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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?

#741

Post by didip »

This is just a comment from 1 guy so take it with a bucket full of salt.

In my opinion, the biggest error of Mozilla is not responding quickly to the computing trends.

Mozilla had a lot of great tech even in the early 2000s but it failed to realize how valuable they were.

Take XUL for example, what if they had expanded it to run on top of Linux directly? They could have become a player in OS market.

What if, after that, they expanded it to run on top of mobile phone when Android came out? They could have become a player in the smartphone market.

Number 3 player in browser, OS, and smartphone is not a bad thing. They surely would have been a much bigger company than what it is right now.

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

#742

Post by maxloh »

I don't think it can be saved.

The last time I checkout Firefox was about a year ago. It still uses ugly lagacy windows UI elements in its history/bookmark manager, and switching between personal/school account was a pain in the ass.

I think it is too far away from Chrome and beyond saving.

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

#743

Post by rincebrain »

selfhoster11 wrote: post #647
topspin wrote: post #482

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"- Get a CEO/upper management that are in it for the passion, not the money" That has to be the first on the list, because that is the prerequisite for everything else. Unfortunately there is no mechanism to achieve this within Mozilla. The people that need to go won't; they've got their trophy titles and they've feathered their nest as they want it. Thus Mozilla and Firefox with it are doomed. Solving that would tak…

Was an endowment needed for LibreOffice and Maria DB? I don't actually know how it happened with those two, but they both seemed to be more or less grassroots forks when people realised that Oracle won't ever be a good custodian. Perhaps a Firefox fork here could emerge in a similar way.

I don't know about LibreOffice, but my recollection was that MariaDB was initially less a reaction to Oracle actually having been bad for MySQL and more a fear that Oracle would potentially {be bad, close the product, ...}

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

#744

Post by maxloh »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #74
ssorallen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome’s Profiles are the #1 reason I use it over Firefox. If Firefox had as complete of an implementation as Chrome then I would consider switching, but until then Firefox is a non-starter for me. I use all 3 of these profiles all day every day for work: * one personal profile logged into personal Google * one work profile managed by the company, logged into company Google * one development profile with all the debu…

Why not use the firefox profiles? I also use multiple profiles. My setup is as fallows. firefox -ProfileManager Create 2 profiles work and private. Change the theme of work to orange and private to black. Create two .desktop files and append to the Exec line -P work (or private) and the Name to include (work) I have work on desktop 5 and private on desktop 8 and 9. Works like a charme for me. Additional bonus. Use co…

But it is just 2 clicks to do the same thing in Chrome (and those two clicks are really fast thanks to Fitts's law).

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

#745

Post by xialvjun »

I don't think we should save Firefox. IE is not opensource, so Firefox is very important. Chromium is opensource, so we needn't to stick with multiple browser kernels. Once Google Chrome change bad, we can use Vivaldi, Brave, or Edge. But we should save Mozila. We need to gather such a group of idealists. They will act as the vanguard to explore the future: create rust, rewrite chromium...

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

#746

Post by maxloh »

weaksauce wrote: post #145
cassianoleal wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Chrome there's an icon you click to switch. Honestly, if someone would create a FF extension that was just that, it would probably cover 90% of what's considered superior in Chrome.

have you used container tabs? those are effectively "different profiles" for what most people consider them. It's still shared extensions and history and bookmarks but you can login with different accounts in different tabs and it keeps that separate.

I have different sets of bookmark in my school and regular profile (because in most cases they were opened for very different purposes).

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

#747

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#748

Post by celdon25 »

zo1 wrote: post #311
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…

They must definitely fire some of their developers too https://www.reddit.com/r/browsers/comments/i8nuyb/firefox_de...

Yikes, I see quite a lot of grandstanding in that thread, and the linked Github issue.

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

#749

Post by 3371 »

bentcorner wrote: post #88
garciasn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They offer nothing I cannot get elsewhere and thus I have no reason to switch. When it first came out, Firefox was faster, lighter and offered way better function than the alternatives at the time. Since then, competition has been fierce in the browser market and they’ve done little to distinguish themselves in any major way from their competitive set. Until they do something so vastly incomparable in the market, the…

Take a look at tree-style tabs. I started using them in FF and have looked several times at chromium-based add-ins and absolutely nothing comes close. Edge vertical tabs is your best choice if you must use a chromium browser, however it is a weak imitation of TST.

I've been using Firefox straight for 10+ years and tried all major vertical tabs extensions and now I recommend Sidebery to everyone.

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

#750

Post by kaba0 »

mhitza wrote: post #588
sfink wrote: post #446

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If I understand what you're reporting correctly, then that's something your OS "included a couple of years back". If you install Firefox from Mozilla's site, it won't have these update problems. What's happening is that your package manager is swapping Firefox's bits out from under it while it's running. Firefox's built-in update system doesn't do that. Which is not to say that I think you shouldn't be using a packag…

Then someone at Redhat was probably bribed by some Googler, cause it only happens with Firefox updates /s Joke aside, Firefox is aware that it's been updated and the new tab states that I have to restart my browser. I'm not familiar with the inner workings of Firefox, I just expect it to have everything it needs to function, in working memory. I've been using Fedora for close to 14 years now, Firefox always installed…

You just probably use the web browser much more often to catch it after an update. And afaik, the reason for this is that they can only maintain a known good state this way, as well as making freshly patched security patches available as soon as possible.
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