alt Hacker News> Amazing how they continue not to cater to their core audience.
Who is Mozilla's core audience? From what I remember, it's not addon-users, as most users never have used even just a single addon.
> They literally have lost 90% of their market share from their peak,
To be fair, it's not entirely their own fault. Competition is strong, especially from Google and Apple. Even with perfect decisions, they likely would still have lost big since their peak. The market for alternative Browsers isn't as big any more as it used to be.
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Remember when the whole reason people liked Firefox is that it was super customizable? There was a time when it was THE power user browser. Things only went sideways after Chrome came out.
Firefox literally was a mainstream browser at one point. Internet Explorer sucked. Safari didn't suck but it was nobody's favorite either except some really hard-core Apple fans.
Yes, Chrome was revolutionary when it came out. And yes, Firefox seemed to struggle with legacy architectural decisions that limited their ability to catch up. But Firefox was still differentiated and had a loyal fan base. Loyal fan base is exactly what can keep a project or product alive through a downturn. All they had to do was focus on the browser. They did some great things along the way like popularizing DoH. But it's 2025 and there's still no UI for switching profiles that any normal person might be able or want to use. Can you really blame people for giving up?
> Who is Mozilla's core audience?
I am thinking of it as: people who care about privacy and/or an independent web browser. That seems mostly in line with what the Mozilla Foundation's principles are stated to be.
Maybe it's not that. But if not, what is it? How do they otherwise have any positive differentiation versus their competition? It surely can't be claimed to be any sense of "users who want an AI browser" because surely those people are going to use ChatGPT's browser, not Mozilla's.
> To be fair, it's not entirely their own fault. Competition is strong, especially from Google and Apple. Even with perfect decisions, they likely would still have lost big since their peak. The market for alternative Browsers isn't as big any more as it used to be.
Their peak in share was also pre-chrome. They've basically been losing the battle slowly for over a decade.
> From what I remember, it's not addon-users, as most users never have used even just a single addon.
Source?
> From what I remember, it's not addon-users, as most users never have used even just a single addon.
If most users who install Firefox do so for superior adblocking and those same users are also very likely to turn off telemetry (which I think some privacy/adblock extensions probably do by default?), then at Mozilla's end one might get the impression that "most users don't use extensions" - even though the vast majority of users do.
So to answer the questions of:
> Who is Mozilla's core audience?
It's probably the kind of user that has telemetry off. You don't know much if anything about them.