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Mozilla's Incredible Speech-To-Text Engine Is At Risk Following Layoffs

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  • Mozilla's Incredible Speech-To-Text Engine Is At Risk Following Layoffs

    Phoronix: Mozilla's Incredible Speech-To-Text Engine Is At Risk Following Layoffs

    For a while now a Mozilla software project that's been an "unsung hero" has been DeepSpeech as their speech-to-text engine. Sadly, following the recent major layoffs at Mozilla and restructuring along with a shift to focusing more on their profitable activities, DeepSpeech for now has an uncertain future...

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  • #2
    My sympathy for any problems mozilla is having is almost at an end.
    Been using their browser for 10+ years and ready to jump ship at this point.
    They have squandered my goodwill.

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    • #3
      Originally posted by HighValueWarrior View Post
      ...
      Been using their browser for 10+ years and ready to jump ship at this point.
      ...
      You gonna appear offline or use a text-browser now?

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      • #4
        They should really change "speech-to-text" to "voice recognition" since the former could be confused with text-to-speech....

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        • #5
          I don't understand why Mozilla's management focuses on profitability via niche products. I have the feeling that the issue related to not being able to incentivize on products is because of bad management choices. Why not focus on stuff where Mozilla is a leader in: the web. Sell web dev trainings, offering consulting services around web devving/strategies etc., offering web dev services,... The web is what people know where Mozilla is REALLY strong and were they have a dominant brand position over many other providers. But no, let's focus on selling a vpn product instead and hope those 1337 people switch their solid VPN service for ours and non-tech people decide to use VPN services 'cause of privacy

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          • #6
            The vast majority of Mozilla's revenues is (was?) from search contracts. When Mozilla started to concentrate on anti-ad features they essentially cut their own revenue stream. While as a user I appreciate the focus on privacy, it made no sense for Mozilla to kill their major source of income without having any alternative. I did wonder at the time what their secret plan is. Turns out, there was no secret plan.

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            • #7
              i wonder if the disaster with android firefox is also the result of those layoffs

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              • #8
                I think that many people here are missing the point.
                Mozilla was always about "freeing" the web. Lets ensure that we have good standards for the web, so that a page would work much the same with many browsers. This is good because it also guarantees a form of continuity. You don't have to replace your work for every new browser coming out.

                Hence they focused a lot on the basic things to make these freedoms easier.

                One of the biggest issues re speech-to-text is that even if the research is public, the data is not, and won't be as long as all the data gets sent to proprietary clouds.
                Speech is an highly anticipated human-interface, so if it doesn't get freed up we are in for trouble.

                So they started the deepspeech initiative, which was a website to collect and validate speech samples, and took a research-quality stt engine, and turned it into mostly release-quality.

                So, of all the projects they are doing, I feel deepspeech is a really good one to try and limit our reliance on proprietary clouds.
                And I, would be really sad if it stops.

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                • #9

                  If they want to safe money, the management should show their goodwill first with reduzing their sallery. Maybe then they will think first before making stupid decisions. Getting rid of voice recognition sounds like a terrible idea for a privacy focused web browser.

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                  • #10
                    second Worst business decisions go Mozilla after yahoo take number 1 spot

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