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

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

#711

Post by voidlogic »

wolpoli wrote: post #411
selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

I would instead argue that Firefox's Gecko engine is beyond saving and that any money invested in it now would be better donated to other community projects because there isn't enough resource to catch up. Sticking with Gecko will eventually lead to the dismise of Firefox the organization. Microsoft, with their resource and their ability to bundle Microsoft Edge in with Windows, couldn't get any appreciable amount of…

Why do you think the engine is beyond saving? I use Firefox everyday and have absolutely zero complaints...

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

#712

Post by JohnTHaller »

ameminator wrote: post #291
JohnTHaller wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is already more customizable than Safari or Chrome. If Safari and Chrome were growing in userbase due to being more customizable than Firefox, it might make sense.

In my experience, Firefox is not more customizable than Vivaldi. Examples include: custom tab layouts, sizing options, default behaviors and more. It would be really nice if they went all-in on those custom features, but I suspect it might need to come from the Servo base engine, first.

Even if Firefox gained all of Vivaldi's users, it wouldn't really change its overall marketshare.

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

#713

Post by system2 »

nikanj wrote: post #13

Every time I restart Firefox, I get about 8 different prompts for "See what's new!" "Reset your Firefox profile now!" "See our new diversity initiative now!" etc. It feels like opening a Windows Me installation from 2000. I just want to get browsing done.

Same here. I just started Firefox now, UAC prompt came again. Restarted, pocket started showing me random stuff, tabs open.

I do not want any of this.

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

#714

Post by JohnTHaller »

mrandish wrote: post #301
JohnTHaller wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox is already more customizable than Safari or Chrome. If Safari and Chrome were growing in userbase due to being more customizable than Firefox, it might make sense.

FF is slightly more customizable for non-tech users. It used to be almost infinitely more customizable. The difference has gone from dramatic to negligible and even that much is now hidden behind flags that don't even appear in the UI.

It was losing tons of users to Chrome long before that changed. And Firefox was significantly slower and taking longer to integrate new features due to that customization around the old extensions model.

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

#715

Post by DarthNebo »

I'd focus on beating Safari in terms of power consumption, better native integration(iCloud sync) & using these as a springboard for anything else. It's very difficult to recommend Firefox/Chrome/Brave on a Mac over Safari unless someone really needs specific addons.

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

#716

Post by [deleted] »

ChristopherDrum wrote: post #684
panarky wrote: post #533

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I don't give a shit how nice the developers who made my web browser are It sounds like you do give a shit that they care about "social justice" and you don't want to use their browser because of that? Or are there specific features / functionality / performance / security issues that prevent you from using Firefox and are somehow caused by the worldview of the developers?

I am someone who does give a shit about not wanting to reward assholes. There is one thing I think is worth noting. There's always all of this talk about, "It's the talent that matters, not the social justice stance of a developer. Keep the talented assholes; don't hire for social justice posturing!" Well, I'm waiting to see all of those displaced "talented assholes" band together to create a product so compelling it…

[deleted]

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

#717

Post by sfink »

eternityforest wrote: post #452
CleverLikeAnOx wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A browser monoculture allows one entity to dictate how the web works. Even if you can open a pull request against Chromium, that doesn't mean it will get accepted without the approval of Google. Right now, backwards compatibility is protected by competing browsers. If one breaks backwards compatibility too often, it risks becoming known for having sites not work on it. In a monoculture, Google could take aggressive m…

So fork it if they do anything bad. In what scenario is maintaining a fork not way easier than a whole separate engine? So far I think I like how they handle Chromium more than I like what Mozilla is trying to do.

Anyone can "fork" it by making their own build. Which will quickly become worse than useless as it falls behind security patches. A secure fork is something that is easy to start, very very hard to maintain.

The possibility of forks does little to prevent a Chromium monoculture from embracing, extending, and extinguishing the web. (Something like Brave, with an independent revenue model, does help some with the bad maintainer problem. But it doesn't help with the constant stream of everyday bugs in the underlying engine, ones that would get set in stone with a monoculture.)

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

#718

Post by SamuelAdams »

DarthNebo wrote: post #715

I'd focus on beating Safari in terms of power consumption, better native integration(iCloud sync) & using these as a springboard for anything else. It's very difficult to recommend Firefox/Chrome/Brave on a Mac over Safari unless someone really needs specific addons.

Do people not use an ad blocking extension? I use a Mac and I tried using safari but the lack of UBlock Origin makes it very difficult.

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

#719

Post by rekabis »

Jayakumark wrote: post #164
selfhoster11 wrote: post #2

They should focus on saving Firefox. - Cut out all (or at the very least, most) initiatives that don't serve the goal of promoting Firefox's market share or sustainability going forward - Donate the major money drains that aren't Firefox to the Apache Foundation or another worthy custodian - Fire all inessential staff that don't want to work on Firefox. - Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not…

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...

[flagged]

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

#720

Post by carapace »

paulryanrogers wrote: post #535
carapace wrote: post #111

> Why is Firefox losing marketshare? For myself, I am moving off of Firefox right now (I don't yet know to what though, recommendations welcome) for one reason: they keep changing the UI in ways that I find irritating and then deprecating the methods to change it back. For me it's really that simple. There are other issues I have with FF but that's the one that got me to the point where I'm ready to abandon FF entire…

> so what is the differentiator that makes it compelling? Is a focus on privacy and independence not enough?

Well, no, evidently not. That's why we're having this conversation, eh?
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