TL;DR: Mozilla has a new CEO and a new mission: transform Firefox into an AI browser. That has run into some snags, as Firefox users don’t seem that interested in AI. Mozilla is forging ahead, utilizing deceptive patterns (previously known as dark patterns) to nag and annoy people into enabling AI features. You can see this in the introduction of Link Previews, an extremely invasive anti-feature that exists solely to push AI into your experience.
On the proxy part, they actually already have that and using it for some other parts:
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/ohttp-explained
TL;DR: Imagine an HTTPS-over-HTTPS proxy. Try to explain it like something groundbreaking without referencing existing tech. Now you have OHTTP.
https://firefox-source-docs.mozilla.org/browser/components/mozcachedohttp/docs/index.html
https://www.fastly.com/blog/firefox-fastly-take-another-step-toward-security-upgrade
It makes me scratch my head a bit why I’ve never see it enabled for DNS-over-HTTP in default stock Firefox config despite it being supported for years - the endpoints are just not configured. You have to know about it and configure the barely documented URL in
about:configfor that. Unlike for newtabpage and the FF shopping feature where OHTTP is used by default. Infra costs?Interestingly, I just interviewed the Waterfox developer, who actually references Oblivious HTTP and his interest in developing this into a paid feature for Waterfox.