Because it's not as good as it used to be. Due poor management I suppose. Chrome is far for ideal too, but at least it works for user and developer without much pain.
Could you be more specific?
Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
41–50 of 245 posts
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#42Actually, why does Chrome/ium has such a high market share even amongst tech savvy people? I don't see the appeal.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#43With the shift to smartphones, a diminishing number of people care about their web browser, let alone those who even remember what a web browser is. Chrome just works for most people, and the need to use another browser is completely unclear to the average person. In fact, there may be no good reason to switch browsers for the average person; why would you choose a different browser with better ad-blocking capabilities when you like using The Google and enjoy those quirky State Farm commercials?
To top it all off, Mozilla has made lousy decisions as to how to delegate its cash flow.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#44I am still using Firefox as my main browser, but some sites are broken with Firefox and working fine with Chrome. So unless you are particularly motivated to stay on a given platform, practically it does not really makes sense as a user to stay committed.
I use Firefox as my daily driver and have not encountered any sites that work in Chrome but not Firefox.
Most recently, I was checking into an international flight on aa.com, and there was some checkbox that Firefox was not displaying. I kept hitting submit, and AA kept telling me there was a problem, and it appeared that I'd filled out the entire form. I disabled Ublock, etc, and I could never get it to work. I eventually tried Chrome, and noticed the extra field.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#45Google wanted more control over the Internet, so they created a browser that they controlled and pushed it on people by leveraging their monopoly in a separate area. You know, the kind of thing we used to think was bad in the 1990s.
Leveraged their monopoly ? How does that work exactly for Windows, MacOS and iOS in your mind ?
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#46Speaking of which, Edge is competitive enough that most Windows users don’t need to change - unlike internet explorer.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#47Use Firefox for a day if you are a Chrome user, you’ll quickly realize the experience is far subpar. JS stuff is slower, random websites break, the UI feels a bit sluggish. I understand there are ideological reasons to support Firefox, and that some of these issues are easily attributed to other parties. But for users, there aren’t too many reasons to switch over from Chrome or even Safari, like it was the situation…
This has not been my experience at all. I was compelled to use Chrome at my last job (there was a bunch of internal tooling built around Chrome assumptions). I was there for almost five years, so I did a whole lot more than kicked the tires. My daily driver has remained FF, and I have not perceived any noticeable difference in perf because of it.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#48Earlier quoted context omitted.
for most, i would assume it's largely just that during the time of the naïve web, there was a period where google kind of was the company, so people started using it for everything (think shortly before and then during the early google+ era). 10 years later almost every normie who didn't start using apple products uses gmail and chrome simply because they legacied into it from when they were younger and less aware of…
I think you're overplaying the social aspect. For quite a while, Chrome had a serious speed advantage over Firefox and the developer tools were (are?) considered much better. I'm not sure if either is still the case. They both seem fine for my purposes, but I use Chrome because it subjectively feels a bit quicker and I've gotten disillusioned with the practice of choosing software based on political considerations.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#49One of the reasons: Massive advertising by Google to convince people to "try chrome". It is only relatively recently that visiting a google property was not met with: "Google X is best used in Chrome -- install Chrome now." (with "install chrome" being a link to the installer. No such massive advertising campaign ever existed to try to convince folks to "install Firefox".
It's an alternative for those who want it, but it's hard to point to any technical reason to prefer it.
Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?
#50I was an avid Firefox user, until it started adding services that I never asked for, namely Pocket. Things that should have been an add-on were now a core feature of the product.
i admit it was an odd addition but I do like browsing those stories on occasion and find it useful to same new stories to pocket so that I can read them later, particularly for publishers that only let you visit their site X number of times a month.