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Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

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Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#21
post #11

Mozilla's recent history should be (and probably will be at some point) a case study in PR. They had enormous reserves of goodwill, trust, and positive perception, and managed to squander all of that in a relatively short period of time.

How did they manage that ?

By replacing focus with office politics, politics at the office, and a bunch of projects so stupid and far from their mission/audience that they literally can and did shock a theater full of people into silence.

Blizzard specifically lost people passionate about their work, getting taken over by business types, realizing too late that it wasn't Blizzard the company that made great products, but great people making great products. As a consequence of passionate people leaving, their audience doesn't feel like they are being understood at all, or even listened to. The devs that were regularly talking to the players and spoke spoke their language have departed, some of them now working on their own game (Palia), where they continue to work as they used to.

Mozilla just appears to be spreading itself very thin, straying far from their mission of creating a good browser.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#22
post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did they manage that ?

I really hate to sound negative talking about Mozilla, because I think their mission is appealing to me, but it came down to a matter of execution of that vision. From personal experience, my perception of Mozilla has been negatively affected by how they've handled the rewrite of Firefox for Android. It was released too early, and it's still missing the ability to search through browsing history. And there are still…

Have you tried Firefox Browser (Nightly for Developers)? I'm using that on Android since the whole debacle that you described. It mostly works fine and from the start it already had a lot of the features that are missing in the main Firefox. I don't understand how it can all be working fine in the dev build whilst the main visible product is so lacking. Sometimes the UI gets some odd changes with updates, but I haven't had to switch browsers again so far. Though I'm not sure if your specific issues are addressed. I mostly ignore or work around them. I have pull to refresh disabled for example as it was driving me nuts.

And yes, I can't understand how Firefox was updated with so many features missing and it is still not there. It's quite sad, really.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#23

Mozilla's recent history should be (and probably will be at some point) a case study in PR. They had enormous reserves of goodwill, trust, and positive perception, and managed to squander all of that in a relatively short period of time.

My gut tells me Rust is going places and I predict in retrospect Mozilla will be seen as having abandoned their stake in Rust just as it was taking off. Just another example.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#24
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their block list excludes Google which has trackers embedded in the majority of web sites. There is nothing really "private" about that.

Do you understand that safe browsing is an anti-malware and anti-phishing system that has nothing to do with tracking?

Do you understand that Firefox boasts "privacy by design" but does very little to promote it?

If you have no problem with this, you might as well use Chrome.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#25
post #12

Mozilla's recent history should be (and probably will be at some point) a case study in PR. They had enormous reserves of goodwill, trust, and positive perception, and managed to squander all of that in a relatively short period of time.

another interesting case would be Blizzard Entertainment that company went from being beloved by nearly all to universally hated in under 18 months it has been astounding to watch so much destroyed so quickly

well it took way way longer in blizzards case and it was their fate. not enough games for their core audience, d3 not as good as d2, wow addons being more stale after 3.0, etc.. the last 3 years was just the tip of all the downs of the years before.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#26
post #12

Mozilla's recent history should be (and probably will be at some point) a case study in PR. They had enormous reserves of goodwill, trust, and positive perception, and managed to squander all of that in a relatively short period of time.

another interesting case would be Blizzard Entertainment that company went from being beloved by nearly all to universally hated in under 18 months it has been astounding to watch so much destroyed so quickly

Mozilla has been a death by a thousand cuts over many years.

The first "user-enhancing" [1] in-browser ads ("sponsored tiles") were introduced in 2014. Pocket imposition was 2015 [2]. Mr Robot was 2017 [3]. Cliqz was 2017 [4]. booking.com was 2018 [5].

[1] https://twitter.com/dherman76/status/433320156496789504

[2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1172126

[3] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozilla-back...

[4] https://www.zdnet.com/article/firefox-tests-cliqz-engine-whi...

[5] https://venturebeat.com/2018/12/31/mozilla-ad-on-firefoxs-ne...

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#27
post #14

Not sure what's wrong with it. I use Firefox nightly and I love it. Admittedly, for mobile I use Brave browser.

If you're on an iPhone, I don't blame you, because Apple won't allow Firefox with add-ons. If you're using Android, you really should use Firefox with uBlock Origin.

this is the only reason I use Firefox on mobile. but I also use nightly, and it does support uBlock Origin.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#28
post #12

Mozilla's recent history should be (and probably will be at some point) a case study in PR. They had enormous reserves of goodwill, trust, and positive perception, and managed to squander all of that in a relatively short period of time.

another interesting case would be Blizzard Entertainment that company went from being beloved by nearly all to universally hated in under 18 months it has been astounding to watch so much destroyed so quickly

In this case it was an acquisition wasn't it? I remember reading from disappointed fans that we should call this company Activision-Blizzard and that Blizzard itself died a long time ago.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#29
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand that safe browsing is an anti-malware and anti-phishing system that has nothing to do with tracking?

Do you understand that Firefox boasts "privacy by design" but does very little to promote it? If you have no problem with this, you might as well use Chrome.

The question was specifically about a feature that is not about privacy, but about malware and phishing.

Re: Firefox May Have Lost Up to 12% of Its Users So Far in 2021

#30
post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you understand that safe browsing is an anti-malware and anti-phishing system that has nothing to do with tracking?

Do you understand that Firefox boasts "privacy by design" but does very little to promote it? If you have no problem with this, you might as well use Chrome.

so go use chrome if its clearly no different as you say. personally i'll stick with firefox.
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