Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

news.ycombinator.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

111–120 of 949 posts

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#111

Post by carapace »

> Why is Firefox losing marketshare?

For myself, I am moving off of Firefox right now (I don't yet know to what though, recommendations welcome) for one reason: they keep changing the UI in ways that I find irritating and then deprecating the methods to change it back. For me it's really that simple. There are other issues I have with FF but that's the one that got me to the point where I'm ready to abandon FF entirely.

> What would you do if you were in charge of Mozilla?

Concentrate on docs, standards, and libraries. Be the "one-stop shop" for all the information and software one needs to do things with the Internet.

> How would you save Firefox?

First you have to answer the question, why save Firefox?

What's so bad about having fewer browsers? (I know most of the arguments, I'm not asking you to repeat them I'm asking you to revisit them.)

Rather than saving one particular browser, I would make it easy for anyone to create a custom web browser.

If you really want to save FF you have to discover or create something about it that beats the competition: speed, reliability, ...? Those are "table stakes" these days, so what is the differentiator that makes it compelling?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#112

Post by afavour »

nwah1 wrote: post #78
paxys wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are answering the question "how can Mozilla make more money", but that wasn't what was asked. Mozilla as a whole is profitable already, and revenues have been growing close to 100% year over year. As a company they are in great health. Except that's not what users care about when picking a browser. Google has too much money, tech, marketing and too big an existing user and device base to make any kind of direct c…

They could pivot to compete with the Big Tech conglomerates in general. Provide their own suite of integrated tools, search engines, communication platforms, and so on. But with a privacy-focused and ad-free approach. DuckDuckGo already proved there is an appetite for something like this. They could go further, and remain relevant and viable in the way that DDG is, even if they never again are the most popular browse…

> DuckDuckGo already proved there is an appetite for something like this.

An appetite, yes. But not a major one. A privacy-focused, ad-free approach would be hugely appealing to the HN crowd. But I’m less convinced about the public at large.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#113

Post by tedivm »

nwah1 wrote: post #78
paxys wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are answering the question "how can Mozilla make more money", but that wasn't what was asked. Mozilla as a whole is profitable already, and revenues have been growing close to 100% year over year. As a company they are in great health. Except that's not what users care about when picking a browser. Google has too much money, tech, marketing and too big an existing user and device base to make any kind of direct c…

They could pivot to compete with the Big Tech conglomerates in general. Provide their own suite of integrated tools, search engines, communication platforms, and so on. But with a privacy-focused and ad-free approach. DuckDuckGo already proved there is an appetite for something like this. They could go further, and remain relevant and viable in the way that DDG is, even if they never again are the most popular browse…

They get most of their money from advertising deals with those major companies (such as by putting google in as the default search engine). Competing against them would likely result in those companies removing the advertising dollars and tanking the business.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#114

Post by jeltz »

benjamir wrote: post #70
ssorallen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome’s Profiles are the #1 reason I use it over Firefox. If Firefox had as complete of an implementation as Chrome then I would consider switching, but until then Firefox is a non-starter for me. I use all 3 of these profiles all day every day for work: * one personal profile logged into personal Google * one work profile managed by the company, logged into company Google * one development profile with all the debu…

headscratch I used profiles with Ff for ages... what is the difference to Chrome's?

The usability and discoverability. I use almost exclusively Firefox but I have stopped using the profiles since the UX isn't good enough.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#115

Post by commandlinefan »

lovehashbrowns wrote: post #63

I want to be done with Firefox so badly. I just don't want to go to Google. There's this really obnoxious issue where search in the address bar has taken a complete dive recently. For example, if I want to go to reddit.com/r/videos and it's a page I go to often, I can't just type "videos" because the suggestions that come up are links to threads I've visited recently. None of the suggestions are to reddit.com/r/video…

I started using Brave - it's still based on Chromium, but at least it's not really Google.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#116

Post by unethical_ban »

chockablocker wrote: post #61

Everybody is moving to mobile and almost nobody uses Firefox on mobile. However, Firefox mobile does support extensions. Is that something that could emphasized? However, Firefox speed on mobile is much slower than Chrome. That should probably be improved upon. For desktop there's not much of a distinguishing factor left. Chrome is good enough. I like Firefox for the privacy, but is that enough of a distinguishing fa…

I'm a FF fanboy but I have moved to Vivaldi for mobile. Two issues persist for me on FF mobile, even the nightly version:

* Scroll lag/tearing on many websites which doesn't occur with Chromium engine

* Reloading of tabs when I return to them, vs. leaving them as-is until I request a reload. This is abominable behavior.

So I installed Vivaldi and then blocked the domain on my pi-hole to prevent the daily checkins the browser attempts.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#117

Post by nicoburns »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #74
ssorallen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome’s Profiles are the #1 reason I use it over Firefox. If Firefox had as complete of an implementation as Chrome then I would consider switching, but until then Firefox is a non-starter for me. I use all 3 of these profiles all day every day for work: * one personal profile logged into personal Google * one work profile managed by the company, logged into company Google * one development profile with all the debu…

Why not use the firefox profiles? I also use multiple profiles. My setup is as fallows. firefox -ProfileManager Create 2 profiles work and private. Change the theme of work to orange and private to black. Create two .desktop files and append to the Exec line -P work (or private) and the Name to include (work) I have work on desktop 5 and private on desktop 8 and 9. Works like a charme for me. Additional bonus. Use co…

In Chrome I can switch from one profile to another as fast as opening a new tab (i.e. instantly). Can Firefox do that?

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#118

Post by Brakenshire »

bentcorner wrote: post #88
garciasn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They offer nothing I cannot get elsewhere and thus I have no reason to switch. When it first came out, Firefox was faster, lighter and offered way better function than the alternatives at the time. Since then, competition has been fierce in the browser market and they’ve done little to distinguish themselves in any major way from their competitive set. Until they do something so vastly incomparable in the market, the…

Take a look at tree-style tabs. I started using them in FF and have looked several times at chromium-based add-ins and absolutely nothing comes close. Edge vertical tabs is your best choice if you must use a chromium browser, however it is a weak imitation of TST.

Multi Account Containers is also good.

Re: Ask HN: Why is Firefox losing marketshare and how would you save it?

#120

Post by vi2837 »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #74
ssorallen wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Chrome’s Profiles are the #1 reason I use it over Firefox. If Firefox had as complete of an implementation as Chrome then I would consider switching, but until then Firefox is a non-starter for me. I use all 3 of these profiles all day every day for work: * one personal profile logged into personal Google * one work profile managed by the company, logged into company Google * one development profile with all the debu…

Why not use the firefox profiles? I also use multiple profiles. My setup is as fallows. firefox -ProfileManager Create 2 profiles work and private. Change the theme of work to orange and private to black. Create two .desktop files and append to the Exec line -P work (or private) and the Name to include (work) I have work on desktop 5 and private on desktop 8 and 9. Works like a charme for me. Additional bonus. Use co…

I use it by the same way. FF is the best!
Post reply on HN