14 DAY TRIAL // Mozilla has announced that both Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta extensions would be retired, with the add-ons to be uninstalled automatically on February 19.
The decision comes after the company decided to retire the Mozilla Speech Proxy Server, Mozilla explains in an announcement today.
And because this server was the one powering the two extensions, Mozilla has no other option than to kill both of them as well.
“We are decommissioning the Mozilla Speech Proxy Server on February 28, 2021. This server helped power the Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta extensions, and as a result of the server decommissioning, we will be retiring these extensions,” Mozilla explains.
“The Mozilla Speech Proxy Server is being decommissioned on February 28, 2021. The server helped power the Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta extensions, which enabled voice-based interactions with the browser, and the WebSpeech API, which allowed developers to add voice based interactions to their web content and services. These extensions are being retired as part of the server decommissioning.”
Source code to be published online, user data removed from Mozilla servers
The company explains that both add-ons would receive a new update shortly that will provide users with notifications of the approaching demise of the extensions. On February 19, however, both will be uninstalled automatically, but users can also remove them manually if they want.
The good news is that Mozilla is releasing the source code for Voice Fill and Firefox Voice Beta online. As for the privacy of users who previously installed the extensions, Mozilla explains that it took the necessary steps to remove all data, so the information that was previously collected wouldn’t be stored on any server and wouldn’t end up in the hands of third parties.