What’s next for Mozilla?
For the longest time, Mozilla was synonymous with the Firefox browser, but for the last few years, Mozilla has started to look beyond Firefox, especially
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I ask once again: who asked for this? Can anybody point to a large community outcry for Mozilla to invest in this? They only have finite time and money, after all, and it appears they are still maintaining their last shiny object, VR worlds.
I didn't ask for it, but I'm lowkey happy to have them in this. I imagine, in a few years from now, all the start-ups will have run out of money or been acquired, and as per the usual, only big tech companies remain.
Traditional search engines will basically be dead, completely swamped with AI-generated spam. And even non-techies will generally depend on generative AIs for information and communication.
If those are exclusively controlled by big tech, we'll have tons of censorship (e.g. if you want to export an LLM to China, it has to pretend to not know about the Uyghurs) and just generally no control.
I don't expect Mozilla to save the world here, they're too small for that. But they're already providing useful tools, raising the entrypoint for independent devs.
That's a huge "if" for how the future pans out, though. If Mozilla is gambling correctly, then their investment might pay off for the average person.
Unfortunately, 2023 marked their purchase of private user data, and they gave themselves the right to purchase and resell it -- location data, browser history, usernames, full profiles.
So if Mozilla wants to be the "privacy AI" company, they skipped the privacy.
You should actually read the plans about their AI. It runs entirely locally, using your own data that never leaves your PC.
Do you believe any part of my comment is untrue, and similarly, do you have any ethical issues with what I just said Mozilla Corp is doing?
I've not heard about what you're saying, so I'd like to learn more.
Their AI system will collect zero data, though, and run entirely locally. And that's what this is about.
Like it or not, this is a hyped feature that people want. The cat's out of the bag. It's not a feature that I want, but it is one the market wants.
It's good to have a privacy-respecting option when we all know in a few years the likes of Google, Microsoft, and Apple will dominate the market. And we know that they won't respect our privacy.
Here's a breakdown from one of Mozilla's AI divisions. Their current product collects data and already has it:
| Category of Personal Information Collected | Third Parties to Whom Personal Information is Sold/Shared |
|---|---|
| browsing history | Advertising partners, Service providers |
| search history | Advertising partners, Service providers |
| your device's precise location | Advertising partners, Service providers |
| a profile about a consumer | Advertising partners, Service providers |
| records of personal property, products or services purchased | Advertising partners, Service providers |
Source: Mozilla
