• Saleh@feddit.org
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      19 days ago

      No, MS just wants to expand their monopoly, but “MS buying most common browser, after antitrust laws already forbid internet explorer” doesnt ring so well.

      • futatorius@lemm.ee
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        18 days ago

        I suspect Altman has ambitions beyond being Microsoft’s cat’s paw, though it may be that that’s all he really is once the shouting is over.

    • GoodEye8@lemm.ee
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      19 days ago

      They don’t want to buy the browser. They want to buy the brand and the users. Chrome makes up over half the browser market. Think of all the data they could extract from Chrome users. It would cost significantly more to fork chromium and grow the user base to a point where they could extract anything valuable from them, and that’s assuming they’d be successful enough to make it happen.

    • cley_faye@lemmy.world
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      19 days ago

      Firefox, the software mainly driven by Mozilla, which is heavily investing in AI and ads ventures? That Firefox?

      But, maybe “it will be different this time”, I guess.

        • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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          19 days ago

          That really doesn’t solve the problem, like every other Firefox fork they’re completely dependent on Firefox. You can’t just make a new webbrowser just like that, and while third party developers can certainly disable some anti-features, there are limits to that and they can definitely not do the basic work that the Firefox devs do (or could do, if Mozilla had different priorities).

      • exu@feditown.com
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        20 days ago

        Some of their I initiatives are good, like the built-in local translation tool we now have.

        • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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          19 days ago

          Also their initiative to recognise images and generate alt-text for screen-reader users.

          My sister is blind and screen readers are close to useless on the web, so it was great to hear Mozilla is working on that.

        • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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          20 days ago

          Considering how little they invest into their core product compared to all the other shit and how much money the top brass earns despite declining market share, I don’t think they’re hurting for money that much.

          • doodledup@lemmy.world
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            19 days ago

            They are investing a lot in their core product. Problem is that you can’t really monatize it. You want Firefox to be paywalled?

            • rumschlumpel@feddit.org
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              19 days ago

              Ideally it would be financed by user donations. Probably not that realistic for a project like this, though.

              • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.world
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                19 days ago

                Yeah, web browsers cost hundreds of millions per year to maintain, they’re mind-bogglingly complicated and costly.

                I’d really hope the Linux Foundation would help contribute towards the budget, but LF is quite pro Chromium.

                I don’t think end users can even come close to funding Firefox development, unfortunately.

              • doodledup@lemmy.world
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                19 days ago

                You can’t finance a massive project like that with donations. This isn’t like Signal or some small project like that. Firefox is MASSIVE.

    • grue@lemmy.world
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      20 days ago

      Mozilla spinning off control of its development to an independent group the way they did with Thunderbird would be the best thing that could happen to Firefox.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Thunderbird :

      Operated by MZLA Technologies Corporation, a subsidiary of the Mozilla Foundation, Thunderbird is an independent, community-driven project that is managed and overseen by the Thunderbird Council, which is elected by the Thunderbird community.

      Chrome self-destructing because of stupidity like AI would only ever manage to be a close second, at best.

  • orca@orcas.enjoying.yachts
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    20 days ago

    OpenAI is like a zombie stumbling around trying to infect everything. We shove it away because it’s fuckin’ gross and we want nothing to do with it, while the bosses that reanimated it are like “well fuck, we made this thing, we have to use it for something.”

  • futatorius@lemm.ee
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    19 days ago

    And if you thought there was some natural end point to enshittification, here’s your evidence that there’s no such thing.

  • rippersnapper@lemm.ee
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    19 days ago

    I’ve said this before and will say it again. The only tech companies that should be allowed to buy Chrome are Canonical and its equivalents.

  • uawarebrah@sh.itjust.works
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    19 days ago

    This can’t happen. Not because I think google is doing a wonderful job, but it’s got serious market share now. Basically a monopoly. It needs to leave the hands of for profit companies and be transitioned to a foundation.