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Afterinstallinga young interim CEO earlier this calendar month , Mozilla , the organisation behind the Firefox web internet browser , is making some major changes to its product scheme , TechCrunch has learned .
Specifically , Mozilla plans to surmount back its investment funds in a issue of production , including its VPN , Relay and its Online Footprint Scrubber . Mozilla will also exclude downHubs , the 3D virtual world itlaunchedback in 2018 , and scale back its investment in itsmozilla.socialMastodon instance . The layoffs will bear on roughly 60 employees . Bloomberg previously reportedthe layoffs .
Going forward , the company said in an internal memo , Mozilla will focalise on bringing “ trusty AI into Firefox . ” To do so , it will bring together the team that work on Pocket , Content and AI / Ml .
Mozilla started expanding its product portfolio in recent years , all while its flagship product , Firefox , keep losing grocery share . And while the organization was often sharply criticized for this , its leadership argued that branch out its merchandise portfolio beyond Firefox was necessary to assure Mozilla ’s survival in the long run . Firefox , after all , provided the vast legal age of Mozilla ’s income , but it also signify the organization was essentially dependent on Google to keep on this deal . With these change , it now looks like Mozilla may refocus on Firefox once more , something that will surely make many hard-core Firefox buff quite happy .
Here is the full internal memo :
Scaling back investmentmozilla.social : Withmozilla.social , we made a big stakes in 2023 to build up a safer , dear societal medium experience , base on Mastodon and the Fediverse . Our initial approach was based on a opinion that Mozilla ask to promptly get hold of bombastic scale in society to effectively shape the future of social media . It was a stately idea but one we contend to execute . While we resourcedmozilla.socialheavily to follow up on this ambitious idea , in retrospect a more small-scale approach would have enabled us to enter in the space with considerably greater agility . The action we ’re charter today will make this strategical correction , lick through a much low team to enter in the Mastodon ecosystem and more rapidly bring small experiment to people that take to live on themozilla.socialinstance .
Protection Experimentation & Identity ( PXI ): We ’re scaling back investment in some of our standalone consumer products in the Security and Privacy space . We are reducing investment funds in market segment that competitors crowd and where it is challenging to deliver a differentiated offering . Specifically , we plan to reduce our investment in VPN , Relay , and Online Footprint Scrubber . We will maintain investment funds in ware addressing customer needs in grow market section .
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hub : Since early 2023 , we have experience a shift in the market for 3D virtual worlds . With the exception of gaming , education , and a handful of recess purpose cases , requirement has moved by from 3D virtual public . This is impact all industry musician . Hubs ’ drug user and client bases are not robust enough to justify continuing to dedicate resources against the headwind of the unfavourable shift in need . We will wind down the serve and intercommunicate a graceful exit plan to client .
Right - size the People TeamGiven the reduction in staffing and lower headcount budget move forward in MozProd , some part have been consolidate in the People and other financial support services orgs so that we are offering the right level of support to our merchandise portfolio . Optimizing our org to sharpen centering .
Correction : in a previous version , we said Mozilla only found its Online Footprint Scrubber last week . What Mozilla launch last week was a fairly similar but different merchandise , Mozilla Monitor . We have updated the story to shine that .
What ’s next for Mozilla ?