Orbit by Mozilla
orbitbymozilla.comI'm reading a lot of criticism here, some I understand, but honestly, this sounds pretty good for a free LLM service: "Orbit doesn't require account creation or save your session data."
Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service - for free. The other big privacy-first LLM provider is Apple, which requires users to have their devices/subscriptions to use, and definitely uses advanced telemetry by default.
Not to speak of all the other providers who are either paid or free-but-mine-your-data.
>Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service
It is just Mozilla have a tendency of chasing hype rather than focusing on what they are doing. During early smartphone era they spend most of the resources trying to write an OS with Javascript ( Firefox OS ) that works on a $35 Smartphone.
Now they are doing it again with AI. Although this time around Firefox is in fairly good shape I guess this isn't too bad. But they need to figure out a way to generate revenue rather than relying on Google. And LLM service isn't it.
I don't think the Firefox OS team was ever bigger than maybe 100 people at the absolute most, and I feel like it was closer to half of that. Admittedly it's been over a decade since I left, so my recollection could be wrong, but it was never "most of the resources" by any metric.
It was a tiny percentage of the overall staff; I traveled to the Toronto office to work with some of the graphics devs (the area I primarily worked in) and the floor we were on easily had 200 people in that one -- relatively small -- location.
B2G/FFOS gets a lot of well-deserved hate -- I quit after a year -- but its impact has been wildly blown out of proportion.
FxOS at its height was an absolutely huge resource and personnel commitment; I seem to recall it being half of MoCo, maybe more.
Mark Mayo, then SVP Firefox, was quoted in a 2017 interview with Walt Mossberg:
> Mayo says [FirefoxOS] took the focus off of Firefox. “It was close to a bet-the-farm effort”
Cite: https://www.theverge.com/2017/1/25/14376710/walt-mossberg-mo...
As a user I always wished Firefox OS had stuck around - I think it would absolutely be practical today with so many PWAs around these days, and KaiOS seems to have done surprisingly well on its Firefox OS base.
But that's the thing, KaiOS is exactly the best that Firefox OS could have hoped to achieve: installs on most feature phones. Sure, it's hard to find a phone with KaiOS in the West, but Firefox OS could have never hoped to be an alternative to Android.
Is KaiOS still being used in any newer feature phones? I believe even its biggest customer Jio Telecom has moved on to android in its entry level phones and any new feature phone I see here (India) occasionally are Nokia.
There are still some things I like better about FFOS than iOS / Android. It had a lot of polish needed even near the end, but some of the foundational bits were very solid.
Firefox OS was around 600-700 people strong at the largest.
> But they need to figure out a way to generate revenue rather than relying on Google
Like by trying other things? Such as a mobile OS, "read later" app, LLM service which they could embed in Firefox? People criticise Mozilla a lot for even trying, but in the same breath say they should figure out alternative income sources. What do you think they're doing? LLMs are part of the hype cycle, yes, but maybe there's still a market for them even after it's blown over?
Correct. Making core Firefox better is not going to generate revenue.
Not sure what people expect, every bold new idea (I.e. mobile OS) is chasing something. And they are trying to do it while being open.
You’d think this HN crowd has never tried to create a sustainable business reading the comments.
>Making core Firefox better is not going to generate revenue
Only because Google decide to pay more for less. Despite Firefox losing marketing share and users.
>People criticise Mozilla a lot for even trying,...Such as a mobile OS, "read later" app, LLM service which they could embed in Firefox?
But which of those did generate extra revenue? And mobile Os and LLM also happen to be CapEx intensive.
During early smartphone era they spend most of the resources trying to write an OS
Most of Mozilla’s resources have always been spent on Firefox. There was never a cycle where most of Mozilla’s resources were spent on FirefoxOS.
But they need to figure out a way to generate revenue rather than relying on Google.
The percentage of revenue from Google has fallen every year since 2016. Mozilla Corporation had a 33% profit margin in 2022 (The latest data on Wikipedia).
It’s a fantastic business model.
> The percentage of revenue from Google has fallen every year since 2016.
"Fallen" is too strong a word: Google still provided 81% of Mozilla's revenue in 2022.
This share probably decreased in 2023, but that's mostly because the revenue increased by $40M thanks to financial operations (see "Interest and dividend income" in Mozilla's annual report for 2023).
Who will pay the bills when Google is forced to end that search contracts?
One of the other bidders, like when Yahoo won the bidding in the early 2010s.
It is unlikely the incoming DOJ will pursue a breakup of Alphabet.
I like Firefox OS, but unfortunately, I rarely saw any smartphones actually running this system. I feel deeply regretful about it.
This is a local device LLM, outdated of a whole year, which is massive for LLMs, running on servers. Privacy side, there is little reason to run this on servers, a Pixel 6 could run 7B models at 5 token/s a year ago.
It's bad by incompetence, 7B models of a year ago were terribly bad. It's not privacy-first enough, as it's possible to run the AI directly in the browser, but for some reason they didnt do it.
It's unlikely that they are doing only a plain old LLM query. It's probably a more advanced setup (RAG, Page/LLM Summary Result Querying, maybe even some sort of Summarization validation checking).
Also consider accessibility for low-end devices and development countries.
I don't see any indication that they use any RAG. It still doesn't explain why they use an old model.
More recent models can run on any phone and have better quality than the model they are currently using.
> it's possible to run the AI directly in the browser, but for some reason they didnt do it.
Perhaps this is a proof of concept and they will have optional Firefox integration at a later time. Firefox uses local AI for webpage translation already.
A locally run 7B model would consume a lot of resources for most people, but it would be nice as an option.
Todat 1B models are better that the 7B models they use currently.
Not everyone has pixel 6 device, same for computer. There are still lots and lots of old device in third world countries.
Running a year old model, if it's power efficient and economically constrained makes complete sense to me.
It is overly generous to describe this as "privacy first." This looks like it's one ToS change away from being a privacy violating service.
In Apple's case, they are putting some amount of work into making their privacy claims verifiable. Good will is no longer good enough. Verifiability should be the bar for trust in 3P privacy claims.
This might be true for any run-of-the-mill service, but I do give Mozilla upfront credit as an entity and Firefox's privacy-leading track record. I haven't read the fine print, but I would be very surprised if there wasn't a robust layer of privacy/anonymisation involved. (Side note: I think the future is in-browser LLM (a la Gemini Nano), so I suspect they will eventually move there.)
Also consider that Apple has the big pockets to build their own server hardware, to claim multiple layers of privacy - but also remember that when they first introduced "differential privacy" and claimed it would be totally anonymous, privacy researchers soon found out that Apple set the epsilon so low that even after a few requests to their service, the user could be de-anonymized.
source: "Apple has boasted of its use of a cutting-edge data science known as "differential privacy." Researchers say they're doing it wrong." https://www.wired.com/story/apple-differential-privacy-short...
Mozilla's privacy-leading track record includes making Google the default search engine, running opt-in-by-default privacy-violating experiments, such as the Mr Robot fiasco[1], and opt-in-by-default collaboration with advertisers[2].
I still use Firefox, but I try to stay aware of changes, precisely because of Mozilla's privacy-leading gaffe record.
1. https://itsfoss.com/firefox-looking-glass-controversy/
2. https://www.pcmag.com/news/firefox-mozilla-data-collection-f...
If those are the only examples of privacy-tarnishing theyve done, I think that would speak for Firefox and Mozilla.
They literally have Google Analytics which sends telemetry data to Google integrated into the Firefox UI.
Can you substantiate this a bit more? Do you have a link?
https://github.com/mozilla/addons/issues/3145
Worth noting that the comment closing the issue mentions:
> You can disable Google Analytics in about:addons by setting your Do Not Track status to on.
> Again: this only affects users who visit the page with Tracking Protection on (which automatically enables DNT) or who manually set their DNT status to on.
but Firefox removed the DNT control last month (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1928087), though it kept the Tracking Protection control and privacy.donottrackheader.enabled is still available in about:config.
> Maybe we shouldn't be too critical of Mozilla for providing a privacy-first LLM service - for free. The other big privacy-first LLM provider is Apple, which requires users to have their devices/subscriptions to use, and definitely uses advanced telemetry by default.
There is a very fundamental critique here: a service being offered for free like this is being subsidized, messing with the general market dynamics that really should be making all of these tools cost way more money to begin with.
Of course Apple is also doing similar things, but for Mozilla to be doing it is quite frustrating.
Does open source not itself severely mess with free market dynamics by having billions and billions of dollars of work being done for free?
There is a fundamental difference between a "regular" foss project and a "free" service in this sense.
Once a foss project has been written, the cost of one additional user is almost zero (some small amount of bandwidth to obtain the package).
I think it's legitimate to worry even about how the funding occurs for those comparatively small costs: the costs of running GitHub (subsidized by M$) and distribution repositories.
But with an LLM service, or any other service which does not run locally, the cost of one additional user is very real. It has to be paid by someone.
I’m not a market fundamentalist, I just don’t like players dumping huge piles of cash in ways to get around market dynamics (especially for AI summaries, which is the computer equivalent of speed reading lessons)
At least open source can outlive the entities that create the thing, and in theory is more about sharing process rather than trying to stomp out smaller players.
I do agree with your sentiment on cost, especially regarding exploding co2 emissions for LLMs, but it sounds like you're putting the blame mostly on Mozilla for what is market dynamics in capitalism, with most of the contenders being heavily VC-funded, and where Mozilla maybe just tries to signal that "AI" can be done responsibly also. If they don't try, people will blame them for "being late to the game/out of touch/ irrelevant" - so better to do it according to your principles and in-time I think.
people will blame anyone for anything.
mozilla is a non-profit so doesn't need to respond to market signals.
it would do a lot more and a lot more sustainably if it focused on the core mission of its browser.
but these costly "big swings" justify outrageous compensation packages for its executives and so it lets its browser wither.
> mozilla is a non-profit so doesn't need to respond to market signals.
No? They, just like every other entity, will have to achieve it's investors goals using the least amount of costs possible.
It just happens to be the case that Mozilla's investor's goals aren't more money.
For example, if a non-profit wants to build a bridge to a small island to provide the children of that island access to the mainland's schools; that non-profit would still be very susceptible to market signals regarding the most cost-efficient materials for bridge-building.
It is precisely because of current market signals that this move is a bad move for Mozilla. If GPUs were a dime a dozen and an AI engineer cost a thousand times less to employ than a browser engineer, Mozilla offering an LLM service would be a lot less objectionable than in the current economy.
> No? They, just like every other entity, will have to achieve it's investors goals using the least amount of costs possible.
The Mozilla Foundation is funded by donors not investors. The fiduciary duties of non-profit directors do not have to include using the least amount of costs possible.
The Mozilla Foundation's stated goals are "to advance the vision of the future of the internet and technology".
You might reasonably argue that this means copy catting every other product by slapping AI on itself, but I would counter that this actually demonstrates a lack of vision.
> it would do a lot more and a lot more sustainably if it focused on the core mission of its browser.
Some numbers to put things in perspective: https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/defaults-matter-dont-assume...
FF is still a solid choice, privacy-wise (with some manual tweaking), but just in the past few years 80-90% of their revenue came from adtech partnerships, so expect a series of rug pulls like the recent ones.
> so expect a series of rug pulls like the recent ones.
I think it's rather the other way around; i.e. it is you that should lower your expectations from a free tool provided by a non-profit company.
Unless I misunderstood your comment completely I think we’re saying the same thing:)
Orbit by Mozilla is a product of the non-non-profit Mozilla Corporation [1], not the non-profit Mozilla Foundation.
It's a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation. As far as I can tell this is (like most complicated things in life) purely a tax dodge.
Being a non-profit that does not have a share-price, I'm curious if you have evidence for validity of your assessment of "big swings resulting in compensation packages".
I can offer a rationale that I hope that will be interesting. Evidence is more effort than I'm willing to invest in a random internet conversation. I hope that's okay. I don't mean to cause offense, but neither do I like having an interesting discussion shutdown.
Executive leadership compensation tends to be based on, - the size/prospects/complexity of the company - the compensation received by executives in similar roles at other companies - the amount/type of oversight by the board
This incentivizes executives to increase the complexity of their role in order to justify greater remuneration. The classic example is turning a widget factory into a widget financial services provider. In this case, by behaving like Silicon Valley companies chasing the latest fad the executive leadership of Mozilla get to demand the same remuneration packages.
I don't think this is relevant here.
Mozilla's executive compensation is famously disconnected from any realities -- economic, industry fad, or otherwise.
Fair enough. However, first of all, it's still in beta. They’re likely using it to gather feedback on its performance. Also, there’s nothing on the site that says it will remain free. Considering Mozilla has introduced paid services like VPN, and given the cost of running LLMs, it’s unlikely it will stay free.
Also consider that some free use, for example 5 summaries per hour or whatever, is a pretty basic offer for any kind of software, not just LLMs.
Offering beta services for free is industry standard and legit, as are free capped tiers, I do not see an issue there.
Honestly, I'm all on board for a privacy-minded company like Mozilla to offer paid services like VPN or email aliases. They have earned their trust, and if paying means contributing to the sustainability of their mission and the open internet, than that's even sweeter.
Does Orbit not work with Firefox Developer Edition? I had the browser open, but after downloading the extension it didn't seem to detect it or install it.
> messing with the general market dynamics that really should be making all of these tools cost way more money to begin with.
Prices have been dropping very rapidly due to technological progress. I feel like a lot of threads recently have had people confused about costs because they either are stuck on prices they learned about 6-12 months ago, or because they're failing to project further rapid reductions of price (I can't predict the future myself, but I'm not gonna bet on inference prices stabilizing all of a sudden.)
I mean, it definitely costs more than FREE. But I think it's closer to free than many commenters realize, and continuing to go that direction faster than many commenters realize.
A very similar service is https://duck.ai/ from DDG.
Definitely like DuckDuckGo - I have recently moved from Google to DDG as I noticed it serves the same, and even better plus privacy-first, results. Yet what you provide is not quite the same: An AI Chat Website vs a Browser Extension (Orbit).
When the Bing API went offline a short while back, the DDG website was a blank page. No fall back, nothing. A Bing wrapper with ‘trust us’ privacy marketing.
How often does the Bing API go offline? Meanwhile, every single google search I carry out includes, right at the top, 'AI' generated nonsense which is sometimes wildly inaccurate. DDG never does that.
> How often does the Bing API go offline?
That’s not the point.
Use any search engine in a terminal to strip the shit. Welcome to Hacker News.
All this costs money though and the eventual question is if you aren’t paying for it then who is?
Privacy-first generally entails designing the service on a technical level to be unable to leak personal data. A promise not to store your data is not sufficient.
> The other big privacy-first LLM provider is Apple, which requires users to have their devices/subscriptions to use, and definitely uses advanced telemetry by default.
By definition then, Apple's is most certainly not privacy first by any stretch of mental gymnastics.
That is always how this stuff works. Capture people with nice features and a friendly approach and then rug pull. There is zero chance I ever use this BS. I don't trust Apple either. I do not want LLM integration period because no corporation can ever under any circumstance be trusted with privacy in regards to it.
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You're assuming there is a single HN hivemind. In reality different companies cater to different audiences with different values, and you'll hear from a different subset of HN users on each topic.
Mozilla users care more about privacy than e.g. Microsoft or Google users do, so when Mozilla adds tracking to one of their products, they get more criticism from their users than their competitors would. This isn't unexpected or hypocritical of those users.
I didn't have the impression that HN was fine with all those things. Supposing it was, wouldn't it be ok to continue criticizing Mozilla, while also criticizing the bad behaviour of the others?
HN in general is not fine with tracking and surveillance. But this is irrelevant for Mozilla specifically, as most companies/projects are not selling themselves on high privacy and rescuing the internet. They are making goal and promises which they repeatedly fail to reach, and people are outcalling them for this. And the worst part is, they are not even not holding up to their own standards, they even ignored and broke them multiple times, and people remember.
Mozilla's problem for me is they wasted their market dominance by hiring grifters as their leaders and allowed bad actors to come in.
I have nothing to base it off other than the results, but someone with a tinfoil hat would wonder if Google chose or influenced the choice of Mozillas leadership to allow Chrome to grow by destroying it from the inside. They were already basically bankrolling the whole company so it's not a big stretch.
Agreed, I also often get that feeling of a double standard.
> Mozilla only problem is being transparent about telemetry.
It's far from that: https://untested.sonnet.io/notes/defaults-matter-dont-assume...
(I still think FF is one of the best choices privacy wise, it's just that we don't have that many choices left)
> HN is fine with tracking, smartphones, and every surveillance capitalist trick in the book
(meta comment, thinking aloud here, feel free to skip) You might be conflating two different groups of users, each vocal about different subjects. That said, there's a big group of people on HN, who just enjoy being annoyingly contrarian. Then some people derive pleasure from pointing out some "moral fallacy" on whatever they perceive as the opposite part of their political/ideological spectrum ("you think my flashlight app collecting fingerprinting data from your phone is evil? well, your browser doesn't block all cookies by default you hypocrite!"). Life's too short for psychoanalysing the orange site, so I'll stop here.
>HN is fine with tracking, smartphones, and every surveillance capitalist trick in the book,
You must be reading a very different HN to mine. Every single submission that reach front page has comment against all the thing you stated. With little to no support for it.
Ads are all evil and there shouldn't be any has been the theme in just a very recent thread.
There’s also Leo from Brave: https://brave.com/leo/
I guess I'm really not this extension's target audience, because somehow Mozilla managed to make me uninstall it in just a few minutes.
First, they have forced telemetry. Okay, it's an early release, it's very basic information, they want to understand how they're doing - I don't like it, but I can understand it. Sets a wrong vibe, though - I had to check if it was from Microsoft and not Mozilla. ;-)
Then, I figured there is no option to use locally-hosted LLMs, which can be something as minimal as simply allowing to configure custom API URL. Somehow, less and less things about Firefox are tinkerer-friendly than they used to be.
That made me wonder if Mozilla used OpenAI-like API, or if they invented their own unique thing for some reason. So I went to look and according to the extension page, it's proprietary ("All Rights Reserved") and I'm too lazy to bother deminifying code from the xpi or remembering how to debug extensions.
Finally, '00s have called and said they wanted their weird floating round thingy UI back, and so I had to return it to the store. (I'm kidding, I don't really mind the visual style. The real issue with that thingy was how it floats on the page. Like, why on Earth it isn't normal right-click menu option that doesn't obstruct the view until it's needed? Or a menu on that toolbar button? It's not even a paperclip to be worth it.)
And then I realized I somehow missed the big "AI you can trust" header, which should've already been a huge red flag.
> For the current version, we are using a Mistral LLM (Mistral 7B) hosted within Mozilla’s GCP instance.
Based on this I would assume they are using GCP Vertex AI as that's going to be WAY cheaper than rolling it all themselves and hosting the model on a GCP server instance. I would also assume they'd be using the gcloud SDK for Vertex AI/Model Garden, which I believe means they can't just provide for a different endpoint and payload shape if you had a service elsewhere.
Eitherway, at the (presumed) scale they'll probably also be using GCPs API management service, so I would expect further abstraction between what the extension is sending and what the model/Vertex AI expects as a payload. This means providing that kind of "bring your own endpoint" experience would require more bespoke build-out time.
BUT who knows? Maybe this is just straight up hitting the out-of-the-box GCP Vertex AI REST API directly from the extension like some hobby project.
Would have been cool if you could connect it to a local running Ollama instance.
You metnion GCP Vertex AI, is that something like MS Copilot Studio?
It's Google Cloud Platforms "AI" service[0], so actually more analogous to what is now called Azure AI Foundry[1], and what used to be called Azure OpenAI Studio.
Microsoft Copilot Studio[2] (formally Power Platform Power Virtual Agents) imho is unique in it's enterprise AI offering. I truly think Copilot Studio is going to be Microsoft's "killer app" when it comes to companies utilizing AI at scale internally, and not it's Azure service.
> I'm kidding, I don't really mind the visual style. The real issue with that thingy was how it floats on the page.
Finally someone admits that BonziBuddy was 25 years ahead of its time.
Info from the FAQ:
- Currently using Mistral 7B, but ability (by Mozilla) to swap the model used to another open source at any point.
- Hosted "by Mozilla" on their GCP instance.
- No obvious info about what it will cost them to run this since it is free to use.
- No training on user data.
Like others here, I'm very curious about the cost for Mozilla to run this service. It may be less than it initially appears given the 7B model they chose. I do wish they would focus their efforts on creating a very long-term endowment to pay devs for continued Firefox development in lieu of projects like this given the tenuous situation with their Google funding.
I'm not against this kind of thing in theory, but I hope it's being done in a cost-sustainable way.
If you scroll to the bottom of the page it appears like this is made by Fakespot, https://www.fakespot.com/our-mission. They explain that they make money through ads, for their other similar product, wouldn't be far to guess that's the future strategy here as well.
When running Orbit on the comments in this page:
> The Orbit add-on by Mozilla is a new AI-powered tool that summarizes and answers queries about web content, including articles and videos. It uses a Mistral LLM (Mistral 7B) hosted on Mozilla's GCP instance. The add-on is free to use and works on various websites, including Gmail, Wikipedia, NY Times, YouTube, and more. However, some users have raised concerns about the size of the model and its privacy implications, as well as the fact that it requires an internet connection to function. Additionally, some users have suggested that Mozilla should focus on improving the browser itself rather than developing new add-ons.
Some more information from when this was launched 3 months ago on the Mozilla connect board:
https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/try-orbit-by-mozi...
I installed it and it's a giant floating popup that's permanently on your screen. You can enable the "minimal" theme in the settings to turn it into a smaller-but-still-big pill shape. It doesn't look like there's a way to hide it in a context menu, at least not one I can see.
I don't fancy having a random floaty object in the way of my webpages, no thank you.
Edit: It appears to go away occasionally. This UX is unclear to me.
If you pin the extension in the toolbar, there's an option to "disable" the extension. The floating popup goes away and using the extension to summarize still works.
Wow, that's really not intuitive, but it works. Thanks!
Yeah, I can't imagine what lunatic thought it would be a good idea to have this stupid orb floating inside the page. Heck, it would be fine if you at least had an option to move it into the toolbar where it belongs...
Same complaint here, uninstalled immediately
Related. This is the bookmark I use to summarize websites using ChatGPT:
javascript:window.open('https://chatgpt.com/?q=summarize this page in 100 words: '+encodeURIComponent(window.location.href),'_blank');
Tested on Firefox and Chrome.
Some websites block ChatGPT and can't be summarized this way.
Works in incognito/anonymous mode and doesn't require a ChatGPT account.
You can probably use another AI service with this idea.
Here's a version of that which should work for any page, whether or not they allow ChatGPT URL access:
I swapped window.location.href for document.body.innerTextjavascript:window.open('https://chatgpt.com/?q=summarize this page in 100 words: '+encodeURIComponent(document.body.innerText),'_blank');I’m sure Openai likes this use case, a neat way to access data where they are otherwise blocked.
Personally I’d worry about using this accidentally and with some sensitive data (eg logins).
I do like the idea though, I’d use this with a local model.
Nice! Thank you!
I just wonder if browsers will limit the amount of characters in URLs.
If memory serves me, there was a limit. But it might be high enough to work fro most pages.
It's around 8KB now – so text bigger than 8 thousand characters will return: "414 Request-URI Too Large".
Anyway the document.body.innerText contains all things on the site, including links, menus, buttons etc just 1 per newline. LLM will only recognise if it previously scanned the same website and it did not change much since the last training set. Some arbitrary websites it will not recognise this way and start hallucinating one because innerText removes all the structure from it.
Modern browsers are not an issue here, e.g. chromium allows 2MB; the issue is with web server's limits.
Indeed, I'm getting Cloudflare error "414 Request-URI Too Large" for this HN post which isn't large.
But the URL bar was not the problem.
I was surprised about the "doesn't require a ChatGPT account" part but when I tried it from an incognito window their "4o mini" gave back
I cannot access external links directly. However, if you provide the text or key points from the page, I can help summarize it for you!
and clicking the model selection drop-down produced "Log in to try advanced features"
interesting so it didn't work for you unfortunately. Give me 2 minutes I'll try it and screenshot the result in both browsers.
edit: you're right it requires the user to be logged in to crawl websites. Somehow in my test while writing it I was logged in. My bad.
So while it's handy, it's not perfect.
That only works for public pages. It can't summarize some attachment to your email, for example.
I'm encouraged that they're actively exploring this and not shying away from experiments. It seems clear to me that there are areas of Mozilla[0],[1] pushing closer and closer to great local AI integrations doing the kinds of things that I, a browser user, find useful. I went to some of the articles on the hn frontpage and had questions (and followups!) that begat reasonable starting points for further learning.
Hopefully they continue to iterate on this with better integration (for instance, moving to a toolbar icon instead of persistent badge on every page) and then make it ~truly privacy respecting by moving locally.
[0] https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile [1] https://github.com/mozilla/translations
Huge heading:
> Commitment to privacy
Buried as the last sentence in a collapsed box at the bottom of the page:
> For the current version, we are using a Mistral LLM (Mistral 7B) hosted within Mozilla’s GCP instance.
And why is it "...Mozilla's GCP instance", not "We quietly send all your data to Google servers, and everyone pinkie-swears that's totally privacy-respecting"?
Any revelation that Google is siphoning data out of other companies GCP instances would be so earth-shattering I don't think it is happening.
Even on the linked page, Mozilla is arguably being evasive about the fact that they're sending the data out the Internet at all.
We don't know whether this is another time that Mozilla execs have sold out users, or shipped something half-baked and vulnerable.
I'm not saying they're leaking the data (by agreement, or negligence), but Mozilla has mediocre credibility in recent years, and there's nothing on this page that improves that reputation.
Regarding Google, for a long time, their thinking seemed to be "We're Google, so of course anything we do is privacy-respecting", not as guidance, but to justify whatever they wanted to do. Also, every time Google gets caught with their hand in the private information cookie jar, it just mints a new industry standard practice.
> I'm not saying they're leaking the data (by agreement, or negligence), but Mozilla has mediocre credibility in recent years, and there's nothing on this page that improves that reputation.
I think you read too much HN and aren’t aware about all the stuff going on in the background at Mozilla.
If there’s one company I would trust, it would be them. Their marketing has been mediocre and I’m not 100% sure about if I like their future decisions, but I trust them 100%.
Is there a profit to Google digging around in the information people send them?
Are there long and vague terms of service documents backed by a pile of lawyers?
There you go, incentive and means. I'm not even confident companies would see that as a problem when it was raised with them directly, in much the same way that Microsoft hosting all the corporate email seems to be just fine.
The disincentive is far higher than the incentive, and the TOS have been scrutinized deeply by some of the biggest enterprises on the planet. GCP is not a consumer service like Gmail or Maps.
As the comment above suggested, any information to the contrary would be business-destroying for GCloud. Many of their enterprise users have strict requirements about access to and use of their data.
Re the example of Microsoft corporate email, much the same situation applies. If Microsoft were mining that corporate customer data and using it or reselling it, enterprises would dump them in a heartbeat.
Can confirm. I worked in gcloud for years. There are so many policies in place to keep customer data secret, even when you're on-call and trying to solve customer issues, it's actually annoying.
It makes sense. Some gcloud customers are banks. Some are federal govt agencies. Some are foreign governments. Google would not only destroy it's cloud business, but also probably get fined and sued out of existence if it was poking around in cloud or gsuite data.
You get what you pay for (in terms of privacy) at Google. Regular users never pay Google a dime, so they don't get much privacy. Cloud and gsuite users fork over mountains a cash directly, and their data is kept about as safe as can be as a result.
Dude, the number of times outright lying has been done and brushed off in a 24 hour news cycle means it’s totally what they are doing.
I don't know what bit of news you are talking about. Unless you are just talking about the news in general which still doesn't prove anything. Any news that Google is stealing data out of GCP is not something you could just sweep under the rug in 24 hours.
If you aren't running an encrypted disk on any cloud provider you should absolutely fundamentally understand that your data has been scanned and that your VM data is "business data" so a copy gets sent to whomever wants it, in bulk.
Maybe it's good to assume that but at this point that is not going to purposely happen at a company like Google or Amazon. The risk, which is a near certainty to bear out if they have any decent employees among the tens of thousands (esp. with the weekly "I'm leaving because I hate this company" screeds these companies yield), isn't worth whatever little reward they might find in your data.
In this case, usually the infrastructure provider owns the keys, and if not, they would have easy access to them. So I don't see how encrypted disk really solves anything besides accidental leakage to a peer infra user, or someone sneaking into the datacenter and physically removing the disks.
Maybe if you are like a high profile target of a state actor, but otherwise this is a paranoid take
Taking into accout that, the first thing Firefox does, is connect to a Google server (e100.net) , i would say it is a good founded concern.
Proof for this claim?
Definitely a baseless conspiracy theory to suggest that Google is harvesting data from their GCP customers
Sounds extremely expensive. How is this paid for?
Also, does anyone know if we'd be able to point it to our own LLM instance for the guarantee of our data being secure?
Out of the funds that should have been used to improve Firefox of course.
I'm skeptical of a lot of Firefox side quests, but I encourage this one. Orbit could be a stepping stone to an Open Source version of Google Project Mariner. A n un-nerfed built-in AI could turn browsers into true user agents that work on your behalf.
Unfortunately no BYOLLM. Brave supports bringing your own LLM e.g. through Ollama
Besides that I'm using AI Summary Helper plugin for Chromium-based browsers https://philffm.github.io/ai-summary-helper/ which also allows using Ollama (or OpenAI / Mistral), asking questions to articles and inserting summaries right into the DOM (which is perfect for hoarding articles / forwarding them to Kindle)
Sort of funny for the lack of local options considering that Mozilla funds llamafile even. Hopefully they allow some API integration, if they are using standard OpenAI API calls, it should be easy to enable swapping the endpoint.
Also, while it's nice to have a service option for those without any spare compute, I think it's a bit of a shame on the model considering how even at the 7B class, models like Llama 3.1 8B, Qwen 2.5 8B or Tulu 3 8B, Falcon 3 7B, all clearly outclass Mistral 7B (Mistral 7B is also very bad at multilingual, and is particularly inefficient at multilingual tokenization).
The current best fully open weights (Apache 2.0 or similar) small models currently are probably: OLMo 2 7B, Qwen 2.5 7B, Granite 3.1 8B, and Mistral Nemo Instruct (12B)
There's been a recent launch of a "GPU-Poor" Chat Arena for those interested in scoping out some of the smaller models (not a lot of ratings so very noisy, take it with a grain of salt): https://huggingface.co/spaces/k-mktr/gpu-poor-llm-arena
> Brave supports bringing your own LLM e.g. through Ollama
It's a shame Brave is so far ahead of the game but no one seems to notice.
I run Brave at home and a local LLM on the same machine, and didn't know this. I guess I'll be playing around this weekend.
Installing the extension enables a floating widget in the webpage. Horrible implementation. Couldn't it have been integrated into the browser better, like the Reader button?
That would require actual engineering effort
Looks like there is no way i can use it without giving up on screen real estate. I'd love to have it pinned in the browser toolbar and I click it when I need it. But it wouldn't allow itself to be hidden and needs to have a floating circle taking up page real-estate.
Disabled it.
Someone provided the solution in another comment.
After pinning the extension, click on it and deselect the "enabled" option (the line with the purple X). This will kill the floating orb UI but you can still click on the extension in the toolbar to use it.
Am I the only person who isn't hugely interested in summarizing emails? I don't want emails summarized because that bypasses a tell-tale sign that said email isn't worth reading in the first place.
I kinda want to run some of our CEOs emails through summarizing, because I feel that there's a very real chance that I'll just get a black page back.
Other than that, I'm with you. The need for summarizing is a symptom of our increasingly poor communication and degrading writing skills. That, and SEO optimization which attempts to hit as many keywords as possible.
We're heading in a direction where people will use LLMs to pad their writing, so it will appear more substantial then it actually is. The receiver will then parse it though another LLM, because the writing has now become to convoluted, or they simply don't have the time for a ten page essay (in which case the none padded draft would have sufficed).
Admittedly I have found a few useful cases for LLMs, mostly related to text parsing and information extraction, which can be seen as summarizing I suppose, but mostly I have a pretty negative view of LLMs. Part of it may be me getting older and not fully understanding how they work, partly it's also their deployment in areas where I believe communication should be human to human.
> The need for summarizing is a > symptom of our increasingly > poor communication and degrading > writing skills.
Whilst I agree there is a societal decline, there has also always been a corporate tendency towards verbosity and opaqueness.
The old rule from the days of memos still seems to apply: ignore first paragraph, get positive / negative gist from second, learn about the impact in the third, ignore remainder.
[Obligatory cartoon](https://marketoonist.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/230327.n...).
I'm vehemently against the whole Apple Intelligence feature of summarizing personal communications, like the AI-generated break-up text summaries that were floating around. But I've found most other AI summarizing to be pretty useful. The problem is the lack of trust and reliability, so even when those summaries seem to save me time, if the topic is of any actual significance or value I'm forced to read the original materials anyway, which ultimately results in spending more time consuming the same information.
I agree, I've read about lots of LLM-based services for summarising content, and I really wonder whether that's because this is something so many people want, or if it's just because it's something LLMs are good at so they are easy to build and then they get hyped because LLM.
Anything that can be expressed in a few sentences, should be, and I tend not to read media that doesn't abide by that rule. If I'm reading long-form content it's because I am looking for detail and nuance that would be lost in a summary.
I do think a reliable video summary generator could be useful occasionally. Interestingly Orbit seems to work on YouTube, presumably by parsing YT's auto-generated transcript.
Honestly, I don't receive any emails which are even worth summarising. I unsubscribe from marketing emails, and the humans who email me aren't writing more than a couple paragraphs at most. It becomes more effort to hit a summary button, wait for it to generate, and then read something of roughly the same length.
Honestly never needed to summarise emails in my life. It's a useless use case.
> How does Orbit work?
> Orbit is a Firefox add on that uses AI to summarize and answer queries about web content such as articles and videos.
> When a user asks Orbit to summarize or query content, Orbit gathers the context (eg. text, images, videos, etc.) of the page the user is viewing and provides a summary or answer. Orbit works on websites including Gmail, Wikipedia, NY Times, YouTube, and more.
> For the current version, we are using a Mistral LLM (Mistral 7B) hosted within Mozilla’s GCP instance.
It's interesting they're going with Mistral 7B. Is anybody else using Mistral 7B in production? And in what role?
I've considered using it for general knowledge type questions, and as a way to classify information, but would have never considered it for summarization type tasks due to it's limited context size (8k).
Mistral 7B has a context window of 32k. I use it in production for medical summarization tasks supporting appeals and physician advisory services.
Why are you confident to use such a tiny model on something so critical?
I would never use anything smaller than a 70B model for anything even vaguely medical related!
I don't use Mistral 7B alone, this is just a component in a RAG-based system. A system that is 1) not clinical facing, 2) not used in clinical decision making, 3) provides in-line references sources for end users to validate information, and 4) is inherently human-in-the-loop.
> Why are you confident to use such a tiny model on something so critical?
Don't use any LLM for something critical. They can't be trusted innately due to their design, why on earth would you use them for something where you need reliability?
> why on earth would you use them for something where you need reliability?
As very best I can tell the answer is "because bags of cash"
A key thing to remember in this specific moment in history is that the vast majority of people will be as lazy as they can get away with being. People want to leave work and go home and if an LLM lets them do that faster, who cares if it's accurate? It can absorb the blame.
Its summarisation, who cares if its right as long as you feel confident after reading it? /s.
In my experience, even GPT-4o is terrible at revealing information from things longer than a few pages.
It might be an issue with dimensionality reduction in general though. If you think about it, you can't really take away much of what is contained within any given amount of text with text, unless the source was produced extremely inefficiently.
Producing outlines or maybe a form of abstract, it seems to be okay at, but you would never really know where it fails unless you read the entirety of the source text first to begin with. IMO, its not worth risking unless you plan to read the source anyway or its not really important.
Try to walk through a Wikipedia article having an LLM summarize every few paragraphs, its often wildly inaccurate.
Hope your prod is being done currently in this political... Climate.
Mozilla has one job: make the standards compliant browser and work with the relevant groups to foster those standards.
Everything else is a waste of time and money and energy.
Mozilla is like that ADHD child that will do anything except to work on what made company successful in the first place - browser.
This move makes sense for Firefox adoption, as Chrome has AI features built in now such as Lens
I don't want AI features in my browser. I want to browse the web with it.
You know what would make sense for Firefox adoption? iOS Firefox that actually works. People complain that every browser is a reskin of Safari on iOS, but somehow only Firefox, native iOS app, manages to lag worse than any webview wrapper app I've ever used.
The only useful (or even paid) browser-integrated AI service I can imagine using would be a browsing history-aware AI chatbot. Essentially, it would just spit out a link from my history based on the context or prompt I give. Since privacy will be a crucial factor, I can imagine building an extension that reads page contents, stores them in a database, and connects to a self-hosted LLM.
A hosted service for this is underwhelming, especially with Chrome shipping on-device AI models and APIs that can also handle summarization.
Such a weird domain name, why not orbit.mozilla.com? This looks like a phishing attempt
When your organization is so broken that it's easier to buy a separate domain for your team, than to go through the process of putting it under the main company domain.
Yeah, I really don‘t understand why companies on one side try everything in their power to teach people to be vigilant of phishing and then do stuff like this. Azure does it too with www.microsoftazuresponsorships.com I always feel like one of these days I will get phished if those are the domains they force me to use :(
Oof, www.microsoftazuresponsorships.com is terrible, it even looks like phishing... at this point I have to ask: are you sure it's NOT phishing? :D
The fact it doesn't even work without www. feels suspicious as well
Why so much hate for Firefox in these comments?
What's a better browser that isn't basically advertising spyware (i.e. chrome, edge) ?
I think someone put it best: make your competitor depend on your evil thing (in this case, google donates to firefox/mozilla and makes deals about default search). In addition, people intentionally go to firefox because it /isn't/ chrome, but that only works SO LONG AS they don't copy everything google does (e.g. opt-out ads in the browser, AI, etc)
>What's a better browser
Not Firefox but forks based on it such as Tor Browser, Mullvad Browser or LibreWolf.
I don't understand all the pessimism.
- It's clear from user share graphs that Firefox as just a browser is tending towards irrelevance. No amount of "improving the browser" is going to solve the problem.
- More fundamentally, the browser is just one portal to the internet / world wide web. With technology outside the browser getting increasingly sophisticated, Mozilla necessarily needs to expand their mandate beyond Firefox in order to serve user needs and influence the landscape. Otherwise we might easily end up in a future where the browser becomes irrelevant and everybody interacts with proprietary large models.
- As far as innovation in browser features goes, this seems like a breath of fresh air. Internet users at large deserve access to AI services in a secure and privacy-friendly, and as a pillar of the free web Mozilla is well-placed as a distribution channel to serve these needs. Therefore, this seems like a very good stepping stone / experiment for Mozilla.
There will be execution challenges that need to be figured out. AFAIK Mozilla doesn't have the talent+budget for training large AI models, or even for doing intensive product research. So they're going to have to team up with some other AI expertise -- either explicitly or implicitly, by depending on open source models. Regardless, IMHO this is a risk they have to take and figure it out as they go along.
There is a (to me very surprising) typo in the section 'Focus on what matters.' where the AI summary states "... 11 out off[sic] 100 products ..."
I don't think I've ever encountered a typo in any of the LLM output I've seen, seems like the exact sort of thing an LLM would be more or less perfect at. Am I wrong to take this as an indication that this text is actually written by a human as a concise marketing example?
Can I just be blunt here and ask, why the F? No one asked for this. No one wants this. We just want a good, standards-compliant browser that doesn't eat up 8gb of RAM watching a single YouTube video (something that seems to be quite a challenge, though not entirely the browser engine's fault but rather the runaway train that is "capitalistic motives dictate the browser is now an OS and needs all features thereof"))…
For those wondering, this uses cloud-hosted AI models. But it's completely free to use so Mozilla is just paying the cloud bills out of pocket. Maybe not the best idea given their increasingly precarious financial situation?
I never understood why Mozilla doesn't offer paid privacy respecting services (outside basic sync that already exists) like email, cross platform password storage etc.
Because everyone who cares about it is already using some sort of a service like that, and it’s incredibly niche market so it’s not worth the effort to develop and support such projects.
But imagine if Mozilla would have done this before, like capturing the market now proton has
Mozilla should have been doing what Proton is doing. But considering how far Proton has gone I wouldn't be surprised if Proton spun up their own browser at this point.
Not using services funded by Google is pretty high on my personal privacy checklist. Also, they offer some services (like VPN, Relay, Pocket) that usually end up as annoying bloatware in Firefox.
I think password storage is covered by Firefox sync.
Only within the confines of web usage, unless you know something about Firefox Sync injecting passwords into Android apps or environment variables
Also, like it or not, I think Passkeys/WebAuthn is going to be pushed more and more, so without a user focused way to own them, that's another reason not to try and use a browser (any of them!) as a password store
It's almost like... They're owned by Google and don't really compete or something...
Gee, fucking wow, it's almost as if it's plain a day why they've sucked as a corp, non profit, and culturally for a decade at this point.
Don't worry, the money will gravitate back towards Mozilla because AI = Search.
I doubt this will ever happen.
The minute Mozilla starts being relevant in search, Google will cut their billions USD/year sponsorship, killing Mozilla in the process.
The incentives are not there.
> The minute Mozilla starts being relevant in search, Google will cut their billions USD/year sponsorship, killing Mozilla in the process. The incentives are not there.
Google needs mozilla more than anyone. It would be a big win for the web if google stopped financing mozilla and had to deal with the consequences.
Why does Google need Mozilla at this point? Firefox has 2.6% market share. Sure, I imagine the cost/benefit ratio is slightly positive for Google, but Mozilla needs Google since that's the majority of their revenue; the reverse is definitely not true.
It’s an anti-competitive ploy run by Google so they can point to Firefox and say “look there are competitors we’re not the only browser.”
Mozilla is like the legit side business the Mafia uses for taxes, group health benefits, etc. and to give an air of legitimacy to their operation.
Google needs Mozilla to exist to prove on paper they don't hold a monopoly with Chrome.
Safari and Edge have larger market shares, they don't need Firefox for that.
Edge is based off of chrome. Safari isn't a browser outside of Apple computers.
IMO the value is more about market share of the browser than the engine.
Wow, that little? I LOVE Firefox. I guess that market share should either make me feel real good, or quite lonely...
As likeabatterycar said, it's about avoiding anti trust / monopoly issues. Just imagine mozilla died and google had to cut lose chrome. That would really be interesting.
I have to ask: why, exactly, does it make sense for Mozilla to invest heavily into running expensive servers to run vanity chat bots for people? What's the path here to something which improves their financial situation or browser market share? How isn't this just yet another random service they'll throw money into for a couple of years before shutting down?
Because if they don't they will not have feature parity with Chrome (Gemini) and Edge (Copilot).
And while not all people are fond of AI, there are shit tons of people out there who do. Which means you automatically diminish your market share if you don't (because your most important competitors do)
Because Firefox has to do things to try and grow itself along with their mission.
If they aren’t trying things, they would also then be accused of languishing in obscurity.
AI being built into browsers isn’t new. Summarization isn’t novel. It’s not early in the game where resources are crazy high.
Summarization could run with a basic low powered model privately hosted.
Market share changes based on what browsers do well.
> If they aren’t trying things, they would also then be accused of languishing in obscurity.
They are languishing into obscurity not because they aren't trying things, but because their browser functionality is languishing behind the others.
Firefox doesn’t have a profit model to sell ads or user browsing behaviour like other browsers as far as I know.
I appreciate the languishing comment, at the same time Firefox has features that seem to be a little unique to it out of the box. Spaces comes to mind.
Getting really good at one thing might be beneficial.
Ai summarization seems to be more and more common in a browser. Maybe they’ll add it as a local feature once a model can comfortably run.
A car with square wheels doesn't grow itself by adding three horns and a bubble dome...
Firefox the browser doesn’t make any money. Doesn’t matter if the wheels are square or round if no one’s willing or able to put gas in the tank. As many prior rounds of Mozilla on HN have pointed out, it’s completely unacceptable to consider having to pay Mozilla for Firefox, and anyways a few million dollars will barely hire enough coders to keep afloat on CVEs (unlike e.g. Let’s Encrypt, who has a much simpler organization to operate!).
So we’re now in the timeline where Mozilla is the liquid metal terminator in T2 trying to escape lava by shapeshifting, as you say, three horns and a bubble dome. Accurately put! And a hilarious image too.
We’d best hope that the antitrust lawsuits don’t kill the Google money that’s keeping their car fueled.
> Firefox the browser doesn’t make any money
Firefox the browser is responsible for the vast majority (81%?) of the money that is injected into Mozilla annually.
What % of the money that is injected into Mozilla annually is paid by Google?
Does it matter? Without it, there would be no money from Google.
You're moving the goalpost rather substantially. "It makes no money" and "it costs millions to maintain" -> it pulls in hundreds of millions per year, the majority of their income. They can afford to focus on it.
Fair enough!
Comparing the Homer mobile to Firefox is a stretch.
In 2-3 years, devices will run this locally.
Oh, they will? Someone else on this site told me they would be running locally in 2-3 years, back in 2022.
Someone on this site also assured me ten years ago that we'd have full self driving by 2020.
>locally in 2-3 years, back in 2022.
That's pretty much accurate. Mine's been up and running on my clunky old home machine for 6 months, and I just this morning overheard a couple coworkers talking about the local llms they're running. Right now a substantial minority of PCs could run useful models. Usage is at the stage where it's small and growing rapidly. Early adapter phase, but all you need is a relatively modest years-old GPU to handle something like this model.
What isn't done, and probably won't be for a while, is a nice generic framework so we can tie their local llm into all sorts of local apps and processes. The big players all want us to use cloud services.
Firefox released a very easy to deploy local LLM around a year ago. https://github.com/Mozilla-Ocho/llamafile https://ai-guide.future.mozilla.org/content/running-llms-loc...
It works.
I mean, the iPhone 16 is already running LLMs locally. So yeah.
It's easy to run models of this size locally already.
Interesting product, very relevant in our time and age.
My guess is this could be useful to many "knowledge workers" who constantly have to crawl, translate and find the meaning of the sugar coated landfill that has become most of the web.
We are right in the middle of the Tower of Babel story.
Seriously if it works reasonably well on legal fine prints I am in.
Mozilla first needs to regain the trust of its users. They aren't privacy-first at all, they run a lot of telemetry on their users. Have you ever checked the number of DNS queries and IP requests that go to Firefox servers every minute? If you haven't, I have, and it is a lot. They literally ping home every minute in the name of network connectivity and other things, if you believe it. I don't mind using Mozilla products, but I just don't trust their motives and data practices.
If you want privacy first AI in the browser here are the tools
Mozilla will do anything but work on their browser.
Related, I made a small extension for chrome that talks to ollama: https://github.com/tobias-varden/llama-explain-extension
I like yours better. I can't even find the source for Mozilla's and yours does not have google analytics.
In the same area of privacy-aware AI there is Jolla Mind2. It's your own computer, so probably even more trustworthy than Orbit by Mozilla?
I have not studied either product in depth, so I am unable to comment on commonalities or differences.
Jolla has a mixed track record: They supported some phones over 10 years with decently working software (typing on one of those). They also failed at least once to deliver a crowd-sourced tablet to most of the backers. Not a risk-free choice, but at least someone trying to do the right thing.
Google pays money to Mozilla. Mozilla creates Firefox extension powered by Google AI(?). Mozilla pays Google for cloud services(?).
Is that the right flow? FAQ link is broken so I can't tell.
I wonder of this or something like it can be extended to "unclickbait" videos/article titles by spawning a background crawler that reads the article / watches the video and comes back with a resolution to the curiosity bait they used to get you to click. Would save countless hours and make the web less shitty IMO. Plenty of examples available just scrolling through youtube for training data.
At least it's an add-on and not built into the browser.
How long till it gets added to https://killedbymozilla.com/?
such a random product. uses an old tiny model, they are paying the gcp bill, and it's to summarize content?
why not use their technical expertise to built an in-browser "https://big-agi.com/" of sorts where users can paste in their API key and use bleeding edge models in combination with the browser's data which they could expose and manipulate as the creators of Firefox!
this product seems really random and quite frankly weird.
So, I'm reading there's a free, anonymous Mistral endpoint somewhere with the bill being footed by Mozilla.
I wish they would copy this one https://github.com/webmachinelearning/prompt-api and include a few options for small self-hosted LLMs using WebGPU or some built-in accelerated AI for Firefox.
I think Mozilla is doing a great job.
I really don't get the comments that they should not focus on anything else than the current browser.
If other browsers start adding llms, I bet those same people will start complaining that Firefox is outdated compared to those browsers in about a year.
Just keep it as optional extension and that will be perfectly fine. They should make it compatible with other browsers too. Considering llamafile project, maybe there will be an option for offline assistant, where user will be able to select their preferred model?
Hopefully Mozilla will eventually come up with a local-AI in the browser model, like the one currently being explored by Google Canary called Gemini Nano (which Google of course doesn't seem to want to make available in Chromium though).
I REALLY liked the part about preparing cakes with AI... Makin' me hungry just thinking about it.
It feels very resistant to doing anything other than summarizing. Even when you ask questions for details, the answer is always in the form of a simple summary.
I really wish I could run this against a local ollama instance.
From a product standpoint, I am curious if sidebar is the right way to integrate AI features in the browser? Did anyone see any better integrated solutions?
Finally I can gaze at my orb and browse at the same time
Bad marketing header "AI you can trust".
The opening paragraphs are nauseatingly written by AI. Who uses 'delve' all the time? AI, that's who.
God damnit, all I want is one nook of the Internet where AI isn't being foisted on me.
I'd rather have tab groups.
Sidebery is my go to for that.
Definitely makes Firefox irreplaceable for me.
Tab groups are on by default in nightly, and though I haven’t been on the computer much this past week they seem well realised. This article suggests they can be enabled in other versions, but I only really use nightly so I haven’t tried it..
https://www.ghacks.net/2024/12/03/how-to-enable-tab-groups-i...
What's wrong with the multiple Firefox addons that provide this functionality already? I'm not trying to be snarky...I'm genuinely curious.
I've been using Simple Tab Groups [1] for many, many years.
1. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/simple-tab-gr...
Looks like it's just around the corner. See previous post: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42499693
This would be great if users could configure it to use a self-hosted LLM.
Funny how “orbit summary” of the Long Board Email is still vacuous
Where is the source code for the extension itself?
That announcement was painful to read. I had AI summarize it.
What a horrible web site. My eyes hurt. I'll need Orbit to summarize it.
This is the 4th time this has been posted here.
And it still doesn't work on on Firefox Mobile. Disappointing.
Mozilla will spend any amount it takes to do anything but build a better browser.
Their browser is fine. But so is Chrome, and Chrome wins by default because it's installed by default on Android and Android really pushes you to it. Once you're using Chrome on Android and have all your passwords saved there, Firefox is a difficult sell.
I can't think of a single Firefox feature that's better than "I don't have to faff around with passwords". Maybe if they allowed adblock on mobile, but last I checked they were fannying around requiring nightly builds and whitelisting extensions...
I agree with your logic but I think the facts lead to the opposite conclusion, because uBlock Origin is now both easy and painless to use with Firefox on Android. That's why every Android user should now have Firefox installed. And if you're using Firefox on Android, why not use it on desktop too with Firefox Sync? I don't actually know how good the Firefox password manager is (I use 1Password) but it's on both desktop and mobile, just like Chrome's is. And it's really nice to send tabs back and forth from mobile to desktop.
Ah I didn't know they've finally done that. I'll have to give it another try. If the password manager works well (e.g. with apps) and I can make the app drawer search open in Firefox then I'll probably switch.
> make the app drawer search open in Firefox
Curious about you mean here. On my android phone the "search for more apps" link in the app drawer search goes to the Play Store app. Why would you want it to open a browser?
After investigation it's actually a feature of the Pixel launcher. In the app drawer there's a search bar that searches apps and the web. It opens search results in the "Google" app, and when you click one by default it uses Chrome.
I found you can make it use Firefox by disabling the setting "Open web pages in the app".
IIRC Firefox still doesn't have their Site Isolation (Fission, currently marked as P3 aka Backlog on Bugzilla) ready, which is the reason I don't use it on Android.
If you're one of the ~72% using Android and you're one of the ~43% who install an extension of any type and if you're the ~20% that choose to have uBlock origin installed when you do then you're one of the ~6% for whom this is but a single reason to consider one browser over another for all of your devices.
https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share/mobile/worldwide/...
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
I love uBO, you love uBO, most of HN loves uBO, actual users either don't care enough or prefer built-ins like Brave over manual customizations and extensions. When specifically discussing mobile users who care about ad blocking also consider many prefer whole phone solutions rather than managing per app solutions, even if it means slightly worse ad blocking in certain apps.
Also remember Firefox let those specific Android users rot on the old, poor performing, and battery eating engine for 2 years longer than the desktop version. Then when they did update only some of the users who picked Firefox for extensions had support. To this day it still hasn't had basic TLC like site isolation implemented. I.e. most Android users who were willing to give Firefox a run already had a bad experience anyways, even if they did care about uBO specifically.
Firefox loses, because they are doing barely anything to be better than chrome. Brave, Opera, Vivaldi, they all build and sell their own unique identity and seem to be successful enough with it. But Firefox? Basically just exists. Something about privacy and not being the big kraken, but so are all other now too. In the meanwhile Mozilla is just continuing wasting money on pointless projects which do nothing to solidify their cash cows future, while adding nothing of worth.
Yes, the default Browser wins (which BTW is not always Chrome), and Mozilla does not put up a fight to change it.
To me, firefox is a much easier sell on mobile. I use it religiously on mobile because of ad blocking, while on desktop I switch between Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Opera without feeling too much of a difference
uBlocK Origin is natively supported on FF mobile, and to me this is the only feature without which I couldn't live.
> Maybe if they allowed adblock on mobile, but last I checked they were fannying around requiring nightly builds and whitelisting extensions...
uBlock origin has been one of the allowed extensions for years. As far as I know it's the only browser allowing extensions on phones. It's a shame the allowed extensions is limited compared to desktop but I use uBlock everywhere anyway. What adblocker are you trying to install?
You shouldn't use your browser as your password manager, sometimes you might need them in another context and that creates friction.
> As far as I know it's the only browser allowing extensions on phones
In iOS, Orion browser allows both chrome and firefox extensions. Not all of them actually work, but ub:o does. Prob the only way to run ub:o on an iphone.
Their android browser is kind of terrible. It's significantly more sluggish than chrome, bordering on unusable on some websites. Maybe there's a state of the art flagship phone out there somewhere that can run firefox android and see it perform well, but I've sure never seen it run well.
I have used ff on android with ublock for 5 years on an s20. It has been superb for me. The only complaint from me is that the bookmark page as "tile" doesnt work.
Yeah it does seem rather more sluggish than Chrome in scrolling. Adblock works though which is nice.
on mobile I would not know. On Desktop I want and need 'full-screen-api.ignore-widgets'. I want my full screen to match the browsers window instead of taking my monitor.
In my opinion, the browser has been much better since 2017/2018. Have you used it in the last few years? Complaints about Firefox aside, the Manifest V3/uBlock Origin issue should be a major concern for tech-savvy Chromium-based browser users.
I was a hardcore Firefox user for many years. Today, Chrome just blows it away. Platforms are Android and Gnome Desktop.
I tried Firefox again about once a year, up until about 2022, and left disappointed again each time. Rust was important. Servo too. I'm not just hopping on the 'Mozilla blows money' train for no reason, I'm sad to see the browser languish while they blow money on things that don't matter. This doesn't matter.
I use Brave now, which has a whole host of haters, some for good reason. But it blocks ads and runs circles around Firefox on every platform that I use.
You didn't use Firefox in the last three years, and you claim that Chrome/Brave (still) blows it away.
Interesting.
Fair. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me 12 times or so shame on me. /s, kinda.
The OP claimed it got better in 2017, and it didn't meet my standards. But I'm honest that I haven't tried it in 2 years.
If some news or person came out to suggest something big changed and I should try it again, I will. Otherwise I'm just wasting time for no reason.
As a person who never used Chrome in a capacity to replace Firefox (I just refused to give up), I'll just share this [0].
As I understand, no amount of words can convince you because I neither know what your standards are, nor I have the right words to convince you to try Firefox again. So, you have to give it a try and see it for yourself.
As a matter of principle, I'd never use a browser which is funded by an advertisement company which lives off my data to show me ads and rob me of my privacy and cognitive capacity.
In my book, Brave is even worse on that matter.
Edit: To clarify: I still have Chrome installed for the odd, unmaintained site which happens to require something Chrome specific, but I just don't open it, since Firefox works for everything and works very well.
[0]: https://arewefastyet.com/win11/benchmarks/overview?numDays=6...
I just checked these benchmarks results few days ago - am I reading this wrong or (apart from Assorted DOM) Firefox loses in most of the tests?
The problem is, benchmarks are never a fair game. It's the nature of the benchmark as a genre. You can always bias a benchmark towards some code path to show that you're superior.
Also, there are other factors to consider:
- Some of the benchmarks are "lower is better", so reading Y axis is important.
- Some results are very close (e.g. speedometer), but the zoom makes difference bigger, so reading the Y numbers again is important.
So, Firefox beats Chrome on WebAudio, StyleBench, AssortedDOM. However, this is still "benchmarks", The real world performance is very, very close.
The bigger picture is, when you look at longer histories, the performance is still being tuned and improved. So, Firefox people are not sitting on what they have.
Lastly, Firefox is way more sensitive to DNS response time when compared to Chrome, and a crowded site makes tons of requests. A fast DNS makes a ton of difference, which is way overlooked.
I used to run a DNSMasq instance when my ISP DNS was very slow. Now, my routers have their own tuned DNSMasq instances, so DNS is instant, so Firefox is as well.
> As a matter of principle, I'd never use a browser which is funded by an advertisement company which lives off my data to show me ads and rob me of my privacy and cognitive capacity.
You can’t use Firefox either then
I can disable all its telemetry, and change my search engine. It becomes a box which receives but never emits.
Plus, I don't use its Mozilla build, but its Debian build.
Sure but you specifically said “funded by” and Gecko dev is funded almost entirely by Google
How many daily-driveable browser engines we have today?
First two are forks of KHTML, which is dead by the end of KDE5 era.- Blink: Chromium and their friends. - Webkit: Safari specific, on iOS and macOS only. - Gecko: Firefox and its a few forks.So? You have a cross platform evil and lesser evil (by judging the development financing). What you do?
On the other hand, I don't finance Google by using the browser itself, so that's another plus in my book.
if you use Linux you can run Gnome web which also uses Webkit as it's engine. You can also build webkit yourself if you want to run it on Windows.
Yeah they’re all funded by Google, so by your explicitly stated principle you can’t use any of them
At least, I’m not feeding Google directly with my every keystroke, so that’s a plus. At least in my eyes.
Sometimes we have to be pragmatic, especially if being pedantic is detrimental to our aims.
Happy new year.
Sure I do think we need to be pragmatic which is why I was questioning your original principle, but you don’t seem willing to abide by your stated principle at all. I’m just not sure why you said it if you have no intention to stand behind it
Just tell me a viable alternative. I'll migrate to it.
- Not funded by an advertising company / data broker, etc. - Not chromium based. - Not a Firefox fork. - Works on Linux & MacOS natively. - Daily-driveable (i.e. functionally equivalent with Firefox).There isn't one, which was my point. By your originally stated principle, you are screwed, but now you seem to be just pretending you never stated that principle. I can quote it again if you like:
> As a matter of principle, I'd never use a browser which is funded by an advertisement company which lives off my data to show me ads and rob me of my privacy and cognitive capacity.
That is what YOU said. All you've been doing is against your own quote. I think the quote is stupid, for the reasons you pointed out. I'm just trying to show you that you're the one who said it, but you seem to be totally unwilling to admit that you did, even though it is clearly publicly there
Still upcoming (already in Nightly), but I'm very excited about vertical tabs, tab grouping, and a better profile UI. And proper uBlock Origin support is table stakes for me.
Considering the Profile UI is basically the same since Netscape days, a revamp of this is a bit overdue. Just a bit though. :)
Absolutely. It's looking really good in Nightly though.
Better does not mean good. Quantum indeed fixed many of their old performance-problems, but at the same time they lost so many in terms of ability, and performance still feels second rate compared to Chrome. But to be fair, this also depends on what you do with them. And yes, I do use them both.
Firefox is genuinely fine, great even, I've used it for years and have no complaints.
But you notice in all these threads, everyone who theoretically ought to use Firefox comes up with their own little list of nitpicks that justify them not using it.
"I can't use it because I was disgusted when they dropped feature x"
"I won't use it because they spent their money on feature y instead of just doing z"
Meanwhile Chrome doesn't give a fuck what you think and does whatever it wants and people keep using it regardless.
Firefox is doomed to be left with the niche audience of people who ignore the 95% of what it does right to focus on the 5% that it does wrong.
You're right in a way. The problem is that Mozilla seems unwilling to accept that that's their audience, so they keep trying to appeal to the 95%. If they would just double down on the "power user" audience they could make a killer browser. But instead they alienate those nitpicky users with pointless UI changes, breaking extensions, and so on.
Ignoring 95% of a uniform market to target the 5% of users who all have niche and conflicting preferences is a ridiculous strategy for stability, growth, and profitability.
I don't think there's any real future in catering to the most demanding users, most of which are completely unwilling to actually pay for a power user browser.
People just like to justify their choices. Whether it Windows or Chrome they will shout from the rooftops about how the open source/privacy respecting thing doesn't do X, but then totally absolve the massive company for doing another anti-consumer/anti-privacy thing. The conclusion is that privacy and software freedom are just not important to the majority of people.
> Meanwhile Chrome doesn't give a fuck what you think and does whatever it wants and people keep using it regardless.
As a Firefox user since 2002 who has never switched away, this part of the situation feels insane. People nitpick over Mozilla and decide they'd rather be steamrolled by Google. What?
To paraphrase an observation from politics: nerds fall in love, everyone else falls in line.
Tbf, they can take all the time they need as Google with Chrome is doing more for Firefox than Mozilla itself, i.e. Manifest V3.
if make a better browser was a nice comfy bed, Mozilla would sleep on the floor
What's wrong with Firefox?
It could have been nice to see the Rust rewrites finished instead of shelved due to costs. AI is very expensive so if they have the money for this, they could've probably started that up again. Firefox is generally good feature wise but Google gets to almost usurp the W3C because pretty much every other browser is using the Chromium codebase over Mozilla's.
What value would a rewrite in rust bring?
It was sold as supporting a much more concurrent rendering engine, which they felt was basically too hard to write correctly/safely in C++, but presumably would be considerably faster.
My interest in a rust web engine is absolutely memory safety, because it's a fun game at work to post the "RCE o' the week" seemingly caused from exposing literally millions of lines of C++ to the wild Internet https://chromereleases.googleblog.com/search/label/Stable%20...
If you're interested in this, you might like https://nuggetize.com/ which works without installing anything and with any browser.
It looks like a nice marketing product, but nowhere it acknowledges how bad LLMs are in general for summarization, or what techniques, if any, the devs use to counteract this. (also, their dev page https://orgsoft.org/ claim "NO BS", but again does not provide details, proof, not even an about page or a business address which is a red flag.
Hey, thanks for the critique (this is my product)! Yeah, LLM summarization definitely has its challenges. We've actually spent months optimizing for this:
1. Using latest models (gpt-4o & claude-3.5) which show major improvements in quality
2. Extensive prompt engineering focused on distilling surprising insights vs. pure summarization
3. Structured output format that's easier to parse
Re: transparency - you're right, we need to add more details. I'm new to this and still learning how to communicate this.
Btw, it's free to use 1x/day, and here's an example: https://nuggetize.com/n/claude-shannon-wikipedia-47ca5e5b
I use Librewolf (based on Firefox), but about once a year I open Chrome for some shitty website that only works on Chrome. And I use Chrome for a few minutes.
It shocks me every time just how fast Chrome is. It is legitimately a superb piece of software. Going to Librewolf after feels like going back ten years in hardware.
Can we please start spending some money to make Firefox better? Instead of whatever Mozilla is currently doing?
Firefox Quantum was great. But why stop? Just keep doing that! It's the only thing you should be doing!
Same number of tabs open and add-ons installed on each?
Damn. Thanks a lot for the comment.
uBlock Origin on both (wouldn't browse the web without it). Vimium and Dark Reader on Librewolf. But turning Dark Reader off does speed it up by _a lot_.
Chrome still seems faster but now they're both playing in the same league.
Never thought about it.
Is Mistral AI open source?
The one they're using is under the Apache 2 license.
Mistral has released Codestral under a new license, but that's not the one used here. https://mistral.ai/news/mistral-ai-non-production-license-mn...
please fix firefox.
Stopped reading after "AI you can trust"
[flagged]
I don't know how Mozilla even exists financially. Is it just that Google keeps them alive to avoid antitrust lawsuits against Chrome?
Pretty much, about 85% of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google in exchange for making them the default search engine. The ongoing antitrust case against Googles search business is threatening to make that deal illegal though, so ironically the attempt to break up one Google monopoly might incidentally kill Firefox and make another Google monopoly stronger than ever.
Assuming donations would still be legal they have the funding structure to get around that through their foundation.
They are gonna need to shed a lot of weight (like this project) in order to make donations feasible.
In a separate comment, I mentioned how Mozilla should have been more like Proton with their cloud storage, VPN, password manager, and cloud office suite.
In fact, they should have done that a decade a ago.
Mozilla has been around since the late '90s and should have evolved beyond just being a browser company. They launched a VPN service when VPNs were already everywhere, and they did the same with a bookmark manager when others were already offering similar solutions. Mozilla is always catching up, never leading, and that's a common issue with many big open-source and free software companies. They often pretend to be a business that isn't heavily propped up by big tech donations.
If I were leading a browser company, my focus would have been aggressively directed towards small business software. I’d create an internet and privacy-focused affordable minimal business software suite that lives within the browser — a combination of Proton and Zoho. And I’d strongly avoid building things that should be browser extensions.
Why does Mozilla always spin their wheels releasing random side projects? Cloud-hosting an outdated tiny LLM that you can't swap out or run locally, to do basic summarization? This just doesn't feel like an area of strategic focus that makes sense for Mozilla. GPUs are expensive, talent to do inference well is expensive, and the actual product they're shipping seems pretty marginally useful at best.
If they shipped vertical tabs I'd probably switch back to Firefox. But that would require focusing on actual browser UX instead of random offshoots. What's their actual product differentiation from Chrome these days?
For me, the product differentiation of Firefox is a bunch of small convenience features which Chrome in its monolithism refuses to provide, such as:
Allowing Backspace to go back a page.
The built-in screenshot tool.
Being able to turn off smooth scrolling.
Support for a menubar, so that I can navigate the features I want quickly.
Being able to choose page encodings (I use a non-Latin charset language).
A usable/useful bookmark manager with things like sorting, tags/labels, timestamps, etc.
"Restore Previous Session" feature.
These are just a few features off the top of my head, I know there are many more.
Of course, for certain sites like Google Docs and YouTube, I have to use Chrome for obvious reasons, but for most browsing I use Firefox (and qutebrowser.)
> Allowing Backspace to go back a page.
Easily solved by https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/go-back-with-backsp... their first party webext.
> Being able to turn off smooth scrolling.
Can disable as easily as Firefox -- chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling
Actually, Firefox lately introduced a bug that will reset smooth scrolling everytime I remote desktop to my Windows machine. Which is annoying AF and they haven't fixed it for months.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1912246
> Being able to choose page encodings (I use a non-Latin charset language).
https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/set-character-encod...
> "Restore Previous Session" feature.
You can do it since.. forever?
Settings -> On Startup -> Continue where you left off
Or just press Ctrl+shift+T when you restart Chrome to restore it manually.
There are some more feature-rich session manager extensions, but they're usually available across Firefox and Chrome.
>Easily solved by https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/go-back-with-backsp... their first party webext.
This only works on pages where extensions are enabled, and only after the extension is successfully activated, so about 30% failure rate for me.
>Can disable as easily as Firefox -- chrome://flags/#smooth-scrolling
This has not worked for me reliably, and the flag has been renamed several times.
For example, on my Mac, it reads "Not available on your platform."
>Actually, Firefox lately introduced a bug that will reset smooth scrolling everytime I remote desktop to my Windows machine. Which is annoying AF and they haven't fixed it for months.
I'm blessed to not have experienced this.
>https://chromewebstore.google.com/detail/set-character-encod...
Same as the other extension comment above, only works once extension activates successfully.
>Settings -> On Startup -> Continue where you left off
This is not the same feature.
I use all the extensions I mentioned for years, claiming it has 30% failure rate is bullshit. They don't work on internal special pages, sure, but they work flawlessly on any "normal" webpages with close to zero load time.
And no, disabling smooth scrolling works totally fine as I use it for more than 10 years.
If you're going to exaggerate your points to make a statement instead actually trying to find solutions, I have nothing for you, then.
What is more likely that they are lying or it doesn't work as well in their configuration as yours? The good faith answer is that it is probably the latter.
Yes, it is more likely he pulled 30% number out of thin air, I'm confident about that.
I did pull the number out of thin air, so let me replace that with "often enough to be annoying and make the browser unusable for me.
Out of curiosity, what "obvious reasons" issues have you had with Docs and YouTube. I use Firefox for everything, including those, without problems. (Though not in any kind of advanced way.)
I use Firefox on my HTPC, running a 6700K with 24GB of RAM. Not new, but not “slow”. Clicking a YouTube video will cause a three second page load, even if the actual “page” says it’s finished loading. Videos will start to play audio before the page is rendered. Navigating back and forth causes issues like this too. Sometimes I can get it to show a video but not change the title or comments that it renders. If I accidentally click the “Shorts” hyperlink I basically have to close the tab to stop it from endlessly playing shorts in the background of the SPA.
It’s awful. The best example I experience on a day to day basis that the SPA as a concept is utterly flawed. YouTube is a fucking webpage that fails to work like a webpage and an app that behaves like a students rough alpha. An utterly painful experience, continually made worse by likely skilled devs who are managed by complete bozo losers. But at least the progress bar has an ugly pink hue now.
Docs just almost entirely does not function for me on Firefox on Linux. As in, I've had it crash the entire browser while just trying to type in a document. In general, Google just aggressively seems to be hostile to any non-Chrome browser using any of their sites. I'm sure they cloak it in "well Firefox just hasn't implemented this spec yet" but when it's functionally enforcing their browser monopoly I have to assume malice at this point.
Too many Google sites behave worse on any non-Chrome browser for it not to be intentional.
I wouldn't call them "obvious" reasons but I recently discovered that in Google Sheets under FF I couldn't duplicate a tab or copy a tab to a new sheet. I had to fire up Chrome to do that.
Oddly enough, Chrome had somehow lost my settings since the previous time I started it a few months earlier, as if it were a new install. :-?
I've not noticed any problems under YT Premium so far.
Depending on how beefy of a machine you're using, they're much slower in Firefox.
> Allowing Backspace to go back a page.
I mostly agree, but whoever came up with this shortcut should get choked.
You may not like it, but I don't think it's a good reason to remove the option of enabling it for those who rely on it for daily work, which is what Chrome did.
It was added with IE and cross pollinated.
Don't forget the option for sane, standard behavior with shift+tab. Chrome refuses to let you customize shortcut behavior like that
Chromium has "restore previous session" - I use it every time I start my browser (I've had a session going for months if not years).
It does not have a command for it. I don’t want it to happen every time I reopen Chrome, but only when I call the command.
> A usable/useful bookmark manager with things like sorting, tags/labels, timestamps, etc.
which bookmark manager can do that ?
Firefox’s built in bookmark manager can do that, Chrome’s is very basic.
> Of course, for certain sites like Google Docs and YouTube, I have to use Chrome for obvious reasons
Yes, obvious.
But left unsaid is that those reasons should lead to the breakup of the (deeply evil) Google ad machine.
I struck a case where Googe Meet is the only website I have found that will not work with Firefox and my headset.
I am so disappointed by Google, I can taste it
Mozilla is almost totally dependent on payments from Google to survive. If Google stops the payments, Mozilla probably goes out of business.
I think it’s pretty clear why they keep on doing this type of side project. They are trying anything they can think of to diversify revenue.
> from Google to survive. If Google stops the payments, Mozilla probably goes out of business.
> I think it’s pretty clear why they keep on doing this type of side project.
It’s not clear to me. I agree they would have some problems if Google declined to pay them because the next best offer would be lower.
But the best way to keep these payments, or to increase them, is by making a better browser and giving people a reason to use Firefox. After spinning off Servo I lost the last hope I had.
It seems everyone is stuffing AI summary tools into everything, is this something that will retain users or bring in new users? I doubt it.
You bring up a great example. Mozilla poured tons of resources and had very smart people working on Rust, Servo, and related tech projects to improve Firefox. Where was the surge of market share?
We’re at a point where the core functionality of browsers is very mature. It’s unlikely that any amount of investment will produce a browser that is significantly faster at things like JS execution or rendering compared to Chrome.
So alternative browsers add things like better ad blockers, more privacy protections, or maybe LLM summaries to enhance the core browser experience instead.
The least cynical view, in my opinion, is that Google is an ad company, which ultimately means they are a data company. They don't need Mozilla to build a better browser, they need Mozilla to increase the amount of user data Google can collect and ad spots Google can sell.
The more cynical view is that Google doesn't care at all about Mozilla because the investment is nothing more than a hedge against regulatory pressure.
A hedge that didn’t pay off despite the Mozilla CEO doing their part at trial and then promptly retiring on a huge pile of GOOG bucks.
Most non-tech "normies", which is to say 95% of the population, barely know what a browser is. They couldn't describe the function of one, or discriminate what makes one better than another. They certainly won't give a crap about Servo, or extremely marginal improvements in page load time (at best).
Given that web browsers are the heaviest application most users are running, and they are running them on low end 10yr old laptops with 8gb of RAM, I think an ultra modern lightweight web browser would be noticeably better.
Web browser crawl on these low end laptops.
This is how Firefox became popular in the first place, by being better.
The “we need an alternative to the “WebKit/blink/chromium” monopoly is what the majority of people will never care about.
Web slowness has much more to do with sites than with browsers. Where sites have accumulated Everest-sized balls of JavaScript mud, web engines have only become more optimized. If you visit “old web” style pages (Macintosh Garden for example) on old machines with modern browsers there’s no speed problem at all.
In the face of all that JS, there’s only so far a spiffy new browser can improve the situation, aside from maybe drop large chunks of legacy web standards but then you’re breaking large chunks of the web.
Most of the new features on the web are corporation driven. The only web site I reluctantly give microphone access is Google Meet and this should have been a desktop app. We have so many layout engines in a browser while layout for both documents and GUI have been solved for decades. Every new feature is just reinventing the wheel to solve a non problem.
From my experience observing and interacting with “normal” non-tech users, slowness of apps and long loading times are simply ignored. I would think “how the hell can you live like that?!”, and they would at best say “yeah it’s kinda slow”.
They also wouldn't use Firefox - they'd use Chrome, Edge, or (more likely) Chrome/Safari mobile. People who use Firefox are already tech people or the family of.
Browsers are a means to an end for other major providers excluding for Opera. They can be loss leaders even, as long as they do their job of steering users towards proprietary ecosystems
For some of the stated reasons this seems like a terrible way to diversify and add any revenue. What if they take a page from Silicon Valley? If the US Government makes Hooli, I mean Google, divest Chrome could Mozilla acquire it?
That would give Mozilla $20B of debt and an even bigger dependence on Google for payments, at least initially.
Though in the long term, maybe they could use the market share to make money in other ways.
But if they can’t manage to make money in other ways with Firefox, I’m not sure that they’d be able to do it with Chrome either.
They seem to feel that they will be marginalized if Google stops paying them to set their default search engine to Google but, the way they have handled it is to focus on everything else other than their browser. At this point since browser engines are dominated by Blink and Webkit what exactly does Mozilla have? Their market share just keeps on going down.
They should have become the Rust company and built services around it.
Whatever happened to Servo?
Mozilla laid off everyone they had working on it. The project is still going on a volunteer basis, but it's obviously not progressing anywhere near as quickly as it was when it had people working on it full time.
Some parts of it, the parts that were production-ready, were merged into Firefox years ago and live on there. Other parts that weren't production-ready were canned and the staff laid off.
Someone will pay to be the default though. Browsers print money.
> What's their actual product differentiation from Chrome these days?
Providing monopoly protection to Google.
They have no interest in actually competing for market share.
Firefox has only a few percents of market share - how is it a protection?
The swindled their 90% share down to <9%, but Google can point to Firefox and try and claim they aren’t a monopoly.
The monopoly protection is provided by Apple and to a lesser extent Microsoft. Mozilla is completely irrelevant at this point.
> If they shipped vertical tabs I'd probably switch back to Firefox.
about:config, sidebar.revamp = true, sidebar.verticalTabs = true
It's getting there.
It's such a waste of resources. They should just focus in making a better browser.
It should be clear that Mozilla Co has far more interest in social issues and galas than browsers.
Truly one of the most self-sabotaging companies I’ve ever seen.
For me:
- continued support for manifest V2 (primarily because ublock origin would stop working if forced to V3 only)
- the firefox address bar is way smarter for any given string i type in than chrome's. it's ability to surface the most relevant deeplinks from my history, vs top level site, vs perform a web search, is night and day difference from the randomness that other browser search bars offer.
- I have the opportunity to use Zen (a Firefox fork) [0] and it's 100% interoperable with my vanilla Firefox instances across devices -- i can even send tabs from my Firefox Nightly on Android to my Zen instances on Windows or Mac. BTW Zen has vertical tab support, (more) first-party multi-profile support, and preserves the address bar behaviors of vanilla Firefox.
Building a browser is hard. Building a proof of concept of the current tech fad is easy and fun. Sometimes developers need to do easy and fun things to keep themselves motivated and happy.
You could build an AI Assistant, or you could spend a month bikeshedding some design details of vertical tabs.
>Sometimes developers need to do easy and fun things to keep themselves motivated and happy.
I tried this line on my boss. Didn't fly. Back to bikeshedding with the rest of the team. I wonder if the difference is we have to earn our money, and our customers expect an roi. Or, at least something that doesn't mess up what already exists.
Yeah I doubt this took a huge amount of resources away from other development. It’s a fun little optional feature that might end up being cool.
Zen Browser is based in the newest Firefox version and does have vertical tabs
Well, you're in luck, sort of. Mozilla has vertical tabs in a new sidebar experience. It's the worst implementation of vertical tabs and a sidebar I've seen in a browser. Complete with typical Firefox UX, it's completely inconsistent and unintuitive to disable. A complete farce compared to Sidebery.
I've been using Zen recently - it's a fork/skin of Firefox that includes vertical tabs.
Google doesn't pay them to be competition. Only to appear as such to keep regulators distracted.
Surely there’s an extension that does vertical tabs…
There is, but hiding the tabs on top — IMO the entire point of vertical tabs, since almost all screens have more horizontal than vertical space — isn't supported without maintaining your own custom CSS. It's a pain.
If anyone is curious, the following seems to work:
0. Install the Tree Style Tab extension (or whatever vertical tabs extension you prefer).
1. Enable userChrome.css: set toolkit.legacyUserProfileCustomizations.stylesheets=true in about:config.
2. Set browser.tabs.inTitlebar=0 in about:config so the title bar buttons (and, on some OS's, the title bar itself) remain visible.
3. Create =chrome/userChrome.css= in your Firefox profile folder and write the following to it:
@namespace url("http://www.mozilla.org/keymaster/gatekeeper/there.is.only.xul"); /* hides the native tabs */ #TabsToolbar { visibility: collapse; }
I use sideberry. Once you get it set up (not super user friendly) it’s amazing.
> Why does Mozilla always spin their wheels releasing random side projects?
Because some project manager had "AI" on his performance goals this year.
Firefox is buggy as hell - which is incomprehensible given its age, but older brother Netscape had the same problem 20-ish years ago. The Netscape 4.x days were absolute hell and you could go hardly a day without the browser crashing.
Despite this, it's packed with nonsense no one asked for like Pocket. Which is a coincidence because "AI assistant for Firefox" is the dictionary definition for redundant things no one asked for, with better alternatives preexisting.
At this point Firefox needs to die and something new and manageable - with energetic developers - needs to take its place. Maybe Microsoft could open source the original Edge engine? The one before they bent over for the long dick of Google Chrome.
> Because some project manager had "AI" on his performance goals this year.
Same reason Logitech did it, it's a totally arbitrary waste of resources
As a counterpoint I'm a heavy firefox user and haven't had crash in many months, and even that was because I was testing some experimental webgpu thing which I had to manually enable. It has its fair share of odd bugs but what kind of big piece of software nowadays hasn't? It's honestly no less cromulent than Chrome.
I said Netscape, not FF, was crash prone.
I would, however, agree FF has many "odd bugs".
> Firefox is buggy as hell
Don't you worry, I'm sure their new AI Assistant will generate a ton of bugfix code!!11 AI gonna take all teh jobs, or so I hear
But, as a more serious contribution: the sentiment "At this point Firefox needs to die and something new and manageable" is the same one which generates the infinite JavaScript treadmill akin to: "I don't like all those bloated JS frameworks, I want one slim and fast and manegable ... well, except this one other feature ... and this other ... oh, shit, this needs to die and have something new and manageable take its place ..."
It's not that I think Gecko is the bees knees, but I do think it has stepped on more than its fair share of real life landmines, and the Great Rewrite Theory means someone needs to spend all that time re-discovering them
> What's their actual product differentiation from Chrome these days?
Not being the progenitor and linchpin of surveillance capitalism.
That and Firefox can run a full-grown version of uBlock Origin that actually works... at least for now.
uBlock Matrix, not Origin, if you actually want fine-grained control.
*uMatrix is unmaintained, and uBlock Origin can do fine-grained control – it just requires the “advanced user” setting for some reason, even if you expand the panels all the way. https://github.com/gorhill/ublock/wiki/quick-guide:-popup-us... (see “I am an advanced user!” expanding section at the bottom)
And I can actually build and package it from source in about 2 hours, unlike the other monstrosity, which surely must lower the barrier to contribution. Almost as much as Bugzilla raises it, I guess :-(
What are vertical tabs? Firefox has some tab reorganizing extensions, FWIW.
Agreed that it would be nice if they had better focus though.
Their product differentiation is that they aren’t fucking Chromium.
Sidebery does just that, and works super well!
I'm sympathetic to the viewpoint but the idea that Mozilla would attract more users via vertical tabs than by an AI assistant strikes me as flat out wrong.
Mozilla's brand is "pro privacy", it does make sense for them to launch an AI product with that brand position. I doubt it'll be successful because I don't think enough people actually care about privacy, but still.
I feel like it's a common HN sentiment to say "why don't Mozilla just focus on the browser?!"... the answer is because barely anyone is using it and there's very little they can do to move the needle on that. IMO they're an organization looking for a purpose.
Depends. If they start with this and then use it as iterative development before going local-only as the models and hardware improve, that could be a good move.
Sidebery does vertical tabs on Firefox better than any other browser/extension imo
Looks like money washing lol
Mozilla please stop.
mozilla.exe has crashed
Shit like this is why Mozilla deserves to die. They have overstayed their welcome and just drag the rest of us all down.
Firefox needs to be forked and owned by the people. I'd pay $1 a month for a browser run by the people. Management and extension options could be rolled out for government, business, education, etc. There are so many models where the browser thrives, the org that shepherds the browser thrives, and the people thrive.
Firefox is like the shitty best option that camps out in its niche, it sucks but it is really hard to push out of the way.
> I'd pay $1 a month for a browser run by the people.
The bad news is that 12,000 other people would need to similarly pay per month to have a dev team of just 10. I know Ladybird is lean and mean but finding that big of an audience (or, of course, bigger) who would pay for a browser, per month, is likely a non-starter
It would be a much more interesting proposal to start a bug bounty for the damn near infinite Bugzilla queue, although as I understand it some of the hassle of a bug bounty program is evaluating submissions. And don't say "but we'll use an LLM" or I'll throw up in my mouth
I generally frown on calculating market size like this, but 10% of the top 1B is 100m, if 1% of those paid a dollar a month, that is a million a month. Good for 100 fang eng.
If Wikipedia can do it, a browser can do it.
I hear you, and ironically I'm actually already in the target demographic of willing to pay for software I use and enjoy. Then again, I find that I am often an outlier in the "lengths folks will go to for good experiences" camp
Anyway, at this moment in my life I don't have the emotional energy to launch this project, but if someone does then please tag me and let me know
This project seems especially ripe for success because it doesn't need product market fit, it doesn't need requirements gathering, it just needs execution and a non-retarded bug tracking product
I am in the same boat, but luckily we just stumbled across tech that can help solve this problem.
> I'd pay $1 a month for a browser run by the people.
You and approximately 5 other people. Paid browsers in 2024 are not a path to mainstream success, especially if you are what Firefox is - a fully independent tech stack down to the browser engine and not a barebones reskin of Chrome. A reskin of Chrome would have very low development costs. Firefox does not.
That is simply not true. I donate a little under 1k a month, there are many like me. Mozilla is not an org that I would feel comfortable funding given the perverse incentives that they have aligned themselves with.
And who are 'the people'? It's an open source product, developed by a non-profit organisation. You want the government to release a browser? I can tell you how popular that will be...
>developed by a non-profit organisation.
Mozilla Corporation is a for-profit.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation
>The Mozilla Corporation is a wholly owned subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation that coordinates and integrates the development of Internet-related applications such as the Firefox web browser,
>Unlike the non-profit Mozilla Foundation, and the Mozilla open source project, ... the Mozilla Corporation is a taxable entity.
Right, but its board and owners that it is beholden to is the Non-Profit.
At least it's more useful than their limited edition themes.
Not until another browser with MV2 commitment picks up the banner that Firefox drops.
Just seeing the title as announcing some new mozilla service my first thought was "What personal data does this new mozilla feature send to cloudflare?" -- turns out the answer was emails and documents but to their own google cloud accounts rather than cloudflare.
Of course, no option to use a local model even though the one they're using is small enough that its perfectly reasonable to use locally. Even on a cell phone.
Given the broader Mozilla foundation's political biases, will these assistants be censored or heavily curated? I am reminded of when Mozilla chose to ban Dissenter, a free speech plugin powered by Gab, from its store. I've never used it but I found it distasteful that a company working on a basic utility program decided to become political. I don't understand why they cannot just focus on the basics and get those right. Still waiting for proper vertical tabs.
What is a free speech plugin? were there political discussions in these threads? If so it seems like they did the correct thing removing such political plugin right?
> basic utility program decided to become political
looks like they wanted to avoid it, isn't it?