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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?

#281

Post by dralley »

ozten wrote: post #46

#1 reason: Google has been spending millions of dollars on ads. 2010 many subway, buses, and TVs had ads about how fast Chrome was. Advertising works! Early adopters switched, followed by mainstream users. Additional Key Strategies: Google focused on developer experience with its tools. Google shipped a good enough extension system. Google invested in matching or beating a few key features but kept Chrome a leaner pr…

> #1 reason: Google has been spending millions of dollars on ads. 2010 many subway, buses, and TVs had ads about how fast Chrome was. Advertising works! Early adopters switched, followed by mainstream users.

Not to mention paying the likes of Adobe, Avast, AVG, and Oracle to have their installers auto-install Chrome using dark patterns.

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

#282

Post by pier25 »

The main reason I left FF after trying it out for a couple of months last year is that after 21 years it still doesn't support multilingual spell checking properly.

For anyone writing in multiple languages daily this is a deal breaker.

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=69687

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

#283

Post by dmitriid »

loudtieblahblah wrote: post #66
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…

If all that is left is chromium, then you can kiss what is left of web standards good bye. Google will set the standard, taking input from any other tech player big enough to have a seat at the table. Its bad enough ISO certification boards and official positions of the W3C can be bought or corrupted. Let there be only one engine, controlled by Google? And even the pretense of a open and fair playing field goes away.…

> If all that is left is chromium, then you can kiss what is left of web standards good bye.

Well, we've already done that. Google a) dominates the standards bodies and b) releases "standard" features that are only standard because Chrome says so

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

#284

Post by dralley »

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.

DuckDuckGo's total revenue is less than 20% of Mozilla's.

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

#285

Post by deltron3030 »

I'd create a Chrome OS alternative (like CloudReady which was bought by Google) for old Intel Macs and other laptops that won't get official Win 11 support, and maybe partner with some productiviy SaaS to have a working GDocs and Office 365 alternative.

Open/Libre Office and their UX are too complicated for normal users like most Linux apps that are modeled after professional desktop applications.

Considering the amount of hardware that's out there and never will work on newer operating systems having a easy to install and use OS for web productivity tasks will very likely be a big driver for overall market share.

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

#286

Post by BoysenberryPi »

throwawayboise wrote: post #265
Jaepa wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I use this as well, but it utterly fails the elderly grandmother test. Its not well known. Its not easily accessibly for non-technical users. & its not clear which profile you are currently using when you are using it.

How many elderly grandmothers and other non-technical users give two shits about having multiple profiles in their browser?

Not grandmother but my non-technical dad cares about this.

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

#287

Post by Permit »

Hnaomyiph wrote: post #240
Permit wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion Why stop there? Why not get developers who are "in it for the passion"?

The CEO and upper management do loads to steer the ship. If all they care about is enriching themselves, they will likely struggle to find developers who are in it for the passion. Look at Google. It is a late-stage, post-IPO business that’s now, frankly, ran by the CFO with a CEO who cares only about the board and an ever-increasing stock number. The people who have passion left for the most part. Replaced by those…

I guess my post was meant to capture the idea: "Do you find it suspicious that you are recommending CEO/Management be in it for the passion (and low pay!) but seemingly not expecting software engineers to make the same sacrifices?"

> Would those who have passion stuck around if Google was ran by people who still had passion? I’d imagine a much greater number of them would still be there.

Why not just lower compensation for software engineers? Then all the dispassionate perf-chasing engineers will leave for greener pastures and you'll only be left with people who are passionate about the products Google builds, no?

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

#288

Post by throwawayboise »

silicon2401 wrote: post #29

Firefox makes poor decisions. I've been trying to use firefox for years and just gave up this past weekend. As far as I know, there's no way to customize your firefox home view on android so that you have a permanent, customizable set of links, and nothing else. You can have "recent bookmarks" which disappear eventually, presumably once they're no longer "recent". Can you imagine being the one to approve such a bone-…

I have my browser default homepage set to ~/home.html. I maintain all my common links in that local html file.

There was a period of time where FF didn't allow a "file://" URL as the default for a new page or tab, but it works now. I'm not sure if Chrome allows it.

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

#289

Post by temp0826 »

dpedu wrote: post #167
temp0826 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's...not the case (and never has been) for me. You only restart it when you get an update (in which case that wouldn't be very often)? Or you did something whacky in about:config? Or maybe a bad extension. Dunno, not normal

I don't often relaunch my apps but I relaunched firefox just now to see what would happen to test this. Here's what I was greeted with - an ad for pocket: https://i.imgur.com/hYYZYE3.png

Huh that's fun...I've had pocket disabled for so long that I forgot it was a thing. I've always been pretty vigilant about turning off nonsense like pocket, so I suppose I'm not as typical of a ff user as I thought...but still think what the parent comment described sounds abnormal.

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

#290

Post by gdelfino01 »

commandlinefan wrote: post #107

Well, I quit using it/supporting it because of their politics. So maybe get out of politics and focus on software?

Same here after many years of using it. In my opinion, and to try to keep the internet free, we should look into supporting LibreWolf (a Firefox fork) just like most people moved from OpenOffice to LibreOffice.
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