Mozilla wants you to love Firefox again

[alberth]

Dumb question: who’s Firefox target user?

Chrome is able to capture the mass consumer market, due to Google’s dark pattern to nag you to install Chrome anytime you’re on a Google property.

Edge target enterprise Fortune 500 user, who is required to use Microsoft/Office 365 at work (and its deep security permission ties to SharePoint).

Safari has Mac/iOS audience via being the default on those platform.

Brave (based on Chromium), and LibreWolf (based on Firefox) has even carved out those user who value privacy.

What’s Firefox target user?

Long ago, Firefox was the better IE, and it had great plugins for web developers. But that was before Chrome existed and Google capturing the mass market. And the developers needed to follow its users.

So what target user is left for a Firefox?

Note: not trolling. I loved Firefox. I just don’t genuine understand who it’s for anymore.

[sdf4j]

I value my privacy and use Firefox. Honestly, I have trust issues with volatile “security focused” forks. I feel the risk of them been tampered are greater than the marginal gains.

[SXX]

Firefox target users are whoever need Manifest v2 extensions to work on Chrome after Google will completely remove it. So basically everyone who want working ad-blocker.

[hintymad]

> due to Google’s dark pattern to nag you to install Chrome anytime you’re on a Google property

I'm not sure if that's true. I switched to Chrome because Chrome felt snappier than its competitors. Its multi-process model made Chrome more robust. It's developer tool had better usability than Firefox's. And Chrome's extensions, at least initially, offered better experience and wider selections. Oh, Google's integration of Chrome with Google's identity system was a nicer experience too.

[attendant3446]

I still think that desktop Firefox is better than any other browser. Their mobile browser is just average though.

[ilrwbwrkhv]

All devs should be using Firefox. If not, you are failing in your moral duty.

[dtx1]

> So what target user is left for a Firefox?

Google, so they can pretend they don't have a monopoly so the antitrust lawsuits are kept at bay. And Mozillas CEO[0] so they can extract millions while fucking us all.

[0] https://itdm.com/wp-content/uploads/Mozilla.png

[danpalmer]

I used to be a die-hard Firefox user, but over the last 15 years software quality has improved, expectations have been raised, and I haven't felt that Firefox has kept up. It still feels like it's a re-skinned 2005 era piece of software. Placing it next to Safari, Chrome, or more recent competitors like Arc, it feels dated.

There are technical reasons for this, there are process/political/human reasons why it has stayed this way, and for many people it's not a big enough issue to switch, or other things take priority, but for me it just comes down to jankiness. Alternative browsers all have their own issues, none are perfect, but most feel less janky at their core.

[thefz]

> Placing it next to Safari, Chrome, or more recent competitors like Arc, it feels dated.

Performance wise?

Appearance wise?

I use it exactly for the reason you state: I do not need 65536 features in a browser, not it makes any sense for it to use 1GB of my memory per tab.

[hintymad]

I don't know if it's just my bias, somehow I feel that the response time of Firefox is longer than that of Chrome. Or maybe it's due to my lingering discomfort about a Netscape-era bug: after running Netscape for a while, Netscape may stop responding or crash. If it crashed, I would not be able to relaunch it unless I manually killed a hanging Netscape process. Netscape never fixed the bug and I ran into the same bug a few times after switching to Firefox, albeit a lot less frequently. I then switched to Chrome and never looked back.

[Fire-Dragon-DoL]

Agree. I switched two days ago because the whole manifest v3. Unfortunately there is only Brave claiming to keep supporting manifest v3 and I'm not really believing that, once the code starts to diverge.

I will say that installing Firefox extensions makes me deeply uncomfortable. Everything requires access to everything.

My hope is an uodate to manifedt v3 that improves things so we can go back to chromium based browsers (not necessary chrome)

[pennybanks]

theres no point in having sentimental attachment to a browser. back then it was just dominated by a few, its the only reason you used it.

you couldnt care less to switch cause were lazy. very funny thing computer people do is have such brand loyalty over a browser.

and we turn around and laugh at coke people, ford people, xbox, how silly is it when you hear people arguing about xbox or ps. this is no doubt even sillier

and as a bonus the only reason we say oh firefox has gone downhill but lol ill never use chrome and let them take my freedom and joy never ever... this is again just brand loyalty lol.... if you dont like firefox just switch, if you dont like that switch, if you dont like any browers... well you just have to choose and live with one then dont you. trust me google has all your info

so does apple depending on your phone. and trust that your phone will be your id, wallet, everything very soon. ask asia, we are always lagging in tech, it will happen (ofc this isnt directed at you. im just talking sht outloud)

[thomassmith65]

When a CEO diagnoses a public screw-up as a failure to educate the customer, the CEO is usually a loser, in both senses of the word.

[technojunkie]

Regarding the Ad Tech section, I found value in the August 6th episode of Security Now titled "How Revoking!" where he's talking about 3rd-party cookies handling in Firefox.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HZx-W5qC_dc

Generally speaking, I'm sure it's difficult to find a general balance between privacy and usability, and I tend to want a purist viewpoint on blocking all 3rd-party cookies if I set Enhanced Tracking Protection to Strict. The above episodes explains why it's not 100% doing what we expect, which was troubling to hear!

[SXX]

I use Firefox on both Mac and Android and it works well. I'd just wish it was proper open source project with BDFL and public team of developers and not some corporate failure.

[create-account]

I’m looking forward for Ladybird browser to be released to the General Public. On the meantime, I’m using LibreWolf instead. I’ve uninstalled Firefox after noticing the surreptitious advertising check

[rasz]

I already love Firefox. Its Mozilla what I dont like. Fire the board and especially CEO, transfer assets to Firefox, dissolve foundation and never come back to software sector.

[_jackdk_]

Or at the very least, let me fund the browser directly!

[oliverkwebb]

Is there any chance this relates to the recent anti-trust case against google?

I.e. making a attempt to appeal to user wants more since the majority of the money they make is at risk

[M95D]

> "We’re finding that our messages are particularly sticking with younger generations"

Sure. Those are the people who don't know what a decent browser is. They never saw a browser with customizable UI, never saw Opera 12's notepad, never saw IE 5 Web Accessories (Links list, Image list), etc. etc.

[Afforess]

I don’t know if Firefox can be saved. I say that using Firefox for iOS right now.

I use Firefox because it’s not chrome, not because it’s good. Mozilla’s reputation is trash, Firefox is riddled with ancient bugs, and the bleeding hasn’t stopped.

I’d like to be wrong but I don’t see how.

[sevg]

Worth noting that Firefox for iOS isn't actually truly Firefox. Due to platform rules, browsers on iOS are all required to use the webkit engine so they all are basically just reskins of Safari.

[transfire]

I already do. Use it everywhere.

[pipeline_peak]

The Meta data collection is no surprise. Mozilla had been pimping out Firefox to Google for quite some time.

Given their strong FOSS, they wouldn’t be doing shady deals like this if their future looked vital.

[incomingpain]

Back in the day, I was one of those who installed firefox on every computer. I used to love firefox. But then they took up california politics and activism. This decision has survived multiple ceos.

Mozilla has done it to themselves. New interim ceo wont be different. I can't fathom mozilla has any chance of selecting someone who could dig them out of their activist hole.

[tmaly]

I still love the Firefox focus app on iOS. I use it as my primary browser for privacy.

[ssss11]

But they keep going back and forth on this..

[err4nt]

    "Deep in the browser’s privacy settings, Firefox introduced an experimental “privacy-preserving ad measurement” toggle, enabling it by default without explanation or disclosure."

This isn't even the first time Firefox has collaborated with an ad or marketing company, rolled out a feature behind a checkbox that users didn't know about, turned it on by default. See the case of the 'Alternate Reality Game' ad campaign for Mr Robot a few years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15940144

I stopped hearing when Mozilla talks about privacy or caring about users. Most companies that treat their users like Mozilla just do it, but it actually adds insult to injury that Mozilla tells you they care, tells you you're important while they do the same things. It's gaslighting or manipulation or lying or something but I'm not going to listen to them any more.

[PenguinCoder]

> we lost Firefox

I agree, and am looking for other alternatives, that aren't chromium based; but not finding any modern browsers that fit that bill. So I still use Firefox. Any recommendations?

[bitwize]

I liked Firefox a whole lot better back before Mozilla effectively became a UN NGO with a few developers working on a web browser in a God-forsaken basement somewhere, Milton Waddams style.

If they want me to love Firefox, they need to love Firefox. And show that love in the form of vision, resources, and better open-source, open-internet style governance. No execs saying "deplatforming is nice and all, but we really need to go even further beyond". As soon as a browser company makes it a mission to decide what people see online, they cease to be trustworthy as a browser company. So I may as well just use chromium (or ungoogled-chromium).

[create-account]

Goggle still has special privileges to your computer through Ungoogled chromium.

I’ve uninstalled them and will only use them on a VM

[sltkr]

Mozilla wastes all its money on its CEO and bullshit DEI programs, while neglecting to develop Firefox, their flagship product. When they spend some money on the browser, they use it to implement user-hostile garbage like Facebook's client-side tracking bullshit.

Here's a cute graph of CEO pay vs Firefox market share: https://calpaterson.com/assets/mozilla-boss-pay.svg

Mozilla is completely fucked. I just hope the company goes bankrupt so its niche of an open source browser can be filled by an organisation that actually cares about its product, and is not just a sham for execs to get millions of dollars from Google for being faux-competition, while fucking over their users.

[devwastaken]

Dump gecko and spider monkey and build a UI over webkit. A "firefox safari" that properly integrates system password management/account management and is convenient to use.

Firefox tech is dead and not modular. It has no use to anyone else and is a major waste of resources.

[supertrope]

You will be assimilated into Chromium. Resistance is futile.

[gotoeleven]

Is there something fundamental to the design of firefox that makes it use tons of memory and be prone to letting web pages peg a core at 100%? Every time I try to use firefox I have to quit because sometimes it runs like a 90s java applet.

[hedora]

It’s always been a GPU driver issue when I’ve seen a meaningful difference in performance between Chrome, Safari or Firefox. (I’ve seen such issues on everything from 128 thread xeons to one core atoms, and also on Arm).

One of them ends up falling back on some legacy thing when the other two don’t.

Once, I encountered two identical machines with the same version of debian. Chrome was unusably slow on one, and Firefox was unusably slow on the other. The other browser ran great.

Browsers and modern hardware are complicated.

shrug

[supertrope]

Usually it's an ad laden local news website. I usually decide the solution is to stop visiting that website.

[pelagicAustral]

I could exchange Firefox for Javascript and land on the same result... but people are going to be equally mad about it... the problem is not the browser.

[xarope]

it's frustrating to watch this, especially since Rust started off within Mozilla.