Updated December 29 2014 to reflect changes in Mozilla’s search strategy, which also brought changes to the about:home page.

The snippet is the first page users of the Firefox browser see when they launch Firefox or open a new browser window. It consists of the Firefox logo, a Google search bar, and the snippet – a tiny (40x40px) icon next to a bit of text underneath the search bar. The snippet is generally about 125 characters long.

With 450 million people using Firefox around the world, millions of people view the snippet every day. In the United States alone, the snippet gets about 20 million views, on average, in a single day. It’s a precious little plot of web real estate.

During December 2013, the snippet will be used to promote Mozilla’s Year-End Fundraising Campaign.