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

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#241

Post by notpushkin » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:25 PM UTC

elcritch wrote: post #221

temphnaccount wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say other way around is true. HN crowd won't like this but it's very hard to continuously update a product for the core userbase that Firefox has. (small sample size but I maintain a small privacy focused app and from my experience, most of the reviews I get are how it's missing features which competitors have or how it's unusable because it can't handle stuff without jeopardizing privacy focused nature of the ap…

> So core userbase for these products becomes hostile towards the product growth by definition. In this environment, either the product stops growing and simply becomes a niche product for those set of users or it dies. Except FF market percentage has been decreasing not growing. The technical foundation has gotten better, but it’s like Mozilla execs are completely out of sync with the market share they could have. T…

https://waterfox.net/ is what you're looking for, I believe.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#242

Post by hypothesis » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:28 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #186

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.

> Firefox is a product strangely hostile to its core userbase. It's almost like they've been deliberately trying to sabotage themselves for years. Easily explainable Mozilla been captured by "aspirational" MBA types who think they don't really need that userbase, instead they want to chase "what big boys do", and copy lame features in hopes that monkeying Apple will score them iDevices users — the type of people they…

People were commenting about acquisitions in other thread: some wouod be unexplainable ones, until you realize that management just wanted to hang out with hip/stylish/trendy people…

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#243

Post by yoasif_ » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:32 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.

Firefox Sync is open source: https://github.com/mozilla-services/syncserver

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#244

Post by BlackLotus89 » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:34 PM UTC

temphnaccount wrote: post #151

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'd say other way around is true. HN crowd won't like this but it's very hard to continuously update a product for the core userbase that Firefox has. (small sample size but I maintain a small privacy focused app and from my experience, most of the reviews I get are how it's missing features which competitors have or how it's unusable because it can't handle stuff without jeopardizing privacy focused nature of the ap…

How can anyone call firefox privacy focused when they use telemetry so fucking heavily? Per default telemetry is active, disable it and you still got telemetry/pings whatever. You have to opt out of everything. It's not even limited to the user side look at this https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1460678#c20

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#245

Post by damagednoob » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:35 PM UTC

freediver wrote: post #222

Firefox simply lost touch with its community. Golden era was around 2005-2010 when Mozilla was running product innovation experiments such as Ubiquity or Tab Candy, "Design competitions", sending "Thank you" cards to beta testers, people like Aza Raskin having regular blog posts about development... My oh my, looking at those in archive.org and seeing treasure throve of comments, 100+ on each post, the excitement in…

Well, when your competition was IE 6-8, it's easy too look good. The process-per-tab architecture of Chrome was a revelation when it was released in 2008.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#246

Post by playpause » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:36 PM UTC

jeffomatic wrote: post #217

clement_b wrote: post #26

I use both Chrome (for work) and Firefox (personal) on Windows. Beyond a few specifics, I often can't remember which I am using. There might be many differences under the hood, but in a regular usage Firefox is really damn good. Even on Google's properties. I also use Firefox exclusively on mobile, and same. At the end of the day, they are two very mature, slightly different executions of the same concept. I get the…

This is my experience as well. I use both Chrome and Firefox across Mac and Windows, and I find the experiences to be pretty much interchangeable. I'm usually someone who gets annoyed at minor differences, but this really is one area where I'm not bothered at all. I use Firefox most of the time, out of a desire to support Mozilla and promote a non-Google browser. Admittedly, this is a political motivation, but it com…

I agree it’s important for Chrome to have a competitor, but Firefox has proven itself not to be a successful one. I’ve lost faith in Mozilla’s ability to make decisions that win back users from Chrome. I wonder if Firefox shut down, the dispersal of its users to other non-Google browsers might create enough momentum that one of them could start to become competitive with Chrome.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#247

Post by nerdponx » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

krylon wrote: post #84

bm3719 wrote: post #48

There's a theory in the Free Software community that BigTech sponsorship of Mozilla was intended to bring about the current state of affairs. The idea is that MS, Google, and others really have no reason to donate to a direct competitor. Perhaps they did so because they knew it would give them control. That control was exercised over the years and now Mozilla is more a social justice advocacy organization than a foun…

Well, once upon a time, Microsoft invested quite a bit of money in Apple to keep them alive. Allegedly, they did this so they could tell the DoJ with a straight face that they were not a monopolist, after all they had a competitor. I would not be surprised if Google's support for Mozilla is based on similar reasoning.

This theory is frequently stated as fact here on HN, so clearly you're not the only one to feel that way.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#248

Post by dralley » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:37 PM UTC

freediver wrote: post #225

dralley wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

150k / person doesn't account for benefits or office expenses. And they have closer to 750 employees.

It does if your team is world-wide. Does Gecko really need more than 100 people?

Firefox is 20 million lines of code. What do you think?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#249

Post by zdragnar » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:39 PM UTC

SSLy wrote: post #115

zdragnar wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I switched because FF was painfully slow, and chrome was blazing fast when it came out in comparison. Not only that, but the dev tools (specifically for JS) were far better than anything else out there. Fast forward 12 years, and little has changed. I dont keep 1000 tabs open, so chrome has never felt slow. I tried installing the developer edition of FF about 6 years ago on macOS and it refused to open. Why bother ch…

Because since FF57 it feels faster than Chrome.

And yet, chrome doesnt feel slow to me. The difference isn't nearly as stark as it once was between the two. FF lost because they lost the plot.

If I were a tab hoarder (I.e. didn't know how to use bookmarks) or thought that Mozilla were any more trustworthy than Google (why is it that the for profit puts out FF but the not-for-profit collects donations that go to anything but?) then I would switch.

I'm waiting to see how manifest v3 shakes out- Chromes plan is still better than safari has been (she admittedly low bar) but until thr browsing experience is affected, I have no problem sticking with chrome / chromium.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#250

Post by nerdponx » Sat, Sep 11, 2021, 6:43 PM UTC

bryan0 wrote: post #157

Tree style tabs have been the best web browser innovation for me in the past several years. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Tree Style Tabs, uBlock Origin, and Tab Session Manager. Together these extensions make the browser feel like an actual useful tool. As long as Firefox supports plugins like this (and hopefully we have already seen the end of major breaking changes to the plugin APIs), I will use it. Not to mention container tabs.