Meanwhile: Brave Passes 25 Million Monthly Active Users
This seems relevant as it was started by the former co-founder of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript. Maybe Brendan Eich is good at finding out what people want in a browser.
Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
221–230 of 618 posts
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#222Switched from Chrome to Firefox around 2017 then to closed-source Chromium-based Vivaldi and haven't looked back since.
Whatever architectural changes Firefox made around '17-19 broke the browser for me. Tabs would randomly go dead, accepting no input. Mobile Firefox was worse.
The old Firefox was perfectly fine, save for being noticeably but, for me, acceptably slower than Chrome. Then Firefox Aurora or whatever happened and things went from stable went to crap. I'd try and go back to see if things got better occasionally, but then gave up and uninstalled it.
Most aggravating is when you have negative feedback about Firefox in forums, including on HN, you immediately get "have to tried" suggestions from avid fans. The intent is good, no doubt. I get that it works for you. But I'm beyond trying already.
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#223This is bullshit. Firefox users simply block analytics.
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#224Will Firefox go extinct like Netscape did?
I fear it will. I use it daily because it is the best at protecting my privacy, no other browser has containers, but it seems too few people care. At least as long as mobile Safari exist, Chrome isn't able to swallow everything and resistance is not yet futile.
> no other browser has containers
THIS. The first damn thing I do on a new PC/VM. I work with multiple clients, they each have their corporate SSO stuff and its so damn convenient to keep them all in their own containers. Same with Google stuff, containers are so much more consistent to switch between Google accounts than their own switching thingy (just try switching between accounts in AdWords).
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#225I have contacted local authorities twice about anti competitive behavior from Chrome. If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should start to look like an earthquake ;-) Same if ten - twenty Germans or Brits or French do the same. I would mention: 1. that some of their web properties (calendar and YouTube) have been intentionally incompatible with Firefox as evidenced by how well they work in Firefox if one…
> How they have pushed Chrome as a "better browser" on the front page of Google (were no one else have been allowed to advertise) to Firefox users since way before Chrome was anywere nearly as good as Firefox, making it both a lie and - more importantly - a massive abuse of dominance in one market to gain monopoly in another just like Microsoft did with IE.
Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle. Windows was the product everyone wanted, and Microsoft abused its dominance in operating systems to increase its share of the browser market by refusing to sell you Windows unless you also took Internet Explorer.
By contrast, Google does not condition the use of Search on the use of Chrome. There’s nothing wrong with promoting a product to customers who use one of your other products (or we’d have to break up pretty much every multi-product company).
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#226Fun fact: Under current conditions (200M users) it looks like Google is paying $2-2.25 per active user annually to be the default search engine in Firefox. "Mozilla renewed its search deal with Google in 2020 for three years. The organization will receive an estimate of $400 to $450 million per year from the deal alone. " https://www.ghacks.net/2020/12/10/mozillas-revenue-jumped-to...
Given how they make a minimum $450M a year in revenue, how on Earth is Mozilla not swimming in cash?! How high can their expenses be?
There is a year of lag, but you can read Mozilla's financial statements and Form 990. The latest ones are linked at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2019/
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#227I have contacted local authorities twice about anti competitive behavior from Chrome. If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should start to look like an earthquake ;-) Same if ten - twenty Germans or Brits or French do the same. I would mention: 1. that some of their web properties (calendar and YouTube) have been intentionally incompatible with Firefox as evidenced by how well they work in Firefox if one…
My child's school uses Google Classroom. The Google experience is unusable in Firefox. Meet doesn't work (e.g. he sees nothing when the teacher screenshares). This seems really quite anti-competitive.
My child cares about privacy and switches browsers. Chrome for Meet, Firefox for most non-Google things.
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#228Do any other browsers support containers? That has been the killer feature for me.
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#229I have contacted local authorities twice about anti competitive behavior from Chrome. If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should start to look like an earthquake ;-) Same if ten - twenty Germans or Brits or French do the same. I would mention: 1. that some of their web properties (calendar and YouTube) have been intentionally incompatible with Firefox as evidenced by how well they work in Firefox if one…
> How they have pushed Chrome as a "better browser" on the front page of Google (were no one else have been allowed to advertise) to Firefox users since way before Chrome was anywere nearly as good as Firefox, making it both a lie and - more importantly - a massive abuse of dominance in one market to gain monopoly in another just like Microsoft did with IE. Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Exp…
No, Microsoft's primary offense was making non-Microsoft tools awkward. Windows without IE was awkward. Windows wasn't done until it gave odd error messages on DR DOS. Borland always seemed to have incomplete documentation, late. Etc.
Google works poorly enough on non-Chrome browsers that it's the same thing.
Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019
#230Earlier quoted context omitted.
But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word of mouth; whether it’s power users recommending it or people having it on their work computers (because their IT mandates it) and wanting the same great browser at home. The problem is that Firefox is basically a Chrome clone at this point, all the way down to the privacy-invading features such as telemetry, so using it nowadays is more down to ideology than a…
>telemetry Maybe they're more likely to cater to users who don't turn off the method they use to decide what to cater to.
They don’t need in-browser telemetry to see that uBlock Origin is one of the most downloaded add-ons, and it’s yet to be built-in to the browser despite its license allowing it.
They also don’t need telemetry to read threads like this one and there’s been plenty of those on HN (and I’m sure elsewhere) and the general consensus is always that Mozilla is letting power users down in favour of trying to copy Chrome.
Given these facts, I don’t think telemetry or lack thereof is the problem.