Mozilla recently appointed a new “interim” CEO, sparking immediate action in the form of layoffs. Reports indicate that approximately 60 jobs, equating to 5 percent of its workforce, are being cut. A TechCrunch report, citing a company memo, revealed not only the layoffs but also the shutdown of one product and a “scaling back” of several others.
Mozilla’s origins trace back to its founding as an open-source browser/email service following the demise of Netscape. While Firefox and Thunderbird have endured, Mozilla’s recent strategy, exemplified by its mozilla.org/products page, indicates a broader scope beyond browsers. The page boldly proclaims, “Firefox is just the beginning!” before delving into projects divergent from Mozilla’s browser-centric mission. These include Mozilla Monitor (a data breach checker), Mozilla VPN, Pocket (a news reader app), Firefox Relay (for creating burner email accounts), and Firefox Focus (a privacy-focused Firefox fork).
This list is far from exhaustive. Mozilla has introduced numerous products from 2017 to 2020, such as “Firefox Send” (an encrypted file transfer service) and “Firefox Reality” (a VR-focused browser that operated from 2018 to 2022). In 2022, Mozilla even launched a $35 million venture capital fund named Mozilla Ventures. Not all projects have been unsuccessful; the memory-safe Rust programming language, developed by Mozilla in 2020, has seen rapid adoption in the Linux kernel and Android.
Despite its small size, Mozilla competes with tech giants like Apple, Google, and Microsoft. Its significance to the web, being the only major browser not stemming from Apple’s WebKit (Chrome’s Blink engine is a WebKit fork, and Microsoft Edge is a Chromium fork), should prioritize Firefox’s development. However, the company has struggled with maintaining focus.
Mozilla Corporation relies heavily on Google, its primary browser competitor, for about 80 percent of its revenue through a search deal. This dependency may explain Mozilla’s exploration of non-browser projects as potential alternative revenue streams, although none have significantly impacted its financial health.
A leaked internal memo outlines strategic corrections for Mozilla’s various products. The company plans to downsize its “mozilla.social” Mastodon instance, originally intended to shape the future of social media, and reduce investments in Mozilla VPN, Firefox Relay, and possibly Mozilla Monitor. “Mozilla Hubs,” a 3D virtual world launched in 2018, is also being shut down, reflecting a shift away from 3D virtual worlds industry-wide. Jobs are also being cut in MozProd, its infrastructure team.
Having pivoted from VR and metaverse trends, Mozilla now eyes AI as its next frontier. The memo suggests that generative AI’s emergence in 2023 prompted Mozilla to integrate trustworthy AI into Firefox, partly through its acquisition of Fakespot, a company that identifies fake product reviews using AI. Mozilla seems inclined to develop a chatbot or webpage summarizer, given its mention of “generative AI.”
While TechCrunch speculates that Mozilla may refocus on Firefox, the memo doesn’t explicitly affirm this. Previous attempts to refocus on Firefox, such as the 2020 layoffs aimed at “core browser growth,” have not yielded significant changes. Firefox’s market share, currently around 3 percent, continues to decline annually.
