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Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#51

Post by drewg123 »

_Wintermute wrote: post #29
cebert wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I use Firefox as my daily driver and have not encountered any sites that work in Chrome but not Firefox.

Google slides didn't work properly for me on Firefox a few days ago, all fonts displayed as some ugly serif font. Though I assume this is Google being underhand and malicious rather than Firefox not working properly.

Google is especially malicious, as they disable the mouse based past options in docs on firefox. This is a pain for users that don't know the paste shortcuts, or who are more comfortable with just using the menus. Sadly, the "dontfuckwithpaste" extension doesn't seem to fix it.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#52

Post by blahyawnblah »

fooker wrote: post #22

Use 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…

If random websites break, it's because the developer didn't do any testing in Firefox. IIRC Firefox follows standards more closely than Chrome and Chrome has random additional features that aren't standard that can make websites better, e.g YouTube, Google Maps

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#53

Post by NoboruWataya »

doodlesdev wrote: post #18
barbariangrunge wrote: post #16

Firefox should act like a startup in the growth phase. Pretend it has X users and is ready to grow, instead of acting like it has X users that it's trying to hold on to. If Firefox were a growth startup, we'd see all sorts of strategies coming into play: recommendations, ways to invite friends to try it, gamification, doubling down on what differentiates it, focusing on a niche then expanding that niche, trying to st…

> The nice part is that, because it's owned by Mozilla, users don't have to worry about a bait and switch at the end of the growth phase lol. Do you mean this seriously? Could you expand further because I just don't see where you're coming from.

Mozilla doesn't have VC backers that expect double-digit returns. At the top of the Mozilla structure is a non-profit foundation. Mozilla still has an incentive to make money, of course, but it does not require outsized returns and it is by its nature less inclined to place profit above mission or user experience.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#54

Post by Tagbert »

cebert wrote: post #8
seren wrote: post #4

I 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.

It’s usually when the sites depend on Chrome-specific calls and don’t provide alternates for other browsers because they only test on Chromme.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#55

Post by kube-system »

missedthecue wrote: post #30
acheron wrote: post #13

Google 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.

I think it's hard to say it's some sort of monopoly thing. Browsers are free and they take about 41 seconds to download and install. That's an extremely low switching cost. Unless you have a chromebook, it doesn't come preloaded on your Macbook or PC either. Consumers make the deliberate choice to go install Chrome instead of Firefox, and it's because they prefer Chrome.

Low switching costs doesn't necessarily mean that they aren't also leveraging powers they have due to their dominant market position. Both of those things can be true at the same time.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#56

Post by jedberg »

numbers_guy wrote: post #5

Actually, why does Chrome/ium has such a high market share even amongst tech savvy people? I don't see the appeal.

I use both. I use Chrome for any Google website, I use Firefox for everything else (except sites that break in Firefox, and then I use Chrome for those too).

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#57

Post by input_sh »

2Gkashmiri wrote: post #10

Network effect I'd say. If tomorrow opera, brave, edge switched to Firefox, people won't notice but Firefox share would rise dramatically. Extensions is another issue. Today, any tom dick and harry who want to create a browser extension only build for chrome "why not". Firefox comes from complaining users who don't want to switch otherwise they don't bother. Its the same chicken or egg thing. Low market share of Fire…

You don't need to build for Firefox these days, extension APIs are to a large extent identical.

But then, unlike with Chrome forks, you still have to support a separate version and deal with another "app store", so I can see why people don't do that.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#58

Post by Tagbert »

missedthecue wrote: post #24

Chrome is better. That's why. It's faster. JS loads quicker. Websites break, for instance Tidal streaming. There are three million tech support threads on the internet of people who can't use Tidal on Firefox. Firefox on desktop can't even translate pages yet, I have to use a janky third party plugin. As a fairly normie internet user, unless you have a hate-boner for Google or some arcane developer niche use case, I…

What is Tidal? Never heard of it. It is a video streaming service?

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#59

Post by seti0Cha »

juujian wrote: post #6
seren wrote: post #4

I 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.

Interesting, I have not come across any broken websites in a while. Or well, there was a booking website recently where I switched to Chrome to have my booking go through. But it would need to be a lot of those instances before I would even consider switching to Chrome. You have any (anecdotal) stats on how many websites are broken? What kind of sites are those?

I'm not a heavy Firefox user, but I've seen it as well. I don't remember the specifics, but on a couple of occasions a site would fail to function properly, I'd pop the developer tools open and see a Javascript error, usually about a null object. I'm assuming some sites are relying on Chrome-specific extensions because they don't see enough Firefox traffic to care. I haven't really seen much in the way of broken layout though, which is a big difference from the old "only tested in IE" days.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#60

Post by fooker »

blahyawnblah wrote: post #52
fooker wrote: post #22

Use 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…

If random websites break, it's because the developer didn't do any testing in Firefox. IIRC Firefox follows standards more closely than Chrome and Chrome has random additional features that aren't standard that can make websites better, e.g YouTube, Google Maps

Agreed. What do you expect users to do here?

Use Chrome or try to force a few thousand websites to test on Firefox?

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