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Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

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Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#101

Post by iso1631 »

Nextgrid wrote: post #68
iso1631 wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exaggerating isn't particularly helpful, makes me thing the problems the OP has with the browser are more based on perception of "culture" or something rather than the actual product

It's not about perception. The browser's job is to display webpages and otherwise get out of the user's way - Firefox constantly fails at that, much more than a lot of paid, proprietary software even.

Really? I've never had that happen and I've been using Firefox for 2 decades. Occasionally I've had a grumble about it not being the latest version, but that didn't stop me.

Short of the removal of flash I can't think of anything you could be referring to, so perhaps rather than exaggerating some actual concrete examples would be good.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#102

Post by BlackLotus89 »

nikanj wrote: post #13

Every time I restart Firefox, I get about 8 different prompts for "See what's new!" "Reset your Firefox profile now!" "See our new diversity initiative now!" etc. It feels like opening a Windows Me installation from 2000. I just want to get browsing done.

  about:config
Search for mstone (browser.startup.homepage_override.mstone) and set it to "ignore" (without the quotes) am not sure why this has to be done this way and I don't have it disabled since I want to know what's new, but hope it helps.

Oh and browser.disableResetPrompt and set it to true. Create it if it doesn't exist

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#103

Post by selfhoster11 »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #56
selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

> [...] (bonuses tied directly to increase in Firefox market share). This might be a perverse incentive depending on if your goal is to make Firefox a good browser or just a popular one.

True, but at this point it doesn't feel to me that the community has that much to lose. If we're truly sub-5% like Statcounter says, then as long as we minimally muzzle this particular paperclip maximiser (say, the browser engine must remain Gecko or an in-house project and cannot be Blink, user privacy must be no worse than currently, selling data or "partnering with" third parties is disallowed) and let it run for a couple of years, at least we'll get a viable browser out of it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#104

Post by jeltz »

zelphirkalt wrote: post #86
sockaddr wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Recently switched to Linux and only installed Firefox. When you force yourself to use it, it's doable. I think only once in the last 6 months did a website not work (my dumb HOA website). Other than that, it's more than sufficient. It crashes sometimes but if that's the price for not having coercive software controlling my life, so be it.

Not claiming, that your experience isn't true, but: Firefox hasn't crashed for me in years! And I am a real tab hoarder. 400 tabs and more are not so uncommon for me. Then again I don't allow arbitrary websites to run all sorts of shit scripts. It might or might not be your hardware, or it might be the websites you visit.

Another tab hoarder and for me the only times Firefox has crashed is when I have upgraded Firefox but not yet restarted it.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#105

Post by yoavm »

newacc9 wrote: post #76

I left because of woke messaging from their CEO. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

What's wrong with this message? Are you against ads revealing who's paying for them and who's targeted? Against transparency of algorithms? What exactly is the issue?

I don't see any reason to leave after reading this.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#108

Post by yoavm »

chomp wrote: post #27
sorry_outta_gas wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think most users care about that, the Google tie seems like a weak point considering most users choose chrome

Users absolutely don't care where their browser gets paid, but financially, Mozilla Corp is dependent on an external entity's good graces to pay them. Mozilla Corp makes 400 million per year from Google money. If this money dries up in 2023, then the browser has to find a new deal, or close shop (figuratively speaking; I'm sure it'd lumber on since it's an open source browser). This is a fair amount of business risk,…

Yes, it's dangerous to depend in income from Google. No, it does not at all explain why Firefox is losing marketshare.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#109

Post by michaelt »

axg11 wrote: post #40
horsawlarway wrote: post #33

This is my personal opinion only, so take it with a grain of salt. ---- Mozilla can't save Firefox. It's not that Firefox can't be saved, but rather that Mozilla as an organization is not capable of doing so. My take is this - Despite a history of being relatively privacy friendly, the vast majority of funding for the organization comes directly from Google (To the tune of ~90% of their total funding, straight from G…

I don't follow this line of reasoning. Google pays Mozilla for the search traffic. If Firefox overtook Chrome in market share, Mozilla's position would become even _more_ favourable and they could command a larger sum from Google. If Google threatened to end the agreement, Mozilla could simply walk to Bing/DuckDuckGo or whoever else.

Right now, Google pays more than Bing or DuckDuckGo.

Perhaps Google just has mountains of spare cash, which DDG doesn't. Perhaps Google gets extra value as FF both provides search traffic, and keeps competition regulators off their back. Perhaps Bing thinks if FF changed the default search engine away from Google, 95% users would change it right back.

But if Bing is only willing to pay 70% of what Google pays - could Mozilla survive losing that much income? Or would it trigger a death spiral, with less money meaning less development meaning lower market share?

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