Conversation

I understand why people are surprised by Mozilla pushing for AI, but it’s not really unexpected.

But but Mozilla are a not-for-profit!!! That’s… Mostly accurate. Mozilla is a not-for-profit corporate organisation. They are not a charity. Mozilla also are still subject to the same market pressures as Google and Zucc, exist in San Francisco, and most crucially still need to pay their staff in accordance with the competition. People can certainly work for Mozilla due to ideals, but nobody would work for significantly less for doing a job that pays more elsewhere.

So why is it not a surprise to me? Mozilla still needs to make money. The money may be ploughed back into the foundation, but they still need investors, paying customers, etc. A large chunk of Firefox revenue comes from the fact Google pays Mozilla big bucks to be the default search operator.

Despite it being the less unethical choice than Chrome, Firefox (and Mozilla) is only being kept alive by this bribe from Google. Firefox only exists to be controlled opposition, so that Google can tell regulators that the browser space is full of healthy competition.

Mozilla’s AI push, IMHO, is predicated on that solely: Mozilla is terrified of what happens if Google pulls the plug and so needs to fill that gap with something marketable.