Windows Central: “Mozilla says Firefox will evolve into an AI browser, and nobody is happy about it”

Every product we build must give people agency in how it works. Privacy, data use, and AI must be clear and understandable, says Enzor-Demeo. Controls must be simple. AI should always be a choice — something people can easily turn off … Firefox will grow from a browser into a broader ecosystem of trusted software. Firefox will remain our anchor. It will evolve into a modern AI browser and support a portfolio of new and trusted software additions.

Even with the confirmation that AI features will be optional, the internet is not pleased. Users online have expressed their disappointment in Mozilla focusing on AI features and capabilities. One post on X says This is a good example of how management doesn’t understand its own user base, which has amassed over 380K views so far.

Another post says I’ve never seen a company so astoundingly out of touch with the people who want to use its software, highlighting how a lot of people choose to use Firefox to get away from the AI obsession that other browsers such as Edge, Chrome, Opera, and Brave have endured over the last year.

Zac Bowden

I’ve been meaning to harp on Mozilla’s penchant for chasing the hype cycle of the broader tech landscape for the past decade or so, never quite managing to deliver a compelling addition to Firefox. Browsing through my posts, I was amused to rediscover the same plans for AI in Firefox from March 2024 – evidently nothing has moved forward yet, another sign of the terrible management at Mozilla. The potential silver lining I see here is that usually Mozilla joins the hype train late in the cycle when much of the enthusiasm has already drained away and people are looking for the next shiny mirage to sell to naive investors.

The reason for the AI pivot has likely to do with Mozilla’s finances and needing to diversify its revenue streams away from the Google search deal. The new CEO Anthony Enzor-DeMeo hinted at this in a recent interview, where he also made concerning comments about ad blockers. The AI monetization scheme could be similar to the Google search deal, where Firefox would receive payments from an AI company to have its chatbot as the default option in the browser. Considering how Google went through a lengthy trial targeting its deals for default placements in Safari and iOS, which concluded with next to no penalties or changes for Google, default placements for chatbots would probably be perfectly acceptable as well.

The broader issue is one of vision and product strategy, which seems to have disappeared entirely from Mozilla’s leadership. As a small, niche player in a consolidated market – ironically, a position Mozilla found itself before, when it challenged the Internet Explorer monolith back in the day – you need to identify and stress what differentiates your product from your established competitor, and attract people who want that extra thing that makes you special. Instead, Firefox has spend years playing catchup to Chrome in standards support and features – just look at their recent highlights of 2025 updates, which were mostly launched in other browsers years before.

Personally, I have abandoned Firefox long ago, and whenever I tried it again it never felt like it stood up against the competition. My main issue is that it feels sluggish and unpolished compared to Edge and even Chrome. Curiously, for more than a year I have been using a Firefox fork, LibreWolf, as a browser for personal stuff on my work laptop, and it has almost none of the sluggish feel of Firefox – clearly some engineers are better at optimizing code than others. LibreWolf is also available in the Microsoft Store, which makes it easier to install and manage. So fortunately there are still alternatives for people not wanting to bloat their browsing with a built-in chatbot.