Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

371–380 of 949 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#371

Post by snird »

sebmellen wrote: post #267
Jayakumark wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current CEO is a cancer to Mozilla, her main goal seems like to make more money personally before Mozilla goes bankrupt. As long is as she is there - there is no hope https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...

The arrogance is hard to believe. > In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask peopl…

And she raised her pay while firing essential engineers: https://www.extremetech.com/computing/313658-mozilla-fires-2...

I'm a firefox user for over 10 years. I think I'm now convinced there is no future, I'll have to start to adapt to another browser now. I'll give Vivaldi a try.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#372

Post by gnicholas »

If Google goes through with the manifest V3 change, there are going to be a lot of people looking for a new browser. They've become accustomed to browsing with blockers (tracking and analytics) and won't want to use a browser that doesn't easily support blockers.

Firefox can scoop up a lot of these users if they don't force out blockers and other addons using manifest V2. I could see articles in Fast Company, Gizmodo, etc. with headlines like "Is Firefox the Hot New Browser (Again)?". It could lead to a huge wave — and hopefully to Google walking back their promises of a forced transition.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#373

Post by godshatter »

JohnTHaller wrote: post #214
captn3m0 wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’d argue that FF could possibly convince some manufacturers to preload Firefox with uBlock installed as a faster browser (if UCBrowser could, surely FF can).

I'd wager that Firefox's deal with Google prohibits them from doing this on any platform.

When you make a deal with the devil I guess you have to expect these sorts of things.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#374

Post by panta »

bradyo wrote: post #253
paxys wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a regular end user why do I care about what Mozilla's mission is? Apple makes shiny devices, Google gives me great free services, and in return I use their (perfectly great) browsers. What is one single reason to use Firefox? As long as these large companies continue to put effort into their browsers (which Microsoft didn't do with IE), users are simply never going to switch, the same way no one is using desktop L…

With enough investment, Firefox could also innovate and introduce features that aren't in Chrome or Safari to actually win users back

It's not user-facing features that move users from one browser to another, it's the number of websites they use that don't break with one or the other.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#375

Post by jamesgeck0 »

nikanj wrote: post #82
temp0826 wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's...not the case (and never has been) for me. You only restart it when you get an update (in which case that wouldn't be very often)? Or you did something whacky in about:config? Or maybe a bad extension. Dunno, not normal

I only start FF when I get a customer report about an issue on FF. I guess I start it seldom enough to always trigger some sort of watchdog? Anyway, here's my 2 cents. I only open FireFox when a customer reports an issue, and I'm always barraged by a deluge of unwanted info, which doesn't encourage me to open FF more often.

If you're on the stable channel you'll see a single tab of "unwanted info" once every six weeks. Half the time it's just a generic "Firefox updated!" page.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#376

Post by chucksta »

BossingAround wrote: post #331
sebmellen wrote: post #267

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The arrogance is hard to believe. > In 2018 she received a total of $2,458,350 in compensation from Mozilla, which represents a 400% payrise since 2008. On the same period, Firefox marketshare was down 85%. When asked about her salary she stated "I learned that my pay was about an 80% discount to market. Meaning that competitive roles elsewhere were paying about 5 times as much. That's too big a discount to ask peopl…

I don't think this has anything to do with arrogance, this is simply the market value speaking. Ginni Rometty did something similar with IBM; while being a terrible CEO ("IBM was the worst-performing large-cap tech stock during Rometty's tenure, dropping 24%" [1]), she got a whopping $20M per year [2] during her first 7 years of being a CEO, and she got $20M golden parachute [3] upon leaving the shell of an IBM. This…

An industry standard of arrogance is still arrogance.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#377

Post by [deleted] »

asdff wrote: post #194

I don't care that its losing marketshare as long as its still used and supported, just like how I don't really care that most computer users aren't using the command line anymore. The age of the average user being choosy about their web browser is over, and the hand wringing about market share is not important. Users either use the browser that ships with their OS (safari, the limited people on edge), or they downloa…

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#378

Post by selfhoster11 »

sockaddr wrote: post #71
phkahler wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>> We as a community, cannot afford to let Firefox languish until the only browsers in the world are Chromium derivatives. The diversity of truly independent browser engines is far too important to give up without a fight. There are a lot of people oh HN who agree with that but then use a different browser for whatever reason. I feel like these people are being very hypocritical and should use what they want to succe…

Recently switched to Linux and only installed Firefox. When you force yourself to use it, it's doable. I think only once in the last 6 months did a website not work (my dumb HOA website). Other than that, it's more than sufficient. It crashes sometimes but if that's the price for not having coercive software controlling my life, so be it.

Damning by faint praise shows how bad it is right now for FF. Back in the golden age of Firefox (arguably, before the versions started incrementing like Chrome), it was a pure pleasure to use, even if certain things like ActiveX refused to work. Now, if we "force ourselves" to use it, it's "maybe OK".

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#379

Post by autoexec »

twblalock wrote: post #323
Jayakumark wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Current CEO is a cancer to Mozilla, her main goal seems like to make more money personally before Mozilla goes bankrupt. As long is as she is there - there is no hope https://itdm.com/mozilla-firefox-usage-down-85-but-why-are-e...

A better CEO would not be cheaper, particularly considering that whoever takes the job would be tasked with saving a dying product. High salary and a golden parachute would be required to attract anyone good enough to succeed.

> High salary and a golden parachute would be required to attract anyone good enough to succeed.

I'm not sure if the best way to get someone to save a dying product is a golden parachute which rewards them for running it straight into the ground. You have to make sure they're not risking everything to keep Firefox going, but ideally they'd have some skin in the game so they don't have an incentive to just loot whatever they can until it dies before sailing away from the burning wreak with even more money.

Post reply on HN