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

Firefox is losing users fast

data.firefox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 80 posts

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#52

Post by rsaz »

I really wonder what the future of browsers looks like. Personally, I prefer my apps to be fairly simple, but it feels like every browser is constantly adding new features to try and stand out somehow. All really I want is a way to browse the web, use some extensions, and maybe do some dev work. Feature bloat is really starting to annoy me, and I wish there was just more focus on things like performance/security updates, or additions to the engine for supporting new technologies.

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#53

Post by politelemon »

ho_schi wrote: post #42
buscoquadnary wrote: post #10

If they focused more on the browser and spent less time and effort on these weird side projects they'd probably be in a better spot. Some data points if anyone from FF sees this: I try and proselyte users to Firefox as often as I can. The biggest selling point I've had success with so far is the containers feature. The big place I see people going is Brave under the idea it is more private or secure. I'd also love to…

> Please FF is the only place still not under the Chromium dictates, please save Firefox Mozilla. There is WebKit! The only other remaining browser-engine held by WebKitGtk and Apple. WebKitGtk is used by many applications which use Gtk and the official web browser of GNOME, Epiphany. And as built-in engine by Apple on iOS and MacOS. Despite rumors, there is still a Qt5-Port used by Otter-Browser. I would be happy to…

Unfortunately the WebKit implementation in iOS is a rehash, even worse, of the IE days. So I definitely wouldn't call it WebKit or an alternate choice(Except it's Apple so for some bizarre reason it gets a free pass on HN).

The original comment is still effectively correct in spirit, Firefox is the only browser not under "hostage".

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#54

Post by orev »

I hope when the Chrome v3 Manifest changes launch, it drives a lot more users to Firefox when suddenly sites on Chrome are infested with ads. Firefox has a real opportunity there.

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#55

Post by daveguy »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #10

If they focused more on the browser and spent less time and effort on these weird side projects they'd probably be in a better spot. Some data points if anyone from FF sees this: I try and proselyte users to Firefox as often as I can. The biggest selling point I've had success with so far is the containers feature. The big place I see people going is Brave under the idea it is more private or secure. I'd also love to…

15+ years ago Firefox was focused on a fast, stable browser. It was the alternative to the Mozilla browser. They did an excellent job of keeping it both. At some point they decided to make it an experimental browser. As soon as they started having regular breaking changes to plugins was when I switched to Chrome.

I recently went back to Firefox on mobile, because I like the idea of not giving google all of my data. Also, they have ublock origin, privacy badger and noscript.

I have to look at fewer advertisements, but it still isn't as stable or fast as Chrome.

It would be great if they refocused on stable fast browsing or spun off a new browser for that purpose (and this time kept it that way when the stable/fast option becomes vastly more popular).

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#56

Post by rsaz »

Semaphor wrote: post #47
rsaz wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems there is: https://gs.statcounter.com/platform-market-share#monthly-202... This definitely seems like a decent explanation in my opinion. Sure Firefox is available on mobile, but on iPhone there's not much point to it since its WebKit anyways, and Androids have Chrome on them by default, which most people are already comfortable with. I feel like I care more about my browsing experience on my desktop than I d…

Don't you he stupid amounts of ads with chrome on android? I wouldn't want to miss uBo

I do most of my browsing on my desktop. On mobile, it's usually really light stuff like searching up a restaurant or store, reading HN or some other silly little thing. Occasionally I see ads which are annoying, but most of these things don't have many ads anyways, so its not a big deal.

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#57

Post by stargrazer »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #29
mattboardman wrote: post #26

I'm an open source advocate. I used firefox for decades, even when it was being blown out of the water by Chrome performance wise. Recently I've switched to Brave due to many websites not rendering correctly or running slowly. Lots of government websites don't work with firefox for instance. You'll get decently far along in the form of a street parking permit, and then you can't submit it for some reason. I wish Mozi…

If Google had spent millions of dollars trying to kill Firefox they would not have done as much damage as the MBAs that have taken over.

hmm, isn't that what happened to Sun - the managers/mbas took over, then the engineers revolted

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#58

Post by abbe98 »

olah_1 wrote: post #5

I stopped using Firefox because of the poor text rendering compared to Chrome. A lot of people here dismissed me, didn't believe me, or just said that I shouldn't care. I can't help but think that the Firefox "community" is just kinda like that. They don't really care about things that regular users are bothered by. Culture dictates priorities, right?

I use Chromium every now and then and notice this as well, however, Chromium instead have very poor rendering of images.

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#59

Post by cbarrick »

buscoquadnary wrote: post #10

If they focused more on the browser and spent less time and effort on these weird side projects they'd probably be in a better spot. Some data points if anyone from FF sees this: I try and proselyte users to Firefox as often as I can. The biggest selling point I've had success with so far is the containers feature. The big place I see people going is Brave under the idea it is more private or secure. I'd also love to…

I hated the most recent redesign with the jumbo user chrome.

So much so that I jumped ship. Went to Opera for a bit, no on Vivaldi.

Vivaldi: Has a pleasant looking UI, is easy to customize the color scheme, has a TON of options for various workflows, is fast.

While FF likes to show strong benchmarks for Gecko, Blink is noticeably smoother in practice.

Mozilla really needs to inject new life into Firefox. Fix the UI; fix the perf problems. The Servo team was making great progress in the perf department. So sad that Mozilla dropped that program.

Re: Firefox is losing users fast

#60

Post by cbarrick »

danohuiginn wrote: post #4

"Generally, MAU [monthly active users] fluctuates over the course of a year, dropping in the summer months and during holidays" That seems to fit what's happening here. Longer term, firefox seems to have lost 15-20% of users in the past 3 years, which is substantial but not catastrophic. On the other hand, that probably means a much steeper decline in market share.

If you change the region from "Worldwide" to "United States", you can see a much more concerning long-term trend.
Post reply on HN