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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#111

Post by cxr »

yutijke wrote: post #10

I feel the article misses how Firefox's inability to get a foothold on the mobile platform contributed to its decline. There are more people today using web browsers via mobile then desktop. In many poorer countries the first and only access to the open internet for the people is through chrome on Android. I don't blame Mozilla for this though since they did not have a monopoly on a platform to capitalize on unlike t…

> they did not have a monopoly on a platform to capitalize on unlike the other players

Considering how poorly pretty much every vendor who wasn't named "Apple" was fumbling around trying to layer negative value added customizations on top of Android in the early days (and continued doing so for years), there was a ripe opportunity to ship a "Mozilla mobile" consisting of a stock Android device + Firefox. Of course, the powers that be predictably blew it.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#112

Post by dspillett »

raxxorrax wrote: post #3

Firefox would fit neatly in the corporate world in my opinion. You can have a centrally administered configuration file and Firefox is indeed able to just use certificated from your OS. It is just a small toggle. Still, a bit of effort and maybe advertising would do wonders, because there are companies critical of Chrome that think data protection is worth more than personal advertising. I think Edge is trying to fit…

> Firefox would fit neatly in the corporate world in my opinion.

Lack of corp support is one of the things that harmed FF from what I saw. Until a few years ago it was not as easy to control FF via group policy¹ as it was Chrome, so FF didn't get a look in. Telling infrastructure managers “but you can do X instead and it is just as easy or easier” would fall on deaf ears because while as convenient in isolation it is still something different instead of integrating with what they did for everything else they permitted on their user machine builds.

¹ This has changed since, but too late.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#113

Post by minimilian »

samwillis wrote: post #65

Firefox is compromised by the fact it’s core active users are also its largest liability. It’s the innovators dilemma. They want it to (more or less) stay the same and not move forward and make changes to compete with Chrome. Whereas for them to achieve a larger market share it needs a radical overhaul. Really what Mozilla need to do is build a “new browser” called something different and put their weight behind that…

> The tight relationship between rendering engine and browser has been broken by Chrome and its “children” (and in some way also by Apples enforced usage of their WebKit implementation in ios). Mozilla need to follow suit in order to survive, rip that rendering engine out, build a new browser and a “browser toolkit” to let other people build their own.

Exactly. I would really like to use something google-free, but the interface of Qutebrowser is too good, and Qutebrowser can't use Mozilla's rendering engine, even though the developers would like to.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#115

Post by rvz »

samhw wrote: post #34
rvz wrote: post #7

Firefox is not a (serious) alternative and it is quite frankly irrelevant. It is either Chrome (Blink) or Safari (WebKit) and I would much prefer WebKit-based browsers over Chromium-based ones and the market-share tells the full story on where to target the most users and it is not Firefox. Why do you think that these web developers stick banners everywhere to force you to run their apps in several Chromium-based bro…

This kind of response is just mystifying to me. You can see for yourself that Firefox has a sizeable share of the market, so clearly it is "a serious alternative" and is not "irrelevant". What's the point in making these statements? Is it just a way of saying "boo Firefox, I don't like Firefox"?

> You can see for yourself that Firefox has a sizeable share of the market...

Since when was a single digit of 3% (and declining) a 'sizeable share' of the market?

> What's the point in making these statements? Is it just a way of saying "boo Firefox, I don't like Firefox"?

The evidence is already out there [0] and it is based on the obvious fact that Firefox market share and usage is still declining. Even the comments in this whole post are saying the same thing about Firefox becoming increasingly more irrelevant.

Why? Because everyone knows it is a clear fact.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#116

Post by twic »

chrisseaton wrote: post #91
zesterer wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They want it to (not or less) stay the same and not move forward I don't think this is true at all. Anecdotally, a lot of Firefox users have been very receptive towards recent changes. Quantum was a huge success and I know very few people that miss the old Firefox with all of its jank. > Mozilla need to follow suit in order to survive, rip that rendering engine out, build a new browser and a “browser toolkit” to le…

> This is precisely what Servo is Great example - because Mozilla binned Servo! https://twitter.com/steveklabnik/status/1295771633320448001

As the Reddit thread quoted in that Twitter thread explains, Servo was not originally intended meant to replace Gecko. It was a research platform to explore new techniques which could be used in Gecko, and it successfully did that. Indeed, i think it was a pleasant surprise when it turned out WebRender could be ported, rather than rewritten in Gecko.

It is a shame that Servo was shut down, because now there isn't a codebase focused on developing new technology; innovation has to happen in Gecko, alongside being a production system.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#117

Post by blendergeek »

soco wrote: post #102
alex_smart wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox just pushed yet another pointless UI change six months ago. People using their software just to go about with their lives don't like pointless UI changes.

I'm not ironic just puzzled: what was the UI change months ago? I'm using Firefox on two laptops and one Android and haven't noticed it...

What Firefox version are you on?

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#118

Post by dspillett »

Nextgrid wrote: post #51
technobabbler wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It would be easier for companies (who aren't anti Google) to administer Chrome policy via their existing Google/Gmail accounts and Google Workspace. Profiles, sync, extensions, etc. can all be centrally administered. And also deployed to Chromebooks for certain users. All without having to manage the overhead of a minority browser with Especially for any web shop... Firefox is even less relevant than Microsoft now an…

Could you name any major websites/apps that break in Firefox but not in Chrome?

I found Amazon unstable on FF for a while a few years ago, it would randomly go off and spin the CPU or eat a pile of RAM, sometimes recovering and sometimes needing to be killed. It was one of the things that pushed me towards using Chrome more. Chrome has since started to have a few issues (occasionally dying and not remembering a chunk of my open tabs being the big recent one) so I'm starting to move back the other way ATM.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#120

Post by esyir »

fsflover wrote: post #35
traveler01 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would I even want to install Firefox on my families computer? The thing is, I want them to have a long term, good working solution that doesn't become a pain in my ass. Firefox isn't very stable for non-tech people, that's the sad truth. Mozilla is badly missmanaged, they are killing Mozilla and specially Firefox. Things need to change, badly.

> Firefox isn't very stable for non-tech people, that's the sad truth. What are you talking about? It's been working flawlessly for many years, without any maintenance for me and my non-technical relatives.

It is pretty annoying. I tried daily driving Firefox for some time, and found it inferior to chrome, though if you'd ask me to define exactly why, I wouldn't be able to do so. However, when an update wiped my profile, requiring manual fixing, that was it. I did restore it, but that shouldn't have been an issue to begin with.
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