Today, I saw a seemingly sarcastic toot from ploum about Mozilla's career page listing a considerable number of jobs for Gen AI-, analytics- and ad-related roles:

He contrasted this with Mozilla’s announcement yesterday of shutting down their Mastodon instance. The responses were an outpour of disappointment and criticism towards Mozilla.

I started writing a threaded response, and realized it should probably be a blog post instead, so, here we go!

In short, much of the criticism I read about on Mozilla seems valid, but I don't know if the critics have a much better plan than complaining. We should consider if we actually know what's best for Mozilla and Firefox.

Mastodon, and "meh" products

To start, I understand the sarcasm to some degree. In particular, I'd appreciate more, not less, investment in the fediverse. The fediverse is a beacon of hope for a more independent and open web, something I thought Mozilla cared about too. Mozilla supporting Mastodon as an alternative for X, Threads and BlueSky sounded logical when they launched the initiative in early 2023. Then again, if they have less than 300 daily active users today, I also understand that the service was considered a failure not worth maintaining.

The question then becomes: did they invest enough in the experiment? Probably not. Beyond a few announcements in the beginning, I didn't hear much about Mozilla Social. Even in Mozilla's "All Products" page from January this year, I can't find a single mention of the instance. Compare this to Vivaldi, which is promoting its Mastodon instance launched in November 2022 prominently on its website and in its browser. We can also ask if they should have even started the experiment, as opposed to taking on a support role. They could have helped to popularize the concept of the fediverse itself, referring to other servers, while supporting the work of existing moderation communities.

Mozilla had already been criticized several times over for investing in products with questionable added value, or equally, killing liked products. In September 2020, Mozilla killed Mozilla Send, a service I had used and liked. Before that, there was the Lightbeam extension, Firefox OS, and many more (the list is sizeable, but nowhere near Google's track record of killing products). 

Among its current suite of products, Mozilla is pushing a VPN service and a password breach Monitor. I too am asking; does the world really need these services? There are already VPN services aplenty, many of which focus on privacy, and Monitor is a feature implemented by virtually every password manager. These also aren't adding much value in my opinion.

Firefox neglected?

One critique I glean from the toot, which reappears often, is that with these distractions, Mozilla is taking much-needed investments away from Firefox, the one product they have that is precious and unique. It's the only major browser with an engine that doesn't have its roots in WebKit, and the only one not owned by a trillion dollar corporation. And, importantly, it has issues that need addressing.

As a web user, I recently switched by back to Firefox after years on Google Chrome (of all browsers), and while I'm planning to stick with it, I also have to use Firefox in conjunction with the Chromium-based Vivaldi browser because of...

• decent performance in more complex web apps (so far I've noticed issues in Penpot, and, not surprisingly, Google Earth, Google Maps and Google Meet)
• desktop-integrated Progressive Web Apps (bringing back PWA support is the second-most upvoted issue with 2278 upvotes in the Mozilla Ideas forum)
• some specific developer tools, like Snippets and JS/CSS coverage reports

Firefox works well for most of my daily browsing, but just isn't up-to-par for some use-cases. This is to say that I too would be happy with more improvements to Firefox' performance and core web feature set, so I can just use one browser (while acknowledging that the problems it has aren't only Firefox' fault).

GenAI, analytics, ads

With this in mind, seeing a list of jobs in the realms of GenAI, analytics and ads make it look like improving the Firefox core browsing experience is not enough of a priority of Mozilla, which I understand is disappointing.

For fairness, it should be noted that out of 35 current openings, 6 have 'gen' in it, 3 'ads', and 2 'analytics'. That's 11/35. There is still a majority of job openings that is not focused on domains considered problematic by critics on Mastodon.

However, I also think critics jump to conclusions too quickly when seeing these words. It is important to evaluate all these job ads in the context of...

1. Mozilla consistently receiving 80%+ of its revenue in the last years through a default search engine deal with Google. That's an awkwardly existential amount of funding to get from a big player with a different ideology around tech and browsers. I can imagine that many at Mozilla are uncomfortable with this, and would like to find alternative sources of revenue.
2. Firefox‘ market share is small and dwindling. Clearly, whatever they have been trying in the last decade(s) (that wasn't a deal with Google), hasn't been working well.

Here's my take on these roles.

Advertisement roles: I suppose these roles are at least partially related to the ecosystem around the recently released "Privacy-Preserving Attribution", and perhaps too to the sponsored Search Suggestions that have existed for a long time.

If I’d have to choose on what to promote, Mozilla’s spin on attribution sounds like a better plan for privacy than Google's "Privacy Sandbox" which can still expose interests of individuals.

Mozilla is probably trying to check if they can sell their own ad insights. It might be one path to more independence (from Google), but I don’t like it much, because it also represents one step further on the slippery slope of surveillance capitalism.

Regarding the search suggestions; this is also one of the main sources of revenue of Vivaldi. I see a double standard in finding that normal, versus berating Mozilla for it.

GenAI: there is much cynicism and negativity around GenAI on the fediverse, and much of it is warranted. GenAI has huge costs in terms of energy, is kept artificially cheap and ad-free for consumers in a classic bait-and-switch scheme, is dangerously misunderstood, is trained in unethical ways, and is proliferating huge swaths of garbage on the internet. It is overhyped, plugged into products without much thought, and therefore it is a bubble that will pop. There is much to dislike. But unlike the blockchain hype, GenAI also has a serious core of real, obvious value and concrete applications. This core isn't going anywhere. It reminds me of the dot-com bubble. This bubble also burst, but eventually came to fruition more gradually with the rise of e-commerce and big web tech through the 2000s and 2010s. I see something similar happening with GenAI, with an even faster turnaround. There might be a market correction, but this thing will keep going.

Mozilla investing in GenAI may seem like one of those anti-Firefox distractions, but some forms of GenAI will persist in the main competitors of Firefox. Summarizing pages will become a table-stakes feature, just like Chrome made in-browser translation a table-stakes feature (and it took Firefox a long time to provide a halfway decent alternative).

These will become the next "missing features" that make many more people run away from Firefox. Browsers aren't only used by tech enthusiasts and privacy nuts. Nurses use browsers, as do bus drivers, lawyers, cooks, ... everyone on the internet uses browsers. People are getting increasingly hooked on cheap or free GenAI, and Firefox needs to be able to sell a narrative tomorrow to the average browser user that is focused on privacy, but that also doesn't come with too many concessions on features. Therefore, building GenAI expertise early on might not be that crazy after all; because going about it in privacy-friendly way, like they did with machine translation, will be a serious challenge.

Analytics: it's no secret that Firefox has included various forms of telemetry, to the dismay of many. I believe privacy-preserving analytics aren't evil per se, and are helpful for sensible, data-driven product decisions. For example, my company is proudly running Plausible, which is really helpful for us. At Firefox' scale, you might need some people whose responsibility it is to work with analytics. I hope they keep it anonymous, however.

To conclude

Mozilla and Firefox might not have displayed a coherent or successful vision for a private and open web in the last few years, but I don’t think it helps to just be sarcastic about their attempts to find alternative sources of revenue in a privacy-preserving way, and their attempts to anticipate what's next for browsers.

What would you do to grow the market share of Firefox, while becoming more independent of Google? To protect the diversity of browser engines, and the open web? It's probably not easy.

Yes, it is awkward that the millionaire CEO got a fat million dollar raise in 2022, a mere year after 25% of Mozilla's workforce was laid off, but being outraged at their Silicon Valley salaries also doesn't help much. Mozilla should have the cash ready to acquire and retain good people to work on their mission (just like Signal).

I hope that Mozilla will find a way to re-focus on the unique value they can provide to the web, and will find a sustainable model for doing so. There is still much to cherish about Firefox and Mozilla, like Gecko, Enhanced Tracking Protection, MDN, ... and the alternatives are still far out. So let's try to stay constructive.