Mozilla is concerned that Google’s efforts to build Gemini into its Chrome browser will make it even more difficult for rivals to compete with the search and ads giant.
The Firefox maker last week voiced opposition to Google’s plans to add AI-based APIs to Chrome, though Google has already expressed its intention to ship some of these features.
Google has proposed a set of application programming interfaces (APIs) that allow web developers to write web applications or browser extensions that call a local version of Google’s Gemini Nano model, which users can download and run in the browser on supported desktop and laptop machines.
Google has already made some of these AI-based APIs available and continues work on others. The APIs include:
Mozillans, along with other interested parties, have been mulling Google’s plans in web community discussions since the proposals started showing up last year. But Mozilla’s position shifted from “wait-and-see” to negative last week after discussions with Google developers failed to alter the Chrome team’s plans.
Google’s decision to base these APIs on Gemini Nano in Chrome means that developers will create apps based on Gemini’s behavior, Mozilla believes. Since those apps might behave differently in a different browser that used the same APIs with a different model, web developers would be likely to prefer Chrome with Gemini.
Brian Grinstead, senior principal engineer at Mozilla, has articulated his company’s position in a series of posts about the Writing Assistance APIs.
Baking Gemini into Chrome isn’t just a minor technical detail, he said in a post two weeks ago. The browser’s choice of AI model has the potential to make the user experience worse in Firefox and other browsers, as he pointed out in an example.
“We could try to work around this by shipping Chrome’s built-in model in Firefox, but that’s not how the web platform is meant to work and it points to a broader set of concerns about market competition.”
Grinstead argued web developers should be able to choose whatever AI model suits their application. Google, he contends, should not be picking favorites.
There is precedent for Mozilla’s concerns. Differences in browser behavior have led websites to recommend specific browsers – such as Microsoft Explorer in the 1990s or more recently Chrome – because its easier for site owners to request use of a single browser than to code for the different ways browsers present a page.
Also, Mozilla isn’t keen to see Google using its Chrome browser market share dominance to achieve a distribution advantage in the emerging market for AI models.
It’s worth noting that Google could lose control of Chrome if the judge mulling remedies for Google’s search monopoly decides on browser divestment, a scenario that could also compromise the revenue Mozilla gets from Google through its Firefox search deal.
Google has pushed back against Grinstead’s argument. Domenic Denicola, a software engineer at the search monopolist, argues that the company isn’t trying to pick winners and asked Grinstead to provide examples of the purported effort to link Gemini to Chrome, which Grinstead did. Nonetheless, Denicola expresses optimism that stakeholders will iron out various implementation concerns.
Either way, the merger of browser and AI complicates the browser market and the workings of the web ecosystem. Google’s AI Overviews and AI Mode, for example, are said to be diverting web traffic from news sites, and the rise of chatbot interfaces like ChatGPT means some queries that might have been handled by web search engines are now answered without a browser at all.
In a recent interview, Firefox SVP Anthony Enzor-DeMeo told The Register he sees the browser wars being re-fought with regard to AI.
“I think Mozilla’s mission in terms of privacy and choice is going to be even more important when it comes to AI,” he said. “What I worry a bit about is you’ll have less choice, if everything’s kind of controlled by one entity.”
Enzor-DeMeo said he’s still exploring how Firefox will interoperate with AI, but he is looking closely at local models that can be stored on-device and don’t transmit information to the cloud.
“I don’t think AI is a fad,” he said, though he believes people will use it to different degrees. “You’re going to have a lot of people who want to do assisted things and then you’ll have skeptics that don’t want to interact with it at all. I think the challenge for browsers is going to be, where do you want to play in that?” ®
