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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?

#111

Post by jareklupinski »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #64
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…

> Finally, in the early 00's, Firefox users had a reputation for letting you know about it. Forums of the day were full of signatures with a Get Firefox link in them. You don't really see that level of fervor anymore, because the difference between Firefox and Chrome today is nowhere near the difference between Firefox and IE back then. I agree that is probably the main reason - but another is simply that we don't ha…

> a waste of screen estate but they allowed users to share a bit of their personality

somewhere there is a powerpoint with a slide that boils down to 'think about all the banner ads we can show in the wasted space where sigs live today!'

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

#112

Post by Klonoar »

elashri wrote: post #88
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…

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.

I mean, since iOS 11 you can apply a WKContentRuleList to a WKWebView. It's not like some form of ad blocking can't exist on Firefox for iOS.

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

#113

Post by xbmcuser »

It was not as good as chrome for most of that decade in performance or security. Google was able to use it search market share to advertise its browser but because it was better many people moved off firefox. 2nd reason is chrome used to auto update in the background so I used to install it on all the pcs of all the non tech people I used to be tech support for as that helped me a lot of daily headaches in term of computer troubleshooting

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

#114

Post by vasili111 »

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?

Not the extensions but you can use Brave browser that has its own built-in ad blocker.

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

#115

Post by beagle3 »

Klonoar wrote: post #112
elashri wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I mean, since iOS 11 you can apply a WKContentRuleList to a WKWebView. It's not like some form of ad blocking can't exist on Firefox for iOS.

There’s Firefox Focus which blocks many ads (also works as a blocker for safari)

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

#116

Post by OkayPhysicist »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #64
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…

> Finally, in the early 00's, Firefox users had a reputation for letting you know about it. Forums of the day were full of signatures with a Get Firefox link in them. You don't really see that level of fervor anymore, because the difference between Firefox and Chrome today is nowhere near the difference between Firefox and IE back then. I agree that is probably the main reason - but another is simply that we don't ha…

This is something I somewhat miss about the old forums. Between signatures and avatars, it was much easier to keep track of who you're talking to. Reddit-esque forums, this one included, have de-emphasized user identity to the point of homogeneity.

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

#117

Post by ezekg »

fooker wrote: post #39
ezekg wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been using Firefox for the past 2 years and I've had no such problems.

Yes, if you have been using Firefox you'll not notice problems. A large number of people used IE5 and IE6 without apparent problems.

What a weird reply. I think I'd especially notice any glaring problems, seeing as I use it every day for web dev. The only issues I've had is that devtools will sometimes completely crash, giving me a white window, requiring me to close the tab to restart devtools. But that's been rare and I can't remember the last time it happened. I completely de-Google'd my life 2 years ago, and I only have Chrome installed so that I can test things cross-browser when needed (e.g. webgl).

Comparing Firefox to IE5/6 is unfounded.

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

#118

Post by pwg »

Klonoar wrote: post #109
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".

>No such massive advertising campaign ever existed to try to convince folks to "install Firefox". I know HN tries to resist comments of this nature, but man do I feel old now. Firefox's entire success pretty much owes itself to a campaign like that dating back to the early to mid 2000s. Hell, there was a massive NYTimes ad in 2004! https://blog.mozilla.org/press/2004/12/mozilla-foundation-pl... Edit: "there as" -> "t…

True, there were Firefox advertising campaigns in the past.

How many days did that NYTimes ad run?

How does that compare in size to Google being able to spend somewhere around ten to twelve years constantly advertising "switch to Chrome" on every google property (search, youtube, mail, etc.)?

The massive size of googles advertising to "switch to Chrome" dwarfs all of the Firefox campaigns combined.

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

#119

Post by fooker »

ezekg wrote: post #117
fooker wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, if you have been using Firefox you'll not notice problems. A large number of people used IE5 and IE6 without apparent problems.

What a weird reply. I think I'd especially notice any glaring problems, seeing as I use it every day for web dev. The only issues I've had is that devtools will sometimes completely crash, giving me a white window, requiring me to close the tab to restart devtools. But that's been rare and I can't remember the last time it happened. I completely de-Google'd my life 2 years ago, and I only have Chrome installed so tha…

>I only have Chrome installed so that I can test things cross-browser when needed

Read my grandparent comment carefully.

Suppose you have two products A, B. They are roughly feature equivalent but B has a 10x more engineering effort put in towards QOL improvements and fixing the long tail of performance issues.

You are not going to notice this if you generally use A and only once in a while use B.

OTOH, if you use B and suddenly get transported to a A-only world you are going to miss the polish.

Another way to think about this is to compare cheap clothes/shoes to well made expensive ones.

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

#120

Post by fooker »

vlod wrote: post #104
fooker wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you remember how Firefox got over this? By replicating IE's bugs and beating them at their own game. Now Firefox, for some reason, doesn't want to do this.

Hhmm. I don't remember FF ever trying to reproduce IE6. I remember having to do special hacks to handle IE.

Here's a search query to dig into this: "firefox bugzilla internet explorer compatibility".
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