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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?

#881

Post by tomxor »

sciurus wrote: post #702
tomxor wrote: post #687

Earlier quoted context omitted.

many users turn off that telemetry, including me.

It's an interesting question if the percentage of users with telemetry disabled has increased a meaningful amount over time. Mozilla has actually done some work to measure users with telemetry disabled; see the "telemetry coverage" section of https://blog.mozilla.org/data/2018/08/20/effectively-measuri... I'm not sure how frequently they've done this or if any of the data has been made public.

> if the percentage of users with telemetry disabled has increased a meaningful amount over time.

Yes, this was my main thought... It's possible what is being measured is the increased sensitivity of FireFox users to privacy issues, and the increased capabilities Firefox offers to it's users being used, including the option to disable telemetry.

>Mozilla has actually done some work to measure users with telemetry disabled;

That's kinda funny :D it's a meta telemetry telemetry... although as they mention it contains basically no info beyond the fact that telemetry was disabled and is only run on a small sample.

I suppose the only other way would be to attempt to count all the downloads of binary packages through all the Linux repo mirrors, flatpak, snap etc and then finally windows and mac in-browser downloads... which sounds like a nightmare so I can see why no-telemetry telemetry would be attractive.

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

#882

Post by acheron »

commandlinefan wrote: post #848
acheron wrote: post #738

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think Google's politics are better than Mozilla's?

No, they're worse. I'm using Brave + DDG - I can't completely de-google-ify, but I can try.

My view is that using any Chrome derivative is still aiding and abetting Google. If Firefox really does die out and all we have left is Chrome derivatives, then yeah it seems like Brave would be the best option then, but that will be a sad day.

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

#883

Post by freediver »

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.

> Edge vertical tabs is your best choice if you must use a chromium browser, however it is a weak imitation of TST.

What makes it weak?

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

#884

Post by ashwagary »

mrtranscendence wrote: post #864
ashwagary wrote: post #815

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to imply central bankers are honest and CPI is accurate. This is absolutely not the case and you should update your views. It used to be a 50% haircut every ~10 years, now its closer to a 50% haircut every ~5 years.

But the CPI is fairly accurate, and those who calculate it are doing their best with a problem that doesn't have one easy to compute answer. Regardless, I know just from personal experience that your numbers are way off. My grocery bills haven't gone up 50 to 100% since 2012; what I spend on clothes and software and veterinary visits hasn't gone up 50 to 100% either. The only thing that I might buy that contradicts t…

>But the CPI is fairly accurate, and those who calculate it are doing their best

Completely disagree.

>Also: as part of my job I can check prices in a major sector of the retail industry

That is probably the problem.

>clothes and software

Clothes = imported from countries we export inflation to. Software = ~0 cost to duplicate.

Inflation doesnt hit the whole population equally or at the same time, and it doesnt hit all products uniformly.

The items/services we all want/need, that are scarce, and can't be imported from our foreign "slaves", are where you will find it concentrated. Healthcare, housing, university, etc...

My earlier observation 50%/10y, 50%/5y is closer to reality for the vast majority of the population.

How much did housing go up in price in the last 10-12 years (300%? 400%?)?

Remember when house prices went up 20-30% in a 6 month period of 2021? Not inflation?

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

#885

Post by GekkePrutser »

utucuro wrote: post #804
dvogel wrote: post #710

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What FF mobile fiasco are you speaking of? I am using FF mobile happily and have been for years. I haven't noticed any issues with it. Was there a business level fiasco or something?

One objective fiasco is the inability of FF on Android to keep multiple tabs in memory. Older versions were capable of it without issue, ever since the tab unloading feature, Firefox has been reloading tabs at the slightest pretense. Switch apps? Tabs get reloaded when you're back. Lock & unlock phone with Firefox in focus? Tabs get reloaded Switch tabs in Firefox? Tabs get reloaded... I wish I was just ranting, but…

Doesn't happen for me. OnePlus 8 with Oxygen OS 11.

The one thing I really miss in FF mobile is the opposite.. Pull to refresh or another gesture that accomplishes that. The current two tap option is too slow.

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

#886

Post by GekkePrutser »

saurik wrote: post #784
krageon wrote: post #778

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rust and servo were how they were innovating, and where a lot of the competitive features came from. By firing them, Mozilla made clear that they do not care about these things. The CEO is quite clearly a parasite hell-bent on extracting as much value as she can before bailing for the next victim.

The problem--and I feel the pain here deeply as a security person myself--is that that innovation was primarily along an axis (security) that no users care about (with a small bit of performance from concurrency, but there were clearly other ways to be faster), and was draining resources away from innovation that users cared about... which I'd claim was even going in the opposite direction: for many years now they ha…

Remember that the users still using Firefox are mostly technical and privacy fans that do care about security a lot.

Focusing on the mainstream user at this point will not help as they're already so far gone they don't even remember the name Firefox anymore.

They should focus first on making it and excellent browser for the users that still care. Then word of mouth will bring it back to the mainstream as it did the first time.

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

#887

Post by GekkePrutser »

account42 wrote: post #814
jokethrowaway wrote: post #505

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The main problem is that they're not making money with their core product so they need to experiment and innovate to find ways to make money. I agree they probably didn't need to invent rust: that was an happy accident, the kind of things that happen when you have really smart people around. If they had a money making accident we would be talking about something else, but I guess they would need a different type of c…

> The main problem is that they're not making money with their core product so they need to experiment and innovate to find ways to make money. Firefox is owned by the Mozilla foundation, the corp is only there to help develop it since having developers work directly for the foundation is apparently complicated. Non-profit foundations don't need to find ways to make money with their core product and they should not t…

No the corporation was founded because having a major corporation like Google pay so much to a foundation was difficult for tax reasons.

But it did push them over the edge IMO. They're behaving like a corporation now, with a CEO pulling as much money as they can, too much PR etc. Through the Google deal they have become what they were fighting. But they're not very good at it, hence the low marketshare.

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

#888

Post by GekkePrutser »

makx wrote: post #342
CoolGuySteve wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fuck, I'll do it for a mere million dollars. The market has spoken. I can't do much worse than losing 85% market share.

You'd think that there are even qualified people who would do it for (almost) free, just for the chance of building a resume...

Almost everyone in business has an MBA so that qualification is pretty easy to get.

The passion they need is a lot harder.

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

#889

Post by GekkePrutser »

krageon wrote: post #783
2muchcoffeeman wrote: post #545

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Japanese CEO salaries are famously very low. The Toyota CEO makes about USD 3.5m. There are other C levels that make 3 times what the Toyota CEO earns in direct compensation. Japanese CEO salaries in general seem to be below USD1m on average.

> Japanese CEO salaries are famously very low. The Toyota CEO makes about USD 3.5m I'm genuinely curious: Do you not see how insane it is that you believe this is low? Earning even a tenth of that would be stratospherically high.

Toyota is a huge company though. It's nothing like Mozilla. I would imagine there's a lot of responsibility riding on it. And I'd imagine that in Japanese culture badly performing CEOs actually face consequences.

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

#890

Post by GekkePrutser »

Kye wrote: post #731
victor106 wrote: post #709

Earlier quoted context omitted.

from her Wikipedia page > Baker was trained as a lawyer. She coordinates business and policy issues. I don't know of any lawyers running a successful tech company.

They usually run for office instead.

I don't know of any lawyers running a successful country either :)

PS: By success I don't just mean economic...

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