Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
Over the last decade, firefox's market share has dropped from ~25% to less than 10% (numbers vary depending on where you look). At the same time, the browser only got better in my opinion. What is going on?
244 comments
Good points have already been raised, but don't neglect the rise of smartphones. When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change? Add Chromebooks into the mix, and those meet a lot of people's needs, why change?
Then, if you get a laptop, you'll want to have all of your passwords and bookmarks synced, so instead of using Edge, you grab Chrome. never even thinking of Firefox.
Finally, in the early 00's, Firefox users had a reputation for letting you know about it. Forums of the day were full of signatures with a Get Firefox link in them. You don't really see that level of fervor anymore, because the difference between Firefox and Chrome today is nowhere near the difference between Firefox and IE back then.
Then, if you get a laptop, you'll want to have all of your passwords and bookmarks synced, so instead of using Edge, you grab Chrome. never even thinking of Firefox.
Finally, in the early 00's, Firefox users had a reputation for letting you know about it. Forums of the day were full of signatures with a Get Firefox link in them. You don't really see that level of fervor anymore, because the difference between Firefox and Chrome today is nowhere near the difference between Firefox and IE back then.
I am a developer on a team of developers for a large data and interaction-rich website and we've watched the stats morph over the past 8 years from 23% mobile to 23% desktop. It's been a very swift revolution. I do a lot of QA on my phone now. I have been a Firefox proponent for at least ten years and resolved to do most of my QA on FF since I was most familiar with its features. Something that is very irksome about iOS is I can't suppress ads on Firefox on ios but I can on Safari. So Safari has become my main mobile browser. I'd love to keep pushing FF into the future- and still use it as my main desktop browser- but I can't advocate its use at least on iOS because of the ads issue.
Any browser on iOS is just a skin of safari, as all browsers on iOS must use the safari webview in the backend. Apple doesn't allow these browsers to use safari extensions.
your problem is not FF, it's the iphone, replace your phone and you'll have the browser you want with the extensions you want. Don't blame the innocents.
You can't use uBlock Origin on iOS?
Every time I have even the slightest mild thought of trying iOS again, I learn something like this which ensures I will not do it.
You can adblock at the DNS level using the AdGuard DNS plug-in for iOS. Not an app: it’s a system plug-in - https://adguard.com/en/blog/encrypted-dns-ios-14.html. It’s extremely effective across all apps that use third-party supplied ads. The only apps it cannot adblock on are those who serve up ads from the same source as their content, such as Pinterest and YouTube.
No. But you can block third-party ads on all apps that display them by using the AdGuard DNS plug-in for iOS. Not an app - it’s a system plug-in: https://adguard.com/en/blog/encrypted-dns-ios-14.html. It’s extremely effective across all apps that use third-party supplied ads. The only apps it cannot adblock on are those who serve up ads from the same source as their content, such as Pinterest and YouTube.
Not the extensions but you can use Brave browser that has its own built-in ad blocker.
nextdns.io works very well on iOS.
I use it on desktop/laptop also and have added many rules - on my profile/account at nextdns.io - with no issues.
It is very much worth a look.
I use it on desktop/laptop also and have added many rules - on my profile/account at nextdns.io - with no issues.
It is very much worth a look.
It's great and I use it on mobile as well, but the lack of cosmetic filtering still makes uBlock Origin a winner. Can't really implement that with anything except extensions.
Is using this for your DNS a privacy issue?
No extensions.
Oh for fuck’s sake. Safari has had extensions since 2010, and uBlock Origin supported it until 2018.
The problem vis-a-vis uBO that in 2018, Safari switched its extension framework. It no longer supports the WebExtensions framework, instead using a native (proprietary) implementation. The new framework requires extensions to be packaged as apps, and is less featureful in terms of what extensions can do and access than the older framework. Consequently, uBlock Origin decided not to support the new extension framework (https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158).
The problem vis-a-vis uBO that in 2018, Safari switched its extension framework. It no longer supports the WebExtensions framework, instead using a native (proprietary) implementation. The new framework requires extensions to be packaged as apps, and is less featureful in terms of what extensions can do and access than the older framework. Consequently, uBlock Origin decided not to support the new extension framework (https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158).
How could u not know that all ios browsers are just reskins of Safari if u r a developer? So ios devices are not even in the discussion
> When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change?
I know you're speaking in the context of the general public, but I've found that uBlock on Firefox Mobile does so much to make the web usable again that I'd never go without it.
I know you're speaking in the context of the general public, but I've found that uBlock on Firefox Mobile does so much to make the web usable again that I'd never go without it.
On the other hand, as someone on an old android device, the performance difference between the two is massive and it isn't getting better. Some sites (usually the ones that are actually important such as restaurant menu) are perfect on Chrome and nearly unusable on Firefox, even with an adblocker.
Performance already matters a lot on desktop browsers, but when battery life is thrown into the mix, it matters even more.
Performance already matters a lot on desktop browsers, but when battery life is thrown into the mix, it matters even more.
It's a bit perplexing to me that Firefox proponents keep denying performance issues for years.
You can just compare it yourself or look at the some of the zillion benchmarks.
You can just compare it yourself or look at the some of the zillion benchmarks.
Are they...issues?
Like, I frankly couldn't care less if Chrome is capable of running some funky JS that is mainly used on sites that I don't visit a bit faster, or is capable of rendering some css animation that I would honestly prefer died in a fire a bit faster.
Like, I frankly couldn't care less if Chrome is capable of running some funky JS that is mainly used on sites that I don't visit a bit faster, or is capable of rendering some css animation that I would honestly prefer died in a fire a bit faster.
They aren't if the goal is having a Firefox useful to you.
They are, if the goal is to figure out why Firefox market share has plummeted. People do care about `funky` websites being faster.
The modern web has immensely useful software which a good fraction of web users depend on that are rendered unusable on Firefox once in a while.
They are, if the goal is to figure out why Firefox market share has plummeted. People do care about `funky` websites being faster.
The modern web has immensely useful software which a good fraction of web users depend on that are rendered unusable on Firefox once in a while.
I don't disagree, I'm just trying to address the incredulity that perhaps for some people, Firefox might not have problems, or (gasp!) for some, Chrome might be the one with problems.
I'd argue that the market share reflects the ratio of these two `some`s.
Unfortunately the party with the deeper pocket tends to win in these cases as long as they care to.
Unfortunately the party with the deeper pocket tends to win in these cases as long as they care to.
Which is why it's even more frustrating when Mozilla ends up wasting a bunch of money on some boondoggle or other. They don't have the warchest Google has, they need to be smarter with how they spend their limited resources, especially since their income is proportional to their market share.
I know it's just anecdata, but on my 2 year old phone, Firefox+Adblock+NoScript uses about 33% less power than the stock Chrome. I grant that my browsing habits aren't such that I tend to use a lot of media-heavy sites in the first place, so perhaps on those I wouldn't see such savings.
I do the same, and honestly it's why I still use Firefox on mobile at all. But stock Firefox (which is what most people use anyways) has clear issues.
Which I think further speaks to my point I made elsewhere in this thread, that a huge part of the problem is that the web itself is shittier. Chrome can just handle that shittiness a bit better by default.
I would love to see a comparison of Firefox vs Chrome with the same set of uBlock and NoScript rules applied to both. I suspect Chrome would probably still win, but perhaps the gap won't be as big.
I would love to see a comparison of Firefox vs Chrome with the same set of uBlock and NoScript rules applied to both. I suspect Chrome would probably still win, but perhaps the gap won't be as big.
How old? My S10e isn't very new and FF works great.
It's an S7. Though newer phones probably don't have as noticeable performance issues, it still indicates that the browser's going to use more power even if the performance is fine.
> Finally, in the early 00's, Firefox users had a reputation for letting you know about it. Forums of the day were full of signatures with a Get Firefox link in them. You don't really see that level of fervor anymore, because the difference between Firefox and Chrome today is nowhere near the difference between Firefox and IE back then.
I agree that is probably the main reason - but another is simply that we don't have signatures anymore. So many of those forums were replaced by Reddit and other platforms which don't have signatures. One could argue they were a waste of screen estate but they allowed users to share a bit of their personality (including, in some cases, their choice of browser/OS) with readers in a non-awkward way.
I agree that is probably the main reason - but another is simply that we don't have signatures anymore. So many of those forums were replaced by Reddit and other platforms which don't have signatures. One could argue they were a waste of screen estate but they allowed users to share a bit of their personality (including, in some cases, their choice of browser/OS) with readers in a non-awkward way.
This is something I somewhat miss about the old forums. Between signatures and avatars, it was much easier to keep track of who you're talking to. Reddit-esque forums, this one included, have de-emphasized user identity to the point of homogeneity.
> a waste of screen estate but they allowed users to share a bit of their personality
somewhere there is a powerpoint with a slide that boils down to 'think about all the banner ads we can show in the wasted space where sigs live today!'
somewhere there is a powerpoint with a slide that boils down to 'think about all the banner ads we can show in the wasted space where sigs live today!'
FireFox doesn't synch with saved passwords that Chrome has.. Remembering tons of passwords across many sites, and having to do TFA all over again is excruciatingly painful. This is how people get locked in to so many monopolies today, and probably why log-ins are so difficult overall, yet still not working very well to secure accounts.
There is too much hassle in software these days, it used to be about making your life easier, but so many companies put out products contradictory to that, creating entirely new problems.
A web browser is just like a TV pretty much. People don't really care about what the brand is, they care about reliability, picture quality, compatibility, features etc... FireFox is like buying into a whole other TV before your current one is broken.
Firefox could jump ahead if it radically changed how we can view painful web sites, like turning a video blog page into a convenient scroller, by adding tools to categorize and search bookmarks, or possibly by letting us block the display of keywords we don't want to see. They should also perhaps create their own search engine to counter Google's strangle hold... By turning FF into more of an Internet assistant, it would become a far superior web TV than Chrome, and that would likely encourage wider adoption perhaps...
There is too much hassle in software these days, it used to be about making your life easier, but so many companies put out products contradictory to that, creating entirely new problems.
A web browser is just like a TV pretty much. People don't really care about what the brand is, they care about reliability, picture quality, compatibility, features etc... FireFox is like buying into a whole other TV before your current one is broken.
Firefox could jump ahead if it radically changed how we can view painful web sites, like turning a video blog page into a convenient scroller, by adding tools to categorize and search bookmarks, or possibly by letting us block the display of keywords we don't want to see. They should also perhaps create their own search engine to counter Google's strangle hold... By turning FF into more of an Internet assistant, it would become a far superior web TV than Chrome, and that would likely encourage wider adoption perhaps...
I dont use browser password saving, but I just looked and FF syncs passwords.
Firefox does sync if you sign in. Extensions, history, the works.
And if you don't trust mozilla sync service you can connect your own.
Stealing passwords from browser password vaults is trivial these days for most any malware, which is why password managers like BitWarden have become much more popular. And those can sync across browsers and systems much more reliably.
>When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change?
I seem to recall Microsoft getting some unfavorable government attention when they did something similar in the 90s...
I seem to recall Microsoft getting some unfavorable government attention when they did something similar in the 90s...
The key being they had a near monopoly in the operating system market. The smartphone OS market is a duopoly.
An opinion of mine is that Firefox's market share has to be greatly under-reported at this point. Built-in, on-by-default tracking protection disables some of the impact of exactly the sorts of trackers that report this sort of market share data. I think that's why the numbers vary so much depending on where you look. No other browser seems to have reporting problems like that.
Plus, one of the major sources of such market share data is and has long been Google themselves and they have such a massive conflict of interest there, but so many people interested in market share data rely on Google numbers because they rely on Google as their advertising landlord defining the markets in which they buy ads.
Ignoring mobile, I don't think Firefox's market share has "dropped" on desktops. Anecdotally, everyone I know that used Firefox has stuck with it or deepened there reliance on it and I know enough people that left Spartan Edge for Firefox when Edge went Chromium to wonder if the market share even went up somewhat though depending on your market share data nothing like that is visible either. (And others point out the problem with mobile marketshare and that being the majority browsers for people's time. Firefox on iOS looks like Mobile Safari because it is Mobile Safari and gets counted as such.)
Plus, one of the major sources of such market share data is and has long been Google themselves and they have such a massive conflict of interest there, but so many people interested in market share data rely on Google numbers because they rely on Google as their advertising landlord defining the markets in which they buy ads.
Ignoring mobile, I don't think Firefox's market share has "dropped" on desktops. Anecdotally, everyone I know that used Firefox has stuck with it or deepened there reliance on it and I know enough people that left Spartan Edge for Firefox when Edge went Chromium to wonder if the market share even went up somewhat though depending on your market share data nothing like that is visible either. (And others point out the problem with mobile marketshare and that being the majority browsers for people's time. Firefox on iOS looks like Mobile Safari because it is Mobile Safari and gets counted as such.)
> Anecdotally, everyone I know that used Firefox has stuck with it or deepened there reliance on it
I find this interesting, because I literally don't know a single person who uses FF regularly anymore, even amongst my hacker friends. 10 years ago, 100% of them did.
I find this interesting, because I literally don't know a single person who uses FF regularly anymore, even amongst my hacker friends. 10 years ago, 100% of them did.
Sample size = 1
In my life I've always come back to Firefox at some point, for various reasons. But I'm currently NOT using it anymore:
- on my personal laptop I'm using Safari because battery life is my #1 priority, and Safari is the best in this particular category. I'm also using Safari on my iPhone because it works well enough, and I find favorites and tabs sync useful
- on my pro laptop I used to use Firefox Developer Edition because I've always preferred Firefox devtools to Chrome-like devtools. But I've recently switched to Arc and I love it. I've tried vertical tabs in the past on Firefox but the experience sucks, it's half baked and ugly. Arc is not perfect but it solves quite a few pain points I had in the past. I still prefer FF devtools, but Arc's experience is better aligned with my intuitive workflow.
So yeah, for me to switch back to Firefox, they need to improve battery life drastically (they're not even bad at it, but Safari is just so much better), and try major innovations regarding user experience.
In my life I've always come back to Firefox at some point, for various reasons. But I'm currently NOT using it anymore:
- on my personal laptop I'm using Safari because battery life is my #1 priority, and Safari is the best in this particular category. I'm also using Safari on my iPhone because it works well enough, and I find favorites and tabs sync useful
- on my pro laptop I used to use Firefox Developer Edition because I've always preferred Firefox devtools to Chrome-like devtools. But I've recently switched to Arc and I love it. I've tried vertical tabs in the past on Firefox but the experience sucks, it's half baked and ugly. Arc is not perfect but it solves quite a few pain points I had in the past. I still prefer FF devtools, but Arc's experience is better aligned with my intuitive workflow.
So yeah, for me to switch back to Firefox, they need to improve battery life drastically (they're not even bad at it, but Safari is just so much better), and try major innovations regarding user experience.
> I'm also using Safari on my iPhone because it works well enough, and I find favorites and tabs sync useful
I've been very happy with Firefox Sync using the iOS Firefox. (Even if that Firefox is "just" a wrapper around Safari on iOS, it still has all the sync tools I need, which yes are very useful.)
> But I've recently switched to Arc and I love it. I've tried vertical tabs in the past on Firefox but the experience sucks, it's half baked and ugly.
Arc does seem interesting. Its current macOS-only focus makes it a non-starter for me, but I'm glad it works well for your workflows. I have been switching back and forth lately between TST and Sideberry in Firefox trying to find which one I like the most for vertical tabs. It is something that I feel the wish that out-of-the-box Firefox had just a tiny bit more polish about, but I do appreciate that extensions can help a lot there and there are multiple options. (However, especially now that Chromium Edge has vertical tabs out of the box that seems like a sign that there is more mainstream interest today and I'd love to see Firefox do some sort of polished design pass.) That's not yet a showstopper for me, but I feel it.
Battery life has been a lot less of an issue for me than memory usage (Firefox could be better there sometimes in my estimation, they are not bad it, just I've seen others do better), but I can certainly understand that complaint.
I've been very happy with Firefox Sync using the iOS Firefox. (Even if that Firefox is "just" a wrapper around Safari on iOS, it still has all the sync tools I need, which yes are very useful.)
> But I've recently switched to Arc and I love it. I've tried vertical tabs in the past on Firefox but the experience sucks, it's half baked and ugly.
Arc does seem interesting. Its current macOS-only focus makes it a non-starter for me, but I'm glad it works well for your workflows. I have been switching back and forth lately between TST and Sideberry in Firefox trying to find which one I like the most for vertical tabs. It is something that I feel the wish that out-of-the-box Firefox had just a tiny bit more polish about, but I do appreciate that extensions can help a lot there and there are multiple options. (However, especially now that Chromium Edge has vertical tabs out of the box that seems like a sign that there is more mainstream interest today and I'd love to see Firefox do some sort of polished design pass.) That's not yet a showstopper for me, but I feel it.
Battery life has been a lot less of an issue for me than memory usage (Firefox could be better there sometimes in my estimation, they are not bad it, just I've seen others do better), but I can certainly understand that complaint.
> is something that I feel the wish that out-of-the-box Firefox had just a tiny bit more polish about
Honestly I'm mad at Firefox for missing this train. They saw the success of vertical tabs extension, so it was a perfect feature to experiment on, UX wise.
I'm mad that Arc is not a project born from Mozilla's teams, based on Firefox.
Honestly I'm mad at Firefox for missing this train. They saw the success of vertical tabs extension, so it was a perfect feature to experiment on, UX wise.
I'm mad that Arc is not a project born from Mozilla's teams, based on Firefox.
> I literally don't know a single person who uses FF regularly anymore
Perhaps the FF users don't feel the need to tell you ?
Perhaps the FF users don't feel the need to tell you ?
I see the browsers they use.
> Built-in, on-by-default tracking protection disables some of the impact of exactly the sorts of trackers that report this sort of market share data.
Am I mistaken in thinking all that's needed is the User-Agent request header? I don't think FF generally fakes this.
Am I mistaken in thinking all that's needed is the User-Agent request header? I don't think FF generally fakes this.
You are underestimating the laziness of the Adtech industry.
"But we've already got Google Analytics, why would we implement server-side code (<- so complicated!) just to log some stupid header?"
"But we've already got Google Analytics, why would we implement server-side code (<- so complicated!) just to log some stupid header?"
Yeah, Google Analytics pioneered "JS and tracking cookies is all anyone needs for analytics" in ancient times and most other analytics companies followed that leader. It's the rare HN post indeed to see someone actually using classic web server logs in 2023 for analytics instead of JS+cookie trackers.
> Anecdotally, everyone I know that used Firefox has stuck with it
You guys know people that use Firefox?
You guys know people that use Firefox?
One of the reasons: Massive advertising by Google to convince people to "try chrome". It is only relatively recently that visiting a google property was not met with: "Google X is best used in Chrome -- install Chrome now." (with "install chrome" being a link to the installer.
No such massive advertising campaign ever existed to try to convince folks to "install Firefox".
No such massive advertising campaign ever existed to try to convince folks to "install Firefox".
>No such massive advertising campaign ever existed to try to convince folks to "install Firefox".
I know HN tries to resist comments of this nature, but man do I feel old now.
Firefox's entire success pretty much owes itself to a campaign like that dating back to the early to mid 2000s. Hell, there was a massive NYTimes ad in 2004!
https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl...
Edit: "there as" -> "there was"
I know HN tries to resist comments of this nature, but man do I feel old now.
Firefox's entire success pretty much owes itself to a campaign like that dating back to the early to mid 2000s. Hell, there was a massive NYTimes ad in 2004!
https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl...
Edit: "there as" -> "there was"
True, there were Firefox advertising campaigns in the past.
How many days did that NYTimes ad run?
How does that compare in size to Google being able to spend somewhere around ten to twelve years constantly advertising "switch to Chrome" on every google property (search, youtube, mail, etc.)?
The massive size of googles advertising to "switch to Chrome" dwarfs all of the Firefox campaigns combined.
How many days did that NYTimes ad run?
How does that compare in size to Google being able to spend somewhere around ten to twelve years constantly advertising "switch to Chrome" on every google property (search, youtube, mail, etc.)?
The massive size of googles advertising to "switch to Chrome" dwarfs all of the Firefox campaigns combined.
You are shifting the goalposts by trying to say it's about scale and reach, but scale and reach in 2004 wasn't the same as what Google has now. Firefox more or less blanketed the web in advertising to get the switch done.
Your point of "Google has a ridiculous playing field advantage" is noted and absolutely true, but you don't need to reach for the factually incorrect "Firefox has not had campaigns for switching" to make it.
Your point of "Google has a ridiculous playing field advantage" is noted and absolutely true, but you don't need to reach for the factually incorrect "Firefox has not had campaigns for switching" to make it.
> You are shifting the goalposts by trying to say it's about scale and reach,
Not at all, unless the meaning of "massive" has changed since I last looked the word up in a dictionary.
I said "no such massive campaign existed". Yes, campaigns did exist, but not with the "massive" size google was able to bring to their campaign.
Not at all, unless the meaning of "massive" has changed since I last looked the word up in a dictionary.
I said "no such massive campaign existed". Yes, campaigns did exist, but not with the "massive" size google was able to bring to their campaign.
I have already illustrated to you how you are not taking into account the differences between 2004 and 2023, along with how your original statement is just plain badly worded - if not outright incorrect, but I'm being charitable.
If your only remaining tangent here is to attempt to debate with the semantics of how "massive" is defined then I'm guessing we've reached the conclusion of this thread.
If your only remaining tangent here is to attempt to debate with the semantics of how "massive" is defined then I'm guessing we've reached the conclusion of this thread.
There was a massive grassroots Firefox campaign in the aughts. It was very successful at growing share and I was proud to participate.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36760016
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36760016
That and the fact that most people saw Google search as the first web page when they opened a browser (or if not then most just navigated to it) sure was a killer combo.
Chrome was started by Google as a push to improve the web, which was mired in the stagnation of Internet Explorer dominance. This was good and it worked, but now they are the new monopoly, controlling not just the majority browser but also the majority search engine, majority email platform, and majority online productivity tools. They naturally work to ensure that all that stuff works well with Chrome. Pretty much the only space they don't dominate is social media, but most people access that through apps, not a browser. Even if Firefox is a better browser (and I'm not saying it is, though I personally prefer it) there just isn't much space for Firefox to start driving a wedge in.
It's an alternative for those who want it, but it's hard to point to any technical reason to prefer it.
It's an alternative for those who want it, but it's hard to point to any technical reason to prefer it.
> This was good
Was it though? It seems like a lot of "ends justify the means" from hindsight. Were all the dark patterns that Google used to insure Chrome dominance enough to justify the ends of "stop IE stagnation"? In the exact same time period Firefox did really well on word-of-mouth. It didn't need dark patterns, and ultimately lost to Chrome's dark patterns and it is harder to argue that that wasn't at least somewhat evil by that point because I think it is a lot harder to argue that the ends of "defeat Firefox" justify those means. I think it is getting harder and harder to justify that Chrome did all those evil things, whether or not you think that Chrome itself is evil.
Was it though? It seems like a lot of "ends justify the means" from hindsight. Were all the dark patterns that Google used to insure Chrome dominance enough to justify the ends of "stop IE stagnation"? In the exact same time period Firefox did really well on word-of-mouth. It didn't need dark patterns, and ultimately lost to Chrome's dark patterns and it is harder to argue that that wasn't at least somewhat evil by that point because I think it is a lot harder to argue that the ends of "defeat Firefox" justify those means. I think it is getting harder and harder to justify that Chrome did all those evil things, whether or not you think that Chrome itself is evil.
So, the only way to grow Firefox now is to have a website Google can't hijack to advertise Chrome, and also a website everyone wants to use.
"ChatGPT runs better in Firefox. Click here to install it."
"ChatGPT runs better in Firefox. Click here to install it."
DuckDuckGo has billboards. Mozilla has money. I think share growth is expressly a non-goal from Mozilla leadership, judging by some of the other comments.
> I think share growth is expressly a non-goal from Mozilla leadership, judging by some of the other comments.
I would agree, I have no idea what the actual goals from Mozilla leadership are. They don't make sense.
I would agree, I have no idea what the actual goals from Mozilla leadership are. They don't make sense.
Google wanted more control over the Internet, so they created a browser that they controlled and pushed it on people by leveraging their monopoly in a separate area. You know, the kind of thing we used to think was bad in the 1990s.
I think it's hard to say it's some sort of monopoly thing. Browsers are free and they take about 41 seconds to download and install. That's an extremely low switching cost.
Unless you have a chromebook, it doesn't come preloaded on your Macbook or PC either. Consumers make the deliberate choice to go install Chrome instead of Firefox, and it's because they prefer Chrome.
Unless you have a chromebook, it doesn't come preloaded on your Macbook or PC either. Consumers make the deliberate choice to go install Chrome instead of Firefox, and it's because they prefer Chrome.
Low switching costs doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't also leveraging powers they have due to their dominant market position. Both of those things can be true at the same time.
In the 90s, Netscape was free and installing it was easy.
Leveraged their monopoly ?
How does that work exactly for Windows, MacOS and iOS in your mind ?
I assume that the previous commenter was referring to Google's monopolies in search, email, and video.
All of which they will use to yell at you to switch to Chrome, and will sometimes cause to actually be faster or more featureful when using Chrome rather than any other browser.
It's a pretty clear case of using your monopoly in one market to artificially prop up your entry into a different market, which is very much the sort of thing that has traditionally been frowned upon both legally and morally.
All of which they will use to yell at you to switch to Chrome, and will sometimes cause to actually be faster or more featureful when using Chrome rather than any other browser.
It's a pretty clear case of using your monopoly in one market to artificially prop up your entry into a different market, which is very much the sort of thing that has traditionally been frowned upon both legally and morally.
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Back when Chrome was fresh, it was pushed very hard by Google through their home page and other related services until it became dominant. It was also the time when Firefox suffered from certain quality issues which really helped Chrome. So, it wasn't the ecosystem thing because Google was, and to some extent still is, the de facto home page of most people, regardless of the OS.
they implement features.only supported by chromium. see google meets blur background.
You think Chrome has ~62% market share because ..Meets has blurred backgrounds ?
If anything, it is impressive how Chrome has managed to be the majority browser, given that by default we get Edge on Windows, Safari on MacOS/iOS and Firefox on Ubuntu.
If anything, it is impressive how Chrome has managed to be the majority browser, given that by default we get Edge on Windows, Safari on MacOS/iOS and Firefox on Ubuntu.
That's what they are supposed to do. The web standards bodies don't like to consider standardizing new features until there is an implementation in the field so they can see how well it works in practice.
So when one browser maker wants a new feature they make a spec and implement it. If it seems to be useful other browser makers will implement it, maybe with changes they think improve it. Then the standards bodies will look at all those and make a standard.
For that particular feature it was actually first suggested by people from Intel and Apple. Google thinks it is a good idea and is the first to write a spec for it and implement it. It seems highly likely that Mozilla and Apple will follow and it will be standardized.
So when one browser maker wants a new feature they make a spec and implement it. If it seems to be useful other browser makers will implement it, maybe with changes they think improve it. Then the standards bodies will look at all those and make a standard.
For that particular feature it was actually first suggested by people from Intel and Apple. Google thinks it is a good idea and is the first to write a spec for it and implement it. It seems highly likely that Mozilla and Apple will follow and it will be standardized.
And for any non-Google Android phone!
In my view, this isn't accurate. Chrome was created at the time because browsers weren't great and Google wanted browsers to be faster. Chrome grew in popularity not because of pushing but because it was genuinely a much higher quality browser for a long time.
Big picture, I don't know. But I stopped using FF entirely a year or so ago because it reached a point where I could no longer put up with it without irritating me. I find its performance to be awful, it's much less usable, and it's harder to correct the various UI choices that I'm allergic to. These are problems that I didn't have, or that weren't as severe, before the revamp.
It's clear to me that FF is set on their development direction, and it's one I dislike, so it was time to give up.
This was actually a hard decision on my part. I've been using FF since the very beginning, and was a heavy advocate for it. Leaving it feels like leaving an old friend who has changed into someone I'm not compatible with.
It's clear to me that FF is set on their development direction, and it's one I dislike, so it was time to give up.
This was actually a hard decision on my part. I've been using FF since the very beginning, and was a heavy advocate for it. Leaving it feels like leaving an old friend who has changed into someone I'm not compatible with.
Interesting, I've never had any performance complaints with Firefox (except for on Ubuntu where you're forced to use the Snap).
May I ask what browser are you using now?
May I ask what browser are you using now?
I'm using Brave at the moment. I'm still seeking a better browser. I'd love to lose the Chrome UI style, if nothing else.
> I've never had any performance complaints with Firefox
Lots of people don't. But lots of people do. My assumption is that Mozilla targeted their improvements at a particular sort of machine and if yours isn't close enough to that, then your performance is very poor.
For me, the turning point came last year (or the year before, I forget), when an update was released that caused FF to take between 3-5 minutes to start up. Nothing I did resolved this. That was the moment when I realized I just had to give up, that FF is unlikely to become a reasonable choice for me in the future. (Although prior to that, FF performance for me had been on a continual downslope ever since Quantum -- which itself didn't improve speed for me, but didn't harm it, either).
> I've never had any performance complaints with Firefox
Lots of people don't. But lots of people do. My assumption is that Mozilla targeted their improvements at a particular sort of machine and if yours isn't close enough to that, then your performance is very poor.
For me, the turning point came last year (or the year before, I forget), when an update was released that caused FF to take between 3-5 minutes to start up. Nothing I did resolved this. That was the moment when I realized I just had to give up, that FF is unlikely to become a reasonable choice for me in the future. (Although prior to that, FF performance for me had been on a continual downslope ever since Quantum -- which itself didn't improve speed for me, but didn't harm it, either).
> (except for on Ubuntu where you're forced to use the Snap).
FWIW, "forced" isn't the correct term here. One can still download the .tar.gz and unpack it at will (or, I presume if determined enough, repackage it into a deb using fpm/nfpm). Just watch out for `chown 0:0` otherwise the 1Password extension tries to be cute and accuses you of malware and refuses to work citing a fantastically opaque error message
source: a random person on the Internet who loathes snap and whose hate for snap overcame his activation cost for downloading the standalone binary. I just have to remember to use Help > About a lot because their update notification is braindead (and that very point is on-topic for this thread: execution matters)
FWIW, "forced" isn't the correct term here. One can still download the .tar.gz and unpack it at will (or, I presume if determined enough, repackage it into a deb using fpm/nfpm). Just watch out for `chown 0:0` otherwise the 1Password extension tries to be cute and accuses you of malware and refuses to work citing a fantastically opaque error message
source: a random person on the Internet who loathes snap and whose hate for snap overcame his activation cost for downloading the standalone binary. I just have to remember to use Help > About a lot because their update notification is braindead (and that very point is on-topic for this thread: execution matters)
I moved to Vivaldi, similar reasons. It's built off chromium and has a very nice syncable android app.The clincher for me was a configurable default search.
Chrome used to be a lot faster years back so I switched. Firefox sadly has never given me a reason to switch back. Chrome is still fast and generally easy to use. (Maybe others here can give me good reasons to switch?)
Chrome also has some obscure features I rely on that Firefox does not have (or just doesn't do well):
Chrome also has some obscure features I rely on that Firefox does not have (or just doesn't do well):
* Firefox does not support Touch ID on macOS. I can't actually log into a lot of my sites
* I can't create a desktop app version of a site (Chrome > Tools > Create Shortcut as window). I use this to put google meet, jira, and some other internal tools as dedicated dock apps.
* Chrome lets you run a work and personal profile in different windows. It's just a cmd+` away. It also remembers which profile you had viewed last and opens links in the right one. I didn't like multi-account containers in Firefox because I always had to select the right profile when I click a link.I understand your dislike of the default workflow for Firefox profiles. Fortunately you can launch them from the CLI, so I usually creat an alias to my alt profiles then launch the browser from the shell.
Also Firefox Multi-Account Containers do things that Chrome profiles can't do at all.
the opposite is true, too, since "Clear History" in Chrome Profiles behaves correctly and (AFAIK) is scoped just to that Profile unlike our container friend: https://github.com/mozilla/multi-account-containers/issues/3...
I still use them because combined with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-url-in-c... ( https://github.com/honsiorovskyi/open-url-in-container ) is a game changer for my workflow but it does make me sad that issue has been open for so long
I still use them because combined with https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-url-in-c... ( https://github.com/honsiorovskyi/open-url-in-container ) is a game changer for my workflow but it does make me sad that issue has been open for so long
To my understanding: the built-in "Junk" container auto-clears history, as well as "In Private" boundaries apply per usual for any container you open "In Private". Containers that I truly need to regularly clear history on, divorced from the rest of my Profile go into their own Firefox Profile. MAC is on top of/in addition to Firefox Profiles.
Multi-Account Container nicely reduces the need to juggle different Firefox Profiles, but it doesn't eliminate it. (I certainly still use a mixture of both for a myriad of reasons.)
Multi-Account Container nicely reduces the need to juggle different Firefox Profiles, but it doesn't eliminate it. (I certainly still use a mixture of both for a myriad of reasons.)
If something requires CLI to work in a reasonable way it is a failure.
The lack of support for TouchID for WebAuthn has been bugging me to no end. Making WebAuthn more accessible is such a big deal to help stop phishing. It also looks like there’s no priority for moving forward with passkeys.
I’m still using Firefox on both desktop and mobile but this is the issue that has me doubting my choice going forward.
I’m still using Firefox on both desktop and mobile but this is the issue that has me doubting my choice going forward.
Because firefox let itself be defined by its competition (chrome).
Everything in firefox in the last 10 years feels like they are just copying chrome with a bit of a delay. You don't win the market by doing the same thing as the market leader (Especially when the market leader is as well funded as google). You need to find a niche and execute on that.
Everything in firefox in the last 10 years feels like they are just copying chrome with a bit of a delay. You don't win the market by doing the same thing as the market leader (Especially when the market leader is as well funded as google). You need to find a niche and execute on that.
Sort of...
But Firefox is open source, so anyone can contribute. Mozilla accepted money from google to "just make google the default search engine".
But they also accept contributions in programming (its open source after all) from google, Microsoft & others employees.
The google/Microsoft contributors whether working after hours or as part of their employment have some influence in the direction of Firefox.
That may be deliberate or benign (a really good direction by google, in a workers mind, will bias their thinking in other projects and visa versa)
That is one disadvantage of open source. A foundation can't avoid that unless you setup like Greenpeace and don't give the riff raff any real say.
Firefox users are "captured" by any adds on google search even though they may advertise chrome.
People that comment here are interested, most users of browsers ARE NOT. It is so much easier to use the default. Google knows this, Twitter knows this.
One of the more brilliant ideas in Firefox was containers, chrome could not implement them because of architectural constraints but rather than build on that beautiful idea, Firefox went in a slightly different direction that Chrome & Edge could follow and still protect their advertising revenue.
The google/Microsoft contributors whether working after hours or as part of their employment have some influence in the direction of Firefox.
That may be deliberate or benign (a really good direction by google, in a workers mind, will bias their thinking in other projects and visa versa)
That is one disadvantage of open source. A foundation can't avoid that unless you setup like Greenpeace and don't give the riff raff any real say.
Firefox users are "captured" by any adds on google search even though they may advertise chrome.
People that comment here are interested, most users of browsers ARE NOT. It is so much easier to use the default. Google knows this, Twitter knows this.
One of the more brilliant ideas in Firefox was containers, chrome could not implement them because of architectural constraints but rather than build on that beautiful idea, Firefox went in a slightly different direction that Chrome & Edge could follow and still protect their advertising revenue.
Just because anyone "can" contribute doesn't mean every patch is accepted or that product decisions are delegated to corporations with competing products. Firefox still bears responsibility for its own product decisions, not to mention how firefox is marketed.
absolutely correct, but Firefox takes notice of ideas.
They can be influenced by what is proposed as fixes or contributions.
"Everyone knows" that Firefox may break some websites, just ask google.
Has anyone ever come across that pretty regularly?
Firefox has become a follower rather than a leader and I think the influence of contributors has done that.
It is no good for Firefox going in a direction that a good deal of their contributors wont go. The users be damned!
I am still using Firefox as my main browser, but some sites are broken with Firefox and working fine with Chrome. So unless you are particularly motivated to stay on a given platform, practically it does not really makes sense as a user to stay committed.
I use Firefox as my daily driver and have not encountered any sites that work in Chrome but not Firefox.
Google slides didn't work properly for me on Firefox a few days ago, all fonts displayed as some ugly serif font. Though I assume this is Google being underhand and malicious rather than Firefox not working properly.
Google is especially malicious, as they disable the mouse based past options in docs on firefox. This is a pain for users that don't know the paste shortcuts, or who are more comfortable with just using the menus. Sadly, the "dontfuckwithpaste" extension doesn't seem to fix it.
The website for one of my local news stations, the one I prefer for severe weather coverage, causes Firefox to freeze. That started happening a few months ago, so I now have to use Chrome to check the weather. And last month my electric company's website stopped working with Firefox. It no longer displays any user data, such as amount owed, so I have to use Chrome to pay my bill. I've encountered a few other sites here and there while surfing.
Local news websites are some of the worst performing websites. Due to the death of local journalism these websites are deep in the vicious cycle of lower advertising revenue, partnering with bottom tier ad networks that are especially spammy or scammy, breaking their webpage layout with ads, and clickbait content. I remember newspapers and magazines were majority ads by layout area but at least those did not spy on you or make your copy heat up and sound like a hair dryer.
If I cut out the worse 10% of websites I could easily browse on 2007 PC. It's sad that web advertising bloat and Microsoft Teams is a reason to buy a new CPU.
For the weather I stick to Weather.gov.
If I cut out the worse 10% of websites I could easily browse on 2007 PC. It's sad that web advertising bloat and Microsoft Teams is a reason to buy a new CPU.
For the weather I stick to Weather.gov.
I do too, and I have had great success... until recently, when I noticed multiple sites that don't display all form fields / checkboxes under firefox.
Most recently, I was checking into an international flight on aa.com, and there was some checkbox that Firefox was not displaying. I kept hitting submit, and AA kept telling me there was a problem, and it appeared that I'd filled out the entire form. I disabled Ublock, etc, and I could never get it to work. I eventually tried Chrome, and noticed the extra field.
Most recently, I was checking into an international flight on aa.com, and there was some checkbox that Firefox was not displaying. I kept hitting submit, and AA kept telling me there was a problem, and it appeared that I'd filled out the entire form. I disabled Ublock, etc, and I could never get it to work. I eventually tried Chrome, and noticed the extra field.
It might be a specific security setting I've made more restrictive than the default, but Cloudflare's bot detector goes into an infinite loop on Firefox, thus making any site that puts that in front unusable, including OpenAI most notably. As a consequence, I don't use those sites, but I'm sure others would rather just give in and use a browser with settings that Cloudflare actually tests against and cares about.
>It might be a specific security setting I've made more restrictive than the default
Probably not.
I recently tried to go back to firefox and eat up some of my gripes with the browser because I don't like chromium's engine monopoly but I had the same issue you had, in my case with some web novels websites that ran cloudflare in maximum DDoS protection mode. Cloudflare would tell me to click to prove I'm human, and the page would just reload in place in an infinite loop.
I ran Firefox on the default settings, and with uBlock (also on default settings). I deleted uBlock, and disabled every option that Firefox has for privacy. Still no cookie. Cloudflare blocked me.
I opened Chrome on the same webpage and not only did it work immediately, but cloudflare didn't ask me to click to prove my humanity, the page just went away on its own without the "challenge" prompt. I had ublock turned on and it caused no issue.
I'm a lesser man, I did what most people would do in this situation: apt purge "firefox*".
I'm a linux user, who used to have a dual boot with windows for video games and who removed the dual boot and stuck with only linux since 2 years ago, I can say, I find being a linux gamer, quirks with proton and all, less painful than browsing the web with Firefox. It's a lost cause. There is simply no way that I am going to recommend Firefox to less technical friends the way I used to in the Internet Explorer vs Mozilla days. I can't see FF ever recovering.
Probably not.
I recently tried to go back to firefox and eat up some of my gripes with the browser because I don't like chromium's engine monopoly but I had the same issue you had, in my case with some web novels websites that ran cloudflare in maximum DDoS protection mode. Cloudflare would tell me to click to prove I'm human, and the page would just reload in place in an infinite loop.
I ran Firefox on the default settings, and with uBlock (also on default settings). I deleted uBlock, and disabled every option that Firefox has for privacy. Still no cookie. Cloudflare blocked me.
I opened Chrome on the same webpage and not only did it work immediately, but cloudflare didn't ask me to click to prove my humanity, the page just went away on its own without the "challenge" prompt. I had ublock turned on and it caused no issue.
I'm a lesser man, I did what most people would do in this situation: apt purge "firefox*".
I'm a linux user, who used to have a dual boot with windows for video games and who removed the dual boot and stuck with only linux since 2 years ago, I can say, I find being a linux gamer, quirks with proton and all, less painful than browsing the web with Firefox. It's a lost cause. There is simply no way that I am going to recommend Firefox to less technical friends the way I used to in the Internet Explorer vs Mozilla days. I can't see FF ever recovering.
OWA (Outlook Web Access) shows me the antiquated "lite HTML" interface with Firefox on my OS. If I change the user agent to claim to be Chrome on Windows, it shows me the modern UI (which works fine, however it gets the time zone wrong).
Accessing Google Docs, Sheets, etc. works OK with Firefox, but if I claim to be Chrome some things don't work. So they are defintely serving up something different to Chrome vs Firefox browsers.
Accessing Google Docs, Sheets, etc. works OK with Firefox, but if I claim to be Chrome some things don't work. So they are defintely serving up something different to Chrome vs Firefox browsers.
That's feature. The light version only takes 3 cores
I've had issues with video calls, particularly ones based on webex that were forwarded through other sites, my health insurer/other telehealth apps, netflix and other streaming sites, just to name a few I've seen in the last year.
It’s usually when the sites depend on Chrome-specific calls and don’t provide alternates for other browsers because they only test on Chromme.
Interesting, I have not come across any broken websites in a while. Or well, there was a booking website recently where I switched to Chrome to have my booking go through. But it would need to be a lot of those instances before I would even consider switching to Chrome. You have any (anecdotal) stats on how many websites are broken? What kind of sites are those?
I'm not a heavy Firefox user, but I've seen it as well. I don't remember the specifics, but on a couple of occasions a site would fail to function properly, I'd pop the developer tools open and see a Javascript error, usually about a null object. I'm assuming some sites are relying on Chrome-specific extensions because they don't see enough Firefox traffic to care. I haven't really seen much in the way of broken layout though, which is a big difference from the old "only tested in IE" days.
Same, it's mostly Google sites that work better with Chrome, like the GCP console.
I know this at least used to be the case, but is it still? Using Safari, it seems like the GCP console has gotten far better in recent weeks, to the point that I no longer feel the need to reach for a Chromium browser.
I spend a lot of time in the GCP log explorer and the UI is very "jumpy" in Firefox. Much better in Chrome.
Google meet works fine on firefox. The GCP console is an affront to the web on any browser, though.
Some users don't understand the difference between the web / an ISP / a website / a search engine / a web browser / an OS /... because of massive advertising from Google, that went on all the segments, and also did so much anti competition that it was charged in the EU
For some, Google is the brand for the tech, and everything else like Firefox is a knock off, or a pedantic complication.
It's a scary world we're living in.
And it's the world we IT guys have built, when we taught the elderly and everyone how to be online with hands-on first and no proper explanation. Google has done better with even easier hands-on and absolutely nothing to know before you use your phone or Chromebook.
For some, Google is the brand for the tech, and everything else like Firefox is a knock off, or a pedantic complication.
It's a scary world we're living in.
And it's the world we IT guys have built, when we taught the elderly and everyone how to be online with hands-on first and no proper explanation. Google has done better with even easier hands-on and absolutely nothing to know before you use your phone or Chromebook.
This. People don't know the difference between a browser and a search engine, and that's a good thing for Google.
Actually, why does Chrome/ium has such a high market share even amongst tech savvy people? I don't see the appeal.
for most, i would assume it's largely just that during the time of the naïve web, there was a period where google kind of was the company, so people started using it for everything (think shortly before and then during the early google+ era). 10 years later almost every normie who didn't start using apple products uses gmail and chrome simply because they legacied into it from when they were younger and less aware of the negative aspects of the practice.
I think you're overplaying the social aspect. For quite a while, Chrome had a serious speed advantage over Firefox and the developer tools were (are?) considered much better. I'm not sure if either is still the case. They both seem fine for my purposes, but I use Chrome because it subjectively feels a bit quicker and I've gotten disillusioned with the practice of choosing software based on political considerations.
Firefox's dev tools are much better than Chrome's
Firefox devtools where long time not comparable to chrome, now they are almost the same.
There are now some features I prefer on Firefox and some I prefer on chrome.
The biggest difference was Firefox's best Dev Tools in those years were extensions and maintained via a wider community and updated on a different (sometimes faster) cadence than the browser itself. Good old Firebug was more capable than Chrome's Dev Tools at most points in time in that "long time not comparable" people believe existed, but Firefox didn't get "credit" for it until Firefox was finally pressured to move extensions like Firebug in-box and into the browser's normal deployment cycle. (I'm not sure that's necessarily the improvement people think it was.)
A decade or so back Firefox was just so fucking slow and Chrome wasn't. So I switched. It's fixed now so I switched back.
Chrome Dev Tools is better than Firefox Dev Tools in my opinion. Chrome has more extensions too.
I use both. I use Chrome for any Google website, I use Firefox for everything else (except sites that break in Firefox, and then I use Chrome for those too).
I use chromium for one reason. work requires Google meets as our meeting software. I require the ability to blur my background. I hate installing third party plugins. therefore brave is my browser
Because there are no better alternatives. I don't like Google (and never did), but I HATE Mozilla for betraying all the good it once stood for.
I hope they go broke, but they already aren't relevant anymore.
I hope they go broke, but they already aren't relevant anymore.
For years, we believed that The Google is the end-all-be-all in terms of "the best" tech to be using. Today, a lot of people still believe this, although to a lesser extent because, for obvious reasons, fewer exhibit blind trust in The Google or get that warm and fuzzy "not evil" feeling. Also, one organization has an astonishingly bigger cash flow than the other, so go figure.
With the shift to smartphones, a diminishing number of people care about their web browser, let alone those who even remember what a web browser is. Chrome just works for most people, and the need to use another browser is completely unclear to the average person. In fact, there may be no good reason to switch browsers for the average person; why would you choose a different browser with better ad-blocking capabilities when you like using The Google and enjoy those quirky State Farm commercials?
To top it all off, Mozilla has made lousy decisions as to how to delegate its cash flow.
With the shift to smartphones, a diminishing number of people care about their web browser, let alone those who even remember what a web browser is. Chrome just works for most people, and the need to use another browser is completely unclear to the average person. In fact, there may be no good reason to switch browsers for the average person; why would you choose a different browser with better ad-blocking capabilities when you like using The Google and enjoy those quirky State Farm commercials?
To top it all off, Mozilla has made lousy decisions as to how to delegate its cash flow.
The market has likely grown by a large amount in that time, and a big chunk of that growth will be on platforms that either ban, or strongly tilt the user's choice of browser.
That and the competitors being rich corporations that are happy to pay to convert low-information users probably accounts for most of it.
I've not looked recently but looking at actual user numbers has long told a different story, which no great decline except in relative terms when compared with rivals.
That and the competitors being rich corporations that are happy to pay to convert low-information users probably accounts for most of it.
I've not looked recently but looking at actual user numbers has long told a different story, which no great decline except in relative terms when compared with rivals.
Simple: Chrome captured the market with a good product, at the right time.
I remember when Chrome was new, and it was fast, and Google had other game-changing products (like email with enormous storage). I was just an average consumer back then, and I went for Chrome.
Then, once you capture enough market share (due to poor competition), people start targeting Chrome as the de facto standard. Throw in Android and you have a browser that the world now depends on. Even Microsoft gave in (with a built in ad-blocker, cause they're bitter about it, too).
Should we all be running a C++ based Javascript interpreter? Absolutely not. But try explaining why to the masses...
I remember when Chrome was new, and it was fast, and Google had other game-changing products (like email with enormous storage). I was just an average consumer back then, and I went for Chrome.
Then, once you capture enough market share (due to poor competition), people start targeting Chrome as the de facto standard. Throw in Android and you have a browser that the world now depends on. Even Microsoft gave in (with a built in ad-blocker, cause they're bitter about it, too).
Should we all be running a C++ based Javascript interpreter? Absolutely not. But try explaining why to the masses...
Firefox should act like a startup in the growth phase. Pretend it has X users and is ready to grow, instead of acting like it has X users that it's trying to hold on to.
If Firefox were a growth startup, we'd see all sorts of strategies coming into play: recommendations, ways to invite friends to try it, gamification, doubling down on what differentiates it, focusing on a niche then expanding that niche, trying to stand out and be more memorable, etc.
For example, Brave is doing some of those things
The nice part is that, because it's owned by Mozilla, users don't have to worry about a bait and switch at the end of the growth phase
If Firefox were a growth startup, we'd see all sorts of strategies coming into play: recommendations, ways to invite friends to try it, gamification, doubling down on what differentiates it, focusing on a niche then expanding that niche, trying to stand out and be more memorable, etc.
For example, Brave is doing some of those things
The nice part is that, because it's owned by Mozilla, users don't have to worry about a bait and switch at the end of the growth phase
> The nice part is that, because it's owned by Mozilla, users don't have to worry about a bait and switch at the end of the growth phase
Mozilla doesn't have VC backers that expect double-digit returns. At the top of the Mozilla structure is a non-profit foundation. Mozilla still has an incentive to make money, of course, but it does not require outsized returns and it is by its nature less inclined to place profit above mission or user experience.
You seem to have fallen into a time machine where it's not 2023 but instead... I dunno... 2010? (I'd have said 2013, but even that would still have been too generous; there's no defensible reason for crediting 2013-era Mozcorp as deserving of the warm fuzzies involved here, either. By then, it had managed to do what Netscape failed at—consolidating power within the distributed and independent mozilla.org project and assuming control for itself.)
No warm fuzzies here - just a factual summary of Mozilla's legal status and ownership. The boards of most tech companies today have fiduciary duties to shareholders who expect a significant return on their investment, which is not the case for Mozilla.
It's not an explicit part of your comment, but the thread where this interaction is taking place contains a suggestion much stronger than a mere "factual summary of Mozilla's legal status and ownership" (and with all conclusions then left to be drawn by the reader). Viz:
> because it's owned by Mozilla, users don't have to worry about a bait and switch at the end of the growth phase
And with regard to your words on their own, the fact that "Mozilla"* "does not require outsized returns" is a separate matter from whether it is, in practice, "less inclined to place profit above mission or user experience". History has shown—in this decade, at least—that prioritizing mission (and/)or user experience is not actually part of its current MO.
Mozilla Corporation* is a fully taxable company. It has indisputably made exactly the sorts of business deals that anyone would expect from one (and would expect not to be planned let alone executed by a purely principles-based organization). There are ordinary businesses—i.e. companies that don't even have the sort of affiliation with a non-profit parent company the way that the Mozilla-the-corporation has with the foundation—that behave more ethically and more consistent with a principles-first approach than the way that Mozcorp does things in its current incarnation and has been doing for the last 10+ years.
* it's good to be specific
> because it's owned by Mozilla, users don't have to worry about a bait and switch at the end of the growth phase
And with regard to your words on their own, the fact that "Mozilla"* "does not require outsized returns" is a separate matter from whether it is, in practice, "less inclined to place profit above mission or user experience". History has shown—in this decade, at least—that prioritizing mission (and/)or user experience is not actually part of its current MO.
Mozilla Corporation* is a fully taxable company. It has indisputably made exactly the sorts of business deals that anyone would expect from one (and would expect not to be planned let alone executed by a purely principles-based organization). There are ordinary businesses—i.e. companies that don't even have the sort of affiliation with a non-profit parent company the way that the Mozilla-the-corporation has with the foundation—that behave more ethically and more consistent with a principles-first approach than the way that Mozcorp does things in its current incarnation and has been doing for the last 10+ years.
* it's good to be specific
[deleted]
I understand, the point about VC is true indeed. I'm generally a bit skeptical about the Mozilla Corporation as it's a taxable entity instead of a non-profit, however while it stays 100% owned by the Mozilla Foundation their objectives should be well-aligned with the interests of us internet-users.
Have a wild test Ballon Version of the app, one can switch too on the fly, allowing young open sorcerers to create new magic.
Don't you need capital you can burn to be in a growth phase, like a startup would be?
Yeah, the current yearly contract payment they get from Google seems to remove any sense of urgency or need to grow market share. I obviously don’t know the details but I haven’t heard of performance incentives or anything, because if Firefox grows it’s bad for Google.
I think in part it's because the web also just got shittier.
One of the common reasons given in this thread is that Chrome is faster, but I've found that aggressive use of NoScript and uBlock will make Firefox much faster than your stock Chrome browser. Excessive JS, excessive CSS, and of course the browser made by a company that pushes both excesses is better at handling them.
One of the common reasons given in this thread is that Chrome is faster, but I've found that aggressive use of NoScript and uBlock will make Firefox much faster than your stock Chrome browser. Excessive JS, excessive CSS, and of course the browser made by a company that pushes both excesses is better at handling them.
The rise of Chrome in the early 2010s really cut into Firefox's marketshare. This is anecdotal, but I remember Chrome running very fast on my Macs in the early 2010s. It was much faster than Firefox of that era and was quite competitive with Safari. Firefox's performance did improve drastically later in the decade, but from a marketshare standpoint Chrome had already gained significant ground.
In the past five years or so I switched back to Safari on Macs and to Firefox on Windows and Linux. My reasons had to do with three factors: (1) Chrome's memory usage, (2) privacy concerns with using Chrome, and (3) my concerns that Chrome would become the monopoly web browser, similar to the "bad old days" when Internet Explorer 5 and 6 were dominant, which held back the Web until Firefox emerged sometime around 2004. Firefox is a good browser and I hope that it will continue putting up a fight against Chrome to keep the Web from being completely dominated by Google.
In the past five years or so I switched back to Safari on Macs and to Firefox on Windows and Linux. My reasons had to do with three factors: (1) Chrome's memory usage, (2) privacy concerns with using Chrome, and (3) my concerns that Chrome would become the monopoly web browser, similar to the "bad old days" when Internet Explorer 5 and 6 were dominant, which held back the Web until Firefox emerged sometime around 2004. Firefox is a good browser and I hope that it will continue putting up a fight against Chrome to keep the Web from being completely dominated by Google.
If I had to pick one thing, I'd say distracting projects at Mozilla. I say this as an outside observer without much to base it on other than the products and announcements I read about.
Don't get me wrong I love the niche work that gets done on the side. What I don't think is a good idea is trying to do more than one big thing at a time, e.g. Firefox OS phone. As I say this it seems to have made its way as TV firmware, so maybe not a waste.
Don't get me wrong I love the niche work that gets done on the side. What I don't think is a good idea is trying to do more than one big thing at a time, e.g. Firefox OS phone. As I say this it seems to have made its way as TV firmware, so maybe not a waste.
I was an avid Firefox user, until it started adding services that I never asked for, namely Pocket. Things that should have been an add-on were now a core feature of the product.
This attitude has always confused me. “Firefox did something I didn’t like so I switched to a browser which does hundreds of things to undermine the free and open internet”.
Plenty of Firefox users do not actually care about free & open and they're the ones who we lost in the greatest numbers. Recognizing and addressing their needs is important.
> so I switched to a browser which does hundreds of things to undermine the free and open internet
like 1. forcing DNS over HTTPS 2. Copying Chrome UI and destroying usability (why do i have to edit a file to get back scrollbar) 3. Droping support for FTP (because everybody i.e Chrome is doing it) 4. Droping suport for localhost (because everybody i.e Chrome is doing it) and so on.
like 1. forcing DNS over HTTPS 2. Copying Chrome UI and destroying usability (why do i have to edit a file to get back scrollbar) 3. Droping support for FTP (because everybody i.e Chrome is doing it) 4. Droping suport for localhost (because everybody i.e Chrome is doing it) and so on.
I think about a year ago they toned down pockets presence. It's basically just another extension now.
So… just Pocket?
i admit it was an odd addition but I do like browsing those stories on occasion and find it useful to same new stories to pocket so that I can read them later, particularly for publishers that only let you visit their site X number of times a month.
i admit it was an odd addition but I do like browsing those stories on occasion and find it useful to same new stories to pocket so that I can read them later, particularly for publishers that only let you visit their site X number of times a month.
Like chrome has account sync? Like chrome has telemetry? Like chrome has a game built in? Like chrome has a read later feature?
You're mad because Firefox was silly enough to call it Pocket instead of Firefox Reading List.
You're mad because Firefox was silly enough to call it Pocket instead of Firefox Reading List.
Because it's not as good as it used to be. Due poor management I suppose.
Chrome is far for ideal too, but at least it works for user and developer without much pain.
Chrome is far for ideal too, but at least it works for user and developer without much pain.
Could you be more specific?
It used to be engineered especially for power users, respecting their interests and needs. Not so much these days. Reverting my about:config settings every time I update, for instance, just conditions me to dodge updates.
One example of this is removing the ability to open local files on mobile. Or forcing browser restarts on the desktop in the middle of browsing.
It specifically sucks now in almost every aspect it used to rule 10 years ago.
Starting from performance, dev tools and finishing with annoying and shitty ui “enhancements”.
Starting from performance, dev tools and finishing with annoying and shitty ui “enhancements”.
I was a diehard Firefox user in the aughts, running a bunch of extensions and recommending it to people.
I switched to Chrome the first day it became available, because it was just so much faster.
You don't need a monopoly or advertising to grow a product that sells itself that well. (Those absolutely did come later.)
I switched to Chrome the first day it became available, because it was just so much faster.
You don't need a monopoly or advertising to grow a product that sells itself that well. (Those absolutely did come later.)
> I switched to Chrome the first day it became available, because it was just so much faster.
This hasn't been the case for a long time.
This hasn't been the case for a long time.
I did eventually switch back to Firefox in ~2018 after they jettisoned their legacy cruft and got fast again (I don't know the technical specifics).
Chrome is better. That's why. It's faster. JS loads quicker. Websites break, for instance Tidal streaming. There are three million tech support threads on the internet of people who can't use Tidal on Firefox. Firefox on desktop can't even translate pages yet, I have to use a janky third party plugin.
As a fairly normie internet user, unless you have a hate-boner for Google or some arcane developer niche use case, I don't see a reason to use Firefox anymore.
As a fairly normie internet user, unless you have a hate-boner for Google or some arcane developer niche use case, I don't see a reason to use Firefox anymore.
What is Tidal? Never heard of it. It is a video streaming service?
High-fidelity lossless music streaming service with several million subscribers
https://tidal.com/
https://tidal.com/
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Use Firefox for a day if you are a Chrome user, you’ll quickly realize the experience is far subpar.
JS stuff is slower, random websites break, the UI feels a bit sluggish.
I understand there are ideological reasons to support Firefox, and that some of these issues are easily attributed to other parties. But for users, there aren’t too many reasons to switch over from Chrome or even Safari, like it was the situation during the IE6 days.
JS stuff is slower, random websites break, the UI feels a bit sluggish.
I understand there are ideological reasons to support Firefox, and that some of these issues are easily attributed to other parties. But for users, there aren’t too many reasons to switch over from Chrome or even Safari, like it was the situation during the IE6 days.
If random websites break, it's because the developer didn't do any testing in Firefox. IIRC Firefox follows standards more closely than Chrome and Chrome has random additional features that aren't standard that can make websites better, e.g YouTube, Google Maps
Agreed. What do you expect users to do here?
Use Chrome or try to force a few thousand websites to test on Firefox?
Use Chrome or try to force a few thousand websites to test on Firefox?
Oh man, just got a flashback to when everyone coded to IE because everyone used it so there wasn't any reason to code to standards.
That was not a good time.
That was not a good time.
Do you remember how Firefox got over this?
By replicating IE's bugs and beating them at their own game. Now Firefox, for some reason, doesn't want to do this.
By replicating IE's bugs and beating them at their own game. Now Firefox, for some reason, doesn't want to do this.
Hhmm. I don't remember FF ever trying to reproduce IE6. I remember having to do special hacks to handle IE.
This has not been my experience at all. I was compelled to use Chrome at my last job (there was a bunch of internal tooling built around Chrome assumptions). I was there for almost five years, so I did a whole lot more than kicked the tires. My daily driver has remained FF, and I have not perceived any noticeable difference in perf because of it.
I tried Firefox a few weeks ago on a 2015 MBP plugged into a 4K tv, it could basically not play any high res video at any watchable framerate. Safari did the best, Chrome was close.
See https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1716164
My guess is that Firefox was being served AV1 by YouTube. Intel chips prior to 11th gen have no hardware decode support for AV1, and so your CPU was overworked and bottlenecking.
Chrome and Safari probably resorted to H.261/H.263/H.264 encoded video from YouTube, and relied on the hardware decoder.
Easy fix: go to `about:config` and disable `media.av1.enabled`.
My guess is that Firefox was being served AV1 by YouTube. Intel chips prior to 11th gen have no hardware decode support for AV1, and so your CPU was overworked and bottlenecking.
Chrome and Safari probably resorted to H.261/H.263/H.264 encoded video from YouTube, and relied on the hardware decoder.
Easy fix: go to `about:config` and disable `media.av1.enabled`.
I also had a 2015 MBP and watched 4k video on it basically every day. I have no idea what you experienced.
That's exactly how software bugs work, weird setup specific issues that are expensive to triage and fix.
But if you are not convinced see how many others have this issue by googling "site:reddit.com firefox stuttering on 4k video on mac"
But if you are not convinced see how many others have this issue by googling "site:reddit.com firefox stuttering on 4k video on mac"
I've been using Firefox for the past 2 years and I've had no such problems.
Yes, if you have been using Firefox you'll not notice problems.
A large number of people used IE5 and IE6 without apparent problems.
A large number of people used IE5 and IE6 without apparent problems.
I reject your premise.
I switched from Firefox to Vivaldi about 18 months ago because (mobile) Firefox scrolling would stutter on site like the New York Times, and it would force reload inactive tabs when I went back to them. On desktop I wanted the "reading list" and mail client of Vivaldi.
Firefox (or NYT) seems to have fixed the stuttering scroll on mobile. Multi account containers on Firefox are an incredible isolation mechanism that needs a little bit of UX refinement.
I'm probably switching back to FF for beta testing before cutting my defaults back to it.
I switched from Firefox to Vivaldi about 18 months ago because (mobile) Firefox scrolling would stutter on site like the New York Times, and it would force reload inactive tabs when I went back to them. On desktop I wanted the "reading list" and mail client of Vivaldi.
Firefox (or NYT) seems to have fixed the stuttering scroll on mobile. Multi account containers on Firefox are an incredible isolation mechanism that needs a little bit of UX refinement.
I'm probably switching back to FF for beta testing before cutting my defaults back to it.
What a weird reply. I think I'd especially notice any glaring problems, seeing as I use it every day for web dev. The only issues I've had is that devtools will sometimes completely crash, giving me a white window, requiring me to close the tab to restart devtools. But that's been rare and I can't remember the last time it happened. I completely de-Google'd my life 2 years ago, and I only have Chrome installed so that I can test things cross-browser when needed (e.g. webgl).
Comparing Firefox to IE5/6 is unfounded.
Comparing Firefox to IE5/6 is unfounded.
>I only have Chrome installed so that I can test things cross-browser when needed
Read my grandparent comment carefully.
Suppose you have two products A, B. They are roughly feature equivalent but B has a 10x more engineering effort put in towards QOL improvements and fixing the long tail of performance issues.
You are not going to notice this if you generally use A and only once in a while use B.
OTOH, if you use B and suddenly get transported to a A-only world you are going to miss the polish.
Another way to think about this is to compare cheap clothes/shoes to well made expensive ones.
Read my grandparent comment carefully.
Suppose you have two products A, B. They are roughly feature equivalent but B has a 10x more engineering effort put in towards QOL improvements and fixing the long tail of performance issues.
You are not going to notice this if you generally use A and only once in a while use B.
OTOH, if you use B and suddenly get transported to a A-only world you are going to miss the polish.
Another way to think about this is to compare cheap clothes/shoes to well made expensive ones.
I used Chrome for 8 years prior. I didn't miss a thing after the switch except my autocomplete/history, which I built back up over a few weeks.
You sound like you haven't actually used Firefox recently. If you have, then maybe give specifics.
You sound like you haven't actually used Firefox recently. If you have, then maybe give specifics.
Never noticed any of that.
(I have to use Chrome from time to time on 2 machines (one is fresh powerfull laptop and the other is a decade+ old PC) due to embedded Google Translate feature, and always happy to switch back to Firefox, which is much more convenient and tunable (and has a killer "Simple Tab Groups" extension)
Simple Tab Groups _IS_ a killer extension! I couldn't find its equivalent in the Chrome store. I haven't noticed any of the Firefox-specific issues that other users in this thread have mentioned that weren't due to extensions I had installed on FF. For the rare case of a website where the devs clearly only tested in Chrome, I will open Chrome to interface with that site and then go back to FF.
It was a combination of factors. First, Google Chrome was originally faster and lighter weight than Firefox. Second, Google used their market advantage to push Chrome via Google search and other properties. Third, Google used multiple third parties to trick end users into installing and setting Chrome as their default via dark patterns when updating or installing Avast, Adobe Flash, Java, etc. (I had to uninstall it from my mom's computer multiple times during this time period.) Fourth, Chrome focused on their developer tools and they got much better than Firefox's. Fifth, Chrome continued to improve and get faster including much better multi-process support and crash resistance while Firefox was held back by their legacy extension framework and XUL-based UI elements.
Examples of paid Chrome dark pattern installs: https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj
Examples of paid Chrome dark pattern installs: https://imgur.com/gallery/WWZxj
I don't understand how people can use a browser without Container Tabs. This is a killer feature of Firefox and so many people don't even know about it.
Are you serious? Sorry to be so pointed here, but Container Tabs are a nerdy niche feature that no normal user cares about.
Firefox was even over 30% at one point. It's a fine browser, but that 30% was in the desktop era where the only competition was a stagnant IE.
Then mobile happened and Firefox failed to secure a seat at the mobile OS table. Nor does it have any big web property to push the browser. So neither on mobile nor on desktop does Mozilla have any leverage.
It's not an engineering problem, it's a leverage problem. But even in engineering Mozilla can't out-compete Google. There's no way out of this sink hole.
Such is the technical analysis, but I want to compliment it with the normie analysis: nobody gives a shit about browsers. They're free and all do the same thing. Hence people go with the default and stick to it for life.
Then mobile happened and Firefox failed to secure a seat at the mobile OS table. Nor does it have any big web property to push the browser. So neither on mobile nor on desktop does Mozilla have any leverage.
It's not an engineering problem, it's a leverage problem. But even in engineering Mozilla can't out-compete Google. There's no way out of this sink hole.
Such is the technical analysis, but I want to compliment it with the normie analysis: nobody gives a shit about browsers. They're free and all do the same thing. Hence people go with the default and stick to it for life.
I used Mozilla firefox for close to 20 years, perfectly happy. I was very happy when they made their android app but sadly it was the plague. Then they changed stuff on the desktop and it stopped working the same. I moved on to stuff that works ( not chrome or google). I would say some of it is definitely an engineering problem.
Google using its huge market share to push a browser to help it know what you are up to. Same as Google analytics, same as Google hosted libraries, Google fonts etc etc. All there to make sure they see you on every site.
Why anyone would use chrome is beyond me.
Firefox will always have a special place in my heart, because of Firebug, which I credit to helping me whilst I was learning webdev in the late aughts.
A colleague of mine at the time quipped that "Firefox is my workhorse; Chrome is my show pony"
Times have certainly changed.
A colleague of mine at the time quipped that "Firefox is my workhorse; Chrome is my show pony"
Times have certainly changed.
Edge comes preinstalled and is managed by one provider that manages the rest of your software.
If you add Firefox to a corporate standard computer, that's one thing more to manage.
When you really look at it, Firefox has nothing more than edge that really justifies it's existence in a corporate network.
The worst about it, now that edge is chromium based, more and more websites or saas are targeting chrome only and don't care about the "nerds" using Firefox.
IMHO, unless Linux gains more presence in the desktop world, Firefox usage won't increase much.
If you add Firefox to a corporate standard computer, that's one thing more to manage.
When you really look at it, Firefox has nothing more than edge that really justifies it's existence in a corporate network.
The worst about it, now that edge is chromium based, more and more websites or saas are targeting chrome only and don't care about the "nerds" using Firefox.
IMHO, unless Linux gains more presence in the desktop world, Firefox usage won't increase much.
IMO it's in some parts a marketing problem others have already discussed quite well, and in other parts, almost every update (and I slowed them down by moving to the ESR channel, because the breakneck speed of the main releases was getting old) surprises me in some new, almost always user-hostile, way. I don't know who's at the helm of Firefox but good lord do they despise their users (and especially the power users that almost certainly make up the vast majority of their remaining marketshare - I don't know too many "normies" (if you will) who know or care what Firefox has been up to lately - actually, a lot of folks don't even know (or remember) what Firefox is). Rather than doubling down on being the resistance to Google's creepware and internet monoculture, Firefox seems to like to spend its development bandwidth finding new ways to advertise Mozilla's latest acquisition, creating new time-limited themes, redesigning parts of the UI that weren't broken to begin with, or really anything but fronting a real opposition to Google.
If qutebrowser didn't devour all my RAM I'd have stayed moved over to it on one of my past 5 attempts to move from FF to QB. Instead, my options are FF (or maybe I'll move to LibreWolf, hm), or... Ungoogled Chromium I guess.
If qutebrowser didn't devour all my RAM I'd have stayed moved over to it on one of my past 5 attempts to move from FF to QB. Instead, my options are FF (or maybe I'll move to LibreWolf, hm), or... Ungoogled Chromium I guess.
I think the reason for Firefox lagging behind in market share can be explained with an overarching theme of "bad management", which may have contributed to some of these problems which chipped away at their chance for success.
> At a crucial stage years ago when IE was clearly dying and many people were considering different web browsers, Firefox's UI and overall performance felt extraordinarily slow in comparison to alternatives. Additionally, as a developer, the experience of building Chrome extensions was much more pleasant there than in Firefox which really soured me on them. It's not like Mozilla has bad developers, but they might have been trying to work on too many projects at once with the financial resources they had available. Even if Firefox has subsequently caught up, peoples' perceptions might take a while to change.
> Whether or not you agree with this, there was a growing perception that Mozilla was moving in a "woke" political direction that seemed to be at conflict with the overall drive towards an open web that many people initially supported them for. Even if the intent of articles like "WE NEED MORE THAN DEPLATFORMING" was genuinely good, their messaging was "pants-on-head regarded" given that many influential tech people supported Mozilla specifically to keep the open web alive. If Mozilla did anything to put that perception of their support at risk, they poisoned their brand for a lot of tech people who tell their friends and family what browser they can be using. Many of these people moved on to browsers such as Brave that seem to be much firmer in at least trying to give a very clear and consistent messaging about what they're all about.
> At a crucial stage years ago when IE was clearly dying and many people were considering different web browsers, Firefox's UI and overall performance felt extraordinarily slow in comparison to alternatives. Additionally, as a developer, the experience of building Chrome extensions was much more pleasant there than in Firefox which really soured me on them. It's not like Mozilla has bad developers, but they might have been trying to work on too many projects at once with the financial resources they had available. Even if Firefox has subsequently caught up, peoples' perceptions might take a while to change.
> Whether or not you agree with this, there was a growing perception that Mozilla was moving in a "woke" political direction that seemed to be at conflict with the overall drive towards an open web that many people initially supported them for. Even if the intent of articles like "WE NEED MORE THAN DEPLATFORMING" was genuinely good, their messaging was "pants-on-head regarded" given that many influential tech people supported Mozilla specifically to keep the open web alive. If Mozilla did anything to put that perception of their support at risk, they poisoned their brand for a lot of tech people who tell their friends and family what browser they can be using. Many of these people moved on to browsers such as Brave that seem to be much firmer in at least trying to give a very clear and consistent messaging about what they're all about.
It was not as good as chrome for most of that decade in performance or security. Google was able to use it search market share to advertise its browser but because it was better many people moved off firefox. 2nd reason is chrome used to auto update in the background so I used to install it on all the pcs of all the non tech people I used to be tech support for as that helped me a lot of daily headaches in term of computer troubleshooting
For me, it just lacked features, and the organization itself seems to be more and more focused on political advocacy rather than making a solid tool. I don't remember when Firefox last did a UI change that made me go "FUCK YES, that's awesome". Instead they publish paeans about how they hired a sneaker designer to do temporary color the-- sorry, colorways for their browser.
A lot of the other work is shit like how we need more than deplatforming (one of the examples linked by Mozilla was algorithmically preferencing sources Mozilla liked - conveniently Mozilla wouldn't have to dirty their hands by manipulating what we see on the Internet)
If a browser's mobile version is way, way behind, their UX team's ideas of good UX not aligned with mine, and they want to decide what I see on the 'net, why bother? There are other fish in the pond, teams focused on actually making good tools for users. They understand they're blacksmiths and make hammers rather than confetti paper.
A lot of the other work is shit like how we need more than deplatforming (one of the examples linked by Mozilla was algorithmically preferencing sources Mozilla liked - conveniently Mozilla wouldn't have to dirty their hands by manipulating what we see on the Internet)
If a browser's mobile version is way, way behind, their UX team's ideas of good UX not aligned with mine, and they want to decide what I see on the 'net, why bother? There are other fish in the pond, teams focused on actually making good tools for users. They understand they're blacksmiths and make hammers rather than confetti paper.
I've switched to Arc. Firefox is okay, but it has become the new Opera, lots of features but appeals to a niche. And like Opera, websites tend to break on it. Chrome is the new IE, sluggish, but everyone uses it because of the brand name. Edge is like Netscape, a former champion failing to regain market share with a superior product.
IMO Firefox's flaws is that
1. It doesn't have the same compatibility as the chromium stuff. Especially add ons. It's similar to the Huawei app store.
2. It's too focused on performance but not really UX. Arc is doing great with UX without hurting too much on performance. There's no visible improvements and unlike Arc, it doesn't do a good job of educating users on how to do things better.
IMO Firefox's flaws is that
1. It doesn't have the same compatibility as the chromium stuff. Especially add ons. It's similar to the Huawei app store.
2. It's too focused on performance but not really UX. Arc is doing great with UX without hurting too much on performance. There's no visible improvements and unlike Arc, it doesn't do a good job of educating users on how to do things better.
It's not default on anything and gmail users naturally default to it. It doesn't market as much as MS and Google either. People using firefox specifically seek it out. I'd wager, at least 80% of users haven't heard of firefox.
I was on a call with people from big G several years ago, explaining issues I had with a product in firefox and out of 3-4 of their people (not engineers or very technical people), not one knew what firefox was, even as I shared my screen. I don't blame them, just pointing out how outside of tech people circles firefox does not really exist even as a term. Back in the day, it made a name for itself as an IE alternative but now it is forgotten thanks to Chrome.
I've worked at several big companies, one of the few policies they all had was "chrome is the only approved browser".
I was on a call with people from big G several years ago, explaining issues I had with a product in firefox and out of 3-4 of their people (not engineers or very technical people), not one knew what firefox was, even as I shared my screen. I don't blame them, just pointing out how outside of tech people circles firefox does not really exist even as a term. Back in the day, it made a name for itself as an IE alternative but now it is forgotten thanks to Chrome.
I've worked at several big companies, one of the few policies they all had was "chrome is the only approved browser".
Chrome is, for the majority of use cases, better. I say that as a Firefox user annoyed by fairly frequent glitches and slowdowns.
Normal people care about that. Google is also heavily pushing Chrome on their properties. That's enough to make a lot of people switch.
Normal people care about that. Google is also heavily pushing Chrome on their properties. That's enough to make a lot of people switch.
I gave Firefox a try this year. I was actually excited to try something new after Google Chrome. Then I noticed the tools I use on the daily acting weird, as I work most of the time via browser. Wanted to export an image from Figma, it was a blank png file. Wanted to share an image on Instagram, the image was flipped upside down. And when I wanted to watch Youtube videos autoplay had to be turned off from browser settings. So after a week I went back to Chrome.
Very recently Chrome has really messed up on my Linux Mint machines, something to do with hardware acceleration. They don't seem to be in any hurry to fix so, I'm now using the Brave browser. Very decent experience so far.
At some point; Firefox was marketed as and felt as "the best browser".
Now the whole marketing seems to revolve around being the best "ethical/open/private/nice" browser. Real or not; it feels like their number one priority is privacy/ethicality rather than technical excellence.
Being "an ethical alternative to" is appealing to some users; but there is a ceiling to this approach. And there is more and more competition in that space (chromium, brave, or even safari). So the share of people putting "ethicality" as their primary deciding factor is split amongst more option.
Being "an ethical alternative to" is appealing to some users; but there is a ceiling to this approach. And there is more and more competition in that space (chromium, brave, or even safari). So the share of people putting "ethicality" as their primary deciding factor is split amongst more option.
I agree, the browser has gotten better over the years. But I was lured away to Chrome because of its integration with Google services. I stopped using most of them and about a year and a half ago switched back over to Firefox. Sadly, there are some sites that seem to render perfectly in Chrome, but not at all in Firefox.
Also, FF was late to add meaningful JS debugging tools.
And I had kind of a bad experience working for Mozilla. Still... I have respect for the Firefox team and don't have a problem using the browser.
I'm a bit of an outlier, but it's a data point.
Also, FF was late to add meaningful JS debugging tools.
And I had kind of a bad experience working for Mozilla. Still... I have respect for the Firefox team and don't have a problem using the browser.
I'm a bit of an outlier, but it's a data point.
Alot of it felt like a timing thing --- Firefox was huge, swore by it etc, but then Chrome just kept getting faster. Eventually switching over was a no brainer and at the same time any new users/new installs started to lean towards Chrome also and the momentum happened. Why would any new user/install switch in droves after that? Marketing is a tough sell when users (a huge chunk who barely know what the browser is let alone care about its open source/privacy/whatever) are happy just surfing along inside Facebook and it "works fine".
I think it's because Firefox was behind on supporting the browser features that Chrome did, so some pages just didn't work on Firefox. I see that problem happening much less often now, but if I had to recommend a browser to any user, I'd tell them to get Chrome just to avoid any incompatibility issues.
I like Firefox mainly because I fear that at some point Chrome will not support ublock origin and its ad blocking features. Also, ublock origin can be installed on the mobile version of Firefox, whereas it can't be installed on the mobile version of Chrome.
I like Firefox mainly because I fear that at some point Chrome will not support ublock origin and its ad blocking features. Also, ublock origin can be installed on the mobile version of Firefox, whereas it can't be installed on the mobile version of Chrome.
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I switched to firefox since it has ublock origin as a plugin on phones. AFAIK chrome does not hence browsing on my phone is useless with all the ads I get using chrome
Android, chromeOS and google in general push chrome. Windows pushes edge (i.e. chromium). Apple pushes safari (i.e. webkit). So what do you expect new users to pick?
Defaults are powerful.
Windows > Edge
iPhone > Safari
Google.com > Chrome (also YouTube, Gmail, G Maps, ChromeOS)
If you ask a regular person what browser they use you'll get answers like Facebook, Bing, Internet Edge, The Google, iPad, Foxfire. The browser, operating system, brand, search engine, hardware, email, ISP, and website are all part of a magic glowing machine to them.
Windows > Edge
iPhone > Safari
Google.com > Chrome (also YouTube, Gmail, G Maps, ChromeOS)
If you ask a regular person what browser they use you'll get answers like Facebook, Bing, Internet Edge, The Google, iPad, Foxfire. The browser, operating system, brand, search engine, hardware, email, ISP, and website are all part of a magic glowing machine to them.
I use Firefox on my desktop PC, FF on my linux laptop and FF on my android phone. Works like a charm but pople like to give their data to Google so...
It might be helpful to ask the question in reverse: why was Firefox ever popular?
I would submit that the answer is that FF was an alternative to IE. And IE was trash. It was so bad that people would go out of their way to download FF.
Now, even if FF is marginally better, iOS Safari and Chrome (and I assume Edge although I haven’t tried it) aren’t that bad. So people don’t go out of their way to find another browser.
I would submit that the answer is that FF was an alternative to IE. And IE was trash. It was so bad that people would go out of their way to download FF.
Now, even if FF is marginally better, iOS Safari and Chrome (and I assume Edge although I haven’t tried it) aren’t that bad. So people don’t go out of their way to find another browser.
I previously used Firefox on Android for adblocking and other extensions, but the hoops I had to jump through to get working extensions became increasingly more ridiculous. I switched to Kiwi browser (Chromium based) and and have been very have a much easier time with extensions and it is much faster as well. The only disappointment is no syncing of tabs to a desktop browser.
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Because a some years back and for many years it was slower. Chrome came as a default for many devices and many sites css where also optimized for it, and soon other browsers adopted its engine.
Firefox had a niche of better browser addons but Mozilla leadership killed it. For mobile it is even more handicapped.
Disclaimer: Longtime FF user who feels like a good friend is gone
Disclaimer: Longtime FF user who feels like a good friend is gone
For me logging into google properties that automagically logged me in the browser was the red line. The last straw. The unthinkable audacity of taking control of my user agent, done in businessy way with a slight innocent smile.
Compared to this, even a hundred pockets and PR lapses and 2007 ignored bugs mean very little.
I wish safari and firefox all the best in fight for free web.
Compared to this, even a hundred pockets and PR lapses and 2007 ignored bugs mean very little.
I wish safari and firefox all the best in fight for free web.
The innovation difference between the browsers is not significant enough to merit a switch.
Commercially supported browsers have a big advantage. I remember google chrome in 1.0 days. And it was terrible. They became great after a while. In the same time, Firefox extensions started needing rewrite.
Now the innovations are happening on both sides. The difference is little to none.
Commercially supported browsers have a big advantage. I remember google chrome in 1.0 days. And it was terrible. They became great after a while. In the same time, Firefox extensions started needing rewrite.
Now the innovations are happening on both sides. The difference is little to none.
Back then there were fewer browser in the common scope of awareness.
My 60 year old dad installed brave long before we ever discussed the browser, and he's darn near tech illiterate.
Same with several other browsers and other family members.
I would hazard a guess that it's simply due to greater variety in total, with chrome/chromium never represented due to dev choices.
My 60 year old dad installed brave long before we ever discussed the browser, and he's darn near tech illiterate.
Same with several other browsers and other family members.
I would hazard a guess that it's simply due to greater variety in total, with chrome/chromium never represented due to dev choices.
The main reason is distribution. The vast majority of internet usage is mobile where Safari, Chrome or Samsung browsers are preinstalled. Users rarely change from the default unless they really need to.
Speaking of which, Edge is competitive enough that most Windows users don’t need to change - unlike internet explorer.
Speaking of which, Edge is competitive enough that most Windows users don’t need to change - unlike internet explorer.
On desktop, I use Firefox, Chrome, Edge (and sometimes Safari) interchangeably and sometimes at the same time. On mobile, I use Firefox and Chrome interchangeably.
Honestly, I notice no different in performance, look or feel. Sometimes I have to check which one I am actually in.
Honestly, I notice no different in performance, look or feel. Sometimes I have to check which one I am actually in.
Personally, I ditched Firefox due to poor performance. Especially on infinite-scroll pages, Firefox would just stutter and become unusable.
Maybe it's improved, but my impression was that of a browser gradually getting worse.
Furthermore, not all websites seems to care much if it breaks in Firefox.
Maybe it's improved, but my impression was that of a browser gradually getting worse.
Furthermore, not all websites seems to care much if it breaks in Firefox.
Firefox was a great browser, haven’t tried it in years. Last I tried it was slow memory hog. They also fired a whole bunch of great engineers during Covid.
Many websites I tried looked off it didn’t work in Firefox. Had to switch to chrome.
Many websites I tried looked off it didn’t work in Firefox. Had to switch to chrome.
I gave it another try after many years and I must say since last year or so they made significant improvement in performance and speed. Another area they shine particularly well is privacy. They made some privacy features baked into the browser itself, which is a good move.
Simple:
1) Simpletons want an iPhone/MacBook and end up with Safari or Chrome.
2) Those who can't afford one got an Android/Windows and either use the native browser or Chrome.
3) Everybody else uses Firefox, at least on their computer.
There's your 10%.
1) Simpletons want an iPhone/MacBook and end up with Safari or Chrome.
2) Those who can't afford one got an Android/Windows and either use the native browser or Chrome.
3) Everybody else uses Firefox, at least on their computer.
There's your 10%.
Purely because it doesn't come pre-installed on most devices.
Network effect I'd say.
If tomorrow opera, brave, edge switched to Firefox, people won't notice but Firefox share would rise dramatically.
Extensions is another issue.
Today, any tom dick and harry who want to create a browser extension only build for chrome "why not". Firefox comes from complaining users who don't want to switch otherwise they don't bother.
Its the same chicken or egg thing. Low market share of Firefox means less users means less customers of extensions means devs will spend less time to build for Firefox and so on.
Firefox extensions often feel like someone actually spent some time and thought into building it, there isn't much crap but chrome store is the dirt bag free for all
If tomorrow opera, brave, edge switched to Firefox, people won't notice but Firefox share would rise dramatically.
Extensions is another issue.
Today, any tom dick and harry who want to create a browser extension only build for chrome "why not". Firefox comes from complaining users who don't want to switch otherwise they don't bother.
Its the same chicken or egg thing. Low market share of Firefox means less users means less customers of extensions means devs will spend less time to build for Firefox and so on.
Firefox extensions often feel like someone actually spent some time and thought into building it, there isn't much crap but chrome store is the dirt bag free for all
> If tomorrow opera, brave, edge switched to Firefox, people won't notice but Firefox share would rise dramatically.
Once of the problems Firefox has that it's actually quite hard to do this. You can't "just" take WebKit or Blink and make your own UI for it. But you can build a Blink-based browser in literally a minute or two with basic C++ or Python skills.
I don't know what technical issues are preventing this, but IMHO this has been a major hurdle, and a huge strategic mistake.
Once of the problems Firefox has that it's actually quite hard to do this. You can't "just" take WebKit or Blink and make your own UI for it. But you can build a Blink-based browser in literally a minute or two with basic C++ or Python skills.
I don't know what technical issues are preventing this, but IMHO this has been a major hurdle, and a huge strategic mistake.
You don't need to build for Firefox these days, extension APIs are to a large extent identical.
But then, unlike with Chrome forks, you still have to support a separate version and deal with another "app store", so I can see why people don't do that.
But then, unlike with Chrome forks, you still have to support a separate version and deal with another "app store", so I can see why people don't do that.
Automation exists so that is hardly a problem.
You are right, they are somewhat similar but the "why bother" attitude, same as with every startup doing support and documentation on discord.
You are right, they are somewhat similar but the "why bother" attitude, same as with every startup doing support and documentation on discord.
Brave literally started on Gecko and ended up switching because Gecko was a PITA to work with.
I use Firefox focus on the iphone and I love it.
I like being able to just close it and the history is wiped.
I like being able to just close it and the history is wiped.
I really hoped Edge v2 would go with the Gecko engine
chrome is a better UI.
Because it used to be a highly extensible browser for power users without spyware and adware.
Then it stopped being extensible at first, then the management went "woke" with all LGBTC++ inclusiveness and other CoC bullshit, fired/made go lots of good core developers and then it all went to shit in accelerated mode.
Then it stopped being extensible at first, then the management went "woke" with all LGBTC++ inclusiveness and other CoC bullshit, fired/made go lots of good core developers and then it all went to shit in accelerated mode.
Firefox security is very very bad. I don't know about it's speed, but AFAIK chrome is one of the fastest and lightweight on laptops.
But mainly it's Firefox security. Though I'm not really sure how many people are actually informed about Firefox security.
They are also totally reliant on Google. Google can decide to tell Mozilla to use only Manifest V3 and other because of their funding. People are worried about that.
It's also known for the privacy concious people that Chrome browser doesn't send telemetry or anything similar when you disable it through settings.
P.S. Not an advertisement for Chrome.
But mainly it's Firefox security. Though I'm not really sure how many people are actually informed about Firefox security.
They are also totally reliant on Google. Google can decide to tell Mozilla to use only Manifest V3 and other because of their funding. People are worried about that.
It's also known for the privacy concious people that Chrome browser doesn't send telemetry or anything similar when you disable it through settings.
P.S. Not an advertisement for Chrome.
though strangely chrome uses the security libraries from firefox. hmm.
Doesn't mean anything.