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Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

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Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#391

Post by slightwinder »

> “People don’t use Firefox because of add-ons. Our telemetry shows 80% of users never install any add-ons” > i.e. the telemetry that any tech savvy person immediately turns off > because they don’t want their browser spying on them and about which we have also complained numerous times.

There are other means to get usage-numbers of addons, like server-side stats. And those numbers support this claim. Even the most popular addons have just some millions of users at best. Adblocker barely make some ten million, meaning they are used by just 10-20% of the users. And those number did not change much in the last 10 years.

Though, there were IMHO already heavy loses before IMHO. Firefox 3 & 4 (released 2008 & 2011) were heavy damage for addon-communiy, killing many beloved tools. The question is whether usage-numbers before this were significant higher.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#392

Post by webmobdev »

dralley wrote: post #262
webmobdev wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I completely buy that argument - BigTech (in particular Google) have a huge influence today on Firefox development. Moreover, Mozilla's Firefox is deliberately hostile to the open source movement too - their code is a convulated mess by design , to discourage others from developing competing products with it. (Remember, that Firefox has provided Mozilla with 100's of millions of dollars - so the excuse of legacy code…

>Moreover, Mozilla's Firefox is deliberately hostile to the open source movement too - their code is a convulated mess by design, to discourage others from developing competing products with it. This is total nonsense. It's a mess because it has 25 years of legacy behind it, and because until a few years ago all of that legacy was considered a "feature" by half of the userbase, who was screaming at them not to remove…

I stand by what I said - their code is a convulated mess by design. It's 25 years and they still haven't modularised their code that anyone can use the Gecko engine on the desktop and creating competing browsers. All anyone can do is create a clone of Firefox, which ofcourse, cannot really compete with Firefox or other desktop browser as it will still have all the flaws of Firefox. And this is what Mozilla wants.

They may have started with altruistic reasons, but after tasting Google's money, their greed corrupted them.

Mobile is a good example. Mozilla realised it was in a precarious position on the mobile platform, which is dominated by Chrome, Opera and Safari. And so they have now been forced to release the Gecko rendering engine for mobile ( https://github.com/mozilla/geckoview ) and are encouraging others to create mobile browsers, in the hopes that this may provide a fillip to Mobile Firefox. Desperation drove them to this move as the money is now in mobile platform (Google paying 15 billion dollars to Apple / Safari highlights this).

If they can do this for the mobile platform, why can't they do it for the Desktop platform too?

This kind of deliberate convulated code mess is like a "dark pattern" where in you know the developer isn't really interested in supporting the open source movement. Yes, there are many other open source projects that have poor code or lack documentation, but unlike the Firefox project, none of them has 100's of millions of dollars at their disposal - it's a travesty how they have wasted all that money!

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#393

Post by slightwinder »

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…

> Judging by the HN and Reddit comments with each Firefox/Signal/Matrix releases

There are always comments and complaints. One need to evaluate the quality of this complains to understand their worth.

> either the product stops growing and simply becomes a niche product for those set of users or it dies.

Successful products prove this wrong. The most successful ones barely change at all, they usually evolve for a decade or two and then adapt to a new generation. Stability is a viable road to success.

Heck, even chrome didn't really change that much since it's first version. Firefox is really absurdly extraordinary in how unstable it is.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#394

Post by webmobdev »

nsonha wrote: post #340
alserio wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Counter point: install ublock origin on firefox mobile (which you cannot do on chrome) and the web is very noticeably faster on firefox.

this and "Video on background fix" which allows you to "listen" to youtube and multitask. I don't use the youtube app to avoid all the addictive features and tracking, and even it doesn't play in the background.

Install the Youtube Vanced app - https://vancedapp.com/

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#395

Post by slightwinder »

GekkePrutser wrote: post #366
AwaAwa wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seems hyperbolic to state, when I'm sure you're using javascript umpteen times daily. Very arguable that Eich's single handedly more responsible for javascript than Brave, engineering wise. I'm not a crypto fan, or of adtech, but BAT is atleast a functional solution to directly supporting sites.

Fair enough. The whole gay marriage thing just really annoyed me. I have some close friends who are struggling with such prejudice every day. And that's in a country where marriage isn't a problem for them. It's one thing for an employee to have private views but another for a CEO to actively try and influence the law. Especially for something that's in my opinion totally a private matter between people. I don't want…

> It's one thing for an employee to have private views but another for a CEO to actively try and influence the law.

Which he did not. He wasn't CEO at that time. He made "small" donations from his own money under his own name years before his appointment. And at no point did he abused Mozilla for any personal political goal of him AFAIK. He just was an employee supporting his own private views. Just that he is a bit more famous than your average employee.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#396

Post by webmobdev »

ndiddy wrote: post #91
phillipseamore wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I suspect Google thinks the $400m/year is worth not having to deal with antitrust proceedings due to having a competing desktop browser.

And it's not as if they are just giving the 400 million dollars away - they earn billions of dollars from Firefox users and they give a percentage of that to Firefox.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#397

Post by nsonha »

webmobdev wrote: post #394
nsonha wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

this and "Video on background fix" which allows you to "listen" to youtube and multitask. I don't use the youtube app to avoid all the addictive features and tracking, and even it doesn't play in the background.

Install the Youtube Vanced app - https://vancedapp.com/

I know about this and New Pipe, but having tons of apps for every little thing I do on the phone is exactly what I avoid. All these apps do is supporting downloading and subscriptions, something I would care about if I submitted to the youtube time sink, which I do not.

Besides, isn't this app a violation of Youtube's policies?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#398

Post by Abishek_Muthian »

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.

> It's almost like they've been deliberately trying to sabotage themselves for years.

I just hope it's not Nokia level deliberate sabotage.

> That might not go on for much longer, though.

I will use it till the end and will use what ever the FOSS community forks from it or existing forks. Because, I'm guilty that me not using FF and FOSS alternatives for Operating Systems, Browsers, Software has led to rise of the Mono/Duo/Oligopolies in-spite of possessing the skills to understand the outcome, In-spite of having access to the warnings for smart people who said exactly this would happen.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#399

Post by corty »

ragesh wrote: post #102
corty wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

It is theoretically true. They have changed the protocol at least three times, there are no user-accessible settings (just about:config) to point at your own sync server, there is no documentation. And at their rate of breaking stuff, your sync server will be obsolete as soon as you get it running. Happened to me, will never waste time on it again.

And the open-source version of the sync server is bad software, age-old python, tons of code smells. I'd wager it is not what they are using themselves.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#400

Post by aero-glide2 »

nsonha wrote: post #397
webmobdev wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Install the Youtube Vanced app - https://vancedapp.com/

I know about this and New Pipe, but having tons of apps for every little thing I do on the phone is exactly what I avoid. All these apps do is supporting downloading and subscriptions, something I would care about if I submitted to the youtube time sink, which I do not. Besides, isn't this app a violation of Youtube's policies?

>isn't this app a violation of Youtube's policies?

This is "hacker" news :)

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