Tag: mozilla

Mozilla announced today that it is shutting down two of its services: Pocket, a long-standing bookmarking and reading service, and Fakespot, a recent acquisition, that can detect fake reviews of products online.

Pocket

Pocket started out as an independent “read it later” service back in 2007. It allowed users to save bookmarks to web resources to keep track of everything from a central location. Mozilla acquired Pocket in 2017 and integrated it in Firefox.

Pocket users have until October 8, 2025 to export their data. The service will enter export-only mode on July 8, 2025 and you may use the service normally until then. All user data will be deleted permanently after October 8. The Pocket extension and mobile apps will also be shut down.

Why is Mozilla shutting down Pocket? Mozilla says that “the way people use the web has evolved” and that it made the decision to channel its resources “into projects that better match” the browsing habits and online needs of this evolved user type.

Paying subscribers will get a partial refund that is based on the time left in a subscription after July 8.

You can check out this support article for details.

Fakespot

The second service that is axed is Fakespot. It started out as an independent service to distinguish fake reviews and ratings of products online from legitimate ones.

Mozilla acquired Fakespot in 2023 and integrated Review Checker into Firefox. This tool is shutting down on June 10th, 2025.

Closing Words

I have to admit that I never warmed to Pocket. While I tried the service, especially in the early days, I never found it particularly useful for my use cases. I know users who have used it for over a decade.

Some were disappointed by some of the decisions that Mozilla made regarding Pocket. Search, for example, some said, got a whole lot worse years ago making Pocket less of a useful tool in the process.

Mozilla does not say, but it is probably throwing dead weight over the board to become leaner and be better prepared for the potential Google breakup and end of the search deal with Google.

Orbit by Mozilla is a browser extension that brings AI-functionality to Firefox. It was announced in September 2024 and is currently available as a beta.

Orbit supports a few options right now, but there are also limitations. As far as these are concerned, it is available only for pages in English at the time of writing.

Main features include:

• Getting a quick summary of a webpage’s or a video’s content.
• Interact with the AI in a chat-like interface.

What about privacy?

Mozilla says that Orbit does not use user data for training. It is based on Mistral 7B, which is one of the top small large language models out there.

The service does not require an account, which is good for privacy. Downside is that prompts are lost when you navigate away from a page.

Mozilla states in the privacy policy that is is getting information when the service is used.

We receive basic telemetry data by default, which we use to improve the performance, stability, and security of the Service, including information about your device, including hardware configuration and device operating system; browser information, such as browser type and settings; log files and usage data; and event information, such as errors or crashes. We may also receive additional information about your device, such as country, language, operator and OEM, which we use to prevent fraud and abuse, enforce our terms, and improve the security of the Service.

Orbit uses third-party services and shares some information with those. It uses the Google Cloud Platform as well as Sentry for application performance monitoring.

Using Orbit

First thing you do is install Orbit in Firefox. You get a privacy prompt after installation. Here you select whether you want basic telemetry to be shared only or more.

Once that is out of the way, you see the Orbit icon floating in the right corner of webpages. Hover over the icon to display the available actions. The top two, Summarize and Ask Orbit, are the main actions.

Summarize provides a short summary of webpages, emails, videos, and other content on a specific site. It is designed to return the essence of the page, but it may be too basic, especially on longer pages, emails, or videos.

The ask Orbit option is available as a standalone option and also after summaries. It works like other AI chat tools. Type a query and wait for the AI to respond.

The option works well with summaries. Start with a summary and then ask Orbit for additional details.

I tried this on several videos, and it worked really well (using transcripts). Orbit answers follow-up questions that you may have, and it worked surprisingly well in tests.

You may also chat directly with Orbit. Chats are limited to content on the active webpage. This limits Orbit.

Closing Words

Orbit, all in all, is an interesting helper extension. While it shares issues with every other AI-tool out there, mainly hallucinations, it is designed to help users make sense of content that they see in front of them.

It worked well with videos, especially with follow-up questions. Still, it may be necessary to verify the information that the AI provides, especially if it is critical.

Have you tried AI tools in recent time? If so, which is your favorite and why?