Retiring the Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta extensions

Add-ons Add-on Support
#23

Discussion in Reddit: https://redd.it/l81odx

… no explanation for the decommissioning. I can guess a reason, but I’d prefer the explanation to come from Mozilla.

Primarily economics, I guess. Plus maybe logistics, given COVID-19 restrictions.

@caitlin please, can someone at Mozilla confirm?

In any case:

Found

… Mozilla has realigned its priorities, and Firefox Voice will no longer be supported by Mozilla. The Firefox Voice team will be going to new things, no longer with Mozilla. …

:arrow_forward: Changing World, Changing Mozilla - The Mozilla Blog (2020-08-11)

Historical

New Test Pilot Experiments Available Today - The Mozilla Blog (2017-08-01)

Mozilla Org Wide Updates: Impacts on Common Voice - Common Voice - Mozilla Discourse

Test Pilot/Voice Fill category (archived)

#25

Update on Common Voice: Mozilla Foundation - Common Voice - Mozilla Discourse

@LexiconCode please, can you suggest a forum that’s suitable for discussing a range of possible solutions? Not Firefox-specific.

For what it’s worth, https://www.google.com/search?q=“Speech+recognition”+“open+source”+forum&tbs=li%3A1#unfucked led me to (amongst other things):

– running phpBB. I’d prefer a Discourse forum but I shouldn’t be fussy.

#26

I don’t have any recommendations for a forum at this time. Most of the work I do is coordinated through chat via Gitter/Matrix. However a Forum format would be preferable for such a discussion.

1 Like
#27

I took up to FF because Chrome is a HUGE Resource Hog on my system…
I mean … it slows to a crawl if I have a number of tabs open… gets unusable.
so I won’t be going back to it any time soon… for sure…

#28

Hi, @andrenatal!

Thanks for replying. I understand. It’s unfortunate that Mozilla can’t continue these services, but I’m proud of Mozilla for being a privacy-conscientious, user-focused company. Thanks for all that you do! May God bless you. Jesus Christ loves you - He always has and always will, no matter what! You’re priceless and you matter!

Keep up the great work! :slight_smile:

Kind Regards, SubjectTea9

#29

I have Dragon NaturallySpeaking Pro. I have seen that outperformed by Speechnotes. I don’t fully understand this move and seems to be in the opposite direction from what’s trending. I hope you guys reconsider. Thanks.

I had to reply to you because I couldn’t figure out where to post ;-(

2 Likes
#30

Hi. I just looked into Speechnotes. I see that it requires you to pay through a Google account, is it compatible with Brave? And will it stay compatible with Brave after Google makes those changes to the chromium APIs? There are some use cases where it would be helpful for me, but it’s not worth it if I’m stuck with the bloat and user tracking of vanilla Chrome.

#31

Yes as a long term user of firefox on Mate, I’m sad to see yet more areas of this browser made less, not more, user friendly. Up to now I only had to switch to Chrome for casting.

#32

sad sad day to see removal of voice

#33

Hello, Isn’t the server side open-sourced as well ? that would allow users in nee of this functionnality to run their own stack

1 Like
#34

Thank you for the information… what does an ordinary non-computer person need to do… can I still voice on zoom and stuff like that… if so I am a ok…

#35

I would also like to be able to do voice searches on Firefox ! Google chrome does this very well already, but I prefer Firefox.

1 Like
#37

Hi @bj_johnson2003, this should only affect your ability to do voice search on Firefox. You’ll still be able to use voice features for other products like Zoom. :slight_smile:

#38

I run my fashion blog so I research new topics each day which makes me tired sometimes. But with Firefox voice recognition I enjoy researching. Why retiring voice fill and firefox voice extension :frowning:

#39

From https://github.com/mozilla-extensions/firefox-voice/issues/1913#issuecomment-775621853

… we are decommissioning the addons purely because the use of Google’s STT backend won’t scale for us, and we never managed to train production ready models through projects like Deep Speech and Common Voice with the quality required for VF and FxVoice.

#41

Google Chrome has voice typing.

#45

Dear everyone,
Could you please share your thoughts on this idea? You can give a vote (kudo) to rally this effort in the down link, hopefully to ressurect the extensions Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/add-native-search-by-voice-to-firefox-mobile/idc-p/2185

@grahamperrin @caitlin @theo181297 @Gork_Skoal @sampaul25 @jessicaneo52 @hedyramy @bj_johnson2003 @jackblack65 @bobw6744 @Green_man @cosmonot1 @andrenatal @SubjectTea9 @Lspcguy

#46

Dear everyone,
Could you please share your thoughts on this idea? You can give a vote (kudo) to rally this effort in the down link, hopefully to ressurect the extensions Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta: https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/ideas/add-native-search-by-voice-to-firefox-mobile/idc-p/2185
@LexiconCode @subjaysmb @Krrishdhaneja @buddhalion @artjgalus @speff @DavidPBaril @ZeusCell @David_Strong @sublimemm @Phie @Macawlover70 @dkd @inyazserg @BruSkald

2 Likes
#47

Why in heaven’s name was Voice Fill not continued? A bribe from Google?! I am eternally stuck without privacy because I use voice search very often. Not even Brave has a usable Voice Search option…the Google monopoly has to end!!! I use Firefox so infrequently now because of this.

2 Likes
#48

are we talking about that Ai which searched for photos of cats on Pixabay? Maybe it wasn’t used much because it made decisions on its own? I simply wanted to search for photos on Google, but the addon opened some weird sites and made its own decisions. I only needed to stop typing while searching on Google.