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Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

netmarketshare.com

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Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#71

Post by godelski »

craftyguy wrote: post #63
godelski wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

User agent switcher will get you around that. It worked when Netflix was blocking FF and hasn't failed me yet.

> User agent switcher will get you around that I wonder how many FF users roll with a user agent that identifies as chrome or some other browser, and how much (if even significantly) it affects surveys like the one in this article.

I wonder that too. I used to have it always on and set to Chrome when Netflix was blocking DRM enabled FF. I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people just always have it on, especially considering how popular of an add on it is.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#73

Post by saagarjha »

kevindqc wrote: post #69
ancorevard wrote: post #62

Why is it that not more people use Safari? On a MacBook Pro it is not only faster but your battery life lasts noticeable longer. Not to mention the Safari engineers' stand on privacy as compared to Google Chrome...

I doubt the engineers make the privacy decisions?

Since they write the software, I'm sure they have more than a little sway.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#74

Post by saagarjha »

ancorevard wrote: post #62

Why is it that not more people use Safari? On a MacBook Pro it is not only faster but your battery life lasts noticeable longer. Not to mention the Safari engineers' stand on privacy as compared to Google Chrome...

The most common complaints I've seen have been that it doesn't support their extensions or they need their web sessions to sync to their Android/Windows/Linux device.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#75

Post by LamaOfRuin »

jopsen wrote: post #11
rocky1138 wrote: post #4

I didn't see any indication as to their methodology for how they're calculating these stats. It's probably been said a zillion times before, but if it's JavaScript-based you can safely assume that they are incorrect as it's likely there is a large intersection between people browsing with an ad-blocker, private browsing, or with content blocker and those people using Firefox.

Does it matter? Even if the measure is somewhat flawed it's hard to argue that drop isn't related to a drop in the underlying number of users. Mozilla is awesome, but growing Firefox is an uphill struggle.

In addition to the higher prevalence of privacy (/ad blocking) conscious users on Firefox, Mozilla has also been aggressively making it easier to enable tracker blocking natively, and turning it on by default in certain cases. This has been happening with progressive versions as they're more confident it won't break large numbers of sites. Rollout of those features does actually mean this type of data needs to be interpreted differently depending on methodology.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#77

Post by chmln »

bjz_ wrote: post #9

Been really enjoying Firefox, especially after Quantum. More devs should support and use it, lest we be beholden to Chrome for the rest of time.

Sorry but the devtools can't even inspect my websocket API frames.

The websocket inspector was a feature request filed 6 years ago. [1]

Maybe Firefox devs didn't have time for it. But somehow they got all the time in the world to add clickbait Pocket articles on my new tab page.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=885508

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#78

Post by craftyguy »

fireattack wrote: post #65
craftyguy wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 1. The biggest thing keeping me tied to Chrome over any other browser is the extension support. Extensions are second class citizens in any other browser. You say this, but on mobile, the only major browser that supports extensions is Firefox. Not Chrome. Not Safari.

I'm a heavy Firefox+addon user, but I just don't use phone browser enough to even bother using addons. (And Firefox for Android is pretty bad otherwise, unfortunately.)

Since I refuse to install apps on my phone for services I use that have websites, I'm a fairly heavy phone browser user.. so being able to adblock, block arbitrary JS (noscript), and kill tracking cookies is wonderful.

> And Firefox for Android is pretty bad otherwise, unfortunately

I disagree. Why do you think it is "pretty bad"?

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#79

Post by Brakenshire »

Quantum I think was too incremental and conservative, trying to integrate Servo into Gecko. They’ve ended up making a desktop browser which is as good as Chrome, but not good enough to demand attention. Mobile, where parallelism should be most beneficial, has lagged behind, and parallel layout, which is where the real prize is, has disappeared over the horizon. Servo has been relegated to WebVR experiments which are speculative at best, at a point when VR is only available to a truly tiny percentage of the population, and should it be successful will probably be dictated by market share anyway. Do Quantum by all means, but follow five other paths to make Servo a success. Servo was designed to be embeddable, why for instance not attempt competition for Electron. Even if it only implemented a subset of the spec it could be a big success. This is Mozilla’s lifeblood, and it just seems attention is elsewhere.

Re: Firefox desktop market share now below 9%

#80

Post by romwell »

Just providing my piece of anecdata that me, and everyone in my family, have switched to Firefox Quantum on all our desktop machines, and aren't looking back.

(My wife has never used anything but FF, but she begrudgingly updated, and is now a happy user. I switched from Chrome; I can get way more tabs open on my cheap Asus 2-in-1 with FF.)

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