Mozilla is a tiny company that competes with some of the biggest tech companies in the world—Apple, Google, and Microsoft. It’s also very important to the web as a whole, as Firefox is the only browser that can’t trace its lineage back to Apple and WebKit (Chrome’s Blink engine is a WebKit fork. Microsoft Edge is a Chromium fork). So you would think focusing on Firefox would be a priority, but the company continually struggles with focus.
The Mozilla Corporation gets about 80 percent of its revenue from Google—also its primary browser competitor—via a search deal, so Mozilla isn’t exactly a healthy company. These non-browser projects could be seen as a search for a less vulnerable revenue stream, but none have put a huge dent in the bottom line.
I believe having a diversity of browser engines is the best path toward keeping the web healthy, open, and independent. I have a ton of browsers installed, but Firefox has been my default for a good 15+ years now. The overall user experience, privacy, speed, and developer tools in early 2024 Firefox suits me just fine. I even use the containers! I want it to be maintained with new features coming to HTML, CSS, and Javascript. I want security patches and bug fixes. I want the browser experience to continue to be one I can customize to my needs. I want the core feature (browsing the web) to be the experience that is improved upon with each release. This is what I want and expect from a product I use every day of the week.
I’d love to see Mozilla become more independent from Google revenue-wise. But I don’t need or want any of the other paid products in the Mozilla catalogue. I don’t see the need for AI in my web browser. Spin off an up-to-date version of Firefox without the AI stuff, and I’d gladly pay to keep that going.