Mozilla appointed a new CEO last week, Laura Chambers. Her introduction comes with a change in strategy for Mozilla, involving some cuts to products announced only last week. Today, Mozilla announced they’re laying off roughly 60 employees. The goal is to shrink their focus. Mozilla had become a sort of go-to place for privacy-focused software and tools on the web. However, they’ll be shrinking, focusing primarily on Firefox and AI.
The focus on Firefox is great. While the browser is still the best choice, it has started to feel dated. However, abandoning other projects that bring not only more sources of income to Firefox, such as the Relay service and Mozilla Monitor Plus, but also bring great and useful features to people doesn’t feel like a fair trade-off. Mozilla felt like one of the last defenders of the average person online. Their cutbacks could hurt the very products that keep the web safe for many.
What’s Scaling Back?
“We’re scaling back investment in some product areas in order to focus on areas that we feel have the greatest chance of success.”
– Mozilla spokesperson, speaking with Engadget
Most of Mozilla’s products will stick around, only with fewer engineers and less focus from the company. This could mean stagnating feature sets until a product is eventually canceled altogether. One product that will end this year, however, is Hubs. Hubs is a 3D virtual world Mozilla created. It, like many 3D virtual worlds, hasn’t been very popular. It’s a niche product competing with other such 3D worlds, some that have found success and won’t give up their users so easily. It’s tough to get people to leave those kinds of experiences. There are network effects in place. As a result, the property hasn’t been worth Mozilla’s time or money.
Other products will see a scaling back in investment and engineering. This includes mozilla.social, Mozilla’s Mastodon instance. Mastodon grew in popularity following Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter, but hasn’t become large enough to be a source of profit, at least not at the scale Mozilla invested in it. As a result, they’re scaling this back, reducing their risk in an area where the payoff may not be high enough to justify the risk.
Mozilla will also, unfortunately, scale back some of their most useful tools. Mozilla plans to reduce their investment in their direct-to-consumer privacy-focused tools. These would be products like Mozilla’s Relay, which lets you mask your email address and phone number to preserve your privacy and prevent spam, Mozilla Monitor Plus, which scrounges the web for your personal data and gets it removed, and their VPN service. They only just released Mozilla Monitor Plus last week.
The layoffs are small, 60 people, only 5% of the company. However, the change in direction could spell trouble for Mozilla’s less well-known products.
What are we Left With?
Firefox will go on forever, I hope. In fact, there is some good news out of this memo. Mozilla will increase their efforts in Firefox, especially for mobile. They believe there’s ground to recapture in mobile, and more investment in Firefox may be what it takes to bring their most popular product to the masses. Perhaps this means a better Android app, and a push for Firefox’s own rendering engine on iOS, so we can have the same privacy and add-ons we have on desktop Firefox on the mobile version. It’s the only thing keeping me from using Firefox as my primary browser on my iPhone. If not, they could still create usability improvements to make the interface more fluid, and sync better with Pocket and the Firefox desktop browser.
Mozilla is also investing in what they call “trustworthy AI.” For now, this could be limited to content suggestions, such as those in Pocket and Fakespot. Pocket can suggest news stories and websites you may want to check out, while Fakespot can analyze product reviews. AI can help both of these. At least in the case of Fakespot, that help could improve your privacy and security with more confidence in online purchases. Mozilla has shown interest in other AI, and hopefully won’t engage in behaviors creators hate, like some AI companies have.
Mozilla’s changes in organization may help the company grow, but it could mean abandoning products that protect consumers. With almost no companies left to protect consumers from a sea of scummy companies, it’s not surprising that the market failed to do what laws should be doing. Perhaps Mozilla’s success will help them eventually focus on those privacy-protecting services once again. Or perhaps you’ll have to find another way to stop companies from selling your personal information online. It’s a task that, unfortunately, has become all but impossible, and could get more difficult now.
Sources:
- Mitchell Baker, Mozilla
- Kris Holt, Engadget
- Frederic Lardinois, TechCrunch