Anthony Enzor-DeMeo is taking charge of one of the internet’s most important — and most complicated — companies.

Mozilla is in a tricky position. It contains both a nonprofit organization dedicated to making the internet a better place for everyone, and a for-profit arm dedicated to, you know, making money. In the best of times, these things feed each other: The company makes great products that advance its goals for the web, and the nonprofit gets to both advocate for a better web and show people what it looks like. But these are not the best of times. Mozilla has spent the last couple of years implementing layoffs and restructuring, attempting to explain how it can fight for privacy and openness when Google pays most of its bills, while trying to find its place in an increasingly frothy AI landscape.

Fun times to be the new Mozilla CEO, right? But when I put all that to Anthony Enzor-DeMeo, the company’s just-announced chief executive, he swears he sees opportunity in all the upheaval. “I think what’s actually needed now is a technology company that people can trust,” Enzor-DeMeo says. “What I’ve seen with AI is an erosion of trust.”

Mozilla is not going to train its own giant LLM anytime soon. But there’s still an AI Mode coming to Firefox next year, which Enzor-DeMeo says will offer users their choice of model and product, all in a browser they can understand and from a company they can trust. “We’re not incentivized to push one model or the other,” he says. “So we’re going to try to go to market with multiple models.”

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  • TurboWafflz@lemmy.worldEnglish
    1183·
    4 months ago

    I feel like mozilla could switch to making all their decisions by flipping a coin and do better than they’re doing in recent years

    • lumpenproletariat@quokk.auEnglish
      20·
      4 months ago

      But how else would the CEO justify her $7 million dollar salary (in ‘22) that’s going up by a million or two every year since she returned, starting at $3 million in 2020.

        • lumpenproletariat@quokk.auEnglish
          311·
          4 months ago

          Oh shit they literally changed CEO a few hours ago. My bad.

          Doubt the wage issue will change though.

          • ripcord@lemmy.worldEnglish
            4·
            4 months ago

            I get missing it in the title, but you didn’t read the article or even the summary blurb either?

            • lumpenproletariat@quokk.auEnglish
              5·
              4 months ago

              No, because I wasn’t commenting on the article. I was commenting on the other users comment about the last few years of Mozilla, something I’m already well aware of.

      • ZoteTheMighty@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        4 months ago

        At least she didn’t cut every interesting program in Mozilla’s portfolio when every other company was laying off employees. She wasn’t great, but she was operating in a bad economy.

        This new guy tho, he sounds like good news if you’re the CEO of Google.

  • Gonzako@lemmy.worldEnglish
    58·
    4 months ago

    Man, I so wish mozilla was a worker owned cooperative. These string of useless CEOs would have already been shown the door

  • DigDoug@lemmy.worldEnglish
    54·
    4 months ago

    Is “must make the dumbest fucking decision possible at all times” in the Mozilla CEO job description or something?

    I have no CEO experience, but I’ll make stupid fucking decisions for a fifth of the salary you’re paying the current guy.

  • Tynan@lemmy.mlEnglish
    511·
    4 months ago

    “AI is untrustworthy, therefore you can use multiple AI services in our product.”

  • 𝚝𝚛𝚔@aussie.zoneEnglish
    361·
    4 months ago

    I’ve cancelled my monthly donation to Mozilla. What’s the point. Every bit of feedback I’ve provided is to the tune of no goddamn AI, spend my money towards keeping up with the alternatives to make sure there’s always an extra player in the field. Instead it’s going to some overpaid dickhead who’s going to introduce AI.

  • 58008@lemmy.worldEnglish
    341·
    4 months ago

    Is there like a petition or something we can all sign to show that literally no cunt wants this?

    • Yggstyle@lemmy.worldEnglish
      92·
      4 months ago

      Uninstall it and pick a different platform. These cunts think you won’t and THATS why they don’t give a fuck. Enough people swap and oh, hey, maybe we should rethink this mistake. If not - not your problem… You already bounced.

  • tired_n_bored@lemmy.worldEnglish
    20·
    4 months ago

    Mozilla is completely detached from its user base. They think their average user is a Microsoft enthusiast when in reality it’s a Debian enjoyer.

  • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
    224·
    4 months ago

    Some of Mozilla’s AI integrations have been amazing, despite the community crying about it. Like private, offline translation (I don’t care what anybody says, this is much better than sending the contents of your web page to a proprietary Google Translate server), and enhanced screen reader functionality.

    But this one puzzles me. They’re not being very descriptive, but it seems like it’s just integrating generic LLM stuff? Not really what I’m after personally. At least it’s opt-in, I guess.

  • super_user_do@feddit.itEnglish
    144·
    4 months ago

    Once I saw AI being integrated into Firefox, my trust towards the Mozilla Foundation dropped permanently. I have now switched over to Vivaldi which is an amazing European browser that kinda mimics Opera in many ways (but without the spyware ofc)

    • myfunnyaccountname@lemmy.zipEnglish
      4·
      4 months ago

      Can you still use uBlock origin? Full, not lite. Haven’t followed Vivaldi and how it’s handling all the manifest changes impacting chrome extensions.

      • super_user_do@feddit.itEnglish
        1·
        4 months ago

        I still have full uBlock origin installed and it works. Vivaldi comes with an adblocker though, but I disable it since I use uBlock Origin