’s optional, local, and private.

... yes but also

  • open source,
  • open model,
  • all annotations done with proper respect to
    • labor law (ideally verified by 3rd party)
    • IP
  • clear on ecological cost
    • CO2 eq in model card (ideally verified by 3rd party)
    • analogy non technical user can understand

... which makes for a rather limited list.

My own constraints https://fabien.benetou.fr/Content/CollaborationRelyingOnAI recommendations welcomed, both on such rules but also on models that do fit, if any.

solrize@lemmy.ml · 22 pts · 250d (1 reply)

Can they rename the browser to Fireslop?

RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works · 1 pts · 249d

That's a sick burn.

RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works · 20 pts · 249d (5 replies)

I use LibreWolf and Tor. I don't care what Mozilla does. The garbage will be removed from the forks.

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world · 12 pts · 249d (3 replies)

At what point does removing garbage become so complicated that they just stop merging anything in at all.

ScoffingLizard@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 247d (1 reply)

I heard that it's hard as hell, but now I can't remember if the dev who said it was from Firefox or Chrome.

NotMyOldRedditName@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 247d

I remember stories of Google intentionally making it hard for people to fork the project and maintain updates on it.

Never heard anything like that about Firefox, but doesn't mean they don't.

RodgeGrabTheCat@sh.itjust.works · 0 pts · 249d

That will be up to the dev.

Auli@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 249d

How long can they do they for. Like it or not Mozilla does most of the coding for those browsers. 0

oeuf@slrpnk.net · 17 pts · 250d

The article quotes him as saying:

AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off.

No big deal. If it turns out to be unethical it will be switched off in Librewolf.

varnia@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 16 pts · 249d (3 replies)

Just in time since 2026 we get the alpha of the ladybird browser. This will be a big boost for the new engines currently in development and the popularity of Librewolf.

DownByLaw@sh.itjust.works · 10 pts · 249d (2 replies)

Ain’t ladybird the browser with project lead Andreas Kling? Well… I don’t know if I wanna be part of that.

AtariDump@lemmy.world · 13 pts · 248d

hellfire103@lemmy.ca · 9 pts · 250d (2 replies)

Guess I'm using Links2 now...

gtr@programming.dev · 2 pts · 250d (1 reply)

Try Dillo. It is what web browsers should have been.

selokichtli@lemmy.ml · 1 pts · 249d

Is it still kicking? Wow, never thought I'd come back to Dillo, Midori, Epyphany (GNOME Web) and links.

pogmommy@lemmy.ml · 4 pts · 248d

God I can't wait until Servo is viable

Auli@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 249d (1 reply)

Is KDE browser hanging around still? I know apple based their browser off of it.

banause@feddit.org · 3 pts · 248d

We will get Orion-Browser soon which is based on webkit.

However, Servo ist currently what we need to lay our hopes on. Do everything you can to contribute there. From donations over reports to code. Even if it is just spreading the word. It is currently the single most important FLOSS project out there.

https://servo.org/

cassandrafatigue@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 1 pts · 235d

The fact that its opt-out means you are more identifiable.

It harvests data by default. It has to.

The man MBA's statements are pure silicon valley woo. He's a scammer. Firefox is even more fucked than I knew before looking him up. And I still feel like I'm missing something fucked that's going on. I'm ending my gradual shift and unijstalling literally right now. I'm so fucking angry; I loved that browser for so long.

cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone · -1 pts · 249d (4 replies)
AtariDump@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 248d (3 replies)

No, but it’s still based on Chromium which killed off effective ad blocking.

cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone · -1 pts · 248d (2 replies)

vivaldi's blocker says otherwise.

AtariDump@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 234d (1 reply)

Yes, the browser that mined crypto without consent

cupcakezealot@piefed.blahaj.zone · 1 pts · 234d

you're confusing it with brave