this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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Mozilla’s new CEO is doubling down on an AI future for Firefox (www.theverge.com)
submitted 15 hours ago by azdle@news.idlestate.org to c/technology@lemmy.world
146 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Mozilla is in a tricky position. It contains both a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the internet a better place for everyone, and a for-profit arm dedicated to, you know, making money. In the best of times, these things feed each other: The company makes great products that advance its goals for the web, and the nonprofit gets to both advocate for a better web and show people what it looks like. But these are not the best of times. Mozilla has spent the last couple of years implementing layoffs and restructuring, attempting to explain how it can fight for privacy and openness when Google pays most of its bills, while trying to find its place in an increasingly frothy AI landscape.

Fun times to be the new Mozilla CEO, right? But when I put all that to Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, the company’s just-announced chief executive, he swears he sees opportunity in all the upheaval. “I think what’s actually needed now is a technology company that people can trust,” Enzor-DeMeo says. “What I’ve seen with AI is an erosion of trust.”

Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon. But there’s still an AI Mode coming to Firefox next year, which Enzor-DeMeo says will offer users their choice of model and product, all in a browser they can understand and from a company they can trust. “We’re not incentivized to push one model or the other,” he says. “So we’re going to try to go to market with multiple models.”

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[–] kieron115@startrek.website 4 points 2 hours ago* (last edited 1 hour ago) (1 children)

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

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

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

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

[–] ikidd@lemmy.world 2 points 1 hour ago (1 children)

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

[–] kieron115@startrek.website 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

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