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Mozilla downsizes as it refocuses on Firefox and AI: Read the memo | TechCrunch (techcrunch.com)

submitted 9 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay and, somewhat remarkably, its Online Footprint Scrubber, which launched only a week ago. Mozilla will also shut down Hubs, the 3D virtual world it launched back in 2018, and scale back its investment in its mozilla.social Mastodon instance. The layoffs will affect roughly 60 employees. Bloomberg previously reported the layoffs.

Yo, wtf. Their VPN, Relay and Monitor are basically the only Mozilla services I'd use and pay for. To me this sounds like this is the wrong direction. What do you guys think?

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[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (2 children)

I'm already paying for Mullvad, the VPN service Mozilla is whitelabeling, so Mozilla VPN is unattractive to me. I'm already using Relay, but not to the extent that any paid features would make sense for me (yet). Monitor, I think, is a great tool, but I don't feel comfortable with giving data brokers all of my PII just for them to delete SOME of my PII. Maybe this will change, though.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

So you're not paying and this is the problem. That's why they're refocusing.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago (1 children)

If I'm the sample size, then they are entirely refocusing on the wrong things, because I've never wanted Pocket, I don't know what Content is even supposed to be and I can forego the use of AI in my browser.

Going forward, the company said in an internal memo, Mozilla will focus on bringing “trustworthy AI into Firefox.” To do so, it will bring together the teams that work on Pocket, Content and AI/Ml.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

Oh god, AI into Firefox? What's the reason?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago

I'm a bit confused what's the cost of shipping a rebadged version of an existing VPN service is.