Mozilla plans to cut up to ten percent of its workforce and refocus its efforts on using artificial intelligence technologies in its Firefox browser.
After destination new head of Mozilla intends make layoffs among approximately 60 employees and revise its product strategy. Given the total number of employees in the range of 500 to 1000 people, this would affect approximately 5-10% of the workforce. This is the fourth major reduction: 2020 employees were laid off in 320, and 2017 in 50.
A key area of ββchange will be the introduction of artificial intelligence technologies into Firefox, including the integration of acquired developments from Fakespot. In order to optimize processes, it is planned to unite teams involved in the Pocket service, content creation and artificial intelligence. It is important to note that the cuts will not affect Mozilla Developer Network (MDN), Mozilla Ads ΠΈ fake spot. The changes will also not affect the legal, financial, operational and marketing departments.
Products that will be cut include Mozilla VPN, an anonymous email address service firefox relay, personal data leak analyzer Mozilla Monitor Plus and social network Mozilla.social. These services will not be closed, but the number of employees working on them will be reduced. Mozilla Hubs, a 3D chat system with virtual reality elements, will be completely closed.
Although significant resources were initially allocated to promoting the Mozilla.social platform, analysis of the situation showed that maintaining the platform could be handled by a smaller team by reducing the promotion of experimental features and focusing on core functionality.
Investments in services related to privacy and security will also be reduced due to high competition in these market segments and the difficulty of creating a unique offer. The closure of Mozilla Hubs is due to the loss of user interest in 3D virtual worlds in areas not related to games and education.
Source: linux.org.ru