Discussion

soapdog: oh mozilla, why don't you just focus on Firefox. That is all we want.

roryirvine: This is from MZLA Technologies, so is a sister product to Thunderbird rather than Firefox.

SV_BubbleTime: OK, but does Thunderbird have flawless exchange support yet? Can I replace Outlook with Thunderbird for our 365 accounts? Does Thunderbird have UI that is welcoming and modern?Does a dollar go from Marla to MZLA? Are those dollars not fungible?

dralley: 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 even Microsoft gave up on that.

spudlyo: 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

stormed: 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

zuInnp: If this wouldn't be under Mozilla/Thunderbird Org on Github, I would have considered this to be fake. It looks very unsubstantial ...

SV_BubbleTime: If this is correct and Firefox is now 2.3% opposed to Samsung Browser and Opera both at 2%… it’s pretty much over.https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#monthly-2009...As a former Netscape user… I think it’s almost masochistic to remain on Firefox as it’s rewarding a company that mismanaged its only product into the ground. And for what? What is the amazing thing Mozilla did at the expense of Firefox and donating the direction of internet technologies to Google?The executives got to attend a bunch of fancy gallows, and Pat themselves on the back?

wolvoleo: 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: > 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.

data-ottawa: 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.

einr: 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.Their Thunderbird for iOS repo is 34k lines.I'm so very tired.

maelito: Wait what ? Did you include libraries imported by NPM in this count ?

imiric: 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

anildash: 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 bestPeople 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: > Thunderbird is revenue positiveIs that why I'm met with a splash screen asking me to donate every time I start Thunderbird? Is this another Wikipedia situation?

stormed: 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.

dralley: >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"

einr: 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…

thecrumb: "Mozilla Bubble" Building things no one wants.

SV_BubbleTime: Pocket, lol. I think the Mozilla VPN could have been OK but it was just rebranded Mulvad and they didn’t make it easy and obvious to use.Is there a FF fork doing anything good out there?

pndy: Watefox, Librewolf have both plucked out all unnecessary stuff Mozilla added over the years. Both are good but Librewolf comes with history and cache disabled by default which may be bit surprising.Floorp comes with additional custom interface features, workspaces (tabs grouping) and mouse gestures. And bit better profiles feature - Mozilla decided to redo it recently which lead to some problems.Mullvad has build in VPN, DoH and proxy as an extension, and comes with uBo and NoScript.There's Zen browser that has a quite uncommon UI, and obscure Pale Moon that IIRC still tries to provide old XUL/XPCOM extensions - which often leads to pages rendering issues.

Wolfrich: that is the firefox groupn not thunderbird. Diff bro

eesmith: 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 allay 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.

lurkshark: By that logic wouldn’t it be pretty much over for Mac OS as well?https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share

hexo: No way they really named it thunderbolt. I mean. Seriously? What is next Mozilla USB-C vibeslop?

beeflet: It's weird that they would name it like thunderbird

tux3: >Thunderbird is revenue positiveHmm, 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: 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: 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.

p-e-w: 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: 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.

CamouflagedKiwi: 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.

eipi10_hn: Why is this related to Firefox?

drzaiusx11: 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.)

ojubknobugh: I agree with the sentiment, but it’s hard to agree fully with anyone seeming desperate.This reads like a kid trying to give business advice to an adult. “You could do THIS, then THIS, it would also be cool if you did THAT but please don’t do THAT!!”C’mon now.

drzaiusx11: Mozilla should not be a business, full stop.The fact that is being run like one, albeit poorly is exactly the problem.I don't think you realize the irony in calling my post childish here. "C'mon" I guess?

godelski: You think that just because the software can be downloaded for free means the developers shouldn't get paid for their work?

EastSquare: 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.

CivBase: 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: Thunderbolt was funded from a grant, not donations.https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt/blob/main/docs/fa...

eipi10_hn: Why is this related to Firefox?

rothific: It's not. Mozilla has been more than Firefox for a long time.

karrot-kake: I agree that Mozilla is a breath of fresh air, and I am happy to see this extending to AI.

ryukoposting: > already painful and readily apparent, stagnation of your browserWhat'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 corporationsOk, I buy that.

latexr: On a personal level, the main thing which stops me from even considering trying Firefox as a daily driver is the lack of AppleScript support (the bug report for that is over two decades old). I’ve made several tools for browser automation on macOS and they all have to skip Firefox because of it. There’s no question I’ve also inadvertently pushed countless people away from Firefox by not supporting it. I would if I could, but I can’t without Firefox’s collaboration. I tried to explain that to their devs (both on an offline) over the years, but was never successful.

exceptione: [delayed]

ta8903: I agreed with these posts a couple years ago but for the past year there have been a lot of meaningful improvements in Firefox.

pmontra: 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

glitchc: 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.

someguyiguess: 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: 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.

eipi10_hn: Yeah, you don't speak for me.

Neywiny: 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.

x0x0: reddit tab, firefox: 428mb. same tab, chrome: 78mb.

mschild: 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.

Onavo: It's slow. It almost always trails Safari and Chrome on most benchmarks.

eipi10_hn: I don't care about benchmarks.

drzaiusx11: 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...

yieldcrv: What fatigues you about this observation?Would recommend exercise

butz: Good thing they didn't name this Unity or Proton. We are seriously running out of names for applications and services, ar we?

Hamuko: 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.

Hamuko: How much of that privacy matters when you're connecting it to third-party agents/models?

singpolyma3: Maybe they shouldn't be, but they are. As a for profit corporation with employees they are very much a business not just "run like one"

time4tea: Firefox is pretty cool. Use it every day.Blocks ads Multi account containers Dev tools very goodI 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.

giancarlostoro: I use it daily, but Chromes dev tools are better. I always wind up back in Chrome to debug things.

giancarlostoro: 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: I feel dumb, but what does oxidized mean in this context?

yjftsjthsd-h: > It just puts them behind for some stuff.Yeah, it really undermines their ability to compromise user security and privacy.

realusername: 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.

crazygringo: 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.

grandpoobah: I mean there's already an established theme... how hard can it be?Fire-foxThunder-birdRiver-wolfStone-raven....

galangalalgol: 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: 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.

braiamp: How many milliseconds do you think this page took to render? I usually click and it's already done.

latexr: HN is a fast site (comparatively; most websites are unnecessarily slow). It’s a bad measurement.

galangalalgol: 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...

latexr: > 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.

fmbb: 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.

derf_: 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 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.

jampekka: 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.

maxloh: 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.

manfredz: There are plenty ways to fund digital commons, including people volunteering their time.

patmorgan23: A leading web browser can not be built and maintained by volunteers.

pipeline_peak: Where exactly do you expect Mozilla to gain revenue from other than non browser projects?Do you want people to pay to use Firefox?

tomaspiaggio12: 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.

rothific: I think that wasn't phrased well- it's "revenue" positive meaning donation money covers more than the expenses

anildash: 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.

dang: "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

gib444: Naming things is really not that hard

bluescrn: Vibe-named

ezst: Funny, I have it exactly the other way around!

maxloh: 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.

time4tea: 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?

theodric: I will eat the RAM penalty to resist the Chromium hegemon. Grateful to have any alternative!

glenstein: 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.

nine_k: They (like many) are afraid to become svn as the world is apparently taken over by git. Well-maintained but irrelevant.

drzaiusx11: 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...

WhitneyLand: 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?

dotancohen: > 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

latexr: 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.

zobzu: i find it interesting that they advertise it as "trusted because european"

captn3m0: Firefox on iOS still doesn't support extensions or adblocking - something Safari (and other browsers as well) do.

jampekka: Firefox on iOS isn't really a Firefox because Apple doesn't allow alternative browsers. It's a Safari skin.

hutattedonmyarm: Orion on iOS is also a Safari skin and supports extensions

charcircuit: 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.

badgersnake: 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.

badgersnake: I don’t know why you’re downvoting, it’s a fair question based on the above comments.

dralley: 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: > 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.

crazygringo: 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...

computer23: 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.

ksherlock: I came here to say that. Especially with the .io TLD instead of .ai

pwdisswordfishq: > This is from the separate independent team that works on Thunderbird, not Firefox, so there isn't any resource contention happening thereI would rather have them work on Thunderbird.

ryanleesipes: No, this was built with money from an grant from Mozilla.

debugnik: No what? That doesn't contradict their comment about Thunderbird.

Vinnl: I think "No, this was not funded by donations".

manfredz: I don’t know, but there are other ways of funding besides -completely- volunteer run.Take look at Ladybirdhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ladybird_(web_browser)?wprov=s...

kgraves: How would Mozilla replace the $500M a year from Google to not be a business?

drzaiusx11: Myself and I believe many others are willing to put money where our mouths are for an organization leading by example with regards to stewardship, much as this org has done in the past prior, instead of all these continued distractions, and ESPECIALLY if they stop swallowing this poisonous "donation" from Google. The fact that they do makes me wary of sending them a single penny. They'll just keep doing shit like they have been in recent years...

eipi10_hn: LMFAO. No, your belief will just starve the devs. This is open source world. Talk is cheap, show me what you've done at Firefox level that pay the devs well.

Barbing: Are they allowed to reuse Thunderbolt when it's already taken in the same industry?

wolvoleo: 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: Very happy to update to Thunderfox.

extraduder_ire: 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.

TiredOfLife: Yeah. Mozilla openly state that they DO sell your data.

thayne: 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: 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?).

thiht: 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: 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.

x0x0: The endless excuses and lies.It was the same page, both on old.

estimator7292: 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.

akvadrako: It's not an Apple thing, though they may have adopted it first.Basically every high end laptop comes with TB4 or 5 ports.

kyorochan: The domain name is the most confusing part! "This is thunderbolt.io. No, not the I/O device, the AI client"...

thayne: Yeah the fundamental problem is there isn't a good way to write cross platform applications that interface directly with a usb device

yencabulator: Because of the Servo people that got laid off!https://github.com/servo/stylo

evil-olive: there seems to be a significant disconnect between the claims in this press release / blog post and the actual reality if you look at the GitHub repo.starting from the very first words of the announcement:> Open-source and self-hostablemeanwhile, the readme [0] has a caveat, added today, about how it's only kinda-sorta self-hostable:> While we eventually plan to make Thunderbolt fully offline-first, it currently depends on authentication and search functionality (though you can disable search on the integrations screen in the app). You can deploy your own backend with Docker and sign up in order to test it locally.and if you follow the link to the self-hosting instructions [1] there's another caveat that was added today:> Under active development — not production ready. Thunderbolt is currently undergoing a security audit and preparing for enterprise production readiness. These deployment paths are provided for evaluation and early testing. Do not use in production environments.don't tell me it's self-hostable if what you really mean is "you can run it locally for testing".meanwhile, scroll a bit farther down in the announcement:> Work seamlessly across devices with native applications for Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, and Androidwhich is repeated on the GitHub readme:> Available on all major desktop and mobile platforms: web, iOS, Android, Mac, Linux, and Windows.but as pointed out in [2] this is just flat-out incorrect - there are no release artifacts published, for any platform.come on Mozilla, you need to be better than this. you have to know your target market is engineers and tech-savvy people who see through this sort of marketing fluff.if you want to publish an announcement saying "we're working on a thing that will eventually do X, Y, and Z" then that's great.if you want to release something that does X, Y, and Z, that's great too.but don't over-promise and under-deliver. don't make an announcement that this thing can do X, Y, and Z and then "clarify" that the plan is to eventually do X, Y, and Z.0: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt?tab=readme-ov-fil...1: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt/blob/main/deploy/...2: https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt/issues/611

thunderfork: Memory measurements reported in browsers come with substantial caveats, as measuring "how much memory is this tab using" is fairly nontrivial.Not saying there isn't a difference, but you'd need to measure (e.g.) a fresh install viewing only one tab with no extensions, etc.

kasajian: Someone explain to me why this product is unique. If Mozilla never came out with it, does that mean businesses are stuck with using cloud-based AI? C'mon. There's a lot of products that already offer local-AI. What am I missing?

PaulHoule: 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 artworkhttps://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 René Girard is deep because they are surrounded by people who think René 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: > 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.

PaulHoule: It is insane to see very ordinary web sites that have 100 trackers but part of that is that the advertising economy gives everyone the incentive to screw each other with the backdrop that of course the metrics do not match across the funnel because people fall out as you go down the funnel —- but if you have 100 trackers they can’t all be lying in a coordinated way.

shmoil: Mozilla Thunderbolt?Why not "Phyrefox"?They are so incompetent, they could not even come up with a name sufficiently different from their own product.

unethical_ban: What's next, iPads and iPods?

maxloh: 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.

yencabulator: Mozilla could stop doing everything else and slow burn their existing $1B into developer salaries over the next decade. They are actively choosing not to.

maxloh: And then what? Just go bankrupt after a decade? That's entirely unsustainable.

curio_Pol_curio: >"Girard">"99.9%"I despise "centrist-moderation" just like any other guy but maybe "entrepreneurial dignity" is not 100% of something but 65\pm1% homeownershiphttps://www.visualcapitalist.com/mapped-europes-homeownershi...

yencabulator: 1. It's unfair to assume that their primary funding source stops in one scenario and not in the other.2. 1 billion dollars is a lot of money. Even the interest off it is huge.3. 10 years is a very long time in tech.4. I would greatly prefer the money Mozilla earned due to Firefox being a thing was put into developing Firefox, yes. The current Mozilla organization seems to be a mechanism for providing third homes for the executives, starting projects nobody wanted them to start, sullying the Firefox brand with them, and then abandoning them. There's a VC cancer infesting the supposed "free software community" called Mozilla.

eipi10_hn: 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.

drzaiusx11: I'm not sure the counter argument you're making tbh.The license or patch cycles of either project is irrelevant in this example. The money changing hands between the original product and it's competitor is the issue at stake here.I'll spell it out in Mozilla's case:If money is provided by a direct competitor, and that same money is _critical to the continued existence of the original project_ as it is in Mozilla's case, that project and it's staff now have a vested interest in avoiding _anything_ that could endanger that flow, as it now poses a very real existential risk. This is the game they play and the conflict of interest I'm merely pointing out.Google gets to keep slowly eating the entire browser pie. Should regulators come calling, they can even point at Firefox and say "see, we're not monopolizing this space! there's Firefox over there" To me it appears as a sick form of puppetry.

LandoCalrissian: Thunderbird was literally asking for donations just a few days ago?

eipi10_hn: And?

bakugo: 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?

rothific: Stop spreading misinformation, it's funded by grant money https://github.com/thunderbird/thunderbolt/blob/main/docs/fa...

bakugo: Ah yes, a grant from Mozilla, to Mozilla.

yencabulator: Even more so, it is likely a grant of money earned by Firefox (the Google search engine deal).

eipi10_hn: Proof?

glenstein: 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 translationAnd 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.

drzaiusx11: Firefox is still very much a technically excellent browser. My plea is simply to stop taking poison pills from the very companies they should be fighting against in standards body discussions. I'd argue Firefox is "behind" in both _marketshare_ and _features_ largely _because_ said features are steamrolled through community governance bodies by the likes of Google, etc. Mozilla is at the table for these discussions but their hands are tied.Mozilla's continued existence in recent history has relied on money from their primary competitor to stay in operation. Some have argued that doing seemingly unrelated projects like the one announced today is an effort to buy their freedom as it were. I'm arguing that's a distraction and that something closer to Linux or wiki foundation model would allow them to concentrate their efforts where it makes the most sense, as their current governance model is inherently based on a conflict of interest.Opera was also a technically excellent browser, and we've seen that that alone is not enough to justify its existence in the long term.

drzaiusx11: I truly hope that is the case. I feel they're going about it from all the wrong angles, but I sincerely hope it works out in their favor. Their funding model and governance seem inherently broken and have for a long time...

hardwaresofton: Wow HN really does have a problem with commenting on anything to do with Mozilla.Anyway, awesome to see this from the team inside Mozilla — hope this can become a new revenue stream over the long term.Really excited to see some tight integration with Firefox and Thunderbird in the future.People are going to hate this, but if someday Mozilla expands to being a productivity suite I’d be pretty happy to give them my money. ProtonMail is doing it and I trust them as well.

eipi10_hn: The argument is you are using OS as a counter example when it's not the counter example.What is the chromium of OS world but Linux doesn't depend on them?

jamespo: Have you donated to the Mozilla Foundation so they can ditch financial ties with Google?

drzaiusx11: I'd gladly setup a recurring donation if I knew it was going to the areas in question and NOT to separate grants to the likes of this product just announced

yencabulator: That is almost all the money Nozilla has. Not sure what you're expecting.

drzaiusx11: I don't think these are contradictory, you're listing what many have wanted all along. There are funding models that would support exactly the above.Microsoft stopped building their own browser engine because it didn't suit their business needs and they could still get a controlling share with significantly less effort by recycling webkit/blink for the umpteenth time. That makes total sense for them. Mozilla has, in the past, guided and pushed back on corporate interests.Today, a large portion of the web now stands, built from the bones of the original khtml project, which was unceremoniously made by a handful of volunteers on the KDE project. Let's not pretend a rendering engine it's an entirely _impossible_ task. It is a LOT of work, and I laud the effortor of the few tireless individuals that make it their work, but in the end it's another piece of software, not unlike an OS. The history goes:KHTML -> WebKit -> BlinkMeanwhile:Mosaic -> Netscape -> GeckoMaybe we find maintaining the second lineage is too great a burden and the web just becomes a defacto standard, guided entirely by 3 corporations. It's not what we want, but I guess at this point it's probably what we deserve.

AnonC: 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.

benkaiser: For those looking for mobile support connecting to remote MCP servers, I maintain a source-available chat app that does exactly that (uses OpenRouter for inference): https://benkaiser.github.io/joey-mcp-client/

econ: The name is strange. They had a fox and a bird, used fire and thunder. The logical next would be Earthworm or watervole.

shmeeed: Spacemonkey.

elAhmo: 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.

shlewis: Web API wrapper. That's really all it is.

shlewis: I first thought "Fine, I'll stop using Thundebird(which I kinda already did, using Betterbird)." But it's Thunder_bolt_? What's with this name?

camgunz: > I implore ANYONEI implore ANYONE about to write a similar post to avail themselves of the search bar to not Groundhog Day us. Someone should do a "History of HNers railing ignorantly about Mozilla and Firefox" coffee table book; would link the buy page in my group chats.

Yizahi: Ladybird can't release soon enough, can't wait to abandon this sinking corrupt ship. I say that as a Firefox user since beta, both on PC and mobile.