The Mozilla Cycle, Part III: Mozilla Dies in Ignominy

I owe Mozilla a thank-you. Really, I do. Maybe an Edible Arrangement? People like those. Some lil pineapples cut into stars on sticks and chocolate strawberries might brighten their day. For the note, I'm thinking something like:

Thank you for proving me exactly right. > > XOXO > MT

Eight months ago, in the fallout of Mozilla's fumbling of a Privacy Policy update, I wrote:

Mozilla is pursuing its primary objective, which is the survival of Mozilla. Its mission statement is more than broad enough to accommodate that, and Firefox is not a real priority. The community should accept that and stop waiting for Mozilla to be the hero they deserve.

Regrettably, I was unable to take my own advice on the last part. So here we are yet again, marveling at Mozilla's dedication toward eroding decades of goodwill in the community they purportedly serve. To quote one of my sacred texts, it's a focus and intensity normally seen only in successes.

Back in the present, we have Mozilla ~~doubling~~ ~~tripling~~ nthing down on this direction. First, with their announcement of "AI Window," a new feature (used very loosely) coming to Firefox which seems to emulate the user experience offered by AI browsers like Perplexity's Comet or OpenAI's Atlas. In other words, instead of performing search from the address bar and interacting with websites like browsers have done since they were invented, your first interaction will be with a language model prompt, which then mediates your experience of the web.

Not to gloat, but I told you so.

The response from the Firefox community has not just been overwhelmingly negative, it is universally negative as far as I can tell. At least among users willing to post on Mozilla's forums about the issue, which is absolutely a biased sample set. I have received some comments separately in support of Firefox, but they are countable and the vast, vast minority. Mozilla's core audience hates this move. At the very least, they would want all the AI components of Firefox to be opt-in, a choice that Firefox has been unwilling to make so far, instead enabling these new features by default.

What does Mozilla do? Temper the plan? Ease up on the forced features?

Nah, they do what any good corporate PR person would tell you to do when facing public backlash: post through it.

This post is a summary of Mozilla's new Strategic Plan, which is viewable in full here. I read it through a few times, and my brain nearly ripped in half from the cognitive dissonance involved. But I think it's worth examining Mozilla's claims carefully. They are:

1. AI (by which they mean generative AI) is a transformative technology that will fundamentally alter how we interact with machines and the web. 2. The current landscape is dangerous and controlled by big tech and "closed source" models. 3. Mozilla should therefore pivot to develop and support "open source" AI implementations the same way they advocated for open web standards.

The strategy details the "what" and "how" of Mozilla's transformation in this direction. We're going to touch on some of those points, but let's begin with these big claims, affording Mozilla maximum benefit of the doubt.

Is generative AI a transformative technology? The Corpos sure seem to want it to be, although its actual usage seems mostly to be chatbot-related. All other attempts to use this trick in other realms have failed rather miserably. Microsoft, for example, wants you to talk to your computer instead of using a mouse and keyboard like a dinosaur. The results, unfortunately, are much worse than the Jurassic version of computer interaction. The pattern holds true across the board. Google's AI Overview continues to be an inferior provider of information than solid web search results. Also, as it turns out, people learn less from LLM output.

Even the AI browsers Mozilla wants to emulate have significant issues, vulnerable to old web vulnerabilities and new attacks against the models themselves.

Generative AI is transforming something, but I don't think it's the web, and I don't think it's for the better.

Which means their second claim is definitely true! The current landscape is dangerous, as I've been decrying for years.

But because Mozilla is convinced that generative AI is a force for good (with no evidence to back that claim up), they conclude that their mission must be to create "open source" alternatives to commercial ("big tech") offerings.

If you truly believe generative AI is a net good but with potential for significant harm, there are arguments to be made for ethical implementations. This same instinct is what propelled researchers from OpenAI to split and found Anthropic.

This, however, is an article of faith. It cannot be argued rationally because no empirical evidence exists to support it. The entirety of the belief is predicated on future potential—and it always will be, right up until the harms are so inescapably clear that even the most ardent of believers suffer because of them. Even then, not all of the Flock will lose faith. And as we now see, Mozilla leadership are not just the Flock, but Disciples.

Mozilla has had a conversion experience, while its core audience has not. This results in a schism of purpose.

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The Actual Strategy

Digging into the plan itself, Mozilla's ambitions are remarkable. Mozilla has, as the plan notes, always measured itself against a "double bottom line" of mission and market success. However, it seems these two criteria are now separately defined by: "a. AI that advances the Manifesto; and b. diversifying revenue away from search."

Their specific goals include:

- All Mozilla orgs have a flagship AI product by 2028 - 10% year-over-year community growth - 20% year-over-year growth in non-search revenue - 3 Mozilla orgs have more than $25M in revenue (currently: 1) - 10% year-over-year investment portfolio returns

I am dumbfounded by these goals. I can't even be snarky about them. They seem so disconnected from reality that I can't imagine how a Board arrived at them.

Let's go through them one at a time.

"Flagship" AI Products

What "orgs" are we talking about here? Historically there have been two Mozilla organizations: the Mozilla Foundation, which is the not-for-profit to which you donate to preserve the open web); and the Mozilla Corporation, which develops Firefox, makes deals with search engines, and creates other revenue-generating projects like, uh, Pocket.

There now exist three other for-profit subsidiaries of the Foundation, although these are not mentioned in the official listings. The first is MZLA Technologies Corporation, which is responsible for Thunderbird. I can't tell what else they do, if anything.

Another is Mozilla.ai, which has a much clearer purpose. This company produces AI products and services. So of these organizations, 3 of them need to have flagship AI products by 2028. What could that possibly look like?

There is also Mozilla Ventures, which is literally just a venture capital firm throwing money at AI projects that align with Mozilla's Manifesto.

Mozilla.ai has the easiest and clearest road, as their Agent Platformis already in early access and is absolutely a commercial product. MZLA has...Thunderbird? So AI-powered Thunderbird? That's what I can figure, although Thunderbird is not exactly known as an AI platform. Their new paid Thunderbird Pro service currently makes no mention of AI integration. That's a headscratcher. Mozilla VenturesAnd finally, we have the Corporation and Firefox.

Let's be as clear as we can possibly be. Mozilla is an AI company, and Firefox will be a flagship AI product according to this strategic plan. This is the focus for Mozilla, which means users of Firefox will only get more and more AI shoved down their throat, and likely fewer ways to avoid it.

Community Growth

I don't have access to Mozilla's "community" numbers, however they choose to define them. But if the