When I posted this, I linked to the latest statement https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1213#i..., which is the content relevant to the title (the details of our opposition to the API). Unfortunately someone removed the link to the specific post.
^ didnt realize who posted the opposition - this is Jake Archibald, a longtime googler on the Chrome team, now joining Mozilla and posting opposition to the Chrome API. no wonder the criticism is so well argued. most be a relief to not have to toe the party line on this one.
Aww thanks! To be fair I didn't toe the party line when I was at Google (imo). Although, that caused me increasing amount of grief internally, until I left. From what I hear, things have gotten exponentially worse in that regard for folks still on the team.
Hey, Jake, not related with your post, but I just want to say that HTTP203 were one of the best web dev content that I've ever consumed. Amazing mix between humour and tech discussion. Thank you!
Aww thanks for saying that! I've been doing little videos on https://www.youtube.com/@FirefoxWebDevs (and accounts of the same name, pretty much everywhere). Although they're designed to be short, so they're pretty different to HTTP203.
The nice thing about open protocols is that we don't have to endorse or use one implementation over another, yet, somehow, the browser monopoly continues to be a standing dilemma.
There are nice projects, like ungoogled chromium, tor, and many more, but I find the biggest issue is that there isn't a voice out there for the average person and a project that connects with the masses.
I think another issue is that a lot of the uninformed users have a strong apathy for the causes and ways the message is delivered, they rather engage and connect with things that are "fun" and want less friction rather than freedom and control.
How do we solve this? How do we make the browser ours, by the people, and for the people?
I wonder if this is a generational thing of fresh young people that already cannot live without LLMs versus crusty old people that don’t want to require a super computer just to run a web browser that violates all their privacy.
To me this sounds like the point where people start looking at and developing alternatives to the browser/web.
Meaning you do not want text generation in the web API at all, or you think the prompt API needs to be different? And if so can you give one sentence on how it should change?
If you glance at that then you may see that I am for the idea of leaner alternatives to the current web platform.
But in the context of the existing web API which has just about everything and the whole kitchen sink in it (hundreds of sub-APIs), I do not think it will really help anyone at this point just just stop adding features, especially major ones.
The web is basically an overlay operating system and has been for many years.
Young people love AI when it helps them cheat homework, or when used for roleplay and memes. Generating "content" with AI - is generally more hated, especially art and video.
Funnily enough, most of the young people I know fall somewhere between those two sides of the spectrum.
I know some actual luddite-tier AI haters that believe it's ontologically evil, and another majoring in Data Science that went to the most recent career fair and told a recruiter "AI will replace you" (I uh don't think he's getting that internship)
And of course many, many, others that fall between the two extremes.
The one thing we can all agree on, is it makes homework a hell of a lot easier :) (well, except the luddite-types, they refuse to use it in any capacity)
I'm a member of a political action committee, where I was brought in as an expert in professional media applications of AI. I've got extensive experience using AI tools in the production of well known entertainment properties (think VFX for film and animation.) Anyway, within the political action committee where is a diverse mixture of people, with about 1/5th of them under age 30. The entire under age 30 set are so AI negative, to such an irrational degree, I have been asked to do nothing and offer no advice that incorporates any technology at all. They are so paranoid. In a not really emotional discussion, a bunch of them erupted in tears, they are so irrational about it.
The biggest irony with telling a recruiter they'll be replaced, is how much easier a data scientist is to replace with LLMs. With their sycophantic nature, execs will eat up whatever "data" the LLMs make up, too.
Do they really? Hating on AI slop is a common sentiment on social media, but remember that the opinions you see on social media are often not representative of what the general population thinks at all.
I keep hearing stories about how homework is now useless because every student just gets ChatGPT to do it for them, and from personal experience, I'm inclined to believe them.
I don't believe every student uses a calculator to solve their math homework, so what makes ChatGPT unique here? For certain subjects the ability to cheat has been trivial for a long time, yet there was no crisis.
I think this is the wrong way. I don’t want my OS or browser to have access to an LLM, but I do want my LLM to have access to a browser or OS (and they already have).
So they should provide an interface to LLMs, disabled by default, enabled when users want it, and that’s it imho.
That also gives me the choice of which LLM provider to use, rather than being locked in whatever LLM Apple decided to do put in their OS.
I want to give Claude access to the stuff Apple Intelligence has access to, for example.
Sure. macOS, iOS and Windows have local model APIs for third-party devs. Chrome is trialing it. Firefox uses models to generate alt-text, but no API.
In theory it's useful. If devs can rely on local models, it's more private and decentralized, they don't need to funnel money to AWS or Anthropic. There are low-stakes use cases that only make sense if they're local (available offline) and free.
But in practice I've seen zero adoption of Apple Foundation Models in native apps. I wonder if any Mac/iOS devs have anything to share on this.
In practice it’s useful too. The local translation in Firefox is quite good, and I love that I can translate pages entirely on my machine; without the contents going to another server.
As for Apple foundational models, I think the issue is more that they’re just not very intelligent or good; maybe WWDC will change that; but if you want to implement LLM functionality, you’re better off either calling an API, or shipping a better small on device model.
Their whole argument is based on this sentence. So I'd expect some rationale. Instead, they provide as "example" links to Google, Microsoft and Apple. The funny thing is that the one by MS is probably the most criticized one, with the company partly backpedaling on it. And Apple is often criticized by LLM aficionados for being quite conservative. Google is the one proposing it.
So my question is: are browsers and operating systems really expected to gain access to language models? If so - by whom: the users or LLM vendors like Google?
That “are expected” is a euphemism for “are shoehorning AI in and trying to shove it down users’ throats”. Whereas the truth is nobody (actual end users, that is) wants it.
I hate having to “dodge” all the AI-enabled controls my phone (iOS) is sprouting - I don’t need that shit, but there’s also no alternative.
It's the typical "cart before the horse" kind of corporate tech talk. It's pretty standard if Silicon Valley wants to sell shit that nobody actually wants; they just assume that people will want it, regardless whether or not they actually want it. Most of the tech press is too obsessed with retaining their "access" to actually be critical of this sort of thing, and most of the regular press doesn't care enough to actually investigate.
We've seen this sort of song and dance before, crypto jumps to mind. Remember when social media sites suddenly were all about those hexagonal avatars? Most of this stuff is really in that same vein.
(Which to be clear, users don't want this. AI pushes by pretty much all recent user feedback metrics are largely tiring out users and reek of corporate desperation to sell shit. It's only a very specific subsection of Silicon Valley that wants to stuff AI in everything like this.)
The word "expected" is a weasel word in this context, especially given how muck backlash MS has received. I'd expect a link to a study where users say: "I'd like to have an LLM integrated with my operating system and my browser" and how it changes over time. Then you can seriously argue for "increasingly expected".
These features are enabled by default, and in the case of iOS/macOS, desktop Chrome, probably also Copilot+ PCs, download 4 - 7 GB local models without properly explaining this to users. This doesn’t confirm any demand because if you just don’t use the features and don’t fill up your device, you may never notice.
I think this API is probably fine, but only if the user already has a model downloaded and wants these features. Naturally, case in point, Chrome quietly downloads Gemini Nano without any opt-out except through group policy. Things like this and Microsoft’s recent admission that they’ve overindexed on Copilot features in Windows make it increasingly difficult to trust that users actually want more than a few killer AI features, most of which are just ChatGPT.
Anecdotally, non-technical friends and family members know about ChatGPT and increasingly Gemini, get frustrated by Copilot, and don’t know Apple Intelligence exists.
What this proves is that browsers and operating systems are increasingly integrating language models, not that they are expected to do so.
The only people who expect them to do so are big tech executives. The average user does not expect nor want Copilot shoved into every possible corner of Windows, and Microsoft themselves have acknowledged this.
I think it was subsumed by later developments (javascript), but the issue with it AFAIR was just that it wasn't useable in all browsers, not that the tag per se was a bad idea (as much as scrolling text can be).
The situation with the model api seems different, more like the AMP spec.
> According to Chrome's documentation, to use the prompt API you must 'acknowledge' Google's Generative AI Prohibited Uses Policy. Elements of this policy go beyond law. For example:
>> Do not engage … generating or distributing content that facilitates … Sexually explicit content
Do not engage in misinformation, misrepresentation, or misleading activities. This includes … Facilitating misleading claims related to governmental or democratic processes
> This seems like a bad direction for an API on the web platform, and sets a worrying precedent for more APIs that have UA-specific rules around usage.
I will say this more strongly—I think it is completely insane, and a violation of free expression principles, for a browser API to have content restrictions.
I wonder if it makes sense for browser vendors to agree upon and ship various ‘standard models’ that are released into the public domain or something, and the API lets you pick between them.
The models themselves would be standardized and the weights and everything should be identical between browsers. They’d be standard and ‘web-safe’ like CSS colors or fonts. Probably would help to give them really boring/unbranded names too. These would work identically across browsers and web developers can rely on them existing on modern setups.
If you want more models, you could install them as a user or your browser could ship them or the web developers could bundle them through a CDN (and another standard for shared big files across domains would probably be needed)
It doesn't make sense at all. So as a user how do you choose which model to use? There could be 3824 models to choose from. The browser might as well set one as default, and we all know how that goes (see: search engine).
Not to mention many other UX questions the come with this, most importantly, how unusable these local models are on regular 3-year old laptops that are constrained in RAM, GPU/CPU capability and likely disk space despite what enthusiasts say here. (They have a Macbook Pro with 32+GB of RAM, reports it works great with xyz model -- fine -- but somehow thinks it works for everyone and local models are the future.)
The Chrome model requires either "16 GB of RAM or more and 4 CPU cores or more" or "Strictly more than 4 GB of VRAM", and "22 GB of free space" (it uses around 4.4GB but it doesn't want to use the remaining free space).
The model is pretty slow on my M4 Pro mac.
The API allows the browser to use a cloud service instead, but then privacy is lower. So, more privacy for the rich.
> It doesn't make sense at all. So as a user how do you choose which model to use? There could be 3824 models to choose from. The browser might as well set one as default, and we all know how that goes (see: search engine).
...what's the exact problem here? Believe it or not, most non-tech-savvy users use the search engine just fine.
With regards to search engines, Google paid billions of dollars [0] to become the default on major browsers. I guess GP's implying that something similar might happen with LLMs.
The rate of model development is an issue here. Once there are many cross-origin models, it becomes a fingerprinting vector. Also even the small models are many GBs.
> This will result in Mozilla and Apple having to licence Google's model, or ship a model that's quirks-compatible with the Google model in order to be interoperable. It may also become difficult for Chrome to update its own model for the same reasons.
Google is again doing Evil.
I am very annoyed that Google kind of de-facto controls the www (through chrome, let's be honest here).
We really need to change this. I don't have a good solution here, but it can not continue that way.
Chrome is not that good anymore compared to other browsers.
I switched long time ago and if the doesn't work with basic features I just leave the site out instead of letting it use chrome to control me
Being a web developer was not fun; and the web was absolutely being held back. Chrome did a lot of things right: per-origin sandboxing, properly implementing web standards, V8, developer tools, and back then Chromium was super close to Chrome.
Do I think Chrome is a net-negative for the web over the past ~3-5 years? Yes, especially with manifest v3, “privacy sandbox”, and them basically forcing through web APIs because they have the dominant marketshare.
But early Chrome was a technologically impressive and user-friendly browser that really did make the web massively better.
I remember happily putting Firefox and Chrome mini-banners (what are they called? Those little rectangular images) on my website, for free, because I recommended it.
The one you're using every day filled with web apps that runsl securely without you dowloading sketchy binaries or being locked into walled garden app stores.
For anyone working in the web area during the old IE days will know, not having to have a dedicated css and js for each browser type was a gamechanger.
Chrome's introduction, albeit through smoother, lighter browser experience at the time, pushed other browsers to standardize to google.
In one way it's bad to have a homogenous approach to all things web based, but in another way it did make the internet a better experience overall.
In the horror days of IE, I remember having to look up some DirectX filter to properly display PNG images with transparency. It was that bad, and that’s one example of 1000.
Some libraries/scripts helped normalise things a little, but never enough. Yuck.
It's exhausting having such reflexive thoughtless ragging anytime Chrome is mentioned.
Oh no! Chrome is trying to enhance user agency again! Oh no! Chrome is trying to make the web better for end users!
Mozilla's concerns aren't totally bogus, I'm not going to try to laugh them out of the room. But their pearl clutching & belly-aching about "oh no what if not all implementations of ai prompts work exactly the same" feels fucking tired and weak sauce to me.
This post really doesn't deserve our attention, my my view. But I'd challenge the haters to at least try to connect their reflexive hate meaningfully to what the topic at hand actually is, to provide something worth considering in some way. But that I think asks too much, for what posts like this seek: merely to inflame the world.
It's not pearl clutching to suggest that websites will build around quirks of a specific model and then we'll be stuck with it forever. This is an issue for future Google as much as it is for Mozilla and Apple.
We had WebSQL which defactor relied on a specific DB implementation, sqlite, and I suspect it also essentially couldn't be updated because people relied on the quirks of a specific version of sqlite.
Oh no, Chrome is adding something that shouldn't be in the browser in the first place.
Oh no, Chrome is adding Googles own AI as only possibilty what surely doesn't hinder competition.
Maybe you shouldn't reflexivly defend Chrome when they clearly abuse their market leading position to push their own AI.
If every browser vendor already has their experimental APIs that can work with different models, it might be a good idea to standardize this in WhatWG living standards (which would still be bad user experience on today's consumer hardware)
But if no browser other than Chrome supports this, and only Google's (proprietary) model (edit: plus Microsoft's Phi-4 mini in Edge), it should be clear it's Google abusing its position. There is nothing worth standardizing.
And we have seen that too many times -- FLoC/Privacy Sandbox/Topics API, Web Environment Integrity just to name a few. Google has been relentless in using its dominant position to push terrible ideas that harm both users and other browser vendors but help only Google's business.
When I posted this, I linked to the latest statement https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1213#i..., which is the content relevant to the title (the details of our opposition to the API). Unfortunately someone removed the link to the specific post.
^ didnt realize who posted the opposition - this is Jake Archibald, a longtime googler on the Chrome team, now joining Mozilla and posting opposition to the Chrome API. no wonder the criticism is so well argued. most be a relief to not have to toe the party line on this one.
Aww thanks! To be fair I didn't toe the party line when I was at Google (imo). Although, that caused me increasing amount of grief internally, until I left. From what I hear, things have gotten exponentially worse in that regard for folks still on the team.
Hey, Jake, not related with your post, but I just want to say that HTTP203 were one of the best web dev content that I've ever consumed. Amazing mix between humour and tech discussion. Thank you!
Aww thanks for saying that! I've been doing little videos on https://www.youtube.com/@FirefoxWebDevs (and accounts of the same name, pretty much everywhere). Although they're designed to be short, so they're pretty different to HTTP203.
The nice thing about open protocols is that we don't have to endorse or use one implementation over another, yet, somehow, the browser monopoly continues to be a standing dilemma.
There are nice projects, like ungoogled chromium, tor, and many more, but I find the biggest issue is that there isn't a voice out there for the average person and a project that connects with the masses.
I think another issue is that a lot of the uninformed users have a strong apathy for the causes and ways the message is delivered, they rather engage and connect with things that are "fun" and want less friction rather than freedom and control.
How do we solve this? How do we make the browser ours, by the people, and for the people?
Sorry, I'm just sad whenever I think of this.
[delayed]
> How do we solve this? How do we make the browser ours, by the people, and for the people?
Simple. Break up all the big tech corporations via anti-trust legislation. They are the robber barons of our time.
> How do we solve this? How do we make the browser ours, by the people, and for the people?
Unfortunately, the answer is pretty much always "real public funding"
I wonder if this is a generational thing of fresh young people that already cannot live without LLMs versus crusty old people that don’t want to require a super computer just to run a web browser that violates all their privacy.
To me this sounds like the point where people start looking at and developing alternatives to the browser/web.
This isn’t Mozilla taking a stance against AI.
It’s them articulating clear and logical reasons why the proposed API, in its current state, is bad for web interoperability.
Did they propose a specific alternative (non-extension) API?
Why would they? This is an issue put up on the "standards-position" repo. They requested a position on a proposed standard, and Mozilla gave it.
No, that’s not how this process usually happens.
Why would they need to?
I think the objection here is unrelated to the love or hate of LLMs. It's about the viability of this particular proposed open web API.
I personally use LLMs for coding assistance, and some home automation stuff, but I do not think this particular API is good for the web.
Meaning you do not want text generation in the web API at all, or you think the prompt API needs to be different? And if so can you give one sentence on how it should change?
https://github.com/runvnc/tersenet
If you glance at that then you may see that I am for the idea of leaner alternatives to the current web platform.
But in the context of the existing web API which has just about everything and the whole kitchen sink in it (hundreds of sub-APIs), I do not think it will really help anyone at this point just just stop adding features, especially major ones.
The web is basically an overlay operating system and has been for many years.
IME young people mostly hate AI.
Young people love AI when it helps them cheat homework, or when used for roleplay and memes. Generating "content" with AI - is generally more hated, especially art and video.
Sounds hypocritical.
I hate knives cause they kill people, but I love my kitchen knife when I make dinner.
The young kids I know who are into tech love AI. Albeit this is from a small sample size.
Funnily enough, most of the young people I know fall somewhere between those two sides of the spectrum.
I know some actual luddite-tier AI haters that believe it's ontologically evil, and another majoring in Data Science that went to the most recent career fair and told a recruiter "AI will replace you" (I uh don't think he's getting that internship)
And of course many, many, others that fall between the two extremes.
The one thing we can all agree on, is it makes homework a hell of a lot easier :) (well, except the luddite-types, they refuse to use it in any capacity)
I'm a member of a political action committee, where I was brought in as an expert in professional media applications of AI. I've got extensive experience using AI tools in the production of well known entertainment properties (think VFX for film and animation.) Anyway, within the political action committee where is a diverse mixture of people, with about 1/5th of them under age 30. The entire under age 30 set are so AI negative, to such an irrational degree, I have been asked to do nothing and offer no advice that incorporates any technology at all. They are so paranoid. In a not really emotional discussion, a bunch of them erupted in tears, they are so irrational about it.
The biggest irony with telling a recruiter they'll be replaced, is how much easier a data scientist is to replace with LLMs. With their sycophantic nature, execs will eat up whatever "data" the LLMs make up, too.
No, you don't understand. LLMs will never be capable of knowing what questions to ask, only how to ask the questions. /s
Do they really? Hating on AI slop is a common sentiment on social media, but remember that the opinions you see on social media are often not representative of what the general population thinks at all.
I keep hearing stories about how homework is now useless because every student just gets ChatGPT to do it for them, and from personal experience, I'm inclined to believe them.
> every student just gets ChatGPT to do it
I don't believe every student uses a calculator to solve their math homework, so what makes ChatGPT unique here? For certain subjects the ability to cheat has been trivial for a long time, yet there was no crisis.
> that don’t want to require a super computer just to run a web browser that violates all their privacy.
That shipped sailed in 2008.
> Browsers and operating systems are increasingly expected to gain access to language models.[0]
Are they?
[0] https://github.com/webmachinelearning/prompt-api/blob/main/R...
I think this is the wrong way. I don’t want my OS or browser to have access to an LLM, but I do want my LLM to have access to a browser or OS (and they already have).
So they should provide an interface to LLMs, disabled by default, enabled when users want it, and that’s it imho.
That also gives me the choice of which LLM provider to use, rather than being locked in whatever LLM Apple decided to do put in their OS.
I want to give Claude access to the stuff Apple Intelligence has access to, for example.
Sure. macOS, iOS and Windows have local model APIs for third-party devs. Chrome is trialing it. Firefox uses models to generate alt-text, but no API.
In theory it's useful. If devs can rely on local models, it's more private and decentralized, they don't need to funnel money to AWS or Anthropic. There are low-stakes use cases that only make sense if they're local (available offline) and free.
But in practice I've seen zero adoption of Apple Foundation Models in native apps. I wonder if any Mac/iOS devs have anything to share on this.
In practice it’s useful too. The local translation in Firefox is quite good, and I love that I can translate pages entirely on my machine; without the contents going to another server.
As for Apple foundational models, I think the issue is more that they’re just not very intelligent or good; maybe WWDC will change that; but if you want to implement LLM functionality, you’re better off either calling an API, or shipping a better small on device model.
Those exact words are the positioning statement (start the second paragraph) of the document you linked.
What are you trying to say?
Their whole argument is based on this sentence. So I'd expect some rationale. Instead, they provide as "example" links to Google, Microsoft and Apple. The funny thing is that the one by MS is probably the most criticized one, with the company partly backpedaling on it. And Apple is often criticized by LLM aficionados for being quite conservative. Google is the one proposing it.
So my question is: are browsers and operating systems really expected to gain access to language models? If so - by whom: the users or LLM vendors like Google?
That “are expected” is a euphemism for “are shoehorning AI in and trying to shove it down users’ throats”. Whereas the truth is nobody (actual end users, that is) wants it.
I hate having to “dodge” all the AI-enabled controls my phone (iOS) is sprouting - I don’t need that shit, but there’s also no alternative.
> What are you trying to say?
GP is clearly asking ”Are they?”
It's the typical "cart before the horse" kind of corporate tech talk. It's pretty standard if Silicon Valley wants to sell shit that nobody actually wants; they just assume that people will want it, regardless whether or not they actually want it. Most of the tech press is too obsessed with retaining their "access" to actually be critical of this sort of thing, and most of the regular press doesn't care enough to actually investigate.
We've seen this sort of song and dance before, crypto jumps to mind. Remember when social media sites suddenly were all about those hexagonal avatars? Most of this stuff is really in that same vein.
(Which to be clear, users don't want this. AI pushes by pretty much all recent user feedback metrics are largely tiring out users and reek of corporate desperation to sell shit. It's only a very specific subsection of Silicon Valley that wants to stuff AI in everything like this.)
I think the resentment for Copilot is pretty much universal. People like AI, when it’s not forced upon them.
A lot of these products feel unguided by an “everything must become AI” FOMO movement, rather than actual thoughtful integrations.
Browsers: Chrome (proposed this Prompt API)
Operating Systems: Windows (built-in Copilot), MacOS, iOS (Apple Intelligence)
So it's >90% desktop browser and OS, plus >30% mobile OS.
Yes, I think it's very safe to say "browsers and operating systems are increasingly expected to gain access to language models."
The word "expected" is a weasel word in this context, especially given how muck backlash MS has received. I'd expect a link to a study where users say: "I'd like to have an LLM integrated with my operating system and my browser" and how it changes over time. Then you can seriously argue for "increasingly expected".
These features are enabled by default, and in the case of iOS/macOS, desktop Chrome, probably also Copilot+ PCs, download 4 - 7 GB local models without properly explaining this to users. This doesn’t confirm any demand because if you just don’t use the features and don’t fill up your device, you may never notice.
I think this API is probably fine, but only if the user already has a model downloaded and wants these features. Naturally, case in point, Chrome quietly downloads Gemini Nano without any opt-out except through group policy. Things like this and Microsoft’s recent admission that they’ve overindexed on Copilot features in Windows make it increasingly difficult to trust that users actually want more than a few killer AI features, most of which are just ChatGPT.
Anecdotally, non-technical friends and family members know about ChatGPT and increasingly Gemini, get frustrated by Copilot, and don’t know Apple Intelligence exists.
https://superuser.com/questions/1930445/can-i-delete-the-chr...
You omitted the clause "by shareholders" after "expected".
What this proves is that browsers and operating systems are increasingly integrating language models, not that they are expected to do so.
The only people who expect them to do so are big tech executives. The average user does not expect nor want Copilot shoved into every possible corner of Windows, and Microsoft themselves have acknowledged this.
This seems like that infamous <marquee> tag [0] to me that felt good and amazing at the time but later turned out not to be a good idea.
[0]. https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/HTML/Reference/...
did the marquee prove to be a bad idea?
I think it was subsumed by later developments (javascript), but the issue with it AFAIR was just that it wasn't useable in all browsers, not that the tag per se was a bad idea (as much as scrolling text can be).
The situation with the model api seems different, more like the AMP spec.
> According to Chrome's documentation, to use the prompt API you must 'acknowledge' Google's Generative AI Prohibited Uses Policy. Elements of this policy go beyond law. For example:
>> Do not engage … generating or distributing content that facilitates … Sexually explicit content Do not engage in misinformation, misrepresentation, or misleading activities. This includes … Facilitating misleading claims related to governmental or democratic processes
> This seems like a bad direction for an API on the web platform, and sets a worrying precedent for more APIs that have UA-specific rules around usage.
I will say this more strongly—I think it is completely insane, and a violation of free expression principles, for a browser API to have content restrictions.
Agreed. Maybe Google will propose a CSS text formatting property that cannot be used on paragraphs that are critical of the US administration.
Like, that sounds daft, but it's not really far from what they're doing here.
Why is Google doing this? They would need to moderate the use of the API, right? What they could gain having to moderate use of a browser's API?
Extremely glad to see Mozilla taking a stance here.
28th of april 2025, isn't this before mozilla added lots of AI feature in their browser?
The objection is not anti-AI. It’s anti this specific API, for nuanced web compatibility reasons.
This is the specific position posted today/yesterday: https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1213#i...
features that are opt in are ok. anti features that are opt out is not ok
Sigh, when I posted this, I linked to https://github.com/mozilla/standards-positions/issues/1213#i... (which was posted 11 hours ago). Unfortunately someone changed the link.
I wonder if it makes sense for browser vendors to agree upon and ship various ‘standard models’ that are released into the public domain or something, and the API lets you pick between them.
The models themselves would be standardized and the weights and everything should be identical between browsers. They’d be standard and ‘web-safe’ like CSS colors or fonts. Probably would help to give them really boring/unbranded names too. These would work identically across browsers and web developers can rely on them existing on modern setups.
If you want more models, you could install them as a user or your browser could ship them or the web developers could bundle them through a CDN (and another standard for shared big files across domains would probably be needed)
It doesn't make sense at all. So as a user how do you choose which model to use? There could be 3824 models to choose from. The browser might as well set one as default, and we all know how that goes (see: search engine).
Not to mention many other UX questions the come with this, most importantly, how unusable these local models are on regular 3-year old laptops that are constrained in RAM, GPU/CPU capability and likely disk space despite what enthusiasts say here. (They have a Macbook Pro with 32+GB of RAM, reports it works great with xyz model -- fine -- but somehow thinks it works for everyone and local models are the future.)
The Chrome model requires either "16 GB of RAM or more and 4 CPU cores or more" or "Strictly more than 4 GB of VRAM", and "22 GB of free space" (it uses around 4.4GB but it doesn't want to use the remaining free space).
The model is pretty slow on my M4 Pro mac.
The API allows the browser to use a cloud service instead, but then privacy is lower. So, more privacy for the rich.
> It doesn't make sense at all. So as a user how do you choose which model to use? There could be 3824 models to choose from. The browser might as well set one as default, and we all know how that goes (see: search engine).
...what's the exact problem here? Believe it or not, most non-tech-savvy users use the search engine just fine.
With regards to search engines, Google paid billions of dollars [0] to become the default on major browsers. I guess GP's implying that something similar might happen with LLMs.
[0] https://www.reuters.com/technology/google-paid-26-bln-be-def...
The rate of model development is an issue here. Once there are many cross-origin models, it becomes a fingerprinting vector. Also even the small models are many GBs.
Browsers do not need to force LLMs on their users.
> This will result in Mozilla and Apple having to licence Google's model, or ship a model that's quirks-compatible with the Google model in order to be interoperable. It may also become difficult for Chrome to update its own model for the same reasons.
Google is again doing Evil.
I am very annoyed that Google kind of de-facto controls the www (through chrome, let's be honest here).
We really need to change this. I don't have a good solution here, but it can not continue that way.
> We really need to change this. I don't have a good solution here, but it can not continue that way.
Advocacy (against chromium and its forks) is one way.
Chrome is not that good anymore compared to other browsers. I switched long time ago and if the doesn't work with basic features I just leave the site out instead of letting it use chrome to control me
Lina Khan's FTC sought to break Google into multiple companies, leaving Chrome alone. Alas, Google escaped unscathed.
Only have yourselves to blame. Chrome made the internet better but everyone put their fingers in their ears about it getting worse at the same time.
Which Internet did make better?
You remember the IE days right?
Being a web developer was not fun; and the web was absolutely being held back. Chrome did a lot of things right: per-origin sandboxing, properly implementing web standards, V8, developer tools, and back then Chromium was super close to Chrome.
Do I think Chrome is a net-negative for the web over the past ~3-5 years? Yes, especially with manifest v3, “privacy sandbox”, and them basically forcing through web APIs because they have the dominant marketshare.
But early Chrome was a technologically impressive and user-friendly browser that really did make the web massively better.
I remember happily putting Firefox and Chrome mini-banners (what are they called? Those little rectangular images) on my website, for free, because I recommended it.
The one you're using every day filled with web apps that runsl securely without you dowloading sketchy binaries or being locked into walled garden app stores.
For anyone working in the web area during the old IE days will know, not having to have a dedicated css and js for each browser type was a gamechanger.
Chrome's introduction, albeit through smoother, lighter browser experience at the time, pushed other browsers to standardize to google.
In one way it's bad to have a homogenous approach to all things web based, but in another way it did make the internet a better experience overall.
In the horror days of IE, I remember having to look up some DirectX filter to properly display PNG images with transparency. It was that bad, and that’s one example of 1000.
Some libraries/scripts helped normalise things a little, but never enough. Yuck.
Both, actually. It did make some parts of the Internet better, and some other worse.
So the next anti trust case for the EU. Chrome is clearly dominating the browser market and now they try to abuse that (again)
It's exhausting having such reflexive thoughtless ragging anytime Chrome is mentioned.
Oh no! Chrome is trying to enhance user agency again! Oh no! Chrome is trying to make the web better for end users!
Mozilla's concerns aren't totally bogus, I'm not going to try to laugh them out of the room. But their pearl clutching & belly-aching about "oh no what if not all implementations of ai prompts work exactly the same" feels fucking tired and weak sauce to me.
This post really doesn't deserve our attention, my my view. But I'd challenge the haters to at least try to connect their reflexive hate meaningfully to what the topic at hand actually is, to provide something worth considering in some way. But that I think asks too much, for what posts like this seek: merely to inflame the world.
Can you please explain how the hell AI slop is going to "enhance user agency" or "make the web better"?
It's not pearl clutching to suggest that websites will build around quirks of a specific model and then we'll be stuck with it forever. This is an issue for future Google as much as it is for Mozilla and Apple.
We had WebSQL which defactor relied on a specific DB implementation, sqlite, and I suspect it also essentially couldn't be updated because people relied on the quirks of a specific version of sqlite.
Oh no, Chrome is adding something that shouldn't be in the browser in the first place. Oh no, Chrome is adding Googles own AI as only possibilty what surely doesn't hinder competition.
Maybe you shouldn't reflexivly defend Chrome when they clearly abuse their market leading position to push their own AI.
If every browser vendor already has their experimental APIs that can work with different models, it might be a good idea to standardize this in WhatWG living standards (which would still be bad user experience on today's consumer hardware)
But if no browser other than Chrome supports this, and only Google's (proprietary) model (edit: plus Microsoft's Phi-4 mini in Edge), it should be clear it's Google abusing its position. There is nothing worth standardizing.
And we have seen that too many times -- FLoC/Privacy Sandbox/Topics API, Web Environment Integrity just to name a few. Google has been relentless in using its dominant position to push terrible ideas that harm both users and other browser vendors but help only Google's business.
Surprised this did not really come up in previous discussion in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47917026
PS: looks like Google's fanboys have arrived. Someone better finds good counterarguments, especially technical ones, instead of just downvoting.