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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?

#91

Post by IMTDb »

At some point; Firefox was marketed as and felt as "the best browser". Now the whole marketing seems to revolve around being the best "ethical/open/private/nice" browser. Real or not; it feels like their number one priority is privacy/ethicality rather than technical excellence.

Being "an ethical alternative to" is appealing to some users; but there is a ceiling to this approach. And there is more and more competition in that space (chromium, brave, or even safari). So the share of people putting "ethicality" as their primary deciding factor is split amongst more option.

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

#92

Post by aednichols »

I was a diehard Firefox user in the aughts, running a bunch of extensions and recommending it to people.

I switched to Chrome the first day it became available, because it was just so much faster.

You don't need a monopoly or advertising to grow a product that sells itself that well. (Those absolutely did come later.)

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

#93

Post by doodlesdev »

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.

I understand, the point about VC is true indeed. I'm generally a bit skeptical about the Mozilla Corporation as it's a taxable entity instead of a non-profit, however while it stays 100% owned by the Mozilla Foundation their objectives should be well-aligned with the interests of us internet-users.

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

#94

Post by aednichols »

pwg wrote: post #2

One 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".

There was a massive grassroots Firefox campaign in the aughts. It was very successful at growing share and I was proud to participate.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36760016

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

#95

Post by aednichols »

wussboy wrote: post #63
wintorez wrote: post #17

I 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.

This attitude has always confused me. “Firefox did something I didn’t like so I switched to a browser which does hundreds of things to undermine the free and open internet”.

Plenty of Firefox users do not actually care about free & open and they're the ones who we lost in the greatest numbers. Recognizing and addressing their needs is important.

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

#96

Post by btreecat »

mdeeks wrote: post #40

Chrome used to be a lot faster years back so I switched. Firefox sadly has never given me a reason to switch back. Chrome is still fast and generally easy to use. (Maybe others here can give me good reasons to switch?) Chrome also has some obscure features I rely on that Firefox does not have (or just doesn't do well): * Firefox does not support Touch ID on macOS. I can't actually log into a lot of my sites * I can't…

I understand your dislike of the default workflow for Firefox profiles. Fortunately you can launch them from the CLI, so I usually creat an alias to my alt profiles then launch the browser from the shell.

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

#98

Post by time4tea »

Google using its huge market share to push a browser to help it know what you are up to. Same as Google analytics, same as Google hosted libraries, Google fonts etc etc. All there to make sure they see you on every site. Why anyone would use chrome is beyond me.

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

#99

Post by vlod »

fooker wrote: post #60
blahyawnblah wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Oh man, just got a flashback to when everyone coded to IE because everyone used it so there wasn't any reason to code to standards.

That was not a good time.

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

#100

Post by wiseowise »

harpiaharpyja wrote: post #87
damnesian wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

No extensions.
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