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Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

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Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#161

Post by samwillis »

DoingIsLearning wrote: post #150
samwillis wrote: post #65

Firefox is compromised by the fact it’s core active users are also its largest liability. It’s the innovators dilemma. They want it to (more or less) stay the same and not move forward and make changes to compete with Chrome. Whereas for them to achieve a larger market share it needs a radical overhaul. Really what Mozilla need to do is build a “new browser” called something different and put their weight behind that…

> They want it to (more or less) stay the same and not move forward and make changes to compete with Chrome. Most of the negative feedback from users comes from two paths, changes that break add-ons, changes that remove customization. Either of those two effectively reduce the value proposition, so I think negative feedback is granted. The problem most 'core' users have is this UX ethos that some how we are not havin…

I can see that, I was using fairly broad strokes in first part of my original comment.

I think it’s the second part that is more important than my initial (potentially unfair) generalisation.

In order to fund further development of gecko it needs to become a competitor to WebKit/blink and grab that market share in this new world of many browser front ends that are cropping up. Explore new business models, for example sign revenue share agreements with new browser developers in exchange for supporting (or even helping with initial funding) their development.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#162

Post by mysterydip »

DeathArrow wrote: post #143
akagusu wrote: post #130

The real problem of Firefox is one that nobody cares about: distribution. Let's say Firefox is the most advanced browser of the universe. How can you get people to install Firefox? Chrome has the advantage here because it is preinstalled in every Android phone and Android has more than 90% market share. The second advantage Chrome has is that it cannot be uninstalled from Android. The fact that Android phones have a…

To me some of the things you mention sound like anticompetitive practices from behalf of Google.

A browser installed by default that can't be removed... where have I heard that one before? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._Microsoft_C....

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#163

Post by eloisant »

pdenton wrote: post #145
samwillis wrote: post #65

Firefox is compromised by the fact it’s core active users are also its largest liability. It’s the innovators dilemma. They want it to (more or less) stay the same and not move forward and make changes to compete with Chrome. Whereas for them to achieve a larger market share it needs a radical overhaul. Really what Mozilla need to do is build a “new browser” called something different and put their weight behind that…

> Mozilla need to [...] build a new browser See The Book of Mozilla, chapter 11. >and a “browser toolkit” to let other people build their own XULRunner was essentially this.

XULRunner was mostly like Electron before Electron.

And it could have take succeeded before Electron arrived if Mozilla didn't decide to let the project die.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#164

Post by rd07 »

rocqua wrote: post #78
Santosh83 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder how difficult would be an open source community project whose explicit aim would be to take the Firefox code base and make it more modular and embeddable, like Chromium? Would it be too much work for a community effort?

Electron, but based on Firefox instead of chrome. Not the most appealing idea, but an interesting one. Might help move more people to essentially using Firefox.

Mozilla has been trying to build an Electron alternative based on Gecko, but it has been discontinued

https://github.com/mozilla/positron

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#165

Post by sime2009 »

madc wrote: post #85
sime2009 wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. People forgot that Microsoft had been developing its own browser for years before they moved to Chromium. That team and expertise didn't just disappear. They've been doing significant work in that code base. See https://twitter.com/ericlaw/status/1329200077517295618 from a year ago. Having that technical power does give them quite a lot of control over the code base which can help balance the political power he…

No web developer old enough will ever forget, I promise you that.

I have not forgotten, but Gates and Ballmer are gone and the market situation for MS is totally different. People don't have to take their Evil Empire monopolist crap of the past.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#166

Post by pyjarrett »

I use Firefox rather than Chrome just to support an alternative to a monoculture. When I was on Mac, I enjoyed using Safari. I'm not a power user--I just use tabs and bookmarks, and don't use sync. Mozilla makes Firefox hard to justify since it keeps adding features I don't really care about (e.g. Pocket). I just want a simple browser that is lightweight.

When I've tried out alternatives, I run into sites that don't work correctly. I don't particularly like Firefox, but it "just works" most of the time.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#167

Post by rvz »

kroltan wrote: post #39
rvz wrote: post #7

Firefox is not a (serious) alternative and it is quite frankly irrelevant. It is either Chrome (Blink) or Safari (WebKit) and I would much prefer WebKit-based browsers over Chromium-based ones and the market-share tells the full story on where to target the most users and it is not Firefox. Why do you think that these web developers stick banners everywhere to force you to run their apps in several Chromium-based bro…

I have no idea how someone can get so stuck up their assumptions as to say something like that. I have been using Firefox since circa 2010, and can count on my fingers how many websites do not work properly in it. Most of the time it's just some CYA "I am a lazy/underpaid-subcontractor dev and didn't bother opening my website on a non-majority browser to check if it is broken" banner asking me to switch (which nowada…

> I have no idea how someone can get so stuck up their assumptions as to say something like that.

The entire comments section of this post painfully admits the decline of Firefox as it has been quickly replaced by Chrome and the users do not care about Firefox's features or even its privacy features. Perhaps the 'assumptions' are backed by the market share and global usage mentioned in the article's website and the original source [0] assuming you have read both.

On top of that which wasn't mentioned is that Firefox cannot possibly counter Chrome's dominance since its creator Mozilla is still being kept on financial life support by Google themselves. Even with Mozilla receiving millions from Google, they are still failing behind.

To reuse this quote from the article: 'Soon Google are going to be in complete control of web standards, unless something drastically changes.'

Well if Firefox is the so-called 'alternative' to the Chrome hegemony, then they are doing a very poor job at convincing the end users to switch back to Firefox and stop Chrome's dominance given the global browser usage and market share.

[0] https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#168

Post by GNOMES »

I started using Firefox again on my computers and mobile with the hype around Manifest v3 inevitably restricting future adblocking.

I see friends switching to Brave, but I dislike how they seem to be focusing their RnD into BAT/crypto features. Firefox also has the advantage of having addons on mobile.

It's a pipe dream, but I could see Google reverting to the don't be evil days with the rise of these Chromium forks and other ad agencies. Somehow change their business model away from ads, promote adblocking, and support addons on mobile. Checkmate Brave/Vivaldi/Edge/etc. Other than niche features or those apposed to Google will look elsewhere.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#169

Post by Qem »

dna_polymerase wrote: post #61

I wonder when Google will finally pull the plug on Mozilla. At 4.0% market share they can't deliver that much search volume to justify spending millions on their incredibly bad management.

Probably never, just to keep antitrust action at bay. Better to have a small market share competitor on life support than to be labeled a monopoly.

Re: Firefox is the alternative to a Chrome hegemony

#170

Post by gostsamo »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #146
bool3max wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have to strongly agree with your last point - I also never understood the massive hard-on that the technical user-base has against useful telemetry. Perhaps it's just the loud minority, but to me it seems that most of them have never worked on an user-facing product (for-profit or not). Yes, users can themselves explicitly communicate feedback regarding the product or its features, and no, most of them don't do tha…

Believe me, I understand the appeal. Yesterday we were discussing something dropping support for some platforms from an open source project and the issue is... we have no way of determining how many installs are on such platforms. Telemetry would fix this, but it's not our right to collect data from other people's machines. So our best bet would be to detect the condition we expect to cause problems, notify them in a…

This would be true if you had an involved user based that follows your communication channels and can give you feedback through the proper channel for each change that you might make. If you have a change surface of hundreds of features/parameters, then it gets rather tricky.

Edit: typo.

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