Firefox lost 50M users since 2019 • Hacker News Board

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#261

Post by christophilus » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

foepys wrote: post #196

christophilus wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Same. I was 100% FF until they broke my AD blocker on iOS. The internet is unusable without it, so I switched to Brave. I do align philosophically with OSS, and community organization, though, so I may switch back at some point. I do think Mozilla’s executive team needs a real shakeup, though. Edit: haven’t heard of Kiwi. Looks interesting. Why’d you land on that vs Brave or whatever else?

I was under the impression that Apple doesn't allow ad blockers but only request filters that are maintained by the OS and have an upper limit. How can one browser be better than another if that's true?

I don’t know, but Brave on iOS works very well. I can watch YouTube with no ads (and even a one-click button to download for offline viewing/ listening). Websites load quickly, with no ads that I can see, except in the rare cases where the ads are selfhosted.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#262

Post by dathinab » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

Many major video conference applications don't even try to support Firefox, so I'm not surprised that during this time frame a lot of users where forced/coerced to switch.

Offenders include:

- Teams

- Slack

- Zoom

Sure there are codec license issues, but all(most) of them do use different codecs depending on the context, so they could totally support Firefox as long as no one in the conference is on a of Android device or similar.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#263

Post by TLLtchvL8KZ » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

freediver wrote: post #122

ladzoppelin wrote: post #115

Edge is the biggest threat to Chrome and Firefox is still great. uBlock Origin does not even work as well in Chrome as it does in FF which will always create demand for alt browsers. I can't deal with with Chrome but if everything else goes away, Edge is fine. Ms is doing exactly what Google did with webkit, what can you do?

One of the problems with Edge is that it sends 350+ requests "home" to Microsoft on startup (in good-old fashioned way Windows does). A big no-no from a privacy standpoint.

Surely this would show up in dns? The only thing my DNS shows me from edge usage is smartscreen.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#264

Post by andai » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

bigyikes wrote: post #243

LinuxBender wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a theory why people have dissenting views on the performance of Firefox. I have a laptop dedicated to doing business online. Firefox has no addons on that machine. Some websites are painfully slow and my laptop fans kick on. I have debugged these issues and in every case it was javascript bogging down the CPU's, all 8 cores! gaming laptop I am not a web developer, so it is perhaps unfair for me to pick on the…

Chrome uses V8, which is the same JS engine that Node is built on top of. As the name implies, it’s sort of wicked fast. IIRC Firefox uses their own engine called Spider Monkey. I don’t know of anything outside of Mozilla which uses it. I have a hard time imagining it being faster than V8, but I actually have no idea — will need to go look at some benchmarks.

There used to be a big difference (in JS engine speed) but it's small recently. Where there is still a difference is in the UI code. Not necessarily operations being slower in Ff, but ordered in such a way to appear slower.

For example, when you press ctrl+n, chrome instantly creates a new window, then spends the next second or so (depending how old your computer is) painting the UI. On Firefox though it seems like nothing is happening for an entire second, and then the window emerges fully painted. So even tho the total time is about the same, FF feels much less responsive due to this design choice.

I also noticed Firefox spent a much longer time (a fraction of a second, but perceptible, and multiply that by thousands of clicks a day) before it would even (apparently, again -- not sure whats going on inside) begin loading a page, which was frustrating.

I verified this was the case in the web inspector's network performance tab (there was an mysterious delay before the first network request).

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#265

Post by LightG » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

ALotOfBees wrote: post #203

judge2020 wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> anti competitive behavior Have some examples? On Desktop, I don't see any, but I would get if you mean Mobile since Chrome is still the default browser there for Android.

Google Ads is practically unusable with Firefox

Feature, not a bug.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#266

Post by radlad » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

driverdan wrote: post #257

gibba999 wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Something is wrong with their system then. I use Meet in Firefox and it works. Sometimes it's buggy but I can always get it to work.

I frequently have to refresh Meet to get it working on Firefox. Not in Chrome.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#267

Post by kilroy123 » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:24 PM UTC

tpetry wrote: post #95

freediver wrote: post #11

Fun 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...

That is a very good deal for google. As ads on the search results are looking more and more like normal results any user without adblocking will click multiple times on these ads in a year. And the cpc prices depending on the topic are really high.

I was thinking the same. It's a bargain and now I understand why Google pays them so much.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#268

Post by radlad » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

agumonkey wrote: post #253

foepys wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A friend of mine has over 4,000 tabs open in Firefox at the moment - they just never close a tab, ever. Their Firefox' memory usage is only a little higher compared to mine with 3 open tabs.

I used to have 1200 tabs open but I noticed more lag around above 800. That said my computer are far from last gen and I wouldn't blame mozilla for not supporting 1000+ tab hoarders anyway. But yeah firefox is not bloated even when abused. that said I despised the UI redesigns and the recent FTP kill.. I want a broswer, not a fashion magazine

The most disappointing part of the redesign to me was that they actually REMOVED icons from menu items. It is harder to find what I'm looking for.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#269

Post by aftergibson » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:26 PM UTC

rmsaksida wrote: post #144

bluedevil2k wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

Mozilla pays millions of dollars per year to their CEO, despite the decrease in usage and user base. Could be a symptom of a larger problem in the organization.

I use Firefox but I don’t donate anymore which is awful but I want to donate to Firefox not Mozilla.

If anyone knows a way to only support Firefox and not Mozilla at large do let me know!

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#270

Post by LightG » Sat, Jul 31, 2021, 2:27 PM UTC

Suprised by some of the comments here. Happy firefox user here for the last 5 years and don't see it changing.

I moved to firefox aftet Chrome became like swimming in treacle, and good to get away from the Google ad bullsh!t. Suprised they haven't sunsetted Chrome yet.

Pssst, Google, you've ruined Youtube too. Sunset that too.