Mozilla's latest quagmire
83 comments
·December 1, 2025bitpush
embedding-shape
Firefox was seriously a better browser, not just "implements standards better". It ran faster, it had tabs (wow!) and at one point it got Firebug which let you have a console INSIDE the browser that showed information you could print with `console.log`, I kid you not.
It was a better browser through and through, maybe because MS slept on IE or maybe not, but in the end it isn't revisionist to say they beat MS's proverbial posterior because the browser was better.
cogman10
Firebug was a big reason for webdevs to adopt firefox in the first place. Part of what made chrome succeed is it came out with a pretty robust set of webdev tools right from the get-go.
But also, google spent a mountain of money advertising chrome.
ghurtado
> Part of what made chrome succeed is it came out with a pretty robust set of webdev tools right from the get-go.
I think this factor isn't given enough weight in the shift to Firefox.
At that time, the largest pain point in web development was (by a long shot) browser compatibility.
When developers fell in love with Firefox, they started pushing business requirements away from IE and towards the browser that didn't feel like it was their enemy. Alongside with this there was also massive shift to start taking web standards seriously, which is another area where IE dropped the ball spectacularly
It took a few years, but eventually pointy haired managers got sick of our whining and gave in.
hi_hi
It's hard to state just how much of a game changer Firebug was for web development. Before that your only option was "alert()"ing or outputting directly to the page.
Once Chrome came along with their devtools, improvements quickly escalated between the 2 before Google eventually won out.
I can't recall the exact point in time when my use of Firefox fell off, but it was probably due to the account integrations with Chrome.
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paradox460
Chrome has the advantage that they inherited webkits inspector. The chrome team made improvements, yes, but it originated in Safari
throwup238
> But also, google spent a mountain of money advertising chrome.
Not to mention preferential treatment like the Youtube anti-IE campaign [1]
[1] https://www.theverge.com/2019/5/4/18529381/google-youtube-in...
outside1234
To be fair to Google, they also kicked ass on implementation at the beginning too.
Chrome was a lot faster and a lot lighter (in the beginning)
evilduck
Chrome borrowed their webdev tools from Webkit, who borrowed them from KHTML. Chrome launched with dev tools, but they didn't develop their own distinct version of them for many years after launching the browser.
bigger_cheese
One big feature at the time was Firefox had a built in popup blocker, IE did not. Popup ads were rife towards the backend of the 90's and the internet felt borderline unusable without a blocker.
cogman10
I'd also point out that IE won the title from Netscape in the first place, which was the basis for the Mozilla software set (that later spun off into firefox).
Mozilla didn't "take on" IE. Mozilla reclaimed their lost browser position. IE kicked the proverbial posterior of Netscape which both Netscape and Mozilla struggled to reclaim right up until the release of Firefox.
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readthenotes1
Didn't Mozilla reclaim its title after Microsoft stopped its s monopolistic and anti-competitive activities? Or do I have the timing wrong?
biglyburrito
lol, please tell me at what point in time Microsoft stopped its monopolistic and anti-competitive activities.
cogman10
That was maybe a factor in the EU. In the US, MS never really stopped their anti-competitive activities. IE has been distributed as the default browser for windows in the US since forever.
MS presented the choice for a browser from 2009->2011.
IDK that MS has ever actually fixed the situation since their last fine in 2013.
IIRC, firefox really started taking off around Firefox 3, which was first released in 2006. Looks like they officially beat IE in 2010. That does seem to line up with MS's implementation of the browser choice screen.
thomassmith65
It wasnt about "respecting users", or "agency" but simply implemented standards properly.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netscape:
In November 2007, IE had 77.4% of the browser market, Firefox 16.0%, and Netscape 0.6%umanwizard
Firefox succeeded because it had tabs and supported extensions. Literally the only reasons IMO.
fragmede
And it was fast, and small. Back in those days, download size mattered.
nomel
No, it was larger than many of the other browsers (like Opera), and size wasn't different enough to matter. Back then, download time was entirely quantized by "one night", because the only thing that mattered was that it finished by morning so someone picking up the phone wouldn't sever the dialup connection. A substation piece of software, like a browser, was happening during sleep time, regardless of size, and rare, so two night would also be fine (resuming was trivial with ftp, where these were sourced, usually from university mirrors).
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smileson2
builds on your point but from what I remember actually having tabs was a really big deal too
arjie
Mozilla has the classic problem of a non-profit that achieved its aims. I was around back in the day and my friends and I were avid evangelists of Firefox - a few cogs in the wheel of the marketing installing Firefox on school machines and getting all the elderly people to use it and so on. There were user groups and student ambassador programs and so on. It was an incredible marketing effort combined with an effort to bring standards and compliance to them into the mainstream. And it worked because they added features at a rate that IE simply did not match.
The extension ecosystem, tabs, plugins, and notably whatever effort they did behind the scenes to ensure that companies that did streaming video etc. would work with their browser all played out really well.
I think the ultimate problem is that Mozilla's mission of a standards-compliant web with open-source browsers everywhere ultimately did get achieved. The era of "Works with IE6" badges has ended and the top browsers run on open-source engines. Despite our enthusiasm at the time for it, I think the truth is that Firefox was probably just a vehicle for this, much bigger, achievement.
Now that it's been achieved, Mozilla is in the fortunate place where Firefox only needs to exist as a backstop against Chrome sliding into high-proprietary world while providing the utility to Google that they get to say they're not a monopoly on web technologies.
Mozilla's search for a new mission isn't some sign of someone losing their way. It's just what happens to the Hero of Legend after he defeats the Big Bad. There's a post-denouement period. Sam Gamgee gets to go become Mayor of the Shire, which is all very convenient, but a non-profit like Mozilla would much rather find a similar enough mission that they can apply their vast resources to. That involves the same mechanics as product development, and they're facing the same primary thing: repeated failure.
That's just life.
edelbitter
This new "please accept cookies and scripts to prove you are running Google Chrome without Adblockers" Internet does not exactly look like mission accomplished to me. And that is before we even get to the part of the Internet that goes straight to "please run this Android app so we can ask Google who truly owns your device".
If Mozilla was not busy "offering" (renamed the no-thank-you setting once again) so many "experiences" they could be doing much of the same stuff they did back in the day.
RicoElectrico
American non-profits seem to be run like corporations, with all disadvantages of it. Bloated, losing focus, growing for the sake of growth (where growth means headcount and income, not necessarily charter goals)
bawolff
I think its even worse than that. Corporations at least have a bottom line to chase. At the end of the day there is the hard reality of you are either making money or you arent. There is an objective measure of success. American non profits are like the bad parts without the checks and balances of actually having to make money.
Amezarak
Mozilla did lose their way. It happened because they abandoned their core users: you. People who loved Firefox so much they practically forced it on everyone around them.
Google released Chrome with a massive advertising campaign, reaching even to television. They put ads for Chrome on the world's biggest web properties. It was packaged in installers. Not to say it wasn't a good browser - but it wasn't obviously better than Firefox. This marketing campaign bought them a ton of marketshare.
Mozilla's response, instead of sticking by Mozilla evangelists, nearly all of whom were power users, was to decide that the browser was too complicated for its users. It needed to be more like Chrome. It needed to be the browser for the proverbial grandma. So they axed features (like Panorama), configurability, and extensibility, alienating everyone who really cared. Only they didn't have the marketing heft of Google, so they didn't get Grandma, either.
Ever since then they've been panicking and grasping at straws and shoving in shovelware like Pocket in obviously vain attempts to regain what they had. And they never will, until they make people like you and me LOVE Firefox again.
creata
> And they never will, until they make people like you and me LOVE Firefox again.
What are the sorts of features you think they should consider adding?
bbor
Random thought, but Kagi is acting like I wish Mozilla would. Their main product is a search engine, but they’ve been trying out a slew of other initiatives, all of which seem well thought out and integrate LLMs in an exclusively thoughtful, opt-in way. Surely many of them will end up being failures, but I can’t help but be impressed.
Maybe it’s because I’m a power user and they tend to cater to power users, idk — that’s definitely what the comment above yours is hinting at.
But at this point, I think we can all agree that whatever Mozilla is doing now isn’t working… so maybe power users are worth a shot again?
bawolff
The biggest problem with mozilla is they are trend chasing instead of finding a niche.
The AI stuff is the perfect example. Are there people who like AI? Certainly. Will they use firefox? Probably not.
At this stage firefox is the anti-establishment choice. That crowd hates AI. Betting on AI might make sense if you are chrome. It doesn't make sense if you are firefox.
whatshisface
Mozilla is a search traffic vendor with one client, not a combination of the EFF and the FSF. That's their behavior and motives in a nutshell. How big of a fraction of the Google traffic comes from power users? How would they find an alternative? Those are the questions the (rational) high-paid execs at Mozilla ask about us.
hd4
It's advisable to use a prefs.js for this sort of thing
notafox
prefs.js is modified by browser itself. And it contains lots of stuff by default already.
You can store your custom preferences in user.js file - Firefox will copy those to prefs.js at startup.
From your link:
The user.js[1] file is optional. If you have one whenever the application is started it will overwrite any settings in prefs.js with the corresponding settings from user.js.
Fnoord
I guess Mozilla also wants to jump on the AI bandwagon.
Out of the five options available, only one is European (the one I am using). What I don't like is how I cannot add my own custom endpoint. What if I run Mistral locally (with Ollama, for example) and want to use that?
Also, I really do think there should be a fat warning about uploading data from browser to a third party. Yes, every bloody time. Not everything the browser shows is publicly available data. There are people who are going to break the law with this tool (ie. using PII with LLM), and the people who are damaged are going to be innocent third parties who didn't opt-out or opt-in anything.
The BS with not being easily able to disable a feature like this is probably to deter, or because 'user studies' showed people don't want to disable it. Well, fuck that. It isn't rocket science to have a checkbox which just deals with these values in about:config.
denismi
> Out of the five options available, only one is European (the one I am using). What I don't like is how I cannot add my own custom endpoint. What if I run Mistral locally (with Ollama, for example) and want to use that?
Set up your preferred self-hosted web interface (OpenWebUI or whatever, I haven't looked into this for a while), point it at ollama, and then configure it in Firefox:
browser.ml.chat.provider = http://localhost:3000/
At home I point this at Kagi Assistant, at work I point it to our internal GenAI platform's chat endpoint.
acomjean
I noticed the ai sidebar. Annoying. But left column browser tabs are back, which is a plus.
bbor
That reminds me that their new tab grouping feature is the first one to really impress me and immediately enter my workflow in… years? Probably since either reader mode or auto-translate first dropped.
Highly recommend everyone check it out. Handily trounces all the tab management extensions I’ve tried over the years on FF and Chrome
arp242
I think I disabled "Use AI to suggest tab group names" and "enable link previews" in settings (not about:config), and I don't really see any AI anywhere else? I can add/remove some chat thing from the sidebar, but you can just remove that button and you don't need to use it. It's like any other feature one may choose to not use.
I now see there's also a "Create alt texts automatically" for pdfjs. This actually seems one of the more useful AI features I've seen. But I've never noticed it exists as I don't need this accessibility feature. You can disable it in the pdfjs (no about:config needed).
In short, Firefox is not forcing anyone to use AI and ways to disable it are not that obfuscated.
einpoklum
People should also know that Firefox (and Thunderbird) collect _quite a bit_ of information about your interaction via their telemetry mechanisms.
Here are instructions on how to disable all of it:
https://github.com/Aetherinox/firefox-telemetry-block
(and no, you can't do it with just a few checkboxes in the prefs, you have to go into the advanced pref editor and look up some stuff.)
danielhlockard
Another user said this, but I'm going to echo it -- Firefox opened up the LLM chat sidebar one time. I closed it. It's stayed closed. It hasn't asked me to open it again. I don't understand the hatred for something you can just _not use_. People will use it if they want to. Firefox also has a very tiny market share in comparison to other browsers.
barnabee
I need things I don’t want to use to not appear in the UI.
I don’t fill my house with tools and products I don’t want and I’m not willing to have them on my computer screen either.
IshKebab
> the majority who don’t use “AI”
Citation definitely needed. ChatGPT has almost a billion users.
I do agree with the main point that this should be easy to turn off, but let's not pretend that everyone hates AI as much as the average HN nerd.
Also, you could argue that Firefox's only remaining users are the average HN nerd and therefore it shouldn't pursue AI, but that's exactly the problem.
cpncrunch
According to a Pew study, the majority of Americans use AI on a regular basis:
https://www.pewresearch.org/science/2025/09/17/ai-in-america...
ChrisSD
That study only says that most Americans think they interact with AI at least a few times a week (it doesn't say how or if it's intentional). And it also says the vast majority feel they have little or no control over whether AI is used in the lives.
For example, someone getting a google search result containing an AI response is technically interacting with AI but not necessarily making use of its response or even wanting to see it in the first place. Or perhaps someone suspects their insurance premiums were decided by AI (whether that's true or not). Or customer service that requires you go through a chat bot before you get real service.
raincole
People who hate AI enough to affect their choice of browser are definitely the minority.
However, realistically Firefox is a niche browser now and will stay so. So niche that appealing to the minority becomes a valid strategy again.
Bratmon
Yeah, that claim killed all credibility of the author for me. I firmly believe that if making your point requires you to invent some statistics that clearly don't pass the smell test, it's time to accept that your point may be wrong.
Aeolun
The latest quagmire is Firefox adding a completely optional AI sidebar? Seriously, some people are impossible to please. Just don’t open it if you don’t like it…
sfRattan
I've added a room to your home.
Sometimes, there's a butler in there who seems absentminded and can only remember things up to a few thousand words. He once stacked all your dishes in the refrigerator and dumped all the food into the sink.
Other times, there's a demon in there who seems hellbent on destroying the innocence of your children and ripping apart your family. He once gave your children snuff films and instructions to build a bomb.
Just don't open the door if you don't like it... Some people are impossible to please.
Aeolun
No, no.
> I've added a room to your home.
They’ve added a room to their home. That they let you live in, for free.
I’ll also mention that the room right next to it had all the contents you claim to take issue with.
The problem here is that you shouldn’t leave children home alone, not that it has two potentially dangerous rooms. There’s several more such rooms in your house, and you wouldn’t let them cook or use your power tools by themselves either (not until they prove they can be trusted with that anyway).
sfRattan
Yes, this is why we routinely fill council homes (or public project housing) with amnesiac butlers to rearrange the residents' possessions, and also with demons for, um, reasons.
Completely reasonable things to do.
How else would we recoup our investment in the hugely expensive, unpredictable butler/demon spawning machines?
>The problem here is that you shouldn’t leave children home alone, not that it has two potentially dangerous rooms. There’s several more such rooms in your house, and you wouldn’t let them cook or use your power tools by themselves either (not until they prove they can be trusted with that anyway).
Depends on age, and the children in question. Also, if I have power tools it's because I chose them. And neither amnesiac butlers nor stochastic demons are necessary to not starve in the way that cooking food is, so the assessments of risk and basic good sense are not comparable.
mvdtnz
> They’ve added a room to their home. That they let you live in, for free.
They don't let you stay there for free. They let you stay there because the world's biggest advertising company pays them to.
NicuCalcea
> Just don't open the door if you don't like it... Some people are impossible to please.
I mean... yeah? Do you use every feature of every piece of software you have installed?
sfRattan
Until the last few years, most features added to software I use haven't:
...had functionally nondeterminstic, unpredictable results in response to how I use them.
...written in long-form English text with confidence and no guarantee of factual accuracy.
...coaxed children into codependent pseudo-relationships with ML models or encouraged suicide.
AI isn't a new feature; it's a new category. And the people who don't understand why some of us don't want it everywhere don't understand that distinction, or else are financially motivated to ignore it and gaslight everyone about the categorical boundaries crossed.
I use LLMs and diffusion style image generators... Where I understand the model I've chosen, can control it locally, and have enough tacit knowledge to double check the outputs before I go ahead with something. I don't trust Mozilla to ensure any of those things anymore. They've long since burned that credibility.
jabbywocker
lol
tumult
No. There is a lot more than that. The AI stuff appears in places in the UI where other things used to, like in right-click menus and when you are entering text into fields. And it's not opt-in. It's on by default. Unless you are willing to search for how to turn it off and open the non-GUI about:config stuff and modify raw settings in a text table (with no descriptions or help text next to them) then you can't even turn it off. Also, the AI stuff takes up disk space.
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abdullahkhalids
The default Right Click Menu in Firefox is
- Icon bar: Back, Forward, Reload, Bookmark
- Save Page As...
- Select All
- Take Screenshot
- Ask An AI Chatbot
- View Page Source
- Inspect Accessibility Properties
- Inspect
I would bet that 99% of Firefox users have never ever even once clicked on any of the options besides the first one (icon bar).
throwaway1389z
Based on the article, you have to disable a whole heap of AI features, not a simple optional AI sidebar.
This include things like using AI to assist with rendering/processing of PDF, looking at the flags.
As a Firefox users, this seems very troubling to me.
Aeolun
That’s what the flags seem to have as a subject sure, but my firefox hasn’t spammed AI in my face even once, and I’ve looked at a lot of PDF’s, so clearly it’s not mandatory.
throwaway1389z
Did you check your network logs when opening PDFs? Why these flags are there to begin with?
phyzome
And added Perplexity to the search engines, and did the tab grouping thing, and took away keyboard shortcut space for the sidebar...
> It might be hard to believe for my younger readers, but Mozilla took on Internet Explorer that was just as entrenched as Chrome is now, and they kicked proverbial posterior! They did because they offered a better browser that respected the people who used it, and gave them agency in their browsing experience.
That is revisionist history. Firefox succeeded because MS was sitting on their hands with IE, and it was stagnating. Firefox didnt do the opposite of what IE - you could argue Mozilla was doing what MS should have been.
It wasnt about "respecting users", or "agency" but simply implemented standards properly.
And that's going to be a hard problem with Chrome because you're up against a browser that is moving very, very, fast.