I believe an open source ranking algorithm is antithetical to good search, sadly. It hands spammers a recipe for how to push past legitimate sites to dominate the search results.
The topic of ranking mechanisms sits at the core of many of our issues with social networks and centrally operated instances. I think it deserves far more attention.
And these algorithms should be open source and we should be able to pick our own and mash them.
This is sadly probably quite true. I'm sure there are workarounds, like slightly changing it every month or two, although that would require quite heavy maintenance. Perhaps the core algorithm stays the same but some constants that decide on the weights of different things are randomised? Not too sure.
Torbrowser is a fork of Firefox, not a user. I'm not going to bother looking this up because pigs aren't flying yet, so I'll just state it as fact: the torbrowser fork does not include any of Firefox's AI code or functionality.
Firefox development is funded almost entirely out of Google's massive donations to Mozilla. For Google, it's no more than a regulatory hedge - something they can point at and say that Chromium and Webkit are not a duopoly. But the flip side is that if Firefox were to ever become a real threat, Google pulls funding and Firefox is toast.
So if we want Firefox to ever seriously compete with Google products, the first thing we need to do is fund Mozilla. When a company's entire capex comes from a monopolistic competitor that would rather see it dead, any talk about capex is bikeshedding.
I can't imagine a quality random sample could come from 52 users who self-selected to participate in a browser beta, then self-selected to post about it in a thread on the Mozilla Connect forum.
The reactions to Firefox's AI features likely range from moderately positive to extremely negative. People who feel moderately about something don't usually bother posting. It doesn't matter how many people feel that way.
I use AI in Firefox all the time. Obviously it seems like I'm in a minority.
* I summarize articles.
* When I need more context to understand an article, I ask AI what I'm missing.
* When I'm writing up something important, I ask AI to proofread it for me.
* When I'm using productivity web apps, I ask AI to help me learn the features.
* When I'm filling out convoluted forms, I ask AI what the writer could have possibly intended.
Non-exhaustive list. Each of these things has resulted in huge leaps in my productivity.
Instead of using Firefox, I should probably be using something like the ChatGPT Atlas browser - except it's super important to me to use a browser that is open source and respects my privacy, lets me opt out from the Chromium hegemony, and allows me full control not only over which AI agent I use, but also full control over the browser itself. With Firefox's AI features, only the data I want sent to an AI gets sent to an AI, and I can have confidence that the rest of my data stays private.
The real key for me is that Firefox's AI features are unobtrusive. They show up when I invoke them, then go away when I don't want to see them anymore. The Mozilla team seems to have struck a perfect balance with that so far, even going so far as to add "turn this off permanently" options directly in every AI-related shortcut and menu. If you don't want to use AI in your browser, it's not like you even have to dig through the settings. Just click the button that shows up. Technically speaking, this is actually more annoying for people who do use the AI features - in a reversal to the usual trope, the AI users are the ones forced to stare at a menu item that's useless to them all day.
As for me, if other browsers start to really leapfrog Firefox in terms of the useful kind of AI integration that accelerates my daily browsing tasks, I'll probably reluctantly switch away at some point. Thankfully, the vast majority of this can probably be done at the extension level, and it probably should be, rather than being directly integrated into the browser itself. That would be a win/win for everyone in my book. I just really don't want to give up Firefox or give up my productivity tools.
And before anyone asks, I did not use AI to write or proofread any part of this post. This one's all me.
> The Mozilla team seems to have struck a perfect balance with that so far, even going so far as to add "turn this off permanently" options directly in every AI-related shortcut and menu.
It's weird that so few people point this out and instead go straight to about:config. I don't use LLMs and I think too that is the best approach they could take: those that want to use AI can, and those that never want it can disable it immediately.
When companies add additional features to a product I use, I generally want to be notified about them so that I can make an informed decision about whether I want them enabled or disabled.
It includes older people because Mozilla had previous work before Firefox, so they heard that name first. I've never heard anyone my age (27) or younger call it that, including non-technical people who somehow still have a nostalgic and/or ideological affinity for Firefox.
When the Mozilla foundation took over the Netscape codebase, it was initially called Mozilla, or Mozilla Browser. There was also a Mozilla email client that came from Netscape Communicator.
Then they made a trimmed-down version of the browser with only essential features. That was initially called Phoenix, then Firebird, then Firefox. They did the same with the email client and called it Thunderbird. These existed alongside Mozilla Browser for a while until it was discontinued.
Yeah, again, probably because tech-literate (not tech-illiterate) people are more likely to know the history of the organization beyond when they started using the software. My point was pretty much that the know-nothing user learning about the software today/recently knows it's called Firefox and might never have heard of Mozilla. The branding is clear about Firefox and the Mozilla name is essentially background knowledge.
I know you're making a joke, but I enjoyed having Safari installed when Apple made it for Windows too, and would still want to download it today if it was available. You can't, though.
hahaha, indeed. but i always can't remember mozilla (i don't even know i spelled it right), the other is really to remember, and automatically you know google has a chrome browser, etc.
