[HN Gopher] Mozilla Thunderbolt
___________________________________________________________________
Mozilla Thunderbolt
Author : dabinat
Score : 322 points
Date : 2026-04-16 13:01 UTC (9 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.thunderbolt.io)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.thunderbolt.io)
| soapdog wrote:
| oh mozilla, why don't you just focus on Firefox. That is all we
| want.
| gianthard wrote:
| RIP Firefox OS
| data-ottawa wrote:
| I agree with you, there are 1,000 different chat apps and just
| one Firefox. And the world needs Firefox more than it knows.
|
| It looks like they might want to get into hosting/selling
| services to users on this.
|
| From the FAQ:
|
| > Is there going to be a hosted version if I don't want to
| deploy it myself? > Yes, we are planning to launch Thunderbolt
| for regular users but we do not have a release date yet.
| dralley wrote:
| There is "only one Firefox" but Firefox exists in a market
| that is not just commoditized, but subsidized to the tune of
| billions by 3 of the 10 largest companies in the world.
|
| The world may need Firefox but it's funny how people complain
| about Mozilla's dependence on Google while also complaining
| about every attempt to become more financially independent
| from Google.
| techjamie wrote:
| They could start getting some of that goodwill back by not
| paying their CEO a multi-million dollar salary and opening
| donations to actually help fund Firefox.
| roryirvine wrote:
| This is from MZLA Technologies, so is a sister product to
| Thunderbird rather than Firefox.
| dralley wrote:
| People "want" a lot of contradictory things. People "want" them
| to be less financially reliant on Google, while also "focusing"
| on a browser in a market that is entirely commoditized and
| subsidized by 3 of the 10 largest companies in the world - and
| having a wholly implementation independent browser engine when
| it's so massively difficult and capital intensive that even
| Microsoft gave up on it.
| eesmith wrote:
| I want them to actively seek foreign sovereign tech funding
| which come with stipulations that commit Mozilla to certain
| levels of privacy and anonymity.
|
| I want them to go cap-in-hand to other countries and say "if
| you don't fund us then you are letting the US and
| surveillance capitalism get between your citizens and their
| government" and "do you really know what Chrome is doing with
| your data?"
|
| I don't want to pretend they are simply part of a browser
| marketplace, but rather have them realize they are part of a
| civil rights effort, with powerful non-market forces they can
| ally with.
|
| And I want those governments to commit to progressive
| enhancement guidelines like https://www.gov.uk/service-
| manual/technology/using-progressi... so new alternatives like
| Ladybird can start, and further require their agencies to
| test on a Firefox branch with no AI, no location tracking,
| full ad-blocking, etc. because while the market is free to
| ignore certain non-profitable users, a government should not
| be allowed to ignore some of its citizens.
|
| I don't see a contradiction there.
| pier25 wrote:
| Having the best browser should be Mozilla's first priority.
|
| Investing on AI is not going to make them less financially
| reliant on Google.
| stormed wrote:
| The anti-trust lawsuits with Google have Mozilla realizing they
| can't just be a company kept afloat by Google. Mozilla's
| priorities have been pretty complacent, basically just
| maintaining Firefox, sometimes Thunderbird, and a couple side
| services that have little financial incentives.
|
| The current state of Mozilla is pretty odd since they rebranded
| to make it more apparent they're a non-profit, while also
| attempting to become more profitable pushing out new products
| and services.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Why is this related to Firefox?
| rothific wrote:
| It's not. Mozilla has been more than Firefox for a long time.
| dotancohen wrote:
| To be clear, it's not from the Mozilla Corporation (which
| develops Firefox), it's from MZLA Technologies (which
| develops Thunderbird). Both bodies are under the Mozilla
| Foundation.
| maxloh wrote:
| Mozilla needs money to support the development of Firefox (and
| the payroll of its high-salary executives).
|
| For now, they mainly rely on Google for that money. Google pays
| them to avoid antitrust cases, to show the courts that they are
| not a monopoly and that "alternatives" exist. For example, the
| DOJ once proposed that Google be forced to sell off Chrome.
|
| However, if another entity has control over your budget, they
| also have control over your product. If Firefox becomes "too
| good" to be a true competitor in the consumer space, the
| funding might be reduced or even cut off.
|
| Creating a new source of revenue allows Mozilla to improve
| Firefox even beyond the point Google feels "comfortable" with.
| trinsic2 wrote:
| No, email that supports open standards/protocols is really
| important right now where many email services are trying force
| IMAP to retire.
| extraduder_ire wrote:
| For a lot of things, I'm glad they don't. A strict focus on
| just a web browser years ago would mean we never get rust for
| instance.
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Curious name choice, that's clearly encumbered by other
| trademarks.
|
| Also, my impression is: yay another AI front-end. What does this
| one differently that the other thirteen in a dozen don't?
| benoau wrote:
| > What does this one differently that the other thirteen in a
| dozen don't?
|
| Mozilla's a _lot_ more trustworthy with privacy and data, and
| they 're unlikely to sell the project to someone who only wants
| to stuff it full of malware/adware/crypto stuff - or do it
| themselves.
| BowBun wrote:
| I'm somewhat a fan of Mozilla, but their weak governance with
| regards to actual plans for the future, a couple of
| questionable partnerships, and the graveyard of products
| makes it hard to trust based on a 15+ year-old reputation.
| Would love to see where Mozilla has meaningfully contributed
| to the modern tech space (things we all actually use, not
| Mozilla versions of more popular apps/tools)
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| But despite that, Mozilla is still far more trustworthy
| than virtually everybody else. Who would you trust more? I
| imagine it's a very short list. Which is a sad state of
| affairs.
| balamatom wrote:
| >Who would you trust more?
|
| Nobody I'd mention on Hacker News!
| imiric wrote:
| This Mozilla?[1] The company whose 85% of revenue depends on
| an adtech giant?
|
| They're certainly doing better than others in this space, but
| their track record does not inspire confidence for anyone
| concerned about their privacy and data.
|
| [1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla#Controversies
| Wolfrich wrote:
| that is the firefox groupn not thunderbird. Diff bro
| EastSquare wrote:
| I worked in Mozilla previously for like 5-6 years. I think
| the supporter of Mozilla is a lot more trustworthy with
| privacy and data, but not Mozilla itself... I think they
| claiming that they do this and do that, but actually speak
| louder than action. My personal takes from the upper
| management is also not that good.
|
| If you were not working with Mozilla Asian area, you know far
| too less. They had a browser in China that redirect to
| different website for profit before every connection and some
| affiliation. By doing so, is it privacy or not? Oh, look at
| Mozilla Japan volunteers, they shut everything up because
| things went wrong.
| Hamuko wrote:
| How much of that privacy matters when you're connecting it to
| third-party agents/models?
| wolvoleo wrote:
| Hmyeah but many others like openwebui are self-hosted and
| open-source so it's not really like they are untrustworthy.
| TiredOfLife wrote:
| Yeah. Mozilla openly state that they DO sell your data.
| rob74 wrote:
| ...and also differs in just three characters from another
| Mozilla product.
|
| "I'm using Mozilla Thunderbolt."
|
| "Huh, do you mean Thunder _bird_? "
|
| "No, Thunder _bolt_! "
| Barbing wrote:
| Are they allowed to reuse Thunderbolt when it's already taken
| in the same industry?
| wolvoleo wrote:
| They have enough money for a legal dept. so I imagine so. But
| it's a confusing choice IMO. Not just because thunderbolt but
| also because thunderbird as someone else pointed out. But
| maybe they are trying to make thunder their 'thing', like
| apple puts an 'i' in front of everything?
|
| Coming soon the browser rebrand to Thunderfox! :)
| Barbing wrote:
| Very happy to update to Thunderfox.
| thecrumb wrote:
| "Mozilla Bubble" Building things no one wants.
| evolve2k wrote:
| Some of us are out here still waiting for Firefox relay
| "premium" to launch and provide disposable mobile numbers like
| they do email addresses.. but product has for some reason been
| stuck on "join waiting list" for what feels like an absolute
| age.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Yikes.
|
| Could Mozilla hand over firefox to a new team please? It is clear
| they are wasting time and energy on things nobody wanted - who
| wants Mozilla-AI please? I mean, seriously?
|
| For people who don't think Mozilla wants to make firefox
| competitive again; and for those who also don't think ladybird
| will become a viable alternative one day (that's for the future,
| I have no crystal ball, I am just pointing at one possibility
| here). Perhaps we could get more momentum when someone else other
| than Mozilla handles firefox.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Why is this related to Firefox?
| balamatom wrote:
| Because Firefox is the only thing that lends Mozilla any
| credibility.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| No. Thunderbird has its own merits and they work without
| Firefox. Mozilla has credibilities in e-mail because of
| Thunderbird. This topic has 0 relations to Firefox.
| zuInnp wrote:
| If this wouldn't be under Mozilla/Thunderbird Org on Github, I
| would have considered this to be fake. It looks very
| unsubstantial ...
| stormed wrote:
| I thought Mozilla was going to join the Thunderbolt standard
| and/or making some tool for it until I clicked the link haha.
| Very interesting name choice
| badc0ffee wrote:
| Well, see, one is Thunderbolt io, and the other is
| Thunderbolt.io.
| spudlyo wrote:
| Chrome on Linux is ~1.47 times faster than Firefox on the
| Jetstream 3 benchmark as recently reported by Phoronix[0]. That's
| how we want you to spend the money Mozilla, keeping up with your
| well-funded rival Google, and making it so we don't end up with a
| browser monoculture. These sorts of distractions just piss me
| off, and are not part of your core mission.
|
| [0]: https://www.phoronix.com/review/firefox-chrome-2026
| ramon156 wrote:
| Ladybird soon(tm)
| panzi wrote:
| Not nearly soon enough. But yes, there is hope. Far away
| hope, but still.
| clumsysmurf wrote:
| And regarding (memory) performance, chromium has the "memory
| saver" settings for unloading tabs. I don't understand why
| mozilla thinks its acceptable to require users unload tabs
| manually. Who even does that?
| Erenay09 wrote:
| I use the about:memory tab whenever I need to clear some
| memory. However, it can't unload tabs.
| p-e-w wrote:
| Firefox has many weaknesses, but I never once thought "man,
| that thing is slow". It isn't, and chasing benchmark numbers is
| a waste of effort. A better security model or deeper
| customizability would be far more valuable.
| Zardoz84 wrote:
| The fact it's that for a normal usage, Firefox with uBlock
| Origin it's faster that Chrome without ad blocking. On
| Android this is especially noticeable.
| Barbing wrote:
| I wonder how much slower Firefox would have to be to
| invalidate the mental health gain not imagining every
| single keystroke going directly to Sundar.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Why is this related to Firefox?
| JCTheDenthog wrote:
| Because Mozilla is wasting money on something other than
| their core product, once again.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Thunderbird is under MZLA Technologies Corporation, their
| money and resources are unrelated to Mozilla Corporation,
| who pays money for their Firefox.
| spudlyo wrote:
| I'm not sure if it's fair to describe a "wholly owned
| subsidiary" as unrelated.
|
| > Thunderbolt is funded through a _dedicated investment_
| from Mozilla and is being developed by a separate team
| focused on enterprise AI products, distinct from
| Thunderbird's donation-supported consumer product work.
|
| Emphasis mine.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Yes, it's unrelated. Each one has its own resources and
| roadmaps. They are totally not dependent on each other.
| Thunderbird and its roadmaps/projects are not affected by
| Firefox' earnings at all. One's development doesn't
| affect the others.
| exceptione wrote:
| I remember that Firefox is orders of magnitude more performant
| in css processing, especially for complex documents with many
| elements. Can't comment on the javascipt interpeter, so I
| assume firefox is losing points somewhere else outside the
| screen painting engine.
| who_is_mr_tux wrote:
| I'm gonna deploy it on my machine and try it! Better option than
| using ChatGPT or Claude.
| einr wrote:
| [flagged]
| maelito wrote:
| Wait what ? Did you include libraries imported by NPM in this
| count ?
| einr wrote:
| I don't think so. I just used a public GitHub LoC counting
| tool directly on the repo, there are a few.
|
| https://ghloc.vercel.app/thunderbird/thunderbolt?branch=main
| claims 141k and most of it is Typescript.
| Tade0 wrote:
| I imagine that would bump that number to milions.
|
| I just checked one old take home task in Angular I did last
| year and the total number of lines is over five million over
| 35k+ files.
| dralley wrote:
| >120k LoC of probably largely vibecoded nonsense for a window
| with a text box and a button that lets you send and receive
| some data over a HTTP API.
|
| "I will make loads of assumptions without checking so that I
| can invent reasons to get mad"
|
| Note that about 30,000 of those lines are JSON files for
| localization and testing, as one example.
| einr wrote:
| How much UI text does this thing have that it needs thousands
| of lines of localization? Where are these files?
|
| Especially curious because I see a whole lot of hardcoded
| english text in there...
| stonogo wrote:
| Are you arguing that 90k LoC for a window with a text box and
| an overengineered textarea tag is somehow more acceptable
| than 120k?
| mzajc wrote:
| 22,056 is not about 30,000. Per scc: Language
| Files Lines Blanks Comments Code
| ---------------------------------------------------------
| TypeScript 760 109110 14500 7397 87213
| JSON 41 22056 6 0 22050
| Markdown 56 7150 2086 0 5064
| YAML 33 3965 406 208 3351
| ... and many more with fewer than 1k lines
|
| Regarding "loads of assumptions," it's hard to tell how much
| of this is vibecoded slop (definitely non-zero looking at the
| commit log), but I don't think it's that outrageous to claim
| 87k sloc is too much for a textbox and an API wrapper.
| glitchc wrote:
| That's still an immense amount of code for a chat interface
| essentially consisting of a text box and a button, which any
| OS (mobile or desktop) can usually throw up in a few lines of
| code.
| ChrisRR wrote:
| Maybe you wouldn't be so tired if you didn't make assumptions
| of things to be mad about
| rothific wrote:
| Hi, I'm on team that worked on this. No it's not vibe coded. We
| do pretty intense code review of every PR. It looks like the
| number you're seeing is including lock files and artifacts that
| are not part of the core coverage.
| einr wrote:
| Fair enough if it's not vibe coded, I'll take your word for
| it. Code review seems like it's mostly bots (Claude, Cursor,
| Greptile) from the PRs I looked at?
|
| Nevertheless, AI use is not what really stood out to me. It's
| that it's SO MUCH CODE. I have no idea how you guys maintain
| or reason about the quality or security of something like
| this. Good luck, I guess.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Ah yeah, after accusing others that they vibe-code without
| proofs, no apology and steering the accusations to other
| things?
| yieldcrv wrote:
| What fatigues you about this observation?
|
| Would recommend exercise
| Insimwytim wrote:
| On the bright side - it doesn't load without javascript ...in
| Firefox...
| autoexec wrote:
| I had to check the comments here to even see what this
| product was for that reason.
| dang wrote:
| " _Please don 't post shallow dismissals, especially of other
| people's work. A good critical comment teaches us something._"
|
| " _Please don 't fulminate._"
|
| " _Don 't be curmudgeonly. Thoughtful criticism is fine, but
| please don't be rigidly or generically negative._"
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
| einr wrote:
| My comments _teaches_ the reader that the codebase of yet
| another identical LLM chat app by an organization most well
| known for wasting money on stupid shit is one hundred and
| twenty thousand lines of fucking code. If I can 't post about
| that without getting admonished by a snarky moderator and his
| copy/paste skills then go to hell, I don't want to be here
| and evidently anyone who is not interested in circle jerking
| around the utter shitscape that is the current state of the
| software industry shouldn't be either.
|
| Please consider this an official request to delete my account
| and all the data in it, I'm done with this.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| This is not airport. No need to announce. Good bye and go
| to the place that you tell others to go too.
| pixel_popping wrote:
| If I may, Mozilla, you shouldn't release half-ass products that
| looks vibe coded like this, even the website looks like it took
| 30min to do with Claude
| poolnoodle wrote:
| Thank god for the Ladybird project
| Wolfrich wrote:
| Some confusion I see here is lots of people seem to not know that
| MZLA who makes Thunderbird and Mozilla Corporation who make
| firefox are separate entities in the Mozilla Foundation umbrella.
| This Thunderbolt is a MZLA product... so ya
| anildash wrote:
| Addressing the usual few complaints folks always bring up:
|
| * This is from the separate independent team that works on
| Thunderbird, not Firefox, so there isn't any resource contention
| happening there
|
| * Thunderbird is revenue positive, and this potentially gives
| that team another revenue stream to be even more self-sustaining
| through charging companies
|
| * Businesses definitely want to control the AI they're using
| (especially with RAGs of their own data) instead of just throwing
| it at their LLM vendor and hoping for the best
|
| People on HN are fond of asserting that their own POV is the only
| one. Imagine that there is such a thing as a person in charge of
| choosing technologies for organizations, and that you're such a
| person. That's who this is for.
| bakugo wrote:
| > Thunderbird is revenue positive
|
| Is that why I'm met with a splash screen asking me to donate
| every time I start Thunderbird? Is this another Wikipedia
| situation?
| godelski wrote:
| You think that just because the software _can_ be downloaded
| for free means the developers shouldn 't get paid for their
| work?
| rothific wrote:
| I think that wasn't phrased well- it's "revenue" positive
| meaning donation money covers more than the expenses
| anildash wrote:
| That's literally what the phrase means. Can't help if
| people don't know what words mean. It was phrased fine, it
| wasn't _read_ well.
| rothific wrote:
| Fair point :)
| tux3 wrote:
| >Thunderbird is revenue positive
|
| Hmm, I thought the for-profit Thunderbird pro hadn't launched
| yet?
|
| I know Thunderbird is for profit, but what are they profitting
| from without the paid service, and how much of that profit is
| going into this unrelated Thunderbolt AI platform, exactly?
| abdullahkhalids wrote:
| Thunderbird currently runs entirely on donations, even though
| they have paid products in the pipeline.
|
| I think a piece of software running on donations is not
| running off "charity". It's just a business model to not
| charge every user. Similar to how Twitch streamers operate,
| or my local theater group.
|
| You can read how they spent money in 2024 [1].
|
| [1] https://blog.thunderbird.net/2025/10/state-of-the-
| bird-2024-...
| tux3 wrote:
| Thanks, that's helpful. This says about ~70% of the money
| was paid to employees, ~10% infra costs, the other ~20%
| various other fees and smaller expenses.
|
| It would be interesting to have a breakdown of what part of
| the Thunderbird team is working on Thunderbird,
| Thunderbolt, or other forms of thunder.
| badgersnake wrote:
| Wait what, they took donations to pay a team to build a
| mail client and had them build an AI thing instead? Or have
| I got that wrong.
| ryanleesipes wrote:
| No, this was built with money from an grant from Mozilla.
| badgersnake wrote:
| I don't know why you're downvoting, it's a fair question
| based on the above comments.
| ryanleesipes wrote:
| No, this was built with money from an grant from Mozilla.
| debugnik wrote:
| No what? That doesn't contradict their comment about
| Thunderbird.
| Vinnl wrote:
| I think "No, this was not funded by donations".
| LandoCalrissian wrote:
| Thunderbird was literally asking for donations just a few days
| ago?
| Wolfrich wrote:
| it is a patreon style thing, they are donation funded. I
| think the poster is saying that they arent being frivolous
| with their money like some people have a bad taste about
| firefox
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| And?
| bakugo wrote:
| And they're taking money donated towards Thunderbird
| development and spending it on random unrelated AI slop
| ideas that nobody asked for. You really don't see anything
| wrong with that?
|
| Surely you can agree that when you open Thunderbird and are
| met with requests for donations, if you chose to donate,
| you'd expect that money to be invested in Thunderbird
| development, and not 10M Claude tokens to vibe code
| Mozilla's latest groundbreaking AI B2B SaaS idea?
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Why do you know that nobody asks for? Are you in the
| team?
| rothific wrote:
| Stop spreading misinformation, it's funded by grant money
| https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt/blob/main/docs
| /fa...
| bakugo wrote:
| Ah yes, a grant from Mozilla, to Mozilla.
| ryanleesipes wrote:
| This was built with money from an grant from Mozilla. See the
| bottom of this page: https://www.thunderbolt.io/announcing-
| thunderbolt
| philipallstar wrote:
| Mozilla gave Mozilla a grant, so that's all there is to it
| I suppose.
| Vinnl wrote:
| Took me a bit to find, so here's it quoted:
|
| > Thunderbolt is funded through a dedicated investment from
| Mozilla and is being developed by a separate team focused
| on enterprise AI products, distinct from Thunderbird's
| donation-supported consumer product work.
| monooso wrote:
| Just for clarity, you do mean Thunderbird (the email client),
| not Thunderbolt (this new AI client)?
| tadfisher wrote:
| Thunderbird (the email client) was spun off from Mozilla
| Corporation into a new for-profit company called MZLA
| Technologies. Both corps are still subsidiaries of the
| Mozilla Foundation. Thunderbolt is a new product from the
| MZLA Technologies team.
| monooso wrote:
| TIL, thank you.
| dotancohen wrote:
| > spun off from Mozilla Corporation into a new for-profit
| company called MZLA Technologies. Both corps are still
| subsidiaries of the Mozilla Foundation
|
| I am a happy Thunderbird user. But when I see such
| reorganizing and deliberately confusing naming, I assume
| that there is somewhere intent to deceive.
| afandian wrote:
| It goes to show that Mozilla(s) could, if they really wanted,
| restructure Mozilla Corporation / Foundation.
|
| (edit - to allow users to fund Firefox, allowing us to better
| sleep at night, and to align our incentives)
| CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
| > Businesses definitely want to control the AI they're using
| (especially with RAGs of their own data) instead of just
| throwing it at their LLM vendor and hoping for the best
|
| Yes, agreed on that. I'm not sure I'm clear how this really
| helps that; I suppose it's a frontend that they don't have, but
| there are a bunch of those already.
|
| It doesn't seem to help them control the _actual_ AI, i.e. the
| model, which still has to come from somewhere.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| I see no reason this product should exist even under the
| Thunderbird umbrella, especially if ANY resources under ANY
| Mozilla org were employed in this. This product is a
| distraction from their core mission in either case.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a crazy crowded space. Any entry into this field looks
| like a "me too" product driven by FOMO instead of being
| motivated by (a) serving customer needs, (b) serving social
| needs, or (c) making money. (All of which are fine with me) It
| will get 0.5% market share -- and I'm supposed to get excited?
|
| If you lived in New York City you might think there are Duane
| Reades coast-to-coast but there are not. If you are based in
| the Bay Area you see billboards that are very different from
| anywhere else. I'd say the viewpoint is a lot like this famous
| artwork
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/View_of_the_World_from_9th_Ave...
|
| but maybe instead of the rest of the US being 1/5 of the
| vertical space it is 1/25 of the vertical space. Problem is
| most customers _do not live in the bay area_ and most web
| browser users _do not live in the bay area_ and most web
| developers _do not live in the bay area_. Based in the Bay Area
| they can hop in their cars and drive the longest 40 miles in
| America to get to Google and Facebook 's headquarters so
| Mozilla is talking to those people all the time and not talking
| to the rest of us.
|
| We don't get costly signalling to show they care about the rest
| of us, we don't even get cheap talk.
|
| They probably think Rene Girard is deep because they are
| surrounded by people who think Rene Girard is deep. If Mozilla
| wants to be relevant and not just an also-ran it needs to
| "think different" like the other 99.9% -- it's not that hard if
| you change your location.
|
| Really the EU needs to apologize for those damned cookie popups
| and invest in a privacy-first browser. Whether that is "fully
| fund Firefox" or "fully a fund a Firefox fork" or pick up
| another browser engine or start a new one.
|
| I see the warning lights flashing: a few years back web sites
| that didn't work with Firefox were few and far between, this
| weekend I bought tickets for a comic book convention and they
| took my money but didn't give me a ticket because the site
| didn't work with Firefox. I use Firefox as my daily driver so
| all the projects that I work on _work with Firefox_ ; the rest
| of my team doesn't give a damn and if you lose me another site
| will become Chrome-only.
| tjoff wrote:
| > _Really the EU needs to apologize for those damned cookie
| popups and invest in a privacy-first browser._
|
| I love them. They are not mandatory, only shady websites that
| rather sell users information than providing a barely
| functional homepage. Yes the popups suck, but I'm very happy
| that this exposes the behavior and priorities of the
| industry.
| 440bx wrote:
| Can the team please use that money on making thunderbird look
| like the nice UI mockups that were published that don't look
| anything like thunderbird.
| zobzu wrote:
| i find it interesting that they advertise it as "trusted
| because european"
| dotancohen wrote:
| > Imagine that there is such a thing as a person in charge of
| choosing technologies for organizations, and that you're such a
| person. That's who this is for.
|
| The "Announcing Thunderbolt" page actually makes this clear,
| the submitted URL does not. Maybe the submission should be
| changed to this URL instead:
|
| https://www.thunderbolt.io/announcing-thunderbolt
| WhitneyLand wrote:
| What does "revenue positive" even mean?
|
| It doesn't mean profitable, it doesn't mean cash flow positive.
|
| Are you just trying to say their revenue is greater than zero?
| pwdisswordfishq wrote:
| > This is from the separate independent team that works on
| Thunderbird, not Firefox, so there isn't any resource
| contention happening there
|
| I would rather have them work on Thunderbird.
| BoredPositron wrote:
| Hu... Revenue positive just last week that had a pretty dire
| sounding call for donations ala make sure thunderbird can
| survive...
| andrewf wrote:
| 1. Potential donors get upset that they can't make directed
| donations to specifically support Firefox or Thunderbird rather
| than the whole kit-and-kaboodle
|
| 2. Separate entity spun up to focus on Thunderbird only. Now
| you can support Thunderbird development directly.
|
| 3. New separate entity is now in the business of extensible AI
| clients?
| Pxtl wrote:
| Aw, another AI thing. I was hoping this was their email service.
| Wolfrich wrote:
| that is in beta
| ForHackernews wrote:
| There's an architecture diagram here:
| https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt/blob/main/docs/ar...
|
| It seems like all the model inference is external APIs? So why is
| the marketing claiming "Self-host on your infrastructure or let
| us help you deploy. Your data never leaves your control."
| kobieps wrote:
| Could those external APIs point to locally hosted models?
| bartvk wrote:
| Lots of negative posts here, who presume to speak for others. I,
| for one, welcome new entrants especially since they're under the
| Mozilla umbrella. This client could use the passwords and cookies
| stored in Firefox. And I'd trust it too, unlike other clients.
| butz wrote:
| Good thing they didn't name this Unity or Proton. We are
| seriously running out of names for applications and services, ar
| we?
| Hamuko wrote:
| We're not, but companies are not courageous enough to explore
| new names.
|
| I've already used up "cum" btw, so you're not allowed to name
| your product that.
| beeflet wrote:
| It's weird that they would name it like thunderbird
| hexo wrote:
| No way they really named it thunderbolt. I mean. Seriously? What
| is next Mozilla USB-C vibeslop?
| CamouflagedKiwi wrote:
| What even is this? A chat frontend to arbitrary model providers
| on the backend - I guess that's sort of useful not to have to
| build yourself but it doesn't feel like the amazing thing they're
| trying to hype. Some of the features seem a bit weird to me too -
| like end-to-end encryption? There isn't a server intermediary, so
| you already have that with TLS to the model provider.
| seabrookmx wrote:
| Yeah it seems similar to Gemini Enterprise. There you can
| deploy "apps" (basically front-ends) on top of the LLM that
| come pre-configured with plugins to access Google sheets,
| Databases, your Jira boards, etc.
|
| So all this is doing is adding context for the LLM and some
| persistence.
|
| I have yet to see a compelling use case for Gemini Enterprise
| at my company but we're still experimenting with it.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Wow this is a confusing name.
|
| At a glance it looks identical to Mozilla Thunderbird, but has
| nothing in common.
|
| And then of course it's also the same as a well-known hardware
| interface.
|
| I know it's hard to come up with names and pretty much everything
| is used by _something_ else, but this seems particularly bad.
| Hamuko wrote:
| > _And then of course it 's also the same as a well-known
| hardware interface._
|
| The cherry on top is that the domain is thunderbolt.IO. No
| other TLDs to pick from?
| grandpoobah wrote:
| I mean there's already an established theme... how hard can it
| be?
|
| Fire-fox
|
| Thunder-bird
|
| River-wolf
|
| Stone-raven
|
| ....
| crazygringo wrote:
| Oh that's really good. You're right, something like Riverwolf
| would fit their branding much more consistently. Just as long
| as it's not Bikepelican, I'll be happy...
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| For anyone reading this that has worked on the launch of this new
| product (or the many others of their ilk throughout the years)
| under the various Mozilla orgs, I mean no disrespect, however I
| feel it's important to not mince words these days..
|
| I implore ANYONE at Mozilla org to please, please stop working on
| projects distracting from the complex and necessary work of
| browser and web standards stewardship. That alone should be the
| very reason for your continued existence if you have any. Focus
| on anything outside that purview will lead to the furthering of
| the, already painful and readily apparent, stagnation of your
| browser and our standards bodies as entities distinct from
| corporations.
|
| Ditching any direct financial ties to Google or any other browser
| vendor is both important and necessary at this point, as this
| clearly represents a conflict of interest in your overall
| mission.
|
| The web as a platform should belong to us all, not just the few
| corporate leaders of the day. I've watched in real time, saddened
| by the persistent errosion of our commons that is the web. I see
| it becoming nothing more than a corporate playground should
| trends continue, if it's not already too late. There may have
| been a time when your mission took precident over product
| launches of seemingly unrelated domains, but that is not what Ii
| observing today.
|
| I think I speak for many in the community in these regards
| (please correct me if not the case.)
| CivBase wrote:
| I'm perfectly fine with Mozilla working on other things as long
| as those things are profitable or at least self-funded. As long
| as they are not leeching donated resources from Firefox or
| Thunderbird, I don't see a problem. However, I wish I had some
| kind of assurance that the money I donate to Mozilla would go
| to Firefox and not some other project like this.
| rothific wrote:
| Thunderbolt was funded from a grant, not donations.
|
| https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt/blob/main/docs/fa.
| ..
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| I think the rest of that line is really kind of important:
|
| > Thunderbolt is funded through a grant from Mozilla.
|
| Is there any way that that's not taking dollars out of the
| same organization that's funding Firefox or thunderbird?
| ryukoposting wrote:
| > already painful and readily apparent, stagnation of your
| browser
|
| What's wrong with Firefox? There are several things Firefox
| does that it's annoying to live without in other browsers
| (video pop-outs, competent ad blocking, etc). Is there some
| core feature that's missing? I'm subjected to Edge at work and
| I couldn't tell you a single thing it does that I'd want FF to
| do.
|
| > and our standards bodies as entities distinct from
| corporations
|
| Ok, I buy that.
| Onavo wrote:
| It's slow. It almost always trails Safari and Chrome on most
| benchmarks.
|
| See e.g.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ljns9o/freshly_re.
| ..
| braiamp wrote:
| How many milliseconds do you think this page took to
| render? I usually click and it's already done.
| latexr wrote:
| HN is a fast site (comparatively; most websites are
| unnecessarily slow). It's a bad measurement.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| HN is a good website. Ebay is another good example where
| JavaScript is optional but with good functionality. Marko
| was mocked, but now Astro is cool because they invented
| ssr...
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| HN is not the most complex website rendering wise by any
| imaginable metric. I presume HN renders equally as fast
| on lynx or Mosaic from 1994...
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| I don't care about benchmarks.
| someguyiguess wrote:
| It doesn't support a lot of video formats that Chrome and
| Safari have supported for years (h265 is one I think. I'm no
| expert)
| holowoodman wrote:
| h264 and h265 are patent-encumbered and therefore very
| expensive and/or dangerous. Patent trolls would rip Mozilla
| apart and eat all their money. The only reason H.264 works
| atm is that Cisco sponsors a plugin for that.
| tux3 wrote:
| H264 patents are finally starting to expire, all the
| known patents have already expired in Europe.
|
| As for HEVC, that particular licensing trash fire
| continues to burn bright. VVC had an opportunity to learn
| from the situation, and decided what they really wanted
| was a trash fire that burned even brighter.
|
| So, we might be stuck with H264 for a little bit.
| dtech wrote:
| I don't event think h265 is widely supported. On Windows
| you have to pay separately for it
| amlib wrote:
| Firefox has had support for h265 for a few months by now,
| they finally relented.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Some folks have already discussed this in sister comments to
| the one you're responding to, but it's a common enough hn
| discussion topic that searching will answer beyond that
| (better than I can regurgitate here.)
| x0x0 wrote:
| reddit tab, firefox: 428mb. same tab, chrome: 78mb.
| mschild wrote:
| I get 80mb for reddit on firefox.
|
| That number can be down to any number of different factors
| on reddit itself. Having an autoplay video running, etc.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Firefox often groups tabs from the same site into one
| process. With large numbers of the same tabs open in
| both, check the total memory for all firefox processes
| and all firefox processes. You will likely find firefox
| actually uses less memory than chrome.
| x0x0 wrote:
| The endless excuses and lies.
|
| It was the same page, both on old.
| theodric wrote:
| I will eat the RAM penalty to resist the Chromium hegemon.
| Grateful to have any alternative!
| Neywiny wrote:
| Web usb and serial are not just missing, last I checked
| Mozilla is opting to not implement based on their moral
| stance. It just puts them behind for some stuff.
| balloob wrote:
| WebSerial just landed in Firefox nightly! https://bsky.app/
| profile/paulusschoutsen.nl/post/3mjfdx3ujta...
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| > It just puts them behind for some stuff.
|
| Yeah, it really undermines their ability to compromise user
| security and privacy.
| realusername wrote:
| There's a lot of good use-cases of Web usb, you can't
| just cut everything which might have privacy aspects
| otherwise the browsers wouldn't have canvas or even gpu
| rendering.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| What are those use cases? It seems like a giant hole
| punched all the way from a tab's sandbox through the
| process boundary and out to the kernel... Yes, gpu
| rendering is a great example of the same problem. Canvas
| at least has some intervening layers depending on
| implementation.
| realusername wrote:
| GrapheneOS for example can install with web usb, I think
| it makes it much easier for people who aren't too tech
| savvy to switch.
|
| Somebody also recently shared an awesome project which
| let's you use an usb printer regardless of your OS
| driver.
| thayne wrote:
| Almost all of the gui software for programming keyboards
| with QMK uses webusb or webhid, so you either have to use
| a chromium based browser or an electron app that is
| basically just a wrapper for chromium.
| tmtvl wrote:
| Yeah, it's a shame Qt/C++ doesn't have any way of
| interacting with USB devices and there's no libraries for
| that, otherwise there could be a native GUI app for QMK.
| Or failing that, because Qt is simply too difficult for
| programmers to figure out, maybe some day there will be a
| way to deal with USB devices from Java, then at least we
| could have an AWT app (or I guess Swing is the new
| hotness now?).
| nothrabannosir wrote:
| pianu.com used to be a website where you could learn
| piano by connecting your piano through usb with the
| browser. It seems defunct now but I found a video
| demonstrating it :
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTBmRV02NgI
|
| I used something similar in the past. It was a legitimate
| use case for web usb which changed my mind on it quite a
| bit.
|
| https://www.charachorder.com/ sells ergo keyboards and
| allows you to update their firmware directly in the
| website, through web usb. No local apps at all. Also an
| improvement in overall security from having to download
| some .exe / .dmg and running it locally.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| There's a reason that https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
| US/firefox/addon/canvasblocker... exists, though; a
| reasonable person could argue that firefox _should_ be
| restricting canvas /gpu more than it does.
| galangalalgol wrote:
| Essentially all of Firefox' incompatibilities with a
| website reduce to Firefox not allowing the users to be
| tracked or fingerprinted by default. Webapps that rely on
| fingerprinting as a replacement for device tokens will
| likely not work. Because fingerprinting is bad and I
| don't want it to work. The people your bank pays to
| implement that are the same companies used for cross site
| tracking. It only works because tracking works. ReCaptcha
| can break for similar reasons, but there are better
| options for captcha and the need for captcha itself is
| possible to eliminate with various strategies depending
| on what it is being used to mitigate.
| dralley wrote:
| It is so frustrating how every thread about Mozilla has
| people getting upset about contradictory things.
|
| Half the thread impunes Mozilla for taking so much money
| from Google and imply that they are controlled opposition,
| and the other half gets upset when Mozilla doesn't
| implement every standard that Google tries to steamroll
| through the standards bodies because of objections to how
| they can be used for fingerprinting, or complains that the
| attempts at anti-fingerprinting break websites, etc.
|
| Sometimes it's not even different people, it's the same
| people punching them for contradictory reasons.
|
| Mozilla is not perfect but they get all the downsides of
| being methodical and privacy focused alongside none of the
| benefits. Everybody hates the "side projects" unless it's
| Rust, Servo, LetsEncrypt, Thunderbird, contributions to
| Opus/AVI, etc. and you can be sure they'll be criticized if
| they "focus" by touching investment in any of those by the
| same people.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| > Half the thread impunes Mozilla for taking so much
| money from Google and imply that they are controlled
| opposition, and the other half gets upset when Mozilla
| doesn't implement every standard that Google tries to
| steamroll through the standards bodies because of
| objections to how they can be used for fingerprinting, or
| complains that the attempts at anti-fingerprinting break
| websites, etc.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| > Half the thread impunes Mozilla for taking so much
| money from Google and imply that they are controlled
| opposition, and the other half gets upset when Mozilla
| doesn't implement every standard that Google tries to
| steamroll through the standards bodies because of
| objections to how they can be used for fingerprinting, or
| complains that the attempts at anti-fingerprinting break
| websites, etc.
|
| Yeah, double standards at its max. Firefox inputs every
| privacy concerns for these APIs that Google puts 0
| Vietnam Dong to care about users' privacy. And those
| people cry about why Firefox doesn't implement it.
| ryukoposting wrote:
| Okay, I'll give you that. Granted, I've used webUSB exactly
| twice, once with a Flipper zero and once with a mechanical
| keyboard. If that's the worst of it, the parent comment
| calling it "painful and immediately apparent" seems a bit
| dramatic to me.
| latchkey wrote:
| I'm building a fairly complicated browser extension [0].
|
| Debugging the extension on Chrome, it works great. On
| Firefox, it is nearly impossible. There are a litany of
| compatibility issues that make it "different" than Chrome,
| despite the extension being very much standards based. It is
| really frustrating and makes me dread getting bug reports.
|
| To be fair, Safari is even worse and I haven't even touched
| Edge yet.
|
| As much as I'd love to have options in the marketplace,
| standards based compatibility between offerings should be a
| top line requirement.
|
| [0] https://oj-hn.com
| galangalalgol wrote:
| The standards used to be there. Chrome decided they made ad
| blocking too easy and unilaterally changed the standard.
| Firefox is still on the standard. Chrome is what deviated,
| and while performance was improved, that was definitely not
| the motive.
| latchkey wrote:
| Nope.
|
| https://github.com/OrangeJuiceExtension/OrangeJuice/blob/
| 5be...
| latexr wrote:
| > What's wrong with Firefox?
|
| It seems like every thread talking about Firefox always has
| someone asking that question, so if you search back you
| should find plenty of reasons. Unfortunately, it's been my
| observation that valid and polite criticisms always get
| downvoted. I don't understand why. It's not like downvotes
| are going to make the problems disappear.
|
| Most of us would like Firefox to succeed, and it's none of
| our faults that Mozilla is constantly neglecting it and going
| off on wild goose projects which get promptly abandoned.
| jampekka wrote:
| I use Firefox on both Linux and Android for 99% of my web
| browsing needs. At least for me it's the best browser out
| there, and doesn't seem neglegted at all.
| latexr wrote:
| Good for you. I'm genuinely glad, you should use whatever
| you like, I don't care for flame-wars. For me, it lacks
| several must-haves (I'm not going to waste my time
| repeating them, history has shown that's a stupid waste
| of time and the downvotes on the original comment only
| prove my point). That's why we have so many apps,
| everyone has different needs.
| fmbb wrote:
| Upvotes are not going to make problems actually relevant to
| solve.
|
| The question keeps getting asked because people say they
| have problems. Answers (if any come) tells everyone what
| the problem is for this one user that raised it.
|
| In aggregate we can all see that the problems are not very
| real for the vast majority of users.
|
| The biggest problem users actually face with using Firefox
| is that web devs don't want to support more than one
| browser and they have picked Chrome now. Or IT departments
| have blessed one and only one browser on corporate machines
| and it is the one most corpoware developers build
| extensions for.
|
| Chasing web standards is a second order problem and will
| not make the user experience better in a relevant manner
| for end users. If web developers want an open web, they
| have to work to support open browsers.
|
| Yeah the criticism is not invalid, but it is also often
| half-relevant soapboxing and I would wager that is why it
| tends to get downvoted.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| LMFAO. You web devs just want more tools to fingerprint
| and track users. When Firefox raises privacy concerns for
| your spyware tools, you play like victims and say that
| "Firefox doesn't want better for users". F that.
| captn3m0 wrote:
| Firefox on iOS still doesn't support extensions or adblocking
| - something Safari (and other browsers as well) do.
| jampekka wrote:
| Firefox on iOS isn't really a Firefox because Apple doesn't
| allow alternative browsers. It's a Safari skin.
| hutattedonmyarm wrote:
| Orion on iOS is also a Safari skin and supports
| extensions
| charcircuit wrote:
| And Brave on iOS has blocking built in to the browser
| itself instead of like Firefox on Android where you have
| to trust a 3rd party dev.
| yjftsjthsd-h wrote:
| To be quite clear, I trust gorhill more than I trust
| mozilla.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| LMFAO. Brave uses uBO's lists and filters, including
| trusted filters which have much more capabilities with
| much more risks to your sites' data and they allow that
| on all other lists too (even uBO only allows their own
| lists as trusted by default, other lists need to have
| permissions from users manually). That's how they can
| block youtube ads, and no they don't code their own
| filters for youtube ads either. And be assure that they
| can't check 100% all commits from uBO and other lists
| either.
|
| If you want to play "no trust to a 3rd party dev", you
| should not use Brave's adblocker either. Or at least turn
| off all the lists inside it, and use your own lists. Your
| security risk is in those stock lists.
| thayne wrote:
| Yes there are things that Firefox does better than others,
| and that is one reason I use Firefox. But there are
| definitely things I would like to see improved, like:
|
| - PWA support on Linux
|
| - better performance
|
| - devtools should be able to handle sites with large amounts
| of js with sourcemaps
|
| - fix a number of bugs that have been open for a long time
|
| - don't lag behind standards as much (I'm not talking about
| things where they intentionally don't implement problematic
| "standards" pushed by google)
|
| - make it feasible to embed gecko in other projects similar
| to how chromium is used by electron and webkit is used in
| "webviews"
| charcircuit wrote:
| It doesn't support WebNFC or WebUSB.
| ta8903 wrote:
| I agreed with these posts a couple years ago but for the past
| year there have been a lot of meaningful improvements in
| Firefox.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| It has been my daily driver off and on again across the years
| since the Netscape code was open sourced and Mozilla as an
| organization was founded. It's a fantastic browser, but
| Chrome now owns the lionshare of the market as Firefox plays
| catch-up instead of leading like it did in the past. Memory
| isolation, etc never got the resourcing it needed to complete
| until it was apparently too late.
|
| I see Firefox now as the new Opera, a technically good
| browser making dubious extensions that no one asked for until
| it dies a slow, spiraling death. My plea is simply to not go
| down that road any further...
| karrot-kake wrote:
| I agree that Mozilla is a breath of fresh air, and I am happy
| to see this extending to AI.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Yeah, you don't speak for me.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| Fair enough.
| time4tea wrote:
| Firefox is pretty cool. Use it every day.
|
| Blocks ads Multi account containers Dev tools very good
|
| I never notice that it is in any way slow, except for those
| sites that need infinity cpu on any browser, like jira.
|
| What specifically is the issue? To my mind it quietly just gets
| on with things.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| It is very cool! I'd go as far to say it's a great browser in
| fact. I simply want it to exist and be such in perpetuity and
| lead by example like it has in the past. I see it as a
| follower instead of a leader these days, largely to Google,
| but also Safari and to some degree Edge (by simply stealing
| the blink renderer)
|
| The Mozilla org continues to produce a very capable browser,
| but it's now 3rd or fourth fiddle on a stage their misteps
| helped orchestrate in their demotion.
|
| Edit: clarification
| sylos wrote:
| What are the other competing browsers? There's chrome(and
| the derivatives), safari, firefox? safari exists only
| because of ios lockin. Aren't most other browsers an
| increasingly smaller share? Genuine question.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| It's a problem. I use Firefox as my daily driver -- it
| used to be I ran into incompatible sites once a month or
| less except for YouTube which intermittently punishes
| users for browsing with Firefox. Now I have a serious
| problem every week like an online vendor or bank or
| something that doesn't work with Firefox.
|
| Firefox is a little slow for an internal application we
| have that loads 40,000 rows of data into a grid but
| otherwise all our stuff works with it because _I develop
| Firefox first_ and I think a few of us are all that
| really stands between Firefox and oblivion and probably
| are doing more work than a lot of the people they have on
| the payroll.
| jgraham wrote:
| (I work on Firefox Web Compatibility)
|
| If you have specific sites that aren't working, please
| let us know and we can investigate and try to fix them.
|
| The usual reporting channels are using
| https://webcompat.com or the "Report Broken Site" tool in
| the Firefox menu. Of course I"m also happy to take bug
| reports here if you (or anyone else) have them.
| VerifiedReports wrote:
| Here are a couple:
|
| 1. The inability to set a specific page for new tabs to open
| on. That is ridiculous.
|
| 2. The mobile version sucks, specifically because bookmarks
| are buried under an absurd number of menu levels. And they're
| also broken up (without user approval or any way to stop it)
| into "mobile" and "desktop" bookmarks. WHY? The entire point
| of syncing is to have them all the same.
|
| I want to like Firefox. I went back to Firefox for the first
| time in decades last year and gave it up after a couple
| months because #2 was that annoying. So brain-dead.
|
| Oh yeah, and another one was that "never remember history"
| does, in fact, remember history. What Firefox really does is
| "stop adding to history." And the bug report on it resulted
| in several YEARS of debate over how to "fix" it. The latest I
| saw is that they're actually NOT going to fix it, but rather
| add more text (somewhere) to say basically, "This doesn't do
| what you think it's going to do."
|
| If fixing a defect like that requires years of committee
| back-and-forth, the product is finished.
| saghm wrote:
| > The inability to set a specific page for new tabs to open
| on. That is ridiculous.
|
| I've been using the "New Tab Override" extension for almost
| a decade at this point. Sure, it would probably make sense
| to have as a baseline feature, but I installed it so long
| ago and it's continued working the whole time that it's not
| really something I think about anymore.
| jamespo wrote:
| New Tab Homepage is another alternative
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I use it daily, but Chromes dev tools are better. I always
| wind up back in Chrome to debug things.
| ezst wrote:
| Funny, I have it exactly the other way around!
| dylan604 wrote:
| One difference I've seen with FF vs Chrome is when finding
| the events to bind to each element. In FF, the event tag on
| the element is clickable and gives you the name and the
| line number in the JS file. It makes finding the code very
| easy. I have not seen that in Chrome. I rarely use Chrome,
| so this one thing leads me to saying FF's DevTools are
| better, at least for me and how I use them.
| maxloh wrote:
| In contrast, the Multi-Account Containers system is the
| primary reason I avoid Firefox.
|
| While it is meant to be an alternative to Chrome's profile
| switching, it is more a workaround than a complete
| replacement. I need entirely different sets of extensions for
| personal, work, and school environments, something containers
| can't do.
|
| Firefox's actual profile support is beyond terrible. To
| launch a separate instance, Firefox requires many more clicks
| than Chrome, all within a Windows-2000-style UI. Not to
| mention that there are weird glitches in their
| implementation.
|
| Firefox is not usable for me until they actually spend time
| improving their multiple profile support.
| dralley wrote:
| This is not meant to be an alternative for Chrome's profile
| switching. It's a different use case entirely.
|
| As you yourself mention, Firefox has actual profile
| support, which may not be as good as Chrome's, but at least
| compare like for like.
| time4tea wrote:
| I definitely have not had that experience, although use FF
| for personal, various work, and various educational places.
|
| None of those have _required_ me to install a particular
| extension..
|
| Of course thats not to deny your experience!
|
| The only time profiles ever come into it, for me, is using
| web driver, playwright, or whatever.
|
| I guess maybe the usage stats dont support making the
| profile selector better.
|
| But also, maybe its a thing they would accept a change for?
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Myself the profile support is the absolute _worst_ thing
| about Chrome. I just want to log into some web site, I don
| 't want to fight with the profiles to get things done.
|
| For those few applications where I really would need
| profiles I will just open a different browser, so I still
| keep Edge/Chrome/Opera around for that rare situation. I
| don't need something that complicates my life _every single
| click_ but it is the whole ideology of the Google Economy
| that they want you to spend 1% of attention on things that
| matter to you and 99% on things that don 't.
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| LMFAO. Containers are not for profiles-purpose. Everyone
| who needs profiles know this.
|
| And Firefox now needs 2 click to switch profiles.
| abhinavk wrote:
| Firefox has a new Chrome-like profiles support as of v149.
|
| https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/profile-management
| giancarlostoro wrote:
| I'm going to sound crazy, and I've said this on HN before, but
| I wish CloudFlare or someone who would truly appreciate the
| effort and investment, would buy out Mozilla and have them
| oxidizing the browser again. Firefox was at its best when they
| were going through that effort, and since they put a pause on
| it, Firefox has been so "meh" for many years now, and embedding
| things nobody asked for. A faster fully oxidized browser on the
| other hand would be loved by many.
| ferfumarma wrote:
| I feel dumb, but what does oxidized mean in this context?
| oceansweep wrote:
| migrate to rust.
| righthand wrote:
| The Mozilla employees are just Google plants. The web standards
| are now controlled by WHATWG who are all members of Microsoft,
| Google, Apple, and Mozilla and they are not interested in
| pushing standards forward or making browser improvements. They
| are only interested in ensuring entrenchment for their
| corporations. That's why they created WHATWG. There is nothing
| any non-compromised Mozilla employee can do. The ship has sunk.
| Either someone hard forks Firefox or we continue down the
| current road.
| maxloh wrote:
| Mozilla is doing exactly what you're describing. They need
| revenue to ditch their direct financial ties to Google (and I
| wonder if they hire those high-salary executives solely in the
| hope of generating that revenue).
|
| These AI products, along with all previous failed attempts, are
| just them trying to gain enough revenue to remove that
| dependency on Google.
| glenstein wrote:
| And you your point, AI is probably eating search and with it
| the prospect of search licensing revenue. Not sure yet what
| paradigms will be most important to the browser experience
| but it's critical to get in early and make the inevitable
| early mistakes and work through them.
| derf_ wrote:
| These two goals:
|
| _> ... please stop working on projects distracting from the
| complex and necessary work of browser and web standards
| stewardship._
|
| _> Ditching any direct financial ties to Google or any other
| browser vendor is both important and necessary..._
|
| are inherently contradictory. If you do not want Mozilla to
| have revenue from search vendors that also have browsers, it
| has to come from somewhere else. Or are you suggesting they
| switch the default search engine back to Yahoo [0]?
|
| I am not trying to defend the projects they have chosen to work
| on, but you have to understand that reducing dependence on
| Google is exactly why they are working on them [1].
|
| [0] Even when they did that, it was for the US only, and Google
| was still the default for most of the world.
|
| [1] Although in this case, this appears to come from the
| Thunderbird organization, so unrelated to the browser. Money is
| fungible, though.
| manfredz wrote:
| There are plenty ways to fund digital commons, including
| people volunteering their time.
| sylos wrote:
| I don't think volunteering is going to cut it. Big orgs
| have big money and public commons are just targets to be
| controlled exploited.
| tomaspiaggio12 wrote:
| mozilla employs 750 people and has a 1/2Bn dollar deal with
| Google and still their browser is absolute hot garbage. i
| think volunteering won't cut it.
| patmorgan23 wrote:
| A leading web browser can not be built and maintained by
| volunteers.
| glenstein wrote:
| Right. Firefox stands alone as the most successful self
| financed full stack browser that's ever been made without
| being subsidized by outside revenue streams. I like to
| use the example of Opera. If "make a better browser" won
| market share and business creativity won stable revenue,
| we'd all be using Opera right now because (sorry
| Mozilla), no browser company was ever better than Opera
| in my opinion.
|
| In 2026 the rules to making a good browser are (1)
| already be a trillion dollar company, (2) use Chromium,
| (3) have some form of distribution lock-in over billions
| of devices. Otherwise you're cooked. Mozilla swims
| against the stream better than anyone.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| The EU says it cares about privacy. although it's actions
| have normalized enshittification; the EU could fully fund
| Firefox or a Firefox fork or another browser in a second
| and stop all the trackers right in their tracks.
| throwaway290 wrote:
| It's American company... unlikely.
| PaulHoule wrote:
| Then fork it.
|
| Besides, the one thing Mozilla could do to be relevant to
| 99.9% of web users is to move somewhere other San
| Francisco and turn their office their into a homeless
| shelter. They should go to Dublin or Frankfurt or
| Barcelona, anywhere.
| manfredz wrote:
| I don't know, but there are other ways of funding besides
| -completely- volunteer run.
|
| Take look at Ladybird
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_(web_browser)?wpro
| v=s...
| aucisson_masque wrote:
| You can't seriously compare ladybird, a mostly broken
| browser nowhere ready or even remotely close to it, to
| Firefox.
|
| Ladybird will be dead in a few years.
| drzaiusx11 wrote:
| I'd argue these are not _contradictory_, just incentivized
| financially to continue since that's how they've operated.
| What i'm suggesting is a change. There's plenty of counter
| examples where diverse funding models for community projects
| can work without taking vast sums from a single, direct
| competitor. Linux is one. Imagine if MSFT was the sole
| contributor to Linux and how that would have shaped its
| development. In recent years MSFT may infact directly
| contribute developers and funding to linux, but they have a
| vested interest in doing so, as they run more Linux VMs in
| Azure than Windows VMs these days...
| eipi10_hn wrote:
| Because Windows doesn't go open-source and others can't
| build their OS from windows like chromium. With OS, there
| are no open source kernels that are actively maintained and
| security-fix bump every month by full time staff of giant
| corporation. With browsers, devs already have an open
| source engine with most of the work and build are from
| full-time staff of a giant corporation, and then they just
| lazily build "their own" browsers upon that and brag on
| social media.
|
| Build your own browser engine and see how you can pay the
| devs to make them work on it.
| jamespo wrote:
| Have you donated to the Mozilla Foundation so they can ditch
| financial ties with Google?
| pipeline_peak wrote:
| Where exactly do you expect Mozilla to gain revenue from other
| than non browser projects?
|
| Do you want people to pay to use Firefox?
| glenstein wrote:
| This "Mozilla is distracted" narrative is a category 5
| hurricane of unsubstantiated vibes from people who have no idea
| what they're talking about.
|
| Some quick hits just from reading recent release announcements
| from December '25 through April 26:
|
| - Hardware acceleration for faster performance with PDFs -
| Expanded WebGPU support - Faster page loading with compression
| dictionaries - Deeper hardware integration for faster video
| playback on AMD hardware - Better GPU stability and performance
| on MacOS - Faster local translation
|
| And I'm only picking out bits and pieces. "Web platform"
| improvements are so abundant that reproducing them from any
| single release would be a massive wall of text, but for a few
| examples just from one recent release:
|
| >Service worker support for WebGPU has been added, making it
| available in all worker contexts. Service workers allow WebGPU
| to run in the background, which is particularly useful for
| extensions and other pages that can meaningfully share
| resources across multiple tabs and time periods.
|
| >Firefox now supports the Iterator.zip() and
| Iterator.zipKeyed() methods from the joint iteration proposal.
| This allows zipping together underlying iterators into an
| iterator over values grouped by position, similar to zip in
| many other languages.
|
| >Firefox now supports the Trusted Types API, which is primarily
| aimed at preventing cross-site scripting attacks.
|
| >Firefox now supports the Sanitizer API, which provides new
| methods for HTML manipulation. The element.setHTML() method
| enables developers to insert HTML content similarly to
| element.innerHTML, but without the security vulnerabilities
| such as cross-site scripting (XSS). A complementary method,
| document.parseHTML(), is also available for parsing HTML
| safely.
|
| And on and on it goes with APIs, CSS and so on, and that's
| every release, and that's still not covering feature requests
| and cosmetic updates, or the constant security updates.
|
| Guys, this is _millions_ of lines of code and thousands of
| patches every quarter. While you were reading about AI features
| or poorly worded terms of service, they studied the blade..er..
| they worked on real performance improvements. It should be a
| scandal that anyone in the comment section gets away with
| claiming they 're not working on anything.
| nine_k wrote:
| They (like many) are afraid to become svn as the world is
| apparently taken over by git. Well-maintained but irrelevant.
| ezekg wrote:
| I swear there are like 10 different Thunderbolts. Why reuse such
| a common name?
| Barbing wrote:
| Did I seriously click on a Mozilla product and see AI? You guys
| at Mozilla read the Internet right?
|
| Doesn't this have to be done under another name to prevent
| massive company-killing pushback?
| glitchc wrote:
| Do trademarks not matter anymore? The name and logo are lawsuits
| just waiting to happen.
| pmontra wrote:
| The Get Started button links to a contact form. That's
| unexpected. I looked for the source code repository and thanks to
| somebody here that hinted at it as a Thunderbird project, I found
| [1]. That's a better Get Started page.
|
| [1] https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt
| rothific wrote:
| Updated!
| 440bx wrote:
| Thought "hey this better not be AI". Yes it's AI.
|
| Just keep making a decent browser and stop getting distracted on
| shit.
| ssalka wrote:
| I immediately thought "oh, the email client? It's AI now?" Then I
| realized this is Thunder _bolt_ , not Thunder _bird_. Kind of an
| odd choice by Mozilla to have two products with such similar
| names.
| bachmeier wrote:
| Some feedback: It would be useful to explain what you do
| differently on your website.
| petterroea wrote:
| All I see is effort that could have been spent improving the rest
| of Mozilla's products.
| IFC_LLC wrote:
| This was the MOST confusing release I've seen in years.
|
| Okay, it took me some time that the mail client is called
| "ThunderBIRD", not the BOLT. Not that I've used it much. But why
| the logo in github still shows TunderBIRD?
|
| It looks like Mozilla is trying to catch the band wagon for no
| particular reason. They don't need it AT ALL. But they just
| jumped in along for a ride.
| etchalon wrote:
| Turns out chat apps are pretty easy to build I guess.
| Tostino wrote:
| I tried to run it on my machine, and the release artifacts are
| missing entirely. Not going to spend time building from source.
| gib444 wrote:
| Naming things is really not that hard
| bluescrn wrote:
| Vibe-named
| javier123454321 wrote:
| Is it just me or is this really bad copy? The only clue as to
| what this is on the landing page is the background of the product
| image. And I also have to sign up to find out anything else about
| it.
| AnonC wrote:
| So this is only for organizations and not for individuals? The
| Get Started button goes to a form where it wants to know how they
| can help your organization. I didn't see any other link to the
| source code or documentation. If whoever created this site sees
| this comment, please clear up the above questions and
| observations.
| zeeveener wrote:
| I believe they're anticipating self-hosters to deploy directly
| from their Github documentation.
|
| The FAQs in Github also imply that a hosted deployment for
| single users is on their roadmap, but not prioritized. -
| https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt/blob/main/docs/fa...
| elAhmo wrote:
| From the home page I have no idea what is this, what even is AI
| client? OpenCode competitor?
|
| Also Thunderbolt is too similar to Thunderbird, really got me
| puzzled for a sec.
| shmoil wrote:
| Mozilla Thunderbolt?
|
| Why not "Phyrefox"?
|
| They are so incompetent, they could not even come up with a name
| sufficiently different from their own product.
| nashashmi wrote:
| Think of it as a product similar to Thunderbird,
| emailing/chatting with a computer instead of a person. But I
| agree the name should have been sufficiently different.
| Thunderbolt would have been a great name for an email server.
| miah_ wrote:
| No thanks.
| computer23 wrote:
| What's with the odd name? Apple already has a 15 year-old product
| called Thunderbolt. Mozilla already has a similarly-named but
| totally-different product called Thunderbird.
| rirze wrote:
| Agreed. The name collision nowadays is horrible.
|
| Then again, it's frustrating trying to name a product in
| today's era; too many names are taken.
| nottorp wrote:
| It's clearly a fancy AI powered cable isn't it?
|
| I suppose there is no Thunderbird for Macs then? Or someone in
| the team would have noticed.
| thiht wrote:
| Not sure about the US but in France there's absolutely no way
| this would be confused with Apple Thunderbolt. No one talks
| about it, and I don't even know it it's even a thing anymore
| since USB-C.
|
| As for Thunderbird, it's not the same name? Idk what to say
| jasomill wrote:
| My first thought was "why would Mozilla support a proposal to
| expose Thunderbolt to the Web after rejecting similar
| proposals for USB and Bluetooth?"
|
| So yeah, especially in light of the lightning bolt logo and
| "thunderbolt.io" domain name, I think it's confusing enough
| that I'm honestly surprised there's no "Thunderbolt is a
| registered trademark of Intel Corporation used under license"
| notice on the site.
| kyorochan wrote:
| The domain name is the most confusing part! "This is
| thunderbolt.io. No, not the I/O device, the AI client"...
| ksherlock wrote:
| I came here to say that. Especially with the .io TLD instead of
| .ai
| akvadrako wrote:
| It's not an Apple thing, though they may have adopted it first.
|
| Basically every high end laptop comes with TB4 or 5 ports.
| epenn wrote:
| It was originally codeveloped by Apple and Intel.
|
| Though from Thunderbolt 3 onward Intel has been the sole
| developer.
| ndom91 wrote:
| Curious how this compares to open-webui on the web, for example.
| econ wrote:
| The name is strange. They had a fox and a bird, used fire and
| thunder. The logical next would be Earthworm or watervole.
| tmtvl wrote:
| BrimstoneOctopus.
| bjornroberg wrote:
| I think this is a smart move, and if Mozilla were the same as 10
| years ago, I'd have hope for something good.
| jaredcwhite wrote:
| RIP Mozilla. I can't even with this nonsense...truly a shame
| considering I once admired this organization and the principles
| it stood for.
| estimator7292 wrote:
| Why does everything AI related feel the need to just take over
| names and words with longstanding well-established meanings
| already in common use?
|
| Like, seriously, this is like calling your AI model NVME or
| Northbridge or something. Insanity.
___________________________________________________________________
(page generated 2026-04-16 23:01 UTC)