May 23 Tech news roundup: Firefox 151 released, Google’s search box is evolving, Sony to stop releasing singleplayer games on PC

Firefox 151 introduces a Fire button for incognito sessions, location selection for VPN

Mozilla released the Firefox 151 update this week which brought a handful of changes. One of these is a “Clear Private Session” button, which is shaped like a flame. It’s exclusive to private browsing sessions. What it does is clear out the current private session’s data, and start a new one. It helps protect your privacy. This isn’t a new concept, DuckDuckGo’s browser was the first to introduce the Fire button a few years ago, to delete all browsing data in one-click.

Firefox Home, which is the New Tab page, has a new layout, new wallpapers, etc. The release notes for the update state that the new version also improves protection against fingerprinting in Standard Enhanced Tracking Protection. Mozilla says that it reduces fingerprinting by approximately 14% on average, and nearly 49% on macOS. If you work with PDFs, you will be happy to learn that you can use Firefox to merge multiple documents into a single one. Linux users can now save a local backup of their Firefox profile, and use it to restore them if required.

Firefox’s built-in VPN, which is still rolling out to users, now has a new option in v151. Users can select the location of the server that they want to connect to: U.S., U.K., France, Germany, and Canada. Mobile users can now manage AI Controls in Firefox, it allows you to turn off specific features, or all of them. Shake to Summarize in Firefox for iOS now supports German, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Japanese, and Italian. The feature is also rolling out to Android users who have set their language to English.

Mozilla also showed off the “Project Nova” redesign officially on its blog. We have previously reported about the UI changes, which includes a rounded tab bar, address bar, updated icons, gradients, and a new color palette. While the redesign has drawn criticism from some users, it could help attract new users who want to switch to Firefox. One interesting point that Mozilla made is that it is bringing back Firefox’s Compact Mode, after users had requested for it.

Waterfox has a new default search engine

If you are a Waterfox user, you may have noticed that Startpage is no longer the default search engine of the browser. It now uses 1.org, a charitable search engine, as its default search, at least temporarily. According to Alex Kontos, the developer of Waterfox, this happened after Startpage had asked him to remove it as the default search. Why? Because too many users had adblock enabled, and the search engine was actually losing money because of that.

Users can still set Startpage as their default search option if they want to, from Waterfox’s settings. Go to the Search settings, and and scroll down to Search Shortcuts. Click on the add button, give it a name, and paste the following as the search URL. Optionally, add a keyboard shortcut, and click on save engine. Now you will be able to select Startpage as an option from the drop-down menu.

Another interesting change that was introduced in Waterfox 6.6.13, is that the built-in ad blocker is now enabled by default. It is based on Brave’s open source adblock-rust library. You should note that by default, it will allow ads on the primary search engine, due to the agreement for funding the browser.

But there is a simple fix, you can make the ad blocker block ads everywhere. Just go to about:preferences#privacy and set Search partner ads to “disallow on Waterfox search partners”. You can choose to disable the built-in ad blocker completely, if you wish to use a third-party option such as uBlock Origin.

Google “evolves” its search bar

Google made some important announcements this week at Google I/O. One announcement drew the spotlight, the search bar. Google is changing the way the search bar works. Believe it or not, this is the first time in 25 years it has changed how this box works. The Mountain View company is calling it the intelligent Search box, and you can probably guess why. It is powered by the Gemini 3.5 Flash model.

The search bar expands dynamically as you type, making room for long and complex queries. Users can choose to switch to AI Overviews, or AI Mode where you can attach text, images, files, videos, or even Chrome tabs as part of the search experience.

Google says that the intelligent Search box is rolling out to users across the world, and it supports all languages that AI mode supports.

Sony may not release PlayStation single-player games on PC anymore

Bloomberg journalist, Jason Schreier, had revealed that Sony will stop launching single-player games on PC. The news came from PlayStation Studio Business’ chief, Hermen Hulst, who had told his staff that only multiplayer games would be released across platforms, while singleplayer titles such as Ghost of Yotei, Saros, and upcoming games like Marvel’s Wolverine and Intergalactic: The Heretic Prophet on PC. They would remain PS5 exclusives.

Naturally, PC gamers were disappointed by the news, and questioned why Sony had released so few games on the PS5 in the first place, and then bothered with porting them over to PC, only to give up now. Microsoft’s upcoming Xbox will allow gamers to play PC games on the console too, and this could have shaken up Sony’s strategy.

Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo have their own online game stores, where they sell not only first-party titles, but also distribute third-party games and earn a tidy sum as a commission fee for it. Now imagine if Xbox players were able to buy games on Steam and play them on their console, as opposed to buying them from Sony’s store. That would eat a good chunk of its profits.

Spotify launches AI-generated remixes

Spotify has announced a partnership with Universal Music Group, which will allow the streaming service to play AI-generated remixes and covers on its platform. This tool, is not free for users. The Verge reports that Premium subscribers may choose to include it as a paid add-on, which will allow them to prompt and create AI-generated versions of songs. Artists may choose to opt-out of the program, or participate in it to collect royalties.

Spotify fans were hardly pleased by the announcement, terming it more slop that nobody asked for. Meanwhile, Netflix has launched The Breakfast Club as its first daily live show.