Mozilla recently confirmed in a blog posting that it is ending support for Firefox Send and Firefox Notes due to security problems and irrelevancy, respectively.
For the unaware, Firefox Notes was launched back in 2018 as a simple alternative to Google Keep and Evernote for Firefox users.
Mozilla launched Firefox Send back in March 2019 and it quickly gained a dedicated fan base. Firefox Send was the more popular of the two services. It was a simple tool that made it easy for people to share files for free. Plus, Send supported encrypted formats, making it popular for people who wanted a secure way to share things online.
However, that plan changed after Mozilla laid off 250 people in August. The layoffs were an effort to re-focus its business on commercial products while also an attempt to fix some of Mozilla’s revenue issues.
The majority of the staff that were supposed to fix Send were included in the layoffs and the ones who remained were reassigned to commercial products like Mozilla VPN and Firefox Monitor.
It’s hard not to look at today’s announcement in the context of the overall challenges that Mozilla is going through. If the organization were in a better financial position, and hadn’t laid off around 25% of its staff this year, it may have kept Notes alive and maybe tried to rework Send.
Now, however, it has fewer options to experiment, especially with free services, as it tries to refocus on Firefox and a few other core projects.
Many loyal users may be frustrated with the vanishing support, but it is important to acknowledge that this gives Mozilla more time and resources to work on its VPN service, Firefox Monitor and Firefox Private Network.
