@Waterfox@mastodon.social "Their lunch is being eaten by AI browsers." -- Chrome was dominating before Google started to add "AI" features to it. I'm sure there's an example out there, but I don't think I've once heard someone say they prefer Chrome over Firefox because of "AI" built in to Chrome. But I often hear people say they use Chrome because it works (noting that Google abused their monopoly position when repeatedly sabotaging their sites for Firefox). It seems like there was an uptick in Interest in Firefox after Google banned ad blockers, but "AI" in Firefox and tone deaf governance from Mozilla has more than counteracted that effect. So I'm not sure I agree with your premise there.
I often see smaller companies trying to do the same thing as larger companies, by making an assumption that the large company knows what people want, but this is often a kind of "cargo culting" effecting. Large companies very often don't do things because people want them (was just reading an article about Paraquat in the US, then there's rBST and everything Monsanto has ever done). Large companies often succeed exactly because they can do profoundly bad things and survive while their smaller competition destroys themselves trying to play follow-the-leader. Microsoft can add Clippy (Clipit) to Microsoft Word that pops up and refuses to go away without a complex, non-intuitive sequence of clicks, that is nearly universally despised, because we ascribe a "no other choice, have to deal with it" superpower to Microsoft (as with Monsanto), but it would be suicide for eg LibreOffice to attempt the same abuse of power (or for independent dairies selling at farmer's market to proudly advertise rBST in their milk). They do not have the power they can abuse. Avoiding getting killed in games of "follow the leader" led by tech giants requires understanding the market and not assuming tech giants are providing what people want. It requires understanding why giant corporations are doing things. That's a whole other discussion, but I see this as more like billionaires buying up the news and social media to intentionally wreck them than in any way providing people what they want.
