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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?

#181

Post by darklion »

wiseowise wrote: post #100
harpiaharpyja wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use uBlock Origin on iOS?

No extensions.

Oh for fuck’s sake. Safari has had extensions since 2010, and uBlock Origin supported it until 2018.

The problem vis-a-vis uBO that in 2018, Safari switched its extension framework. It no longer supports the WebExtensions framework, instead using a native (proprietary) implementation. The new framework requires extensions to be packaged as apps, and is less featureful in terms of what extensions can do and access than the older framework. Consequently, uBlock Origin decided not to support the new extension framework (https://github.com/el1t/uBlock-Safari/issues/158).

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

#182

Post by ForestCritter »

dahwolf wrote: post #178

Firefox was even over 30% at one point. It's a fine browser, but that 30% was in the desktop era where the only competition was a stagnant IE. Then mobile happened and Firefox failed to secure a seat at the mobile OS table. Nor does it have any big web property to push the browser. So neither on mobile nor on desktop does Mozilla have any leverage. It's not an engineering problem, it's a leverage problem. But even in…

I used Mozilla firefox for close to 20 years, perfectly happy. I was very happy when they made their android app but sadly it was the plague. Then they changed stuff on the desktop and it stopped working the same. I moved on to stuff that works ( not chrome or google). I would say some of it is definitely an engineering problem.

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

#183

Post by unnervingduck »

markx2 wrote: post #174
harpiaharpyja wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't use uBlock Origin on iOS?

nextdns.io works very well on iOS. I use it on desktop/laptop also and have added many rules - on my profile/account at nextdns.io - with no issues. It is very much worth a look.

It's great and I use it on mobile as well, but the lack of cosmetic filtering still makes uBlock Origin a winner. Can't really implement that with anything except extensions.

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

#184

Post by ForestCritter »

JohnFen wrote: post #86

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 thei…

I moved to Vivaldi, similar reasons. It's built off chromium and has a very nice syncable android app.The clincher for me was a configurable default search.

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

#186

Post by lewdev »

I think it's because Firefox was behind on supporting the browser features that Chrome did, so some pages just didn't work on Firefox. I see that problem happening much less often now, but if I had to recommend a browser to any user, I'd tell them to get Chrome just to avoid any incompatibility issues.

I like Firefox mainly because I fear that at some point Chrome will not support ublock origin and its ad blocking features. Also, ublock origin can be installed on the mobile version of Firefox, whereas it can't be installed on the mobile version of Chrome.

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

#187

Post by supertrope »

babalulu wrote: post #124
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.

The website for one of my local news stations, the one I prefer for severe weather coverage, causes Firefox to freeze. That started happening a few months ago, so I now have to use Chrome to check the weather. And last month my electric company's website stopped working with Firefox. It no longer displays any user data, such as amount owed, so I have to use Chrome to pay my bill. I've encountered a few other sites he…

Local news websites are some of the worst performing websites. Due to the death of local journalism these websites are deep in the vicious cycle of lower advertising revenue, partnering with bottom tier ad networks that are especially spammy or scammy, breaking their webpage layout with ads, and clickbait content. I remember newspapers and magazines were majority ads by layout area but at least those did not spy on you or make your copy heat up and sound like a hair dryer.

If I cut out the worse 10% of websites I could easily browse on 2007 PC. It's sad that web advertising bloat and Microsoft Teams is a reason to buy a new CPU.

For the weather I stick to Weather.gov.

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

#188

Post by janalsncm »

It might be helpful to ask the question in reverse: why was Firefox ever popular?

I would submit that the answer is that FF was an alternative to IE. And IE was trash. It was so bad that people would go out of their way to download FF.

Now, even if FF is marginally better, iOS Safari and Chrome (and I assume Edge although I haven’t tried it) aren’t that bad. So people don’t go out of their way to find another browser.

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

#189

Post by hamilyon2 »

habinero wrote: post #133
hamilyon2 wrote: post #128

For me logging into google properties that automagically logged me in the browser was the red line. The last straw. The unthinkable audacity of taking control of my user agent, done in businessy way with a slight innocent smile. Compared to this, even a hundred pockets and PR lapses and 2007 ignored bugs mean very little. I wish safari and firefox all the best in fight for free web.

Of all the things to criticize them for, "a minor decrease in toil" is a weird one.

Yes, that's how most reacted.
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