Published in News

Firefox gives up on connected devices

by on03 February 2017


Lays off 50 people and lays down

Big Cheeses at the Mozzarella Foundation have given up on connected devices and have eliminated the team connected to bring the browser to the internet of things.

Actually, there is a bit of a purge on at the Red Panda house. Ari Jaaksi, the senior vice president in charge of the effort, is leaving, and last week, Bertrand Neveux, director of the group's software, told co-workers he's off to greener pastures too.

While 50 people might not be much when you have 1,000 employees, what is more important is that Mozilla had been planning lots of new and exciting stuff and now has seemed to have given up.

A spokesMozilla said that the company had shifted its internal approach to the internet-of-things opportunity.

It had decided to step back from a focus on launching and scaling commercial products to one which is focused on research and advanced development. This means dissolving its connected devices initiative and “incorporating our internet-of-things explorations into an increased focus on emerging technologies".

There are mutterings that the layoffs greatly curtail the non-profit organization's ability to make Firefox great again. It has been kicked to death by Google's Chrome and had been trying to make the tech work on other devices.

More people are browsing the internet on their phones and Red Panda is not particularly good at that.

Firefox's share of usage in January dropped to 14.9 percent on personal computers and 6.8 percent on all devices, according to web analytics firm StatCounter.

Last modified on 03 February 2017
Rate this item
(0 votes)

Read more about: