edited the heading of the question. I think most of us here are reasoning why more people are not using firefox (because it was the initial question), but none of that explains why it’s actively losing marketshare.
I don’t agree ideologically with Firefox management and am somewhat of a semi-conservative (and my previous posts might testify to that), I think Firefox browser is absolutely amazing! It’s beautiful and it just feels good. It has awesome features like containers. It’s better for privacy than any mainstream browser out there (even counting Brave here) and it has great integration between PC and Phone. It’s open-source (unlike Chrome) and it supports a good chunk of extensions you would need.
This was about PC, but I believe even for Mobiles it looks great and it allows features like extensions (and I hear desktop extensions are coming to firefox android?), it’s just a great ecosystem and it’s available everywhere unlike most FOSS softwares.
So why is Firefox’s market share dying?
I mean, I have a few ideas why it might be, maybe correct me I guess?
- Most people don’t know how to use extensions well and how to use Firefox well. (Most of my friends in their 30’s still live without ad blockers, so I don’t think many are educated here)
- It’s just not as fast as Chrome or Brave. I can’t deny this, but despite of this, I find it’s worthy.
- It’s not the default.
- Many features which are Google specific aren’t supported.
- Many websites are just not supporting firefox anymore (looking at you snapchat), but you would be right in saying this is the effect of Firefox losing it’s market share not the cause (at least for now) and you would be right.
But what else?
I might take time (a lot of it) to get back at you, thanks for understanding.
occasionally I’ll find websites that don’t work 100% because they were coded primarily for chromium based browsers. FU Google
A lot of extensions now seem to be Chrome only (probably because Chrome has so much market share), and from what I looked into there isn’t an easy way to use Chrome extensions in FF.
I saw something over the last week starting Firefox had implemented install chrome extensions. Think there are some caveats
“select extensions” I hate this patronizing shit so much. They kill off startpages, they make it impossible to install unsigned extensions. There has to be a better way to protect users from malware than acting like this is not my computer and the software on it isn’t mine to do what I want with.
FYI, AFAIK this isnt so much about protonizing users than about a technologie switch on android and then having to re-add necessary functionality … and doing that while the web-extension api ist still changing.
Think of the malware protection as more of a sideeffect of the general design choices in regards to the web-extension API.
Hope this info helps or is at least a little interesting.
this isnt so much about protonizing users than about a technologie switch on android and then having to re-add necessary functionality
I’m going to disagree there. It’s been possible to add more extensions in the unstable nightly builds since just after the change, but requires having a Mozilla account and jumping through some hoops. Iceraven, a third-party build removes some of the hoops, and indeed many extensions not specifically built with Android in mind work just fine.
I can’t guess what Mozilla is actually thinking here, but it’s not true that it isn’t or wasn’t technically feasible to allow installation of arbitrary extensions on Firefox for Android following the rewrite.
It’s been possible to add more extensions in the unstable nightly builds since just after the change
possible yes … but as you might have notices many many more addons even those with a large userbase dont work or dont work properly because of the mentioned missing APIs or other issues. And i absolutely understand that mozilla did not want to expose this situation to “normal users” who would likely easily assume some failure/error on firefox part for not working with the extensions. So keeping this feature behind a “small” barrier (collection and nightly) until those issuse could be properly addressed seems to have been a wise decision, if you look at it like that.
mozilla did not want to expose this situation to “normal users”
That’s patronizing.
A checkbox to enable full extensions support and a clickthrough warning on anything that didn’t explicitly support the new version for Android would have been more than adequate.
patronizing
def. : showing or characterized by a superior attitude towards others
i dont see any indication for a “superior attitude” … and i personally agree with you that it would have been nice to have easier access to the incomplete feature … but looking at it from mozillas viewpoint i guess you could also argue that by not making it “to easy” … they made sure that many people did not run into the frustrating situation of non-functional addons. i mean if it was as easy as toggeling a switch in settings or about:config … many normal people would follow some tech article blog post and just flip the switch and forget even that they did. Requiring a bit more effort … might actually be a smart decision.
If they’re planning on expanding it ultimately then it’s not so bad I guess
Internet Explorer / Edge is not complete garbage anymore, that’s not helping for sure. Also, there was a period where Firefox was actually kinda lacking. That’s in the past since the “Quantum” update I’d say.
Declining market share and dying are not at all the same thing. Remember that FOSS can survive without resources tha M$ and ABC have.
Anyway, what do you mean you’re conservative? I don’t understand at all. What values pushed you to what browsers? Laziness and defaults, maybe, but that’s a different position.
Maintaining a browser for the modern web is a massive undertaking that needs funding.
what do you mean you’re conservative?
He means “waah waah! They’re oppressing me by not agreeing with me!!!” Conservatives hate the consequences of their actions.
Hey there now. BoTh SiDeS tHo /s
Eh, even as someone who on a global political scale is left leaning, I’ve been hesitant to donate to Mozilla. I’d love to support the browser development, but the fact that they siphon off money from that to support political activities and organizations (especially when some of them are downright corrupt, like BLM) turns me off from that.
When I want to donate to a political organization, I’ll do that directly. What I want Mozilla to do, most of all, is keep firefox (and by extension gecko) alive, and thereby maintain internet freedom.
Firefox is kinda like Linux in my opinion. Yes, some games might not run on linux and some games don’t run as good as on windows, but most run just fine. But since I don’t use windows I don’t know the difference and so I don’t care about it either. Same thing with firefox, chrome might do x better, but then I have not used it in years so I just don’t care about it. Blissful ignorance I suppose? Either way I am happy with linux and firefox since both have not only downsides, but plenty advantages too in my opinion.
- It’s actually faster than Chromium in recent build benchmarks. Firefox runs JS faster.
I ran the speedometer 2.0 benchmark on firefox and cromite (fork of bromite), and Firefox beat chrome by like 20 points which surprised me because chrome still feels a bit faster. Maybe this is why
I think a lot comes down to preinstalled SW on phones (Chrome/Safari) and the enterprise world. My rather large employer just switched from FF preinstalled to Edge for all work devices since it alreadz comes with Windows.
Maybe Firefox is missing a really compelling enterprise offering for Desktops? Everybody less savvy is on mobile anyways, which is dominated by the Duopoly Apple/Google.
I actually switched away from Firefox to Vivaldi a few months ago mainly for 2 reasons.
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Firefox’s profiles are dogshit. They are almost a hidden feature and are very cumbersome to use.
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The Android browser support for certain types of extensions is dodgy. Using uBlock Origin delays the loading of all webpages by a few seconds for some reason. There is a Github issue about this that has been open for a few years now.
I want the browser I use to be on both Android and desktop. Vivaldi has been OK so far.
I do miss a lot of the good stuff from Firefox, especially their address bar. For some reason I find it much better than anything on Chromium based browsers. Firefox’s is much snappier and is correct with it’s suggestions the majority of the time.
I also like Firefox’s sync between devices to be much better.
When those 2 issues are resolved I will come back, but as it stands now it’s a hassle for my needs.
you can use profiles easily by creating shortcuts with the flag --profile xyz
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Because not only do you (the end user) have to go out of your way to get it, but you get spammed by Microsoft/Edge and Google/Chrome to install a “faster” and “more secure” browser. Additionally, on the mobile side, Apple is preventing all iPhone/iPad users from picking a real alternative browser that isn’t just webkit re-skinned, putting half the population at a disadvantage and to their own corporate interests.
What do you mean about the apple part? I use FF on my iPhone.
All browsers on iOS are just reskinned Safari, because that’s the only thing iOS allows you to install.
This is a really great reason not to use iOS.
It’s uses safari’s engine, which is the only one allowed by Apple. Doesn’t matter what browser you download from the store.
Thanks, I did not know that.
The Apple part might change quite soon, with the EU’s Digital Market Act. Apple will have to allow users to download apps from other markets than the Appstore.
That would be great! Hopefully they don’t screw it up and decide to make the feature available only if you’re in the EU.
With these companies nothing would surprise me.
They’re absolutely going to make it available only in the EU unless other countries also push for it with legislation.
It’s also going to have a lot of scary “Are you sure u want to compromise your safety?” boxes.
Don’t get your hopeS. JIT compilation is an integral part of all modern JavaScript engines, and JIT compilation requires violating the static W^X principle that is currently mandated by iOS for security. Not to mention that allowing third party browser engines would probably increase Blink’s (Chrome, Edge) market share more than Gecko’s.
Firefox on android is terrible. The UI is awful (how hard is to create a usable bookmark system?) and forced opening a new tab are my two pet peeves. Also, it is much, much slower than a chromium based browser in my experience and seems to take a lot more memory. Also, occasionally I’ll find websites that don’t work 100% because they were coded primarily for chromium based browsers. FU Google.
I quite like Firefox for Android, mainly because I can install UBlock Origin and block ads, which Chrome does not support.
The UI is awful (how hard is to create a usable bookmark system?)
agree to disagree, it’s one of the best. What do you use that’s better?
I don’t use anything else. I don’t like the long list of folders that doesn’t clearly show the tree hierarchy, ie. I can’t easily identify the child/parent relationship. The visual difference between parent and child is too minimal for my eyes. I realize it’s subjective but I really don’t like it.
Ah, agreed. There’s like no indent at all in that list. Room for improvement
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Weird, for me that only pops up if I already have the app installed, and only when I navigate from a different website to that one. I’m using Firefox Beta if that matters.
I install chrome on a computer and log in, I’m immediately connected to my calendar, email, cloud storage, remote desktop, documents, and my login info is synced floor all the other things I do and will auto login for me on a large number of those sites. In short it saves me a crazy amount of time.
You can do pretty much the same thing with Firefox: you sign in to Firefox to sync your passwords and browser settings, then (assuming you’re talking about Google calendar, Gmail, etc.) You can sign into your Google account with one click. That’s not really any less convenient.
Besides, I’ve hardly ever heard of anyone moving away from Firefox to Chrome, so I doubt the reason is any sort of convenience or design superiority. I’d attribute it to the fact that most people who already use the Internet (pretty much everyone) has already settled on a browser, with chrome-based browsers being the most common. So anyone new to the Internet will just choose the favorite as the default. This is especially true considering they most new Internet users are probably kids, so they’re not aware of concerns about privacy, monocultures, DRM, etc. that would drive someone to pick Firefox.
Basically, it’s not that Chrome is actually better than Firefox. I think it’s that the market is growing, and the most common browsers will grow more quickly than Firefox simply for the sake of familiarity.
Chrome is the only browser I actively avoid using on my PC or on mobile, simply due to Google tracking every website I visit
Many would argue this is not a good thing. Plus, Google login permeates all Google services as a session and has nothing to do with the browser at that level.
Most people don’t know how to use extensions well and how to use Firefox well. (Most of my friends in their 30’s still live without ad blockers, so I don’t think many are educated here)
All browsers have extensions, even Safari. This has nothing to do with FF particularly
It’s just not as fast as Chrome or Brave. I can’t deny this, but despite of this, I find it’s worthy.
Firefox is now a memory hog as bad as Chrome, but doesn’t offer speed and responsiveness, which is kind of a shitty trade-off
It’s not the default.
Neither is Chrome, yet people actively download and install it.
Many features which are Google specific aren’t supported.
True
Many websites are just not supporting firefox anymore (looking at you snapchat), but you would be right in saying this is the effect of Firefox losing it’s market share not the cause (at least for now) and you would be right.
True
All browsers have extensions, even Safari. This has nothing to do with FF particularly
Some people not using Firefox might use it if they understood some of the great extensions for FF which are unique to it. Like the Containers one.
people who don’t use extensions due to lack of knowledge about them probably wouldn’t care if they knew about them either
Not actually necessarily true. I just recently learned about the Firefox container extension which is a game changer I didn’t know about
Again, I guarantee if someone never cared about extensions and didn’t even install uBlock, then Containers is an abstract concept to them.
I am an example of this person you assert couldn’t exist. That’s what I’m pointing out. Not sure how that’s not getting across.
you were unaware of extensions?
I knew about extensions but not a specific one that was a game changer for me.
My point was even though I knew about extensions, I didn’t use Firefox on mobile until I found out about some extensions I didn’t know existed on mobile, and on desktop, had I not been using FF before learning about containers, I may have switched at that moment when I found out
Because Librewolf is better
It’s not like as if firefox would lose significant market share to librewolf
I use Firefox. The only thing I don’t like about it is that Duck duck go isn’t a terribly accurate search engine compared to Google.
But you can just change your search engine
Actually in my country DuckDuckGo is the only reliable search engine left. Google started giving me a bunch of bogus results for very specific queries a couple of years ago. Sad that FF depends so much on Ma’Google.
Oh hmm I don’t have that experience. If I Google an obituary for example, it automatically goes to the person correctly but I find DDG doesn’t have that precision.
Firefox boot slower on Android. Webkit-based browsers boot much faster. I think they make use of some preloading of the browser itself.
Firefox does not have a way to force them into it.
- ChromeOS - Chrome only. Default. Google.com beggs you to get an account and try Chrome. Android, comes with Android preinstalled.
- Windows - Annoying Try Edge popup force them during boot. Bing Chat is Edge Only.
Many Linux distributions include Firefox as a default browser, but GNU/Linux is not very popular on desktop either…
True, and sad.
