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Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

arstechnica.com

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Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#71

Post by EdSharkey »

This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. I take this to mean that Firefox is getting faster and less janky with recent releases. Enough Windows users who are in the know and who occasionally kick the Firefox tires are finally settling on it. I don't view this as a knock on the quality of Microsoft products as much as an overall improvement in Firefox.

I'm on Mac, and I believe Chrome software quality has slipped in the past 12 months. Lots more crashes than I have ever seen and some new CSS curiosities. And that's with me rarely running Chrome - Firefox is my primary browser.

Maybe Mac is a much tougher platform to target and isn't the priority for Goog, or perhaps the transition to Blink has been rough. Whatever the reason, Chrome seems to be getting creaky in its old age.

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#72

Post by partiallypro »

I prefer Firefox to Chrome, Edge is still unstable but I do like some of the direction they are going in. The lack of extensions I think killed it out of the gate. It's also odd to me that Edge doesn't update through the Windows Store, and instead is updated through Windows Update...doesn't that defeat the purpose of it being a UWA?

I actually find what Opera is doing a lot nicer than any other others are the moment though, find myself using it more and more.

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#73

Post by untog »

EdSharkey wrote: post #71

This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. I take this to mean that Firefox is getting faster and less janky with recent releases. Enough Windows users who are in the know and who occasionally kick the Firefox tires are finally settling on it. I don't view this as a knock on the quality of Microsoft products as much as an overall improvement in Firefox. I'm on Mac, and I believe Chrome software quality has slipped…

> This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team.

Looking at the data, not really. Their usage continues to grow, Firefox growth is at the expense of IE/Edge, not Chrome.

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#74

Post by Rudism »

kpcyrd wrote: post #13
mmastrac wrote: post #10

Wow. I remember watching these stats, waiting for Firefox to edge past IE in the 2000s. Chrome really took the ball and ran with it. They had the advantage of seeing things that FF did that really worked (tabs, extensions, find-as-you-type) and the intelligence to iterate on that (multi-process support, a world-class debugger) and a really solid foundation in WebKit (née KHTML). In a way Chrome was in the right place…

> Chrome really took the ball and ran with it I'm still kind of bitter with the way they did that. A lot of windows installers, which usually installed you toolbars if you forgot to uncheck a box, started installing chrome as your default browser if you forgot to uncheck a box. I've seen a lot of non-technical people using chrome who have no idea what chrome is or remembering giving consent to installing chrome.

Google was paying out $1 per Chrome install for a long time, which is why you saw it being heavily distributed through all sorts of shady channels like monetized installers.

For context, a payout of $0.10 for a bundled install would have been considered really good back then; a payout 10x that amount meant you'd pull every dirty trick in the book to get as many installs as possible.

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#75

Post by TazeTSchnitzel »

zobzu wrote: post #39
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome also had the advantage of being advertised on Google.com.

anywhere i go without an adblocker begs me to install chrome and stop using whatever horrible outdated browser im using (according to the google ad), and how youtube, etc work best with chrome anyway thats quite a lot of powerful advertisement, on the sites people browse every day. its not too different than being part of the default install IMO ;-) and of course - chrome is a pretty good browser (though edge is actu…

And the thing is it's sadly not a lie. YouTube and such do work best with Chrome. Google's effective web vertical integration means they control every stage of the pipeline. They control the sites and the browser. They can deploy experimental tech in Chrome which nobody knows about and which only Google sites use.

It's terrifying.

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#76

Post by EdSharkey »

untog wrote: post #73
EdSharkey wrote: post #71

This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. I take this to mean that Firefox is getting faster and less janky with recent releases. Enough Windows users who are in the know and who occasionally kick the Firefox tires are finally settling on it. I don't view this as a knock on the quality of Microsoft products as much as an overall improvement in Firefox. I'm on Mac, and I believe Chrome software quality has slipped…

> This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. Looking at the data, not really. Their usage continues to grow, Firefox growth is at the expense of IE/Edge, not Chrome.

Yes, Chrome is the current 800lbs gorilla, and they continue to grow.

I am still operating under a browser wars mentality where Netscape/Mozilla's marketshare completely collapsed and they slowly recovered over time. I'm just impressed that Firefox is in double digits in terms of marketshare given that they don't have a huge marketing engine driving them (Okay, I guess Yahoo is pretty decent as engines go.)

I remember when Chrome shipped with V8 as being a big turning point for the way Firefox was run. Management went from complacent to reactionary. The bug reports regarding JavaScript performance in the Firefox bug tracker at that time were really fascinating to watch - Mozilla was a very disturbed hornets' nest! Then came rapid release and all the arewe*yet.com websites, etc.

Mozilla has been punching above their weight class ever since Chrome came to market, but I perceive that recently Mozilla management has been transitioning from reactionary to offensive. Their moves on Rust and sunsetting XUL and XPCOM are geared towards security AND performance, which are painful and necessary shifts. Largely hitting pause on FirefoxOS and Thunderbird and everything else not Firefox is also the right, if painful, thing to do.

That's why I'm going to stick with my assertion. Every day that Mozilla/Firefox doesn't shrivel up and die has to be a concern to the Chrome team!

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#77

Post by Aldo_MX »

shmerl wrote: post #62
tdkl wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It also had an advantage of being a friggin' fast browser. I switched in 2009 and never looked back beside occasionally trying out FF and nope'ing back to Chrome.

Firefox became faster than Chrome quite a while ago already. Not sure what you were measuring.

UI Responsiveness probably, any perception of speed is lost if loading a website freezes the entire browser for several msecs.

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#78

Post by Aldo_MX »

MOARDONGZPLZ wrote: post #70
k__ wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Growth hacking at large. Impressive :)

No, it's not impressive. It's deceptive and a dark pattern.

Google's not at fault; Adobe, Oracle, and every other greedy software vendor are.

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#79

Post by chr1 »

untog wrote: post #73
EdSharkey wrote: post #71

This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. I take this to mean that Firefox is getting faster and less janky with recent releases. Enough Windows users who are in the know and who occasionally kick the Firefox tires are finally settling on it. I don't view this as a knock on the quality of Microsoft products as much as an overall improvement in Firefox. I'm on Mac, and I believe Chrome software quality has slipped…

> This has to be worrisome to the Chrome team. Looking at the data, not really. Their usage continues to grow, Firefox growth is at the expense of IE/Edge, not Chrome.

From the article Firefox didn't even have any growth, just slower fall than IE.

Re: Firefox tops Microsoft browser market share for first time

#80

Post by Aldo_MX »

nowprovision wrote: post #54
mmastrac wrote: post #10

Wow. I remember watching these stats, waiting for Firefox to edge past IE in the 2000s. Chrome really took the ball and ran with it. They had the advantage of seeing things that FF did that really worked (tabs, extensions, find-as-you-type) and the intelligence to iterate on that (multi-process support, a world-class debugger) and a really solid foundation in WebKit (née KHTML). In a way Chrome was in the right place…

chrome did not have extensions when launched, and firebug was far superior back then. it was a long time before extensions came maybe even 2010. they did not run with what ff did, far from it.

I wouldn't claim firebug was "far superior", unless "far superior" is a synonym of bloated.

Since their inception the dev tools were minimalistic (just the DOM Inspector and a JS Console), currently the Dev Tools of Chrome could get some trimming, ex. some tabs such as Sources and Resources could get merged.

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