i cringed so hard I blacked out and woke up with Internet Explorer in Wine as my default browser.
Mozilla: Becomes *the* nagware browser with ads, tracking, AI, … everywhere
Mozilla, 2026: Please come baacck
@Seirdy You know? I think Mozilla would benefit from advertising "Look how great the web still is!" not "Look how great the web used to be!".
If it was me I'd have licensed OCs from the likes of Decoder Ring Theatre or Rusty Quill to do some cross-promotion.
Then again I have no reason to believe Mozilla's aware of them... Its sad that they seem stuck in the past, despite their statements to the contrary.
@alcinnz If Mozilla didn’t try to chase tech hype and stuck to making a reliable browser, I would find nostalgia based advertising acceptable.
“Remember the simpler times? We didn’t go anywhere. Still a plain old browser, since 2004”
But right now, it’s not much different.
Mozilla: Hmm…what do people want?
People: a browser
Mozilla: a social bookmarking service!
People: we want a browser.
Mozilla: A New Tab ✨experience✨
People: Just a browser.
Mozilla: Colorways! Buy a limited time color!
People: Please make a good browser.
Mozilla: People want AI! AI superpowers!
People: A browser. To show webpages.
Mozilla: Remember those older memes? Don’t they remind you of how things were before the web went to shit?
People: From back when you made a browser?
@Seirdy The funny thing is, I *do* want AI in a browser... to remove all the ads, sidebar links, hero images, pop-ups, overlays, and unimportant crap from the damn page I want to look at. Make the AI auto-click the Reject All button. And an ML model that detects AI writing to notify me if I'm looking at slop.
@Seirdy Mozilla gets 400 million per year from Google. I do not think they care what the people want.
Dear software companies:
I do not want an Experience. I want to do the thing I launched your program to do and then move on with my fucking life. I do not want to remember how your software felt to use. I want to remember the Work I did while using your software.
You are not designing an amusement park. You are designing a tool. My screwdriver is not an Experience. Building this furniture is an Experience.
Hardly anybody wakes up and says “oh boy I can’t wait to Operate Photoshop today! I love Using the Browser!”
The greatest improvement you can make to my user experience is to disappear into my subconscious. you fetch and render pages and allow me to manipulate them. You are not what gives me joy. You are the tool I chose to find it.
Be the tool worth choosing.
@Seirdy Sigh... It strikes me of marketers getting in the way of having something to sell...
@Seirdy
"Royalty"? What we should do with all royalty: strip them naked, laugh at them, distribute all their gold, make them wash our dishes.