Mozilla Is Shutting Down Pocket

Emma Roth, The Verge:

Mozilla is shutting down Pocket, the handy bookmarking tool used to save articles and webpages for later. The organization announced that Pocket will stop working on July 8th, 2025, as Mozilla begins concentrating its “resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs.”

Following the shutdown, you’ll only be able to export saves until October 8th, 2025, which is when Mozilla will permanently delete user data. Mozilla says it will start automatically canceling subscriptions as well, and will issue prorated refunds to users subscribed to its annual plan on July 8th.

Pocket is one of those apps that obviously doesn’t have a ton of users (presumably?), but those users it has are die-hard read-it-later-ers. Pocket, for example, is the only read-it-later service supported on Kobo e-readers.

This feels in line, somewhat, with Mozilla shutting down their Mastodon instance a few months ago. When Mastodon took off, I know some people thought a Mozilla-hosted instance would have a good shot to stand the test of time. Instead, they gave up after just a few years.

★ Friday, 23 May 2025