Mozilla is “rewiring” itself to put AI at the centre of everything: what it builds, why it builds it, and how it makes money.
Going forward, every product in Mozilla’s portfolio, including Firefox, will need to “design their strategies” and “measure their success” by how much AI is added and, more worryingly for ‘public interest’ projects, how much cash its AI features generate.
Target: 20% yearly growth in non-search revenue – around $25 million a year.
Mozilla says this is necessary to save the web (and humanity) from big AI, and to give users more “agency” and “choice”.
But is this really a moral crusade to wrestle control from billionaire tech owners on behalf of their users (as it frames it), or a cynical survival plan to try and woo the exact same billionaire tech owners into giving it cash in exchange for integrations?
Goggles on: it’s about to get snarky.
Mozilla AI Rewire Explainer
Name: Mozilla’s “Rewiring” Strategy.
Age: New, yet also two years too late.
Appearance: Mission statement/business pitch/survival plea.
Tl;dr? To “do for AI what they did for the web”. Remember how they took on Internet Explorer to free us from the yoke of Yahoo! toolbars, virus-laden pop-ups and wonky web standards? They’re riffing on that nostalgia for a new crusade against “Big AI”.
Mozilla blame big tech for filling the web with slop. Their fix? Hand out slop buckets so more can join in…
Fighting talk – what’s the battle plan? Over the next three years, every Mozilla product will need to add AI features that generate money. Mozilla calls this a “Double Bottom Line”, where revenue is on equal footing with their mission.
Which one matters most? Well, you can’t pay a CEO in “mission”.
But they’re supposed to b the good guys. Which is why they’re promising a New Hope (sovereign, open-source AI) to take down the Imperial Empire (Big AI), and raise a Rebel Alliance (community projects) to strike back at the Sith-class tech bros. All very worthy, but Mozilla’s plan involves using Imperial laser cannons from a Star Destroyer to do it…
Er, I don’t like sci-fi. It’s like Greenpeace announcing eco-friendly oil rigs.
I don’t like strained analogies, either. Mozilla lack the compute, cash and headcount to build and train their own AI tech stack. All the local AI features it adds use ‘open weight’ models, most powered by Meta’s llama. Those models are licensed freely, but for how long? To say nothing on concerns they were trained on material of questionable provenance…
Going forward, Mozilla will work as much on AI as it does the web.
I think I’ve get it: Mozilla loves AI. They do, and don’t: they blame AI for filling the web with “slop”…
—will they stop-the-slop?! Alas, not. Their “fix” for the web’s slop problem is to hand out more slop buckets via their “First Choice” agentic stack so more people can make, er, better slop? As these are Mozilla-branded slop buckets we’re supposed to punch the air and say ‘RIGHT ON!’.
My head hurts. Mine too — confusion and conflation is intentional on Mozilla’s part. They take shots at ‘Big AI’ and their billionaire owners whilst simultaneously fishing to make deals with the same companies and tech — and expect to farm kudos from giving us all the “choice” to use it. They chat about “sovereignty” in AI yet build their own AI-powered features with bricks stamped “Courtesy of Meta”. I could go on.
You do. Tbf, I do.
But choice is good, right? Mozilla name-checks “choice” and “agency” a lot, but they mean consumer choice: which Big AI chatbot do you want in your sidebar or context menus? Which AI search engine do you want to filter the web for you? Do you even want to browse the web, or should Firefox ‘AI Window’ mode do it for you? It’s like being told you can choose what to eat, only to be walked to a poorly-stocked vending machine.
Mmm, raisins. Gross.
Mozilla’s rewiring – more to ‘save the company’ than ‘save the web’?
—wait, AI Window? Mozilla is building ‘AI Window’ for Firefox, a prompt-based way to browse the web (or, rather, have AI browse the web for you and tell you what it found – irony being it’s a window on the web that describes the view to you instead letting you look out to see it yourself.
So much for the open web. More “curtains drawn” web. Mozilla says it won’t “force” anyone to use AI Window in Firefox (or other AI features) and that it will keep “classic mode” available for the foreseeable future.
But? But, they also say that, going forward they will work “just as much on AI as on the web”. With the new AI features tied to revenue targets… I mean, to be put bluntly: they won’t make millions by hiding those features in a random menu on the off-chance someone finds it and “opts-in”…
What if an AI feature is helpful but doesn’t make money? It’s ‘cooked’, as Australians would say.
Do they also say Mozilla is cooked? No. But between AI pivots, ad-tech ventures, layoffs and cuts to web advocacy, leadership restructures, expensive rebrands and that ever-increasing CEO pay it’s fair to say this ‘rewiring’ feels more a way to ‘save the company’ than ‘save the web’.
Do ask: “Remember when Mozilla stood for more than revenue targets?”.
Don’t ask: “Did they ask an electrician about ‘rewiring’ or rely on ChatGPT…?”
This is part of our Explainer series, where we chat through the What and How of whatever is happening in the wider Linux scene to tease out if it’s worth caring or tutting about.