Anthony Enzor-DeMeo is taking charge of one of the internet’s most important — and most complicated — companies.

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.”

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  • heyWhatsay@slrpnk.netEnglish
    3·
    1 day ago

    I used to use it exclusively, but it slowly got bloated, so when I got rid of windows, I went to tor browser and librewolf.

  • enthusiasm_headquarters@lemmy.worldEnglish
    4·
    2 days 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.

    • dimjim@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
      1221·
      3 days ago

      This is such a fantastic way to put it. I fuckin love the internet, people have amazing ways to say things lol

      • M137@lemmy.worldEnglish
        16·
        3 days ago

        There are two things that the Internet has taught me: the incredible creativity people have about absolutely everything and the unimaginable levels of stupidity that people have about absolutely everything. Sometimes one of those things only exist because of the other, and that’s hard to process.

  • Tonava@sopuli.xyzEnglish
    441·
    3 days ago

    Programs are like socks, once they get dirty, you change them. Do these people really not understand how this stuff works? Even giants can fall when enough people switch to other options

  • tired_n_bored@lemmy.worldEnglish
    39·
    3 days ago

    Mozilla is completely detached from its user base. They think their average user is a Microsoft enthusiast when in reality it’s a Debian enjoyer.

  • criss_cross@lemmy.worldEnglish
    80·
    3 days ago

    “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.” Some will be open-source models available to anyone.

    This is such an out of touch non-answer here.

    People don’t oppose ai changes because they’re locked into a model. In fact most AI products I use for my job let you choose a fucking model.

    People hate them because

    A) 90% of the time they’re useless and the remaining 10 are detrimental to the product experience

    B) Ethical concerns about training off of artists and authors as well as environmental impact. EDIT: or also the general trend of trying to replace humans with AI.

    C) Not wanting to play into the fucking arms race the billionaire class are manufacturing

    D) The time they could be useful they have a risk of being either hilariously wrong or dangerously wrong. And there’s no amount of training and GPU manufacturing that’s gonna fix that.

    Absolutely none of this is addressed by the CEO. I’m sure he has to say this because of the fucking tulip crazy money is in around this but it doesn’t make it any less tone deaf or futile.

  • TurboWafflz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    2164·
    3 days ago

    I feel like mozilla could switch to making all their decisions by flipping a coin and do better than they’re doing in recent years

    • Deceptichum@quokk.auEnglish
      501·
      3 days ago

      But how else would the CEO justify her $7 million dollar salary (in ‘22) that’s going up by a million or two every year since she returned, starting at $3 million in 2020.

        • Deceptichum@quokk.auEnglish
          614·
          3 days ago

          Oh shit they literally changed CEO a few hours ago. My bad.

          Doubt the wage issue will change though.

          • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
            73·
            3 days ago

            I get missing it in the title, but you didn’t read the article or even the summary blurb either?

            • Deceptichum@quokk.auEnglish
              151·
              3 days ago

              No, because I wasn’t commenting on the article. I was commenting on the other users comment about the last few years of Mozilla, something I’m already well aware of.

      • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zipEnglish
        6·
        3 days ago

        At least she didn’t cut every interesting program in Mozilla’s portfolio when every other company was laying off employees. She wasn’t great, but she was operating in a bad economy.

        This new guy tho, he sounds like good news if you’re the CEO of Google.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
      52·
      3 days ago

      mozilla is nothing more than an extension of GOOGLE, since they recieved most of thier funding from them. they are essentially google shills, and probably using thier AI too. i wouldnt be surprise if google tries to buy them down the line.

      • Blisterexe@lemmy.zipEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        They aren’t using their AI. They currently use open source ondevice models and have perplexity as a search option.

  • Gonzako@lemmy.worldEnglish
    115·
    3 days ago

    Man, I so wish mozilla was a worker owned cooperative. These string of useless CEOs would have already been shown the door

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
      11·
      3 days ago

      mozilla foundation is like susan comen breast cancer foundation, where the CEO takes the large chunk of donation for him/herself.

      • frunch@lemmy.worldEnglish
        4·
        2 days ago

        Well if Susan isn’t being compensated several million dollars a year, what incentive would she have to help cancer patients? 🫠

    • RagingRobot@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      They all just do the same exact predictable thing. It’s always the shittiest thing for everyone but the “share holders”. Just automate them away and call it a day at this point.

  • DigDoug@lemmy.worldEnglish
    102·
    3 days ago

    Is “must make the dumbest fucking decision possible at all times” in the Mozilla CEO job description or something?

    I have no CEO experience, but I’ll make stupid fucking decisions for a fifth of the salary you’re paying the current guy.

    • ArxCyberwolf@lemmy.caEnglish
      151·
      3 days ago

      The job of a CEO is to make the line go up, and that almost always comes at the expense of the consumer and the quality of the product itself.

  • 58008@lemmy.worldEnglish
    551·
    3 days ago

    Is there like a petition or something we can all sign to show that literally no cunt wants this?

    • Yggstyle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      142·
      3 days ago

      Uninstall it and pick a different platform. These cunts think you won’t and THATS why they don’t give a fuck. Enough people swap and oh, hey, maybe we should rethink this mistake. If not - not your problem… You already bounced.

      • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
        151·
        2 days ago

        If anyone has any suggestions for browsers hook me up, I’m running out of browsers with thier own engines to try. I don’t see much point in using, say, LibreWolf if the engine is still the same as Firefox (Gecko in this case). Maybe I’ll give NetSurf a try and pretend like it’s 1996 again.

        edit i don’t see much point because doing some about:config shenanigans is nearly the same amount of work to me as switching browsers.

        • sudoer777@lemmy.mlEnglish
          51·
          3 days ago

          If all of the web engines enshittify, you can always curl the HTML/CSS/JS and hand-parse it. Might have suboptimal performance however.

        • tired_n_bored@lemmy.worldEnglish
          21·
          3 days ago

          I’m afraid that not using Gecko or Blink may expose me to any sort of malware while visiting the web tbh

          • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
            8·
            3 days ago

            That’s still a fork of Firefox, isn’t it? I was hoping to find a reasonably modern browser that doesn’t rely on gecko or blink. I’d be okay with a WebKit browser but I don’t have a Mac.

            • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
              61·
              2 days ago

              I do, in fact. I get that they are typically open-source, and I also understand how ridiculously difficult it is to create one from scratch. If LibreWolf or whoever want to make privacy focused browsers based on mozilla foundation or google’s work then that’s fine and I support it, but I’m personally curious if there are any mainstream browsers that don’t have any (or minimal) reliance on google and mozilla foundation. Someone pointed me towards an engine in development Servo which looks quite interesting! Hopefully there will be a browser based on it soon.

              https://www.spacebar.news/servo-undercover-web-browser-engine/

              At the start of the millennium, Internet Explorer used its own Trident engine on Windows and Tasman on Mac, Opera used Presto, some embedded devices used NetFront, Netscape had Gecko, and KDE made KHTML for its Konqueror browser. Those browsers eventually faded away or adopted a competing engine to simplify development. KHTML was the basis for Safari’s WebKit, which in turn became Chromium’s Blink engine, and Netscape’s Gecko engine became the foundation for Firefox. Opera ditched its custom Presto engine in 2013 and switched to Chromium, and Microsoft Edge made the same move in 2020.

              This is a danger to the open web in more ways than one. If there is only one functioning implementation of a standard, the implementation becomes the standard. The web becomes to Google what Java is to Oracle. It also means the limitations and security flaws in Chromium affect most other browsers, which became a topic of conversation with Google’s recent Manifest V3 transition.

              • ikidd@lemmy.worldEnglish
                4·
                3 days ago

                I figured you did. It’s the guy you were replying to that seems confused.

                • kieron115@startrek.websiteEnglish
                  4·
                  3 days ago

                  Oh shit my bad! Leaving the info up anyway, in case anyone else is wondering why only two major engines is a bad thing for the open internet.

  • 𝚝𝚛𝚔@aussie.zoneEnglish
    622·
    3 days ago

    I’ve cancelled my monthly donation to Mozilla. What’s the point. Every bit of feedback I’ve provided is to the tune of no goddamn AI, spend my money towards keeping up with the alternatives to make sure there’s always an extra player in the field. Instead it’s going to some overpaid dickhead who’s going to introduce AI.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.todayEnglish
      4·
      3 days ago

      firefox is almostly completely dependant on google through ad revenue, hence thats why the sudden jump into AI, which google is trying to jam into all its services.