I want the people who make Firefox to make decisions about Firefox based on what users have been asking for instead of based on what a CEO of a for-profit decides is still not going to make them any money, just like every other plan that got pitched in the last 10 years that failed to turn their losing streak around.
It's not a knee-jerk reaction to "AI", it's a perfectly reasonable reaction to Mozilla yet again saying they're going to do something that the user base doesn't work, won't regain them marketshare, and that's going to take tens of thousands of dev hours away from working on all the things that would make Firefox a better browser, rather than a marginally less nonprofitable product.
While I do sympathize with the thought behind it, general user is already equating llm chat box as 'better browsing'. In terms of simple positioning vis-a-vis non-technical audience, this is one integration that does make fiscal sense.. if mozilla was a real business.
Now, personally, I would like to have sane defaults, where I can toggle stuff on and off, but we all know which way the wind blows in this case.
Firefox is not for general users, which is the problem that Mozilla's for a literal decade now. There is no way to make it better than Chrome or Safari (because it has to be better for every day users to switch, not just "as good" or even "way more configurable but slightly worse". It has to be appreciably better).
So the only user base is the power user. And then yes: sane defaults, and a way to turn things on and off. And functionality that makes power users tell their power user friends to give FF a try again. Because if you can't even do that, Firefox firmly deserves (and right now, it does) it's "we don't even really rank" position in the browser market.
The way to make Firefox better is by not doing the things that are making the other browsers worse. Ads and privacy are an example of areas where Chrome is clearly getting worse.
LLM integration... is arguable. Maybe it'll make Chrome worse, maybe not. Clunky and obtrusive integration certainly will.
I find that hard to believe, every general/average user I have spoken to does not use AI for anything in their daily lives and have either not tried it at all or only played with it a bit a few years ago when it first came out.
The problem with integrating a chat bot is that what you are effectively doing is the same thing as adding a single bookmark, except now it's taking up extra space.
There IS no advantage here, it's unnecessary bloat.
It's not a knee-jerk reaction to "AI", it's a perfectly reasonable reaction to Mozilla yet again saying they're going to do something that the user base doesn't work, won't regain them marketshare, and that's going to take tens of thousands of dev hours away from working on all the things that would make Firefox a better browser, rather than a marginally less nonprofitable product.