Mozilla is shutting down Firefox Send and Notes
The company will end support for Notes in early November.
Mozilla plans to say goodbye to two of its lesser-known products this year. The first is Firefox Send, a tool the company introduced in 2017 to allow users to share encrypted files. Send was generally well-liked by the Firefox community, so it might be surprising to find out Mozilla plans to discontinue it. However, as these things sometimes go, a couple of bad apples ruined the experience for everyone else.
Earlier in the summer, Mozilla saw that some malicious users had started to use Send to carry out phishing attacks and ship malware. In response, Mozilla took down the tool. At the time, it said it would relaunch it a later date after it had the chance to add better reporting capabilities. But the company has now changed its mind.
"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," Mozilla said. Since Send is already offline, there's nothing you have to do to prepare for its decommissioning.
The other tool Mozilla is sunsetting is Firefox Notes. Like Send, Notes grew out of the company's defunct Test Pilot program. It was initially a way for Mozilla to try out new ways to sync encrypted data. Once the experiment ran its course, the company kept Notes around as a tool you could use in Firefox and Firefox for Android.
In early November, Mozilla says it will discontinue support for the Firefox Notes app and syncing service. If you have the extension already installed on your desktop computer, you'll get the chance to export all your notes. However, after November, it won't be possible to install the extension again.
It's never easy to see a company discontinue a product, particularly if you depended on that app for its utility. In its defense, Mozilla says parting ways with Firefox Send and Notes will allow it to focus on products like its recently launched VPN service.
