alt Hacker NewsIt sure is nice to see that Mozilla is still doing all that they can to keep on top of current trends, except developing a decent privacy-focused web browser for developers and power users.
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They get paid half a billion a year to do exactly what they have been doing and keeping FF at <5% of market share on desktop and 0% on mobile.
This used to be my attitude, but I do feel like Firefox has made good ground in 2026.
I've also become sympathetic to their AI strategy. They don't seem delusional in their approach. They're not building models or selling slop, they're building OSS compatibility layers.
I don't want to see a world of vertically locked AI, so if Mozilla truly can dust off the old playbook for OSS AI, we'll all be better off for it.
But they supply all the source for those projects to flourish and have an ecosystem of their own: Librefox, Iceweasel, Reynard, etc, etc.
Yes, Firefox itself is a “general purpose” browser, and that’s probably for the best in terms of wide market appeal. Other developers have taken the engine and made power-user-focused browsers with it. Lately I’ve fallen in love with Zen (though after 2 months of use its pinned tabs features still confuse me a bit).
Firefox's AI Chatbot feature only proposes one open model provider (Mistral) and zero local option. They're not walking the talk.