Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#101

Post by Klinky » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 2:55 PM UTC

phillipseamore wrote: post #74

Yoric wrote: post #60

I have an alternative set of explanations regarding why Firefox is seeing a continuous decline for the last 12 years. 1. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are not public but I would be surprised if Google didn't have 10x more people working on Chrome vs. the number of people working on Firefox. 2. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are again not public but I remember reading estimates that the eq…

To points 1-4, where would FF be without $400m a year from Google?

Is this what peak competition looks like? 3 browsers, 2 from companies with histories of anti-trust behavior who use the same browser engine, and the alternative is heavily funded by 1 of those 2 companies.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#102

Post by ragesh » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 2:57 PM UTC

corty wrote: post #53

laurent92 wrote: post #19

My Firefox has become adware. Adware for Mozilla, but still: Every new tab I open, there is a “WE CARE FOR YOUR PRIVACY” message awaiting for me. Every restart, “LOOK AT HOW WE HAVE FEWER ADS, MORE PRIVACY”. And from time to time, if I don’t open a tab by myself, it will install Pocket and/or open two tabs at startup, one for the release notes and one for browsing, but still with the little mention “Firefox has been…

Also, in my mind, exchanging Chrome's insistence on Google logins is just the same as Firefox's insistence on their proprietary sync and pocket. I'll say no to every one of those things, because I do value my privacy and none of them provide proper self-hosted options.

I thought it was possible to host your own sync server for Firefox. Is this no longer true?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#103

Post by dgan » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 2:58 PM UTC

I always use FF sync feature between laptops The only regular pain for me is bad webrtc support, which makes me use Chromium for meetings.. otherwise it just doesn't work

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#104

Post by kunagi7 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:02 PM UTC

dunefox wrote: post #9

knob wrote: post #3

One year ago they launched their new Android version, which is godawful. Just read the reviews on the android store. Why Firefox, why?!

> Just read the reviews on the android store. 4 1/2 stars with over 4 million reviews. I use it regularly and have no real problems with it.

Well, it did drop to 3.9 stars.

Initially, Google Play reviews got filled with 1 star reviews from users complaining that a lot of their workflows were broken, things that they liked were removed, extensions not working (unless you used the initial nine excluded extensions).

The rating dropped from 4.7 to 3.9 in less than a month. After that, some one star reviews were removed (maybe google thought it was review bombing or Mozilla used some kind of third party service for that). Ratings started to go up a bit after that.

And suddenly a lot of 5 stars reviews with little to no content (thumbs up emojis, Nice/Great/Good, or just dots) started to appear and the rating almost returned to the previous normal.

Nowadays is just a mix of good and bad reviews, most of them quite lengthy.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#105

Post by eplanit » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:03 PM UTC

Yoric wrote: post #60

I have an alternative set of explanations regarding why Firefox is seeing a continuous decline for the last 12 years. 1. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are not public but I would be surprised if Google didn't have 10x more people working on Chrome vs. the number of people working on Firefox. 2. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are again not public but I remember reading estimates that the eq…

As a US citizen, I really wish I lived in a country with effective (i.e. actually used/enforced) antitrust laws, that would see the dominance in browsers (chrome and android), combined with dominance in search -- which promotes its ads (another industry it dominates), the alteration of how the web is experienced to favor itself (hiding site identity the browser and in search results, combined with showing scraped content instead of directing traffic to actual site), combined with ... as being monopolistic and anti-competitive practices. It's beyond ridiculous anymore.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#106

Post by morpheos137 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:05 PM UTC

I wish somebody would make a light weight web browser that was compatible with modern standards. I like Opera but I don't think it is available for my operating system (OpenBSD) any more.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#107

Post by NelsonMinar » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:06 PM UTC

laurent92 wrote: post #19

My Firefox has become adware. Adware for Mozilla, but still: Every new tab I open, there is a “WE CARE FOR YOUR PRIVACY” message awaiting for me. Every restart, “LOOK AT HOW WE HAVE FEWER ADS, MORE PRIVACY”. And from time to time, if I don’t open a tab by myself, it will install Pocket and/or open two tabs at startup, one for the release notes and one for browsing, but still with the little mention “Firefox has been…

Wait, what? I use Firefox exclusively and there's definitely not a Mozilla ad every new tab or every restart. There is one once a major release (including a couple of days ago), and those always annoy me, but it's only once a month or two.

Are you exaggerating or does yours work differently?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#108

Post by elpocko » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:11 PM UTC

footlose_3815 wrote: post #25

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #6

I agree with this opinion piece. Firefox is a product strangely hostile to its core userbase. It's almost like they've been deliberately trying to sabotage themselves for years. I don't use it because I approve of all their stupid pigheaded UI choices, I use it because it has been the least bad option despite those choices. That might not go on for much longer, though.

this is my bit, too. they dropped an update that arbitrarily spaced out the area in between your bookmarks folders. You can you fit less on your screen now because of the stupid spacers

I'm more and more wary of Firefox updates because they keep pulling shit like that. Why are they doing this? How many users are there saying "I wish my bookmarks would suddenly take up double the space as before, so I have to scroll more?" I don't get it.

At least there's a workaround for the bookmark issue. There's no workaround for renamed menu items and changed shortcut keys.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#109

Post by aaomidi » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

will4274 wrote: post #92

Yoric wrote: post #60

I have an alternative set of explanations regarding why Firefox is seeing a continuous decline for the last 12 years. 1. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are not public but I would be surprised if Google didn't have 10x more people working on Chrome vs. the number of people working on Firefox. 2. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are again not public but I remember reading estimates that the eq…

Um. A "hapless victim" of the US culture wars? Mozilla quite deliberately committed suicide - they bought a fucking fireworks show to announce to the world that if you had views as conservative or more conservative that the average American, you had a permanent glass ceiling for your employment at Mozilla. Now they struggle to hire developers over the age of 25 - who would have guessed? Describing the prosecutors of…

Dude literally spent money trying to fuck over the right for gay people to get married.

He's a predator, not a victim. Using your influence to fuck over people who have NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU is absolutely disgusting and unforgivable.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#110

Post by agumonkey » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 3:16 PM UTC

pteraspidomorph wrote: post #6

I agree with this opinion piece. Firefox is a product strangely hostile to its core userbase. It's almost like they've been deliberately trying to sabotage themselves for years. I don't use it because I approve of all their stupid pigheaded UI choices, I use it because it has been the least bad option despite those choices. That might not go on for much longer, though.

I'll be understanding with mozilla, their challenge is difficult, and they've been going hard surprisingly long. I think they folded under the many new trends in the space, UI being one.

I wish they could find a stronger inner core to work on, something more utilitarian than user-drafting.

There's a lot of people saying chrome wins because websites are better with it, sites with high requirements like zoom IIRC, but in my experience it's not common nor impactful enough (these sites work fine enough on my old laptop)

whoever has the solution i hope it comes fast