4 ms·

I think that a fair amount of people share your views. Some time ago I articulated [1] that I find that Mozilla has to appeal to three very different groups of

by niftich 10y ago

I think that a fair amount of people share your views. Some time ago I articulated [1] that I find that Mozilla has to appeal to three very different groups of people, and its efforts to appeal to one are met with disdain from the others. To quote a portion of my post, these audiences are, in increasing order of vocalness: [a] the impressionable; the next-wave of web user who has recently gotten online [b] the alternative-seeker; the average web user who is uneasy with Google [c] the idealist; the open web, open-source advocate [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12192509#12194161 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12192509#12194161

dao- 10y ago
It's interesting that you mention this here, as it seems to me that the Firefox and Mozilla brands do in fact try to appeal to different groups of people. I believe the Firefox brand caters for [a] while the Mozilla brand seems like a better fit for [c]. [b] seems to be somewhere in the middle...?
MichaelGG 10y ago
>the average web user who is uneasy with Google Is this even a demographic? I really dislike Google. But I still use search (DDG just doesn't quite cut it for me). And Chrome for a few sites. And YouTube. And Android and Play Music, which gets my kids ad-free YouTube. FF needs to be appealing by itself, not in contrast to Google, to succeed. Features like adblock on Android - that's powerful stuff. >web user that just got online Is this much of a demographic in developed countries?
- gcp 10y ago
  This is definitely a demographic. The browsers are both good enough products for many common user cases that something like this can dominate the consideration.
- bad_user 10y ago
  I like Google's products, the problem with Google is that keeping all of your eggs in a single basket is very unwise, especially given their potential for evil. They can now control and mine your searches, the videos you view, the email you send and receive, your contacts list, your location, literally keeping track of where you've been, the mobile apps you use, your purchased eBooks, your music subscription, your browsing history, your chats, your cloud data, etc. The only thing they failed at is social networking. I see many people placing so much trust in Google, but that's very foolish. Even if they behaved well until now, power inevitably corrupts and even if they kept your data safe, let's say for the sake of this argument, you don't know where that data will be tomorrow. Plus there are people that lost access to everything due to one of their automated processes that bans accounts based on weird heuristics, e.g. people getting banned from their email account because they've bought and sold a Pixel. How fucked up is that? I must also say that even though I can forgive Mozilla for every one of their failures because they were in good faith, I cannot forgive Google for killing Google Reader in order to promote Google+. So I would say that non-Google is definitely a feature. I use Firefox because I trust Mozilla more than Google, Apple or Microsoft, with the browser being the window to all my communications and secret desires. Of course, I still use other Google products, including Chrome and Android, though not full time, my work email is GSuite (personal is FastMail), etc.
schoen 10y ago
Mozilla also has its own internal list of target user demographics https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/08/firefox-user-types-in-north-america/ https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/08/firefox-user-types-in-no... It might be interesting to compare that to your list.

by niftich 10y ago

dao- 10y ago

It's interesting that you mention this here, as it seems to me that the Firefox and Mozilla brands do in fact try to appeal to different groups of people. I believe the Firefox brand caters for [a] while the Mozilla brand seems like a better fit for [c]. [b] seems to be somewhere in the middle...?

MichaelGG 10y ago

>the average web user who is uneasy with Google Is this even a demographic? I really dislike Google. But I still use search (DDG just doesn't quite cut it for me). And Chrome for a few sites. And YouTube. And Android and Play Music, which gets my kids ad-free YouTube. FF needs to be appealing by itself, not in contrast to Google, to succeed. Features like adblock on Android - that's powerful stuff. >web user that just got online Is this much of a demographic in developed countries?

gcp 10y ago
This is definitely a demographic. The browsers are both good enough products for many common user cases that something like this can dominate the consideration.
bad_user 10y ago
I like Google's products, the problem with Google is that keeping all of your eggs in a single basket is very unwise, especially given their potential for evil. They can now control and mine your searches, the videos you view, the email you send and receive, your contacts list, your location, literally keeping track of where you've been, the mobile apps you use, your purchased eBooks, your music subscription, your browsing history, your chats, your cloud data, etc. The only thing they failed at is social networking. I see many people placing so much trust in Google, but that's very foolish. Even if they behaved well until now, power inevitably corrupts and even if they kept your data safe, let's say for the sake of this argument, you don't know where that data will be tomorrow. Plus there are people that lost access to everything due to one of their automated processes that bans accounts based on weird heuristics, e.g. people getting banned from their email account because they've bought and sold a Pixel. How fucked up is that? I must also say that even though I can forgive Mozilla for every one of their failures because they were in good faith, I cannot forgive Google for killing Google Reader in order to promote Google+. So I would say that non-Google is definitely a feature. I use Firefox because I trust Mozilla more than Google, Apple or Microsoft, with the browser being the window to all my communications and secret desires. Of course, I still use other Google products, including Chrome and Android, though not full time, my work email is GSuite (personal is FastMail), etc.

schoen 10y ago

Mozilla also has its own internal list of target user demographics https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/08/firefox-user-types-in-north-america/ https://blog.mozilla.org/ux/2013/08/firefox-user-types-in-no... It might be interesting to compare that to your list.