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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?

#81

Post by FreshStart »

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…

Have a wild test Ballon Version of the app, one can switch too on the fly, allowing young open sorcerers to create new magic.

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

#82

Post by damnesian »

thesuitonym wrote: post #15

Good points have already been raised, but don't neglect the rise of smartphones. When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change? Add Chromebooks into the mix, and those meet a lot of people's needs, why change? Then, if you get a laptop, you'll want to have all of your passwords and bookmarks synced, so instead of using Edge, you grab Chrome…

I am a developer on a team of developers for a large data and interaction-rich website and we've watched the stats morph over the past 8 years from 23% mobile to 23% desktop. It's been a very swift revolution. I do a lot of QA on my phone now. I have been a Firefox proponent for at least ten years and resolved to do most of my QA on FF since I was most familiar with its features. Something that is very irksome about iOS is I can't suppress ads on Firefox on ios but I can on Safari. So Safari has become my main mobile browser. I'd love to keep pushing FF into the future- and still use it as my main desktop browser- but I can't advocate its use at least on iOS because of the ads issue.

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

#83

Post by 0x073 »

blahyawnblah wrote: post #48
seti0Cha wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Firefox's dev tools are much better than Chrome's

Firefox devtools where long time not comparable to chrome, now they are almost the same. There are now some features I prefer on Firefox and some I prefer on chrome.

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

#84

Post by cuttysnark »

Firefox will always have a special place in my heart, because of Firebug, which I credit to helping me whilst I was learning webdev in the late aughts.

A colleague of mine at the time quipped that "Firefox is my workhorse; Chrome is my show pony"

Times have certainly changed.

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

#85

Post by bendhoefs »

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.

A lot of people don't remember how slow Firefox used to be before ~2018. Maintaining compatibility with XUL extensions really held them back for a while.

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

#86

Post by JohnFen »

Big picture, I don't know. But I stopped using FF entirely a year or so ago because it reached a point where I could no longer put up with it without irritating me. I find its performance to be awful, it's much less usable, and it's harder to correct the various UI choices that I'm allergic to. These are problems that I didn't have, or that weren't as severe, before the revamp.

It's clear to me that FF is set on their development direction, and it's one I dislike, so it was time to give up.

This was actually a hard decision on my part. I've been using FF since the very beginning, and was a heavy advocate for it. Leaving it feels like leaving an old friend who has changed into someone I'm not compatible with.

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

#87

Post by harpiaharpyja »

damnesian wrote: post #82
thesuitonym wrote: post #15

Good points have already been raised, but don't neglect the rise of smartphones. When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change? Add Chromebooks into the mix, and those meet a lot of people's needs, why change? Then, if you get a laptop, you'll want to have all of your passwords and bookmarks synced, so instead of using Edge, you grab Chrome…

I am a developer on a team of developers for a large data and interaction-rich website and we've watched the stats morph over the past 8 years from 23% mobile to 23% desktop. It's been a very swift revolution. I do a lot of QA on my phone now. I have been a Firefox proponent for at least ten years and resolved to do most of my QA on FF since I was most familiar with its features. Something that is very irksome about…

You can't use uBlock Origin on iOS?

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

#88

Post by elashri »

damnesian wrote: post #82
thesuitonym wrote: post #15

Good points have already been raised, but don't neglect the rise of smartphones. When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change? Add Chromebooks into the mix, and those meet a lot of people's needs, why change? Then, if you get a laptop, you'll want to have all of your passwords and bookmarks synced, so instead of using Edge, you grab Chrome…

I am a developer on a team of developers for a large data and interaction-rich website and we've watched the stats morph over the past 8 years from 23% mobile to 23% desktop. It's been a very swift revolution. I do a lot of QA on my phone now. I have been a Firefox proponent for at least ten years and resolved to do most of my QA on FF since I was most familiar with its features. Something that is very irksome about…

Any browser on iOS is just a skin of safari, as all browsers on iOS must use the safari webview in the backend. Apple doesn't allow these browsers to use safari extensions.

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

#89

Post by duped »

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.

I've had issues with video calls, particularly ones based on webex that were forwarded through other sites, my health insurer/other telehealth apps, netflix and other streaming sites, just to name a few I've seen in the last year.

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

#90

Post by cxr »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #53
doodlesdev wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

You seem to have fallen into a time machine where it's not 2023 but instead... I dunno... 2010? (I'd have said 2013, but even that would still have been too generous; there's no defensible reason for crediting 2013-era Mozcorp as deserving of the warm fuzzies involved here, either. By then, it had managed to do what Netscape failed at—consolidating power within the distributed and independent mozilla.org project and assuming control for itself.)
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