[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 (and deep platform integration).

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.

[DamnInteresting]

> Dumb question: who’s Firefox target user?

These days, it seems to be people who:

* Don't want to be using a browser owned by an ethically dubious corporation

* Want a fully functional ad blocker

* Prefer vertical tabs

[whynotmaybe]

> Want a fully functional ad blocker

My main reason but also

* want to ensure competition because I'm sure that once it's chromium all the way, we're gonna have a bad time.

[Bolwin]

Mind you, you can get all that and more in a browser like vivaldi. And that market is.. small. Vivaldi doesn't have to develop a browser engine

[akagusu]

The problem is the list keeps shrinking since now Mozilla Corp is an ethically dubious corporation.

[someNameIG]

> Want a fully functional ad blocker

Is this even the case? UBO has ~10 million users going by the extension store, Firefox has over 150 million users.

So less than 10% of Firefox installs also have UBO.

[account42]

* But don't really care about privacy that much

[charcircuit]

Brave already has an adblocker built into the browser itself and supports vertical tabs.

[suprjami]

Ostensibly nerds. Linux users and maybe Mac users. Technical people who understand more about the software industry than all Mozilla Corp management since Brendan.

It's difficult to monetize us when the product is a zero dollar intangible, especially when trust has been eroded such that we've all fled to Librewolf like you said.

It's difficult to monetize normies when they don't use the software due to years of continuous mismanagement.

I think giving Mozilla a new CEO is like assigning a new captain to the Titanic. I will be surprised if this company still exists by 2030.

[glenstein]

Right and to your point, there's not a whole lot of precedent for browsers successfully funding themselves when the browser itself is the primary product.

Opera was the lightweight high performance extension rich, diversely funded, portable, adapted to niche hardware, early to mobile browser practically built from the dreams of niche users who want customization and privacy. They're a perfect natural experiment for what it looks like to get most, if not all decisions right in terms of both of features users want, as well as creative attempts to diversify revenue. But unfortunately, by the same token also the perfect refutation of the fantasy that making the right decisions means you have a path to revenue. If that was how it worked, Opera would be a trillion dollar company right now.

But it didn't work because the economics of web browsers basically doesn't exist. You have to be a trillion dollar company already, and dominate distribution of a given platform and force preload your browser.

Browsers are practically full scale operating systems these days with tens of millions of lines of code, distribued for free. Donations don't work, paying for the browser doesn't work. If it did, Opera (the og Opera, not the new ownership they got sold to) would still be here.

[0x3f]

Yes, I would literally pay a nominal fee for Firefox if I were confident in the org's direction. As things stand though, the trust is gone as you said.

[account42]

Mozilla is (or at least started as) a nonprofit. Even corporation is only there to fulfill the nonprofit goals. They shouldn't even be thinking about monetization they should be thinking about getting donations and securing grants.

[thesuitonym]

> What’s Firefox target user?

It seems as if you ask Mozilla, the answer would be "Not current Firefox users."

I really don't know the answer to this question, and I don't know if Mozilla has defined it internally, which probably leads to a lot of the problems that the browser is facing. Is it the privacy focused individual? They seem to be working very hard against that. Is it the ad-sensitive user? Maybe, but they're not doing a lot to win that crowd over.

It kind of feels like Firefox is not targeted at anyone in particular. But long gone are the days when you can just be an alternative browser.

Maybe the target user is someone who wants to use Firefox, regardless of what that means.

[protoster]

I use Firefox because I don't want to use a browser provided by an advertising company e.g. Chrome.

[28304283409234]

Yet ... with firefox that is exactly what you are using. Except there's a proxy in the middle (Mozilla).

[__alexs]

Just one that is entirely funded by an advertising company?

[TiredOfLife]

> Dumb question: who’s Firefox target user?

Partly me. It's the only browser where I can disable AV1 support to work around broken HW acceleration on Steam Deck.

Also tab hoarders. (I migrated to Chrome 3 years ago to try and get rid of my tab hoarding)

[sfink]

I've been using Firefox for a long time, longer than it's had that name, and it used to be excellent for my tab hoarding habits. Specifically, it could handle a large number of tabs, and every couple of months it would crash and lose all of them. I would have to start over from scratch, with an amazing sense of catharsis and freedom, and I never had to make the decision on my own that I would never be able to make.

Now, it's no better than the others. I'm at 1919 tabs right now, and it hasn't lost any for many years. It's rock solid, it's good at unloading the tabs so I don't even need to rely on non-tab-losing crash/restarts to speed things up, and it doesn't even burn enough memory on them to force me to reconsider my ways.

This is a perfect example of how Mozilla's mismanagement has driven Firefox into the ground. Bring back involuntary tab bankruptcy and spacebar heating!

[glenstein]

Me! I want the best thing that's not Google or Chromium. Right now that's Firefox. Maybe someday it will be Ladybird.

[dabockster]

> I just don’t genuine understand who it’s for anymore.

It still gets bundled a TON on Linux. So if you use Linux a lot, Firefox gets into your muscle memory.

But honestly, that bundling is likely just momentum from the 2010s. Better tech exists now.

[Zak]

It seems to me Android users who want to block ads are a strong target market. Desktop Chrome has extensions and despite the nerf, it has adblockers that mostly work; Android Chrome doesn't have extensions.

A built in adblocker would probably help Firefox attract those users, but might destroy their Google revenue stream.

[cyberrock]

I think the problem with that is that Firefox Android with uBO still feels like it has worse First Contentful Paint than Chrome Android. Even on a high-end phone the difference can feel ridiculous; sites render after 1-2s on Chrome but sometimes I can count up to 5 with FF.

The benefits of having uBO might matter more to you and me, but let's not forget that faster rendering was arguably the main reason Chrome Desktop got popular 20 years ago, which caused Firefox to rewrite its engine 2 (3?) times since then to catch up. 20 years later this company still hasn't learned with Android.

[lukewrites]

Somehow its target user group includes my father, who is 90 years old. As far as I can recall, we got him using Firefox years ago and he became a committed user.

I wish more browsers would target seniors. Accessibility and usability is universally a nightmare.

[J_Shelby_J]

Non-laptop users.

[mmooss]

It's an island of trust in an ocean of predatory capitalism.

[account42]

It was that once.

[lionkor]

Firefox users are people who would use LibreWolf, but installed it, tried it, saw it doesn't have dark mode, and figured that Firefox was good enough after all.