> The nonprofit, also the parent of Firefox, is investing in artificial intelligence startups that are working on safety and governance issues in AI.
Why?, they want to go bankrupt?, do they like burning money?
I would understand investing in AI Tech... Brilliant if they use Mozilla contributors.
I would understand but investing in other startups... with due diligence and something that might make a difference
> that are working on safety and governance issues in AI.
what... why... what the hell... that's governments job, not mozillas...
Why do people take these AI "safety" research projects at face value? The real reason you need AI that is "safe" and "governable" is so that when you start having it promote advertisers content or support the current administration, you don't have to worry about it going "off the rails" and promoting a competing product to criticizing the administration.
I'm sure plenty of researchers in this space also believe they are working for the good of humanity, but I suspect the real am is much more practical and perfectly aligned with the business interests of all the companies sponsoring this type of work.
I don't want to see CSAM created, but the totalitarian control required is too much for my taste (and frankly it's preferable for that person to use NN than to go out and hurt actual children).
Not to mention even locked down technology is often being abused by the privileged.
Mozilla is a deeply corrupt and failed organization.
Can you elaborate?
Some of us who donated money and supported Mozilla and Firefox are deeply, deeply disappointed and disgusted.
Principles are meaningless to non-human corporate entities, and I'll never donate to a non-profit, charity, or other institution again for the rest of my life.
[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...
They're an NGO, you can just... look this up, it's public.
While I agree with the general point that non-profit donors have a legitimate interest in the use of funds, in the particular case of the Mozilla Foundation, I believe the vast majority of that money is from placement fees Google paid to be the default search engine in Firefox. As the pay-for-placement market has evolved and Firefox's browser share has fallen, this income has also fallen dramatically.
On the general point about non-profit donations, legally non-profit's use of funds are governed by their board of directors and charter, which often are not constrained in ways donors may assume, hence the need for due diligence prior to giving.
Most of program service revenue was from Mozilla Corporation. They paid Mozilla Foundation a small part of their revenue for trademark licenses, legal services, and so. And most of Mozilla Corporation's revenue was from Google.
[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Foundation_Form_99...
They could build interesting protocols into Firefox like IPFS or ENS, or develop alternatives. $1.4 billion can accomplish a lot -- if you stay in your lane and don't yeet it into a capital intensive field with uncertain returns like AI.
Sorry, I can't take Mozilla seriously when they're doing anything other than Firefox or Thunderbird. Enough of this crap. Dressing it up with juvenile capeshit references doesn't help.
If something like KDE can build a whole desktop on a shoestring budget with some donations, Firefox can too. And I'd gladly donate to it. Problem is I can't because you can only donate to the foundation. And I don't want to fund their dogood distractions, just firefox.
Besides, the search deal will end one way or another. Either Firefox will lose so much marketshare that Google no longer bothers, or the DoJ will finally ban the search deals. Relying on it is ultra stupid.
Back of the envelope math says that's worth 50-70 million dollars a year, taking into account inflation. A cracked developer is worth 1/2 a million per year, both of Mozilla's core offerings are OSS so benefit from free code contributions. Is that not enough for a dozen highly paid software engineers, a well paid CEO and infra? This is ignoring future donations.
It sounds like you haven't looked into Mozilla Foundation's history regarding CEO salary, bonuses and overall use of funds.
also, I don't think a dozen devs is enough to support a competitive browser
anyway, companies are far(!) from just devs
Of course this funding would come with some pretty big strings attached. Including perhaps "no AI in the core system."
Even if you don’t care too much about FF itself, they also own the Gecko engine on top of which other browsers are built.
Personally I’ve been using Zen for the past year and it’s been a pretty good experience. I should add a disclaimer that I’m not a frontend dev, so can’t speak to dev tooling.
They deserve it. The one thing people need from Mozilla is for it to fight browser monoculture, which is critical the free and open web. "They had one job." But, to the great detriment of humanity (I don't think I'm exaggerating), they're failing. That sucks.
> Personally I’ve been using Zen.
Thanks, I didn't know about Zen, I'll check that out. I'm on Brave, but would rather not be.
(unless you're nvidia/tsmc)
I only use Firefox because of my hate for ADs.
$1.4 billion would be a very good start for an endowment which one day could maybe fund, a browser?
[1] https://stateof.mozilla.org/ledger/
[2] https://stateof.mozilla.org/pdf/Mozilla%20Fdn%202024%20-%20A...
Then again, given Mozilla Foundation's stellar record of taking on massive corporations and crushing them, and given that they themselves not owe their very financial existence not even a little bit solely to donations from a certain mega-corporation, maybe it's not that risky - more an assured success.
>Receive most of their funding from the Empire
It's a trap!
If you have to explain why you chose the name, it might not be a good name :/
They meant State of Mozilla 2025 seemingly.[1]
Thanks for starting Rust, I guess, at least it was directly related to improving Firefox.
Is that too much to ask for?
I don't want any AI features to exist in the Firefox source code, since this increases Firefox's attack surface for no real gain to the product I want to use. The AI-enabled browser should be a separate product line for people who want that.
Right now, Mozilla keeps fighting wars it cannot win.
This is almost like GRRM trying hard not to focus on Winds of Winter.
donate to this sham foundation
Buy their Thunderbird pro mailservice
Or shovel money in any of their other hair-brained schemes.
Google and Microsoft will obviously remain. I have a hard time envisioning that OpenAI or Anthropic will go under - especially Anthropic, who are reportedly raking in billions from Claude subscriptions.
Just from my armchair predictions, it's not really any of the juggernauts who have to worry, but rather the many companies springing up to try SaaS offerings with LLMs at the core. A bubble pop there could certainly cause some strife, but I'm just not seeing the mechanism by which these too-big-to-fail tech companies and the heavily invested "frontier AI companies" are going to suddenly cease to exist.
I think the dotcom bubble is a fairly apt metaphor in the key sense that the web didn't go anywhere - just a lot of small players lost their tickets on the gravy train. "Big tech" as it existed at the time of the bubble pop trundled along and continued making gobs of money.
Microsoft seem to be pushing all kinds of users away in all directions at the moment while focused on the AI bubble*. Once it bursts/deflats, will they come back?
Or are we looking at a post-Windows future, where MS just focuses on cloud stuff?
(Or will there be a 'we learned from our mistakes, honest' Windows 12 that wins people back in the same way that Win10 did after Win8?)
I think the trillion dollar companies have enough money, they can hire people as 'plants'.
Okay, before this is marked as crazy talk: Historically this has happened, this isnt a new invention. A company needs to survive, not be ethical. Using third parties give plausible deniability.
I look at the atrocious state of LibreOffice, and I'm pretty sure someone from Microsoft is screwing things up. Might just be a little bit of friction and fake concern over a useful change. Maybe they even find someone who already does this and fund it as a full time job.
I look at Firefox, and I wonder if Google somehow is significantly influencing things there. Google keeps Firefox alive to prevent anti-trust. But they make sure funding is diverted from browser to wasteful projects.
When I worked for a fortune 20 company, we had a major, irrational push away from python into Microsoft Power Automate. Other people were convinced either our director was a Microsoft plant, or was getting some sort of kickback.
Here is my question:
What is the business called where people do this? Like if these companies paid a third party, what is this categorized as? (For instance, paying for reddit upvotes and comments is called 'Reputation Management')
Some have used the term "Strategic accommodation".
Interesting you bring this specific Mozilla/Google example up since this is the closet thing to seeing this happen in real time:
https://www.opensourceforu.com/2025/09/court-ruling-secures-...
"Courts and press have noted that Mozilla relies heavily on Google’s search‑default payments, which keep Firefox viable. Recent antitrust proceedings have wrestled with whether (and how) to restrict these payments: a judge ultimately allowed Google to continue non‑exclusive payments to distribution partners like Mozilla while barring exclusivity and some tying/bundling—an outcome many observers said preserved Mozilla’s “lifeline” without materially threatening Google’s core position. That is textbook co‑opetition coupled with what many would call strategic accommodation."
They're not fighting anything. They're being paid to be a weak antitrust excuse.
I love Firefox and I use it all the time but this situation worries me deeply.
Given the Mozilla track records and bias, looks like they need another woke LLM that is woker and DEI-er (is that even a word?) than the existing major models.
I'd rather they focus on finally bringing Firefox back where it belongs, instead of spending resources on useless identity wars.
Mozilla has failed to compete in the browser landscape and it feels icky most of the stuff they have attempted to do, which didn't even yield them any money.
Great work, you robbed the bank and you're still poor and everyone hates you.
Transparently - I've been relatively deep in the extensions space across every major browser (Chrome/Safari/Edge/Firefox).
Based on my interactions with their browser team during this process - I'm no longer a supporter of Firefox. I want to credit the engineers and support personnel I interacted with there for doing their best despite their company policies, but their policies became insane (And since you mentioned ublock - here's Gorhill, the author, expressing basically the same opinion here: https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBOL-home/issues/197#issueco...)
I won't recommend using it: I don't think it's trying to serve its users, I don't think it's trying to serve their developers. I think it's coasting on historical good will, and it's essentially been on life-support as a cash grab from Google since they laid off their engine team in 2020.
Combined with increasingly non-sensical product releases (ex - this one) and "security marketing" that doesn't match reality... I find the whole thing fairly distasteful at this point.
I'm already getting tons of captchas from the likes of cloudflare in Firefox on Linux. Because somehow I'm suspicious. That's not the sign of a browser doing well.