Maybe it's just me, but I think the name "Firefox" is fun and endearing, while "Mozilla" is ugly and ponderous. I say this as someone that has been on the Web since Mosaic and almost entirely used Netscape-heritage browsers since then. Let the Mozilla name go, and embrace Firefox.
When I hear "mozilla" I remember the event I went to where apparently some board members decided to come after all and the employees / contractors were panicking to make sure everything was perfectly presentable. The food catering, the cleanliness...
to me, the word mozilla reminds me of the ueeless board members.
Mozilla is clearly trying to expand into new areas. Some of the fun ones from their open job postings include a social recommendation component (likely the reason for this rename), Search and a bunch of AI stuff.
> Mozilla Social’s vision is to develop an integrated platform that empowers users through seamless communication, content discovery, curation, and sharing capabilities, enabling them to stay up-to-date, explore new perspectives, and engage within a safe and enriching experience. Define and own the technical execution of our long term ML strategy with a particular focus on developing industry leading recommender system techniques.
> Mozilla’s Innovation Studio is a fast-paced organization of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial minded individuals. We build new products and experiment quickly to improve and extend the way people access and engage on the Web. We are looking for a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer to help us develop and grow new machine learning driven products and tools.
> The Firefox team is a community of engineers who care deeply about delivering the fastest, friendliest, most usable browser possible. We are responsible for making the things you see in the browser work securely, quickly, and well! We are looking for a Principal Engineer to help us develop and grow new machine learning driven products and tools. You will play a key role in enabling safe and healthy machine learning and AI driven experiences in Firefox.
> Firefox is used by hundreds of millions worldwide and the Director of Product for Search and AI is a critical role in the product management team. The role will lead a team of PMs and be responsible for the product strategy, vision, and execution of our Search and AI investments. You’ll combine product excellence with strong leadership skills and help build a smart browser that helps our users be productive online.
I wish they'd stick to a browser, and keep the other stuff separate. I have no idea why every product has to grow until it's overbloated and the core functionality starts lacking behind.
"I can't trust Mozilla, they get too much of their income from Google"
(Mozilla tries to branch out so that they're less dependent on Google) "I wish Mozilla would just stick to Firefox"
(Mozilla tries to find a non-Google revenue source for Firefox) "How dare they try to monetize Firefox, the one and only product I want them to produce."
Their investment into AI yielded some cool things like on-device language translation that I use a lot in Firefox.
Rust is something that grew out of their investments into programming languages/tooling/etc.
Their investment into documentation and technical writing brought us MDN, which is a great resource for web development.
Mozilla's development of password managers, that they eventually walked back on rolling out as an independent product, yielded a better password manager built into Firefox, as well as Firefox Verify.
It's also important to make a distinction between the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit, and Mozilla the corporation. The non-profit is responsible for many of the non-browser investments.
This pattern in the tech industry is getting really annoying.
Imagine going to your favorite pizzeria and they keep trying to push you to buy some newspapers, clothing or car servicing, because the pizzeria executives want to fill up their resume.
And I think you see that most in foundations (Wikipedia, Linux, etc.) because they have no profit motive, so the ranks get filled by hundreds of unproductive activists or parasites while the tech staff is still a tiny core and doing the actual work.
> The renaming is intended to create a more consistent brand experience across all Mozilla surfaces, driving higher awareness of the portfolio of Mozilla products.[0]
This links to a page which... primarily consists of "Firefox" branded products. VPN is the _only_ Mozilla one. What are they driving awareness of?
I have a Firefox account to sync my browser settings. Renaming it to Mozilla account feels like trying to convince me to use other stuff that Mozilla has.
Regardless of Mozilla being an "opensource friendly" company, this is perverted.
The brand is Mozilla for FF and always has been. How on earth is finally fixing your branding "perverted"? At worst it has taken decades to get their act in gear!
You can fiddle with other Mozilla branded stuff or not ... no biggie - its still your choice.
No perverts were harmed producing the preceding paragraph.
The Firefox brand is stronger than the Mozilla brand, so it feels like an exec move to try and leverage something to boost something else.
On the copy of Firefox I'm typing this in, the only obvious mention of Mozilla is in the About dialog, where it says somewhere in the blurb in the middle that "Firefox is designed by Mozilla". The main app menu (macOS) says Firefox. The icon when you switch apps says Firefox. The app you start when you Cmd-Space is Firefox. The install directory is /Applications/Firefox.app.
There's another "More from Mozilla" in the Preferences, but the icon, which kinda has to be a Mozilla icon, looks out of place with the other icons.
When I used Windows 10 (and all the way back to... 3.1, I think? I'm only middle-aged), I logged into that OS with a username and password. No way was I going to use a Microsoft account, and now it's moot since I just use Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), since I like what both the Mint and Debian teams are doing so far.
Same for my work computer (local government entity/utility).
Perverted does seem like overly strong language to describe something I just prefer not be the case but which many others (presumably) could care less about.
> Regardless of Mozilla being an "opensource friendly" company, this is perverted.
Mozilla's messaging over the past few years has always been perverted, all talk and no action.
They "care about your privacy", yet their tracking protection was for a long time whitelisting known malicious domains from trackers. Their telemetry implementation in the browser to this day does not comply with the GDPR as it's opt-out rather than opt-in.
The browser, despite being free, open-source and supposedly on your side (a purported user-agent), uses many user-hostile tactics typical of malicious closed-source software such as frequent nagging, bad/annoying defaults, etc.
> Mozilla's messaging over the past few years has always been perverted
This is just a corporate PR (or enterprise bullshit). Nothing to do with reality.
No one should ever trust corpirate PR in the same way other human beings are trusted. Because a company is not a human being. Although both __can__ speak similar language (of words and sentences). The difference is that the corporation is (almost) never held responsible for any words it outputs. It literally can say anything and get dry out of water later even for a complete bullshit.
Yeah the one bad default I excuse for them is Google as search. Since it pays for the whole thing obviously. And it's easy to change and it never nags you to put it back.
Readit News
to me, the word mozilla reminds me of the ueeless board members.
> Mozilla Social’s vision is to develop an integrated platform that empowers users through seamless communication, content discovery, curation, and sharing capabilities, enabling them to stay up-to-date, explore new perspectives, and engage within a safe and enriching experience. Define and own the technical execution of our long term ML strategy with a particular focus on developing industry leading recommender system techniques.
> Mozilla’s Innovation Studio is a fast-paced organization of entrepreneurs and entrepreneurial minded individuals. We build new products and experiment quickly to improve and extend the way people access and engage on the Web. We are looking for a Senior Staff Machine Learning Engineer to help us develop and grow new machine learning driven products and tools.
> The Firefox team is a community of engineers who care deeply about delivering the fastest, friendliest, most usable browser possible. We are responsible for making the things you see in the browser work securely, quickly, and well! We are looking for a Principal Engineer to help us develop and grow new machine learning driven products and tools. You will play a key role in enabling safe and healthy machine learning and AI driven experiences in Firefox.
> Firefox is used by hundreds of millions worldwide and the Director of Product for Search and AI is a critical role in the product management team. The role will lead a team of PMs and be responsible for the product strategy, vision, and execution of our Search and AI investments. You’ll combine product excellence with strong leadership skills and help build a smart browser that helps our users be productive online.
"I can't trust Mozilla, they get too much of their income from Google"
(Mozilla tries to branch out so that they're less dependent on Google) "I wish Mozilla would just stick to Firefox"
(Mozilla tries to find a non-Google revenue source for Firefox) "How dare they try to monetize Firefox, the one and only product I want them to produce."
Their investment into AI yielded some cool things like on-device language translation that I use a lot in Firefox.
Rust is something that grew out of their investments into programming languages/tooling/etc.
Their investment into documentation and technical writing brought us MDN, which is a great resource for web development.
Mozilla's development of password managers, that they eventually walked back on rolling out as an independent product, yielded a better password manager built into Firefox, as well as Firefox Verify.
It's also important to make a distinction between the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit, and Mozilla the corporation. The non-profit is responsible for many of the non-browser investments.
Imagine going to your favorite pizzeria and they keep trying to push you to buy some newspapers, clothing or car servicing, because the pizzeria executives want to fill up their resume.
And I think you see that most in foundations (Wikipedia, Linux, etc.) because they have no profit motive, so the ranks get filled by hundreds of unproductive activists or parasites while the tech staff is still a tiny core and doing the actual work.
Double title inflation! What’s before this? Junior Staff Machine Learning Engineer?
Or maybe this is how the order goes: Junior Staff -> Staff -> Senior Staff. No?
This links to a page which... primarily consists of "Firefox" branded products. VPN is the _only_ Mozilla one. What are they driving awareness of?
[0] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/products/
It seems banal enough, I'm too suspicious for my own good.
https://www.theverge.com/23778208/kobo-pocket-ebook-reader-i...
They've abandoned the old one and the new one isn't finished and not even released... It's been like this for years.
Regardless of Mozilla being an "opensource friendly" company, this is perverted.
You can fiddle with other Mozilla branded stuff or not ... no biggie - its still your choice.
No perverts were harmed producing the preceding paragraph.
On the copy of Firefox I'm typing this in, the only obvious mention of Mozilla is in the About dialog, where it says somewhere in the blurb in the middle that "Firefox is designed by Mozilla". The main app menu (macOS) says Firefox. The icon when you switch apps says Firefox. The app you start when you Cmd-Space is Firefox. The install directory is /Applications/Firefox.app.
There's another "More from Mozilla" in the Preferences, but the icon, which kinda has to be a Mozilla icon, looks out of place with the other icons.
Do you attach a Mac account to your MacBook or an Apple ID?
Tying the arguably weaker brand to the stronger one is so commonplace in the industry that it’s a bit laughable to call it perverted.
When I used Windows 10 (and all the way back to... 3.1, I think? I'm only middle-aged), I logged into that OS with a username and password. No way was I going to use a Microsoft account, and now it's moot since I just use Linux Mint Debian Edition (LMDE), since I like what both the Mint and Debian teams are doing so far.
Same for my work computer (local government entity/utility).
Perverted does seem like overly strong language to describe something I just prefer not be the case but which many others (presumably) could care less about.
I didn't attach an Apple ID to my Macbook either.
Mozilla's messaging over the past few years has always been perverted, all talk and no action.
They "care about your privacy", yet their tracking protection was for a long time whitelisting known malicious domains from trackers. Their telemetry implementation in the browser to this day does not comply with the GDPR as it's opt-out rather than opt-in.
The browser, despite being free, open-source and supposedly on your side (a purported user-agent), uses many user-hostile tactics typical of malicious closed-source software such as frequent nagging, bad/annoying defaults, etc.
This is just a corporate PR (or enterprise bullshit). Nothing to do with reality.
No one should ever trust corpirate PR in the same way other human beings are trusted. Because a company is not a human being. Although both __can__ speak similar language (of words and sentences). The difference is that the corporation is (almost) never held responsible for any words it outputs. It literally can say anything and get dry out of water later even for a complete bullshit.
Other stuff such as pocket..Grrr
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