Mozilla is expanding Firefox's Smart Window with live web search, cited AI responses, and natural-language history lookup, positioning the browser as a model-agnostic alternative to Google's tightly integrated Chrome-plus-Gemini stack. Starting today, chats inside Smart Window can pull current web data through a partnership with search API startup Exa, and answers now surface source links so users can verify what the AI returns. The feature remains opt-in and in beta, with no committed exit date.
The bigger structural bet is choice of model. Smart Window lets users route their queries through Google's Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, OpenAI's oss-gpt-120b, Alibaba's Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507, or a local model running on their own machine. That is a sharper contrast with Chrome, where Gemini is the default and the integration point, than any other mainstream browser currently offers.
Mozilla is also leaning on history as the AI's raw material rather than fresh generation. A live demo showed Smart Window sorting through prior browsing to surface "running shoes I looked at last week," complete with images pulled from the pages the user had already visited. The AI can also suggest tab groups, detect duplicates, and close them, aimed at users who keep dozens of tabs open across research sessions.
Key facts
- 01Firefox's Smart Window now pulls live web data via a partnership with search API startup Exa and cites sources in AI responses.
- 02Users can pick between Google's Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite, [OpenAI](/openai)'s oss-gpt-120b, Alibaba's Qwen3-235B-A22B-Instruct-2507, or a local model.
- 03Mozilla says all third-party model providers operate under zero-data-retention contracts and cannot use prompts for training, ads, or human review.
- 04Smart Window remains an opt-in beta with no set launch date; new features include natural-language history search with image previews.
- 05The update lands as Google folds Gemini directly into Chrome, framing Firefox's approach as the anti-default alternative.
Ajit Varma, Mozilla's head of Firefox, framed the strategy as a deliberate divergence from what he sees as Google's incentive structure with Chrome and Gemini.
“They didn't create a browser for you to go to Wikipedia more; they created a browser for you to generate more LLM and chat queries. Whereas for us, we are just looking at more just browser experience, user experience.”— Ajit Varma, Mozilla head of Firefox
Firefox has been rebuilding around AI since last year, when Mozilla first announced the mode as "AI Window." Since then it has added an AI Controls panel in settings where users can disable every AI feature or toggle them individually. Varma described the approach as "agnostic" — shipping AI features for users who want them without forcing them on the rest of the base.
Privacy sits at the center of the pitch. Steve Truong, Firefox AI senior staff product manager, said the third-party model providers Firefox routes queries to operate under zero-data-retention contracts, processing prompts in memory without storing them for training, advertising, or human review. Mozilla itself does not retain user chats on its own servers without permission, and Truong explicitly noted Mozilla is not building its own models.
That is a materially different data posture from a browser that ships a first-party model tied to the same company's advertising business. It is also the clearest wedge Mozilla has against Chrome, whose Gemini integration inherits Google's broader data practices by default.
“We also ourselves do not retain user chats in our servers without user permission to do things like model training — we're not making models — and certainly not for human review and for advertising.”— Steve Truong, Firefox AI senior staff product manager
Beyond search and history, Mozilla is teasing Chrome-like surfacing of recent browsing journeys and AI-powered autofill for online forms in future updates. Varma also pointed to "digital sovereignty" as a design goal — letting users pick regional model providers or run local AI when they do not want any cloud provider in the loop at all.
The obvious question is distribution. Firefox's global browser share has trailed Chrome by an order of magnitude for years, and a well-designed AI mode does not by itself reverse that. Mozilla's bet is that a subset of users — privacy-conscious, technically fluent, tired of defaults — will notice the difference between an AI that cites Exa results with source links and an AI that answers from an opaque model tied to a search ad business. That subset is real but not large.
Mozilla is also constrained by what it will not do. Truong's flat statement that Mozilla is not building its own models means Firefox will always be a shell over someone else's inference. If Gemini and OpenAI improve their in-browser experiences at Chrome- and ChatGPT-app velocity, Firefox is dependent on API partners keeping pace and honoring the zero-retention terms it advertises.
The Smart Window update matters less as a product launch and more as a proof of concept for what a non-vertically-integrated AI browser looks like: user-selectable models, cited answers, opt-in defaults, and a history-first interaction pattern instead of a chat-first one. Whether that wins users back from Chrome is a separate question from whether it should exist — and on the second question, Mozilla has a genuinely differentiated answer for the first time in this cycle.
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