so, my take on Mozilla:
I don’t like that they’re doing All This (AI stuff, etc; sponsored stuff is another discussion) and I wish they wouldn’t, but I understand why they’re doing it.
their leadership sees Chrome coming with Gemini integration, they see the market hype for AI, and they go “we’re behind the market, we need to catch up, how do we do that”. they realize that a lot of people—and, particularly, a lot of their users—are wary of AI (wary is an understatement, of course).
so they go “okay, we need to work on AI stuff, but we need to address the problems our users have with it”. they start with integrating local-only AI translation, this is reasonably well received, and then when they do the sidebar they make sure it supports whatever API you want to use. they’re giving you control, they’re giving you choice, right?
but all they’re doing is demonstrating they don’t understand. they don’t understand their place in the market, they don’t understand their users, and they don’t understand the hype cycle they’re trying to play into. their users like Firefox because it’s not Chrome. they provide more value, have a better place in the market, if they position themselves in opposition to it. if they’re the anti-hype-cycle browser.
and it’s painful to see. to know they’re self-sabotaging, but doing what their leadership thinks is best.
I can’t say I’m not mad about this, but more than that, I’m sad. It hurts to watch Mozilla do this right now.
