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Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

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Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#31

Mozilla's recent history should be (and probably will be at some point) a case study in PR. They had enormous reserves of goodwill, trust, and positive perception, and managed to squander all of that in a relatively short period of time.

To be fair there's some apparent history of Google sabotaging the browser so people favour Chrome.

e.g. https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...

That said, it's not healthy that Mozilla have relied on search revenue from Google.

Personally I've used FF for 10 years+, on Linux nowadays

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#34
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand that Firefox boasts "privacy by design" but does very little to promote it? If you have no problem with this, you might as well use Chrome.

so go use chrome if its clearly no different as you say. personally i'll stick with firefox.

In case you didn't notice, the article is about lots of people doing this.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#35
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand that safe browsing is an anti-malware and anti-phishing system that has nothing to do with tracking?

Do you understand that Firefox boasts "privacy by design" but does very little to promote it? If you have no problem with this, you might as well use Chrome.

I agree that Firefox could do a lot more for privacy by default but let's be accurate in our criticisms.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#37

>Just since the beginning of 2021, and according to StatCounter, Firefox may have lost Who doesn't block statcounter.com!? Edit: Apparently the guy following my comments works for them.

That's a good point, though. Statcounter is probably blocked by most tracker protection implementations, so Firefox users are probably underrepresented because of the privacy Firefox brings.

Only people without privacy-preserving addons will show up in these statistics. It's a game rigged in favour of Google, Microsoft, and only partially, Apple.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#38

Mozilla's recent history should be (and probably will be at some point) a case study in PR. They had enormous reserves of goodwill, trust, and positive perception, and managed to squander all of that in a relatively short period of time.

Their pr has been bad, but their behaviour has been mostly good. Most of the controversies I looked into in detail were not portrayed accurately in the media

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#39
I'm one of those users. Actually I think I abandoned Firefox last year.

I want to like Firefox. But every single update for several years has reduced it's utility. Development is no longer focused on the user. Who knows what it's focused on at this point, they say the user, but looking at the design decisions it is easy to see that that isn't true. I don't like being bullshitted.

I think generally the idea of "web browsers" is a negative thing. The internet is supposed to be protocols, the web is supposed to be documents. Having a window that you open that runs more stuff than your operating system unless you're writing code is strange, it is a UX entirely driven by massive technical debt as a result of bad decisions piling on top of one another for decades.

These days as far as browsers go, I use ungoogled chromium, bromite, and gnome web. I've tried pale moon and a few others and they're generally not what they're pitched as. It's hard to build a browser from scratch because of what I mentioned above, and I get that, and the main problem with web browsers is that the web is broken, but I live in a world where I need one and Firefox doesn't deliver.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#40
post #38

Mozilla's recent history should be (and probably will be at some point) a case study in PR. They had enormous reserves of goodwill, trust, and positive perception, and managed to squander all of that in a relatively short period of time.

Their pr has been bad, but their behaviour has been mostly good. Most of the controversies I looked into in detail were not portrayed accurately in the media

Behavior has been horrible as well. Dumbing down Firefox, ignoring power users and dismissing any criticisms to changes. I was a hardcore fan but they alienated me so I left it over a year ago and don't regret it at all.
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