At the beginning of 2025, Mozilla joined the AI trend and presented a name extension orbit. Overall, it was like an assistant that would help us understand where we were browsing, and it could even summarize videos. The extension can still be used, but it will no longer be available starting June 26, as explained in the header. the project pageWhy have they backtracked?
«Important Update: Orbit will be shutting down on June 26, 2025. You will no longer be able to use the Orbit Extension on June 26th. Thank you for supporting our journey.", reads the header. There is no further information, or not in the note and Orbit page, but it is known that Mozilla is shedding ballastIt was recently announced that Pocket, its service for saving links to read later, and Fakespot, which was used to identify fraudulent reviews, would be shutting down.
Orbit joins a long list of casualties
Mozilla's intention is to live up to what many expect of it: to focus on your browserPolicies aside, the company has been harshly criticized for trying to do too much—as we know, those who do too much, do too little—which caused its employees to become distracted and pay less attention to its flagship product: Firefox.
Mozilla's behavior so far has been reminiscent of the jokes developers make about "side projects," i.e., new projects started after the current ones, which are often more important, haven't been completed. If a developer neglects side projects, they can improve the most important things, and that's the direction Firefox has chosen.
Or so it is hoped.
It remains to be seen whether these moves will be of any use and whether they will translate into significant new features in Firefox.