Following the appointment of a new interim CEO earlier this month, Mozilla, the organization behind the Firefox browser, is making some major changes to its product strategy. Specifically, Mozilla plans to scale back its investment in a number of products, including its VPN, Relay, and the Online Footprint Scrubber, which was launched just a week ago.
Mozilla will also shut down its 3D metaverse hubs, which it launched in 2018, and scale back its support for MozillaSocialMastodon instance. The layoffs will affect approximately 60 employees. Bloomberg previously reported on the layoffs.
In an internal memo, the company said that going forward, Mozilla will focus on willing"Trustworthy artificial intelligence is introduced to Firefox"。To do this, it will bring together the teams responsible for Pocket, Content, and AI ML.
In recent years, Mozilla has begun to expand its product portfolio, while its flagship product, Firefox, has seen its market share decline. Although the organization is often sharply criticized for this, its leadership believes that in the long run, in order to ensure Mozilla's survival, it is necessary to enrich its portfolio outside of Firefox. After all, the Firefox browser provides the vast majority of Mozilla's revenue, but it also means that the organization largely relies on Google to keep afloat. With these changes, it now looks like Mozilla may be refocusing on the Firefox browser, which is sure to make many die-hard Firefox fans quite happy.
Here's the full internal memo:
DownsizingRightmozilla.socialofInvestments: via mozillaSocial, we're making a big bet in 2023 to build a safer and better social ** experience on top of Mastodon and FedeDiverse. Our initial approach was based on the belief that Mozilla needed to scale quickly in order to effectively shape the future of social**. It's a long-term idea, but we're struggling to implement it. Although we are mozillaSocial provided a lot of resources to bring this ambitious idea to life, but in retrospect, we could have been more flexible in this space if we had taken a more modest approach. The actions we're taking today will revise this strategy, involve the Mastodon ecosystem with a much smaller team, and more quickly prepare the way for the selection at MozillaPeople living on social instances bring small experiments.Conservation Experiments & Identification (PXI):We are scaling back our investments in some of our standalone consumer products in the security and privacy space, and reducing our investments in segments that are crowded out by our competitors because it is challenging to provide differentiated products in these segments. Specifically, we plan to reduce our investment in VPN, Relay, and Online Footprint Scrubber. We will continue to invest in products that meet the needs of our growing market segments. Hub: Since the beginning of 2023, we have experienced a shift in the 3D metaverse market. With the exception of gaming, education, and a handful of niche use cases, market demand has moved far away from the 3D virtual world. This has implications for all industry players. Hubs' user and customer base is not strong enough to justify continuing to invest resources in dealing with adverse shifts in demand. We will end the service and communicate an elegant exit plan to the customer.
Adjust the size of the personnel team reasonably
In light of Mozprod's downsizing and reduced staffing budget, we have consolidated a number of positions in HR and other support services to provide the right level of support for our portfolio. Optimize the organization and highlight the key points.
In 2023, generative AI is starting to rapidly change the landscape of the industry. Mozilla seized the opportunity to bring trustworthy artificial intelligence to the Firefox browser, largely driven by the acquisition of Fakespot and subsequent product integration efforts. In addition, finding great content remains an important use case for the internet. So, as part of today's change, we're bringing Pocket, Content, and the content-supporting AI ML team into the Firefox organization. There are no changes to MDN, ADS, or FakeSpot inside Mozprod. There are also no changes to the Legal Policy, Finance & Business Operations, Marketing or Strategy & Operations departments.