Mozilla retires Firefox Send and Firefox Notes services

Martin Brinkmann
Sep 18, 2020
Firefox
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Mozilla shut down Firefox Send on September 17, 2020 and plans to shut down Firefox Notes no November 1, 2020. Firefox Send was launched as an experiment in 2017 to improve the sending of files on the Internet. It was the first experiment that Mozilla created that was created as a web service and not an add-on or feature for Firefox.

The service launched officially in 2019; it allowed anyone to share files with a size of up to 1 Gigabyte and Firefox account users to share files up to 2.5 Gigabyte in size. Users with a Firefox account got extra features such as the managing of all files uploaded to the service or changing expiration times.

One of the main features of Firefox Send was that files uploaded to the service expired after a certain number of downloads or an expiration time.

firefox send final

Mozilla pulled the service earlier this year promising that it would return at a later point in time. The main reason for the taking down was that bad actors used the platform to distribute malware and other unwanted files. The free nature of the service coupled with automatic deletions of files after a number of downloads or a set expiration time benefited bad actors significantly.

Firefox Send's homepage redirects to the main Mozilla homepage. A support article on Mozilla's support website provides confirmation that the service has been retired for good. A blog post on Mozilla's official blog reveals additional information.

According to the post on the blog, Firefox Send is being retired as part of Mozilla's restructuring. The company laid off 250 employees this year and announced that it would "tighten and refine its product focus".

Firefox Send was a promising tool for encrypted file sharing. Send garnered good reach, a loyal audience, and real signs of value throughout its life. Unfortunately, some abusive users were beginning to use Send to ship malware and conduct spear phishing attacks. This summer we took Firefox Send offline to address this challenge.

In the intervening period, as we weighed the cost of our overall portfolio and strategic focus, we made the decision not to relaunch the service.

Firefox Notes was launched as an experiment in 2017 as well. Unlike Firefox Send, which was a web service decoupled from Firefox, Firefox Notes was an internal feature of Firefox that added note taking to the browser. Most browsers rely on third-party extensions for note taking functionality; Vivaldi is an exception to that as it launched with note taking support.

Notes was updated several times to improve functionality. The latest version supports multiple notes, formatting options, and the exporting of notes as HTML files.

firefox notes

Mozilla will shut down Firefox Notes on November 1, 2020. The Firefox browser extension will remain installed but it won't be available anymore for installation. Mozilla won't provide updates, security or otherwise, for the browser extension anymore, and Notes syncing will not be available. The Notes application for Android won't work anymore at that time.

Firefox users who do use Notes may use the Export All Notes option of the extension to save all notes as HTML. All that is required for that is to click on the three dots in the notes extension interface and select the option. Individual notes can also be exported.

Now You: Have you used Firefox Send or Notes? What is your take on the termination of these services?

Summary
Mozilla retires Firefox Send and Firefox Notes services
Article Name
Mozilla retires Firefox Send and Firefox Notes services
Description
Mozilla shut down Firefox Send on September 17, 2020 and plans to shut down Firefox Notes no November 1, 2020.
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Ghacks Technology News
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Comments

  1. neil said on September 21, 2020 at 5:49 pm
    Reply

    sounds similar to what google keep doing with some of the products the buy and or develop on there
    in essence, anything cloud could just go and vanish in a puff of smoke overnight

  2. firefox_last_spark said on September 20, 2020 at 10:00 am
    Reply

    Next stop: NOzila retires firefox!

  3. Anonymous said on September 19, 2020 at 6:51 am
    Reply

    Better title for the article: “Mozilla shuts down useful services due to employee layoffs. More services to follow”. Well, at least Mozilla’s CEO will receive her millions.

  4. John Smith said on September 19, 2020 at 3:15 am
    Reply

    This is ridiculous. It never occurred to them while they were making this product that it would be abused?

    This is why I am moving to self hosting and not using apps from Google/MS/etc. anymore, they’re always starting them up, shutting them down, moving you to other ones.

  5. Anonymous said on September 19, 2020 at 1:32 am
    Reply

    Tch I wanted Firefox send to stay. Why the responsible companies are only facing problems
    & those whole sell user data like hotcakes making money -_-. This needs to stop dammit!

  6. VioletMoon said on September 18, 2020 at 5:18 pm
    Reply

    The problem with Mozilla is “commitment.” If the Team plans on implementing a Send feature, which is unique and useful, the Team should ask itself if it can support the idea for a decade. If not, don’t go there.

    Same with Notes. Great ideas! I have them every morning until I start breaking down the whole into pieces so I can make that Great Idea work forever.

    It’s too bad Mozilla and Google and MS start programs and drop them as fast as one can think, “Yes.”

  7. ULBoom said on September 18, 2020 at 4:19 pm
    Reply

    Retire what?

    From the comments it seems Send was useful…for those who knew it existed.

    I wonder how many of these tweaks/services Firefox has?

    Seems whenever a good service is offered, scum of the earth wreck it for those who appreciate it.

  8. Ryan F said on September 18, 2020 at 2:51 pm
    Reply

    I’m going to miss Firefox Send. Whenever clients called with issues sending or receiving email attachments that were excessively large, or attachments that contained macros which got them flagged, I’d tell them to use Firefox Send instead. I used it a handful of times myself. I thought it was pretty good.

  9. motang said on September 18, 2020 at 1:42 pm
    Reply

    Ugh this sucks, I was a notes user. I am glad I had backups on SimpleNote.

  10. some1 said on September 18, 2020 at 11:26 am
    Reply

    Firefox Send was very useful & straightforward. I used it to send personal documents instead of an email attachment that would stay in Gmail servers unnecessarily.

    What would be a good alternative to this that has encryption?

    1. chumley said on September 18, 2020 at 8:33 pm
      Reply

      A few more alternatives:

      https://hatbat.in/

      https://fromsmash.com/

    2. Martin Brinkmann said on September 18, 2020 at 11:40 am
      Reply

      You could try https://wetransfer.com/ or https://www.sendgb.com/ as Ahmet suggested, both appear to support encryption / password protection.

      1. Luzandro said on September 19, 2020 at 6:38 am
        Reply

        Haven’t used it so far, but this also looks like an interesting alternative: https://send.tresorit.com/

  11. Ahmet said on September 18, 2020 at 11:14 am
    Reply

    This decision was actually made clear in July. Firefox Send was used a lot for phishing attacks. Mozilla first thought of the member model. However, those who expect this easy file transfer service would not like it. Mozilla’s decision will benefit services such as Wetransfer and Sendgb. Files were transferred up to 2.5GB with Firefox Send. Wetransfer allows file transfer of up to 2GB. Sendgb is used for sharing large files up to 5GB.

  12. ShintoPlasm said on September 18, 2020 at 9:57 am
    Reply

    I actually used Send quite a bit and found it useful and convenient. Not surprised by Mozilla’s decision though: take anything that’s remotely useful and cut it; take anything that irritates people (e.g. obnoxious political activism, PR…) and triple it.

    1. Ayy said on September 19, 2020 at 2:20 pm
      Reply

      >take anything that’s remotely useful and cut it; take anything that irritates people (e.g. obnoxious political activism, PR…) and triple it.
      yep, and they wonder why nobody takes them seriously anymore.

    2. Clairvaux said on September 18, 2020 at 2:03 pm
      Reply

      Exactly. Also : encourage people to invest time in storing their own data in your notes application, then pull the carpet beneath their feet, and make months or years of work useless in a blink.

      People, come to Vivaldi. Notes is embedded in it, and they keep adding features without taking any of them away — as strange as that may seem nowadays.

  13. Romukas said on September 18, 2020 at 8:37 am
    Reply

    I used Firefox Send. Once. My take on this is: LOL

    1. Craigster said on September 18, 2020 at 2:08 pm
      Reply

      My mother used this once. ONCE

      (Jonny Dangerously) :)

      Continues the Mozilla trend of change for the sake of change then having to retire stuff. Pocket, the awful address bar magnification (still waiting on that to be resersed LOL)

      Mozilla if you’re reading this: just do the simple things well. users want a browser they can trust, that protects their privacy and that just works. one that isn’t Chrome and one that doesn’t harvest usage for their personal gain.

      Simple really, your users don’t ask for a lot :) just don’t mess up what’s already there and don’t change for the sake of change

      1. Iron Heart said on September 20, 2020 at 7:59 am
        Reply

        @Craigster

        > one that isn’t Chrome and one that doesn’t harvest usage for their personal gain.

        Firefox is worse than Chrome in some areas. Not even Chrome bundles tracking scripts on mobile, Firefox also installs FF Experiments (arbitrary code) behind your back via the Normandy backdoor. Firefox also installs a scheduled telemetry task on Windows which runs outside of the browser itself.

        Funnily enough, some Chromium-based browsers are miles more private than Firefox as it stands. Seems like Mozilla’s marketing is still working, though.

      2. Anonymous said on September 21, 2020 at 9:04 am
        Reply

        Iron, I feel like it’s pointless to keep repeating the same stuff about Firefox over and over again. People believe Firefox is the most privacy-respectful browser because Reddit and YouTube told them so. The same people also keep saying Chromium = Google = bad, whereas Google is the sole reason Firefox is still somewhat alive, but I guess when it comes to that, Google isn’t actually that bad. Delusion at its finest but whatever floats their boat, I guess.

      3. Firefox is better than Chrome said on October 12, 2020 at 7:17 pm
        Reply

        How sad that these Chrome shills probably aren’t even paid by Google. Go ahead, use a
        “privacy-respectful” browser from an advertisement agency, very smart consumer you are.

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