The Mozilla Graveyard

Some tech companies are more notable than others for shutting down products and services, with Google as perhaps the most recognizable example. Mozilla, the company behind the Firefox web browser, has also accumulated quite the collection of dead projects. I think it's about time we take a trip through the Mozilla Graveyard.

Mozilla has existed as an independent entity since 1998, when it was founded by members of Netscape to take over development of Netscape Communicator's engine code. The Mozilla Application Suite was born shortly afterward, which eventually evolved into the standalone Firefox web browser, and the rest is history.

Mozilla has pulled off a few big successes over the past 26 years, but there were also a lot of projects that didn't work out. Some of them were small-scale experiments, while others were high-profile services and platforms with a lot of time and money involved. A few were being built as possible revenue streams for Mozilla, which could have helped the company rely less on Google (and previously Yahoo) to cover the operating costs for Firefox. That's something Mozilla still hasn't quite figured out, though I really wish it would, because I like Firefox.

Some quick notes before we get started. This is not an exhaustive list—I stopped at 20 projects—and some of them were referenced as experiments that were not intended to be long-term efforts. There are also a few projects that died under Mozilla but found new life elsewhere, and I'm still going to count them as Mozilla Graveyard entries. Don't "well akshually" me.

Persona (2011-2014)

Mozilla introduced BrowserID as a unified sign-in experience for third-party websites, intended as an alternative to the login buttons for Google, Twitter, and Facebook that were common across the web. Mozilla planned for it to be a core component of Firefox OS and the Firefox OS app store, and it was eventually rebranded as Persona. It was discontinued in March 2014 due to low usage.

Firefox Marketplace (2012-2018)

Mozilla created the Firefox Marketplace in 2012 as an "app store" for installable web apps that worked across Firefox for Android, the desktop Firefox web browser, and phones running Firefox OS. It was similar to the original Chrome Web Store, back when it included installable web apps in addition to browser extensions.

After work on Firefox OS ended in 2015, there wasn't much of a point in it sticking around. Mozilla promised it would remain functional until at least January 2018, and it was eventually shut down in March of that year.

Thimble (2012-2019)

Thimble was an online code editor for teaching HTML, CSS, and JavaScript basics, initially released in 2012. Mozilla reworked it in 2015, based on Adobe's open-source Brackets project. It was shut down in 2019, though Mozilla allowed Thimble projects to be migrated to Glitch, and the source code is still available.

Shumway (2012-2016)

Mozilla created Shumway in 2012 as an open-source replacement for Adobe Flash Player. The goal was to allow Flash-based media and interactive content—which still dominated the web at the time—to be functional without the slow, proprietary, and bug-ridden Adobe Flash Player. It was eventually integrated into Firefox Nightly, but it was seemingly never enabled in the stable builds of Firefox.

Development on Shumway ended in 2016, as more web pages were phasing out the use of Flash content in favor of HTML5, making Shumway and other similar projects only useful for archived web content. The source code is still on GitHub.

Firefox Metro (2012-2014)

Firefox Metro was a web browser redesigned for Windows 8 and its 'Metro' application framework, first released as a preview in 2012. It could synchronize with the regular desktop Firefox application, and supported the charm bar, touch gestures, and data sharing built into Windows 8.

Mozilla gave up on the Metro app in 2014, as the preview version never passed 1,000 daily active users. Windows 8's Metro design and connected app ecosystem were generally not well received, and Microsoft ended up backtracking much of it with the arrival of Windows 8.1 and Windows 10, so the failure of Firefox's Metro port was hardly an anomaly.

Mozilla's Servo (2012-2020)

Servo is an experimental browser engine, written in the Rust programming language for fast performance and safety. It started as a research project at Mozilla in 2012, and elements of it were integrated into Firefox's Gecko engine, starting with the release of Firefox 57 "Quantum" in 2017. The Servo-based code made Firefox twice as fast in web performance benchmarks, and generally helped the browser catch up with Chrome in general performance and usability.

Mozilla laid off 250 employees in August 2020, which included "many of the Servo folks," according to a statement by the Rust core team. The Servo project was transferred to the Linux Foundation later that year, and in 2023, new external funding allowed development to kick off again. It's still under active development and has a promising future, but its existence as a Mozilla project ended in 2020.

Firefox OS (2013-2015)

Firefox OS was an open-source mobile operating system, originally intended for use on low-end smartphones. It was moderately successful, and had expanded to 14 phones in 28 countries by the end of 2014. Unfortunately, later versions of Google Android with optimizations for low-end hardware sealed its fate.

I have some fond memories of Firefox OS. I bought a ZTE Open in the bright orange color, pictured above, and I published a few apps on the Firefox Marketplace, including the task planner app Planr. I also had Android, Firefox OS, and Ubuntu Touch triple-booting at one point on my Nexus 5.

Development ended in 2015, and it was later forked to create KaiOS, which is currently used on many feature phones from Nokia, HMD, Alcatel, Reliance, and other manufacturers.

Firefox Launcher (2014)

The Firefox Launcher was announced as a home screen launcher for Android phones, developed in collaboration with Israeli contextual computing startup EverythingMe. Mozilla and EverythingMe were already working on contextual features for Firefox OS, and the Android launcher had some of the same functionality.

It was supposed to recommend different apps on the home screen depending on your usage and location, and there were plans for sponsored app placements. Facebook was trying a similar project at the time, called Facebook Home.

As far as I can tell, Firefox Launcher was never publicly released. It was similar to EverythingMe's own launcher app, which was real, but then shut down in 2015 as the company ran out of money.

Mozilla WebThings (2017-2020)

Mozilla announced a software and hardware framework for Internet of Things (IoT) devices in 2017, called Project Things, which included a standardized data model and API for device communication over the web. Mozilla hoped it would be a "unifying horizontal application layer to bridge together multiple underlying IoT protocols," and it was being developed in collaboration with the W3C, IETF, and other industry groups.

Mozilla continued working on the project, and released a version of the Things Gateway software in 2018 for the Raspberry Pi and other similar devices. It eventually evolved into Mozilla WebThings, and in 2020 it was spun off as an independent open source project. Mozilla shut down its remote gateway services at the end of 2020, but WebThings still exists with relatively active development.

Firefox for Echo Show (2018-2021)

Mozilla created a version of Firefox for Amazon's Echo Show smart displays, primarily for watching YouTube videos, but also usable for general web browsing. It was released in August 2018, and discontinued in April 2021.

Firefox Lite (2017-2021)

Mozilla released Firefox Rocket in 2017 as a lightweight Android web browser. The initial release had a smaller download size than the full-featured Firefox app, a 'turbo mode' for blocking ads and trackers to save mobile data, and the option to use an SD card for cache and downloads. The best part was the modified Firefox icon in the GitHub repository, with Doge holding a rocket. Sadly, that didn't end up as the official icon.

It was later rebranded to Firefox Lite, and then was discontinued in 2021, following performance improvements rolling out to the regular Firefox browser. It's pretty funny that Mozilla added a travel planning feature to Firefox Lite in February 2020—just in time for the COVID-19 pandemic to shut down international travel for months.

Firefox for Fire TV (2017-2021)

Mozilla released Firefox for Amazon's Fire TV and Fire TV Stick in 2017, developed in collaboration with Amazon. It was primarily made for watching YouTube videos and other web media content that didn't have dedicated Fire TV applications.

When Amazon and Google ended a long-running dispute in 2019, and the official YouTube app returned to Fire TV, the Firefox browser didn't have much of a reason to stick around. It was discontinued in April 2021.

Firefox Advance (2018-2019)

Advance was a Firefox extension that analyzed the user's web history and provided suggestions about what to read next. Mozilla explained in a blog post, "For example, you’re just browsing the internet, and come across a page with a list of the hottest restaurants. Advance starts to recommend similar content around the most popular restaurants so that you can start comparing without having to do all the research on your own." The Advance browser extension was shut down in 2019, along with all other Firefox Test Pilot experiments.

Mozilla Hubs (2018-2024)

Hubs was first shown off as a preview in April 2018, as a basic web social platform where people could meet and talk in virtual 3D spaces on mobile, desktop, and virtual reality. Mozilla continued adding features like more environments and avatars, and in 2022 a subscription tier was introduced for virtual classrooms, events, meetings, and other similar use cases. Mozilla even acquired Vancouver-based startup Active Replica in 2022 to help work on Hubs.

Mozilla said in 2024 that "demand has moved away from 3D virtual worlds," and work on it ended after a round of layoffs at Mozilla. The project was transferred to the Hubs Foundation, where development remains active.

Firefox Reality (2018-2024)

Firefox Reality was a modified version of Firefox designed to run on VR headsets, available on Viveport, Oculus, Pico, and HoloLens platforms. It could function as a regular 2D web browser application in virtual environments, but could also display 3D web content and VR web apps. Firefox Reality was discontinued and removed from app stores in 2022, with Mozilla pointing users to Igalia's Wolvic browser as a direct successor (which used some Firefox Reality code).

Firefox Notes (2017-2020)

Notes was a Firefox extension, initially released in 2017, that allowed users to save notes that would sync with encryption across all their devices. It was rolled out to the mobile Firefox browser in 2018.

Mozilla shut down the Notes service in 2020, saying it was meant as an experiment for synchronizing encrypted data. The source code is still available on GitHub.

Firefox Send (2019-2020)

Send was a web service that allowed users to upload files with encryption, and share them as links for other people to download. Mozilla shut it down in mid-2020, as it was increasingly used to distribute malware, and decided in September 2020 not to bring it back.

Mozilla's Thunderbird team announced in August 2023 that it was working on reviving the project, and it was mentioned again in Thunderbird's 2023-2204 annual report, but nothing has been released as of September 2024. The source code for Firefox Send is still available, and it's accessible through various independent instances.

Firefox Private Network (2019-2023)

Firefox Private Network was a VPN built into the Firefox browser. Following tests with ProtonVPN and other third-party recommended services, Firefox's own VPN started as a beta test for US users in 2019, and it was reworked as a $2.99/month subscription service in 2020. Firefox Private Network was shut down in June 2023 and replaced by Mozilla VPN, which is mostly a rebranded version of Mullvad VPN.

Firefox Ad-free Internet (2019-2020)

Scroll, the subscription service that removed ads from many sites (while still paying the sites) for one monthly subscription, partnered with Mozilla to create a Firefox-branded version of the service. The service was announced in 2019 as Firefox Ad-free Internet, a $4.99/month subscription. The website explained, "We share your payment directly with the sites you read. They make more money which means they can bring you great content without needing to distract you with ads just to keep the lights on."

Mozilla ended the experiment by March 2020, and Scroll itself was purchased by Twitter in 2021. The independent Scroll service shut down later that year, and lived on for a while longer as the "Ad-Free Articles" feature in Twitter Blue subscriptions.

Mozilla.social (2023-2024)

Mozilla announced its own Mastodon server in December 2022, aiming to "apply the lessons of the past to build a social experience for humanity that is healthy, sustainable, and sheltered from the centralized control of any one entity." Private beta testing started in May 2023, and it doesn't seem like it was ever fully open to the public, according to an archived version of the support page.

Mozilla's layoffs in early 2024 included the Mozilla.social team, and the shutdown was confirmed in September 2024. The archived site is expected to remain functional until December 2024.