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Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

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Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#271

Post by svl »

I'd say ~30M, rather than 50M.

They explicitly call out the summer holidays effect above the first graph: "Generally, MAU fluctuates over the course of a year, dropping in the summer months and during holidays." So comparing the peak of Jan 2019 to the low of Jul 2021 isn't giving a good idea of the total loss.

  Jan 28 2019: 253.9M
  Jan 27 2020: 229.5M
  Feb 01 2021: 219.7M

  Jul 22 2019: 224.2M
  Jul 20 2020: 214.1M
  Jul 19 2021: 200.4M
Still, definitely not good; we've seen what happens when web developers believe only a single browser (engine) matters, and we _need_ an organization like Mozilla, which puts user interests above commercial interests, to have a seat at the table.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#272

Post by andai »

Nextgrid wrote: post #212
foepys wrote: post #181

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could Mozilla ever compete in technical merit nowadays? Google is siphoning nearly all talent by paying them insanely huge amounts of money. Web is part of Google's core business and they will pour every little penny into it if it means they can be one step ahead and force others to follow them. How can Mozilla, a non-profit, compete with that? Even freaking Microsoft gave up! I'm insanely impressed with Mozilla…

Security and privacy. I mean real privacy, not Firefox’s current illusion of privacy. Advertising is a common vector for malware, telemetry can inadvertently expose PII or corporate intel and so can their bullshit features such as Pocket that are foisted upon unsuspecting users. Make a browser that addresses these problems out of the box . The enterprise will be all over it and will be paying actual money for it so t…

If Firefox becomes truly private out of the box, most of their funding goes away.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#273

Post by wigado »

Firefox lost me as a user shortly after the megabar change and the massive reworking of the mobile app UI. I still keep up to date on what's been going on since then, and I can't say I regret my decision in the slightest.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#274

Post by granzymes »

criley2 wrote: post #237
granzymes wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Microsoft's crime was doing it in the 90s. What Apple has done with iOS and OSX takes Microsoft's bundling, third-party lockout and lack of consumer choice to an exponential level, and it's celebrated as a feature now. iOS literally disallows any other browser technology from running, requiring them all to use less-featured versions of the first party tool. Microsoft must be jealous seeing them get away with that.

The difference is that Apple is selling hardware with software as a single product and has done so consistently, while Microsoft attempted to exclude a new competitor by colluding with OEMs and imposing exclusionary agreements on partners as a condition of buying Windows, a product that had a dominant share in its market. If Microsoft had always included Internet Explorer in Windows and hadn't tried to later tie them together in order to crush Netscape then the outcome may have been different. Instead, Microsoft basically said "distribute our new product or we won't let you distribute Windows" and you just can't do that when Windows is dominant.

The Justice Department's complaint is an eye-opening view into what Microsoft's misconduct was: https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#275

Post by dontblink »

eitland wrote: post #143

I 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 do you know this is because of Chrome in the first place? Another explanation is that it could be Edge or even users moving to use mobile (browsers) more?

Genuinely curious where the market share and total number of users in the market (broken down) has shifted.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#278

Post by tannhaeuser »

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...

Come 2023, pray that Google doesn't alter the deal further, with the remaining FF user base in the low single-digit figures. It's a matter of when, not if, Mozilla goes down given this trajectory. Or, Mozilla get's actually paid for working with Google on "web standards" and producing a browser as a fig leaf for the monopoly the WWW has become and counter measure against antitrust (with US antitrust a lame duck anyway), in a Mafia-esque way. It's not like we haven't been telling this all the time, with the HN crowd however cheering Mozilla's erratic ventures into Rust, WASM, and whatnot.

(For the record: I'm using FF and actually prefer it over Chrome, especially their DevTools for CSS which I find pretty meh on Chrome, and of course for ad blocking).

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#279

Post by loudmax »

criley2 wrote: post #237
granzymes wrote: post #225

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

Microsoft's crime was doing it in the 90s. What Apple has done with iOS and OSX takes Microsoft's bundling, third-party lockout and lack of consumer choice to an exponential level, and it's celebrated as a feature now. iOS literally disallows any other browser technology from running, requiring them all to use less-featured versions of the first party tool. Microsoft must be jealous seeing them get away with that.

Microsoft's crime was doing this in the 90s when they had nearly complete control of the desktop market and there were few alternatives for getting on the internet. This was a monopoly.

Apple has about half the mobile market share in the US, and about a quarter globally. There are plenty of alternative ways to get on the internet. This is not a monopoly.

You can't just look at bundling the browser with the OS in isolation. The circumstances are significantly different.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#280

Post by leppr »

Nextgrid wrote: post #220
mfer wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What is chrome technically better at in a way that’s impactful to end users? The idea that the best thing wins just because it’s the best and people will share that is flawed. It basically negates marketing and influence which is what Google’s money making model is based around. And they have been successful at that.

Speed? Lack of in-browser ads? (Google websites have ads but as far as I’m aware Chrome itself doesn’t have any, unlike Firefox which has sponsored sites and “snippets” on the new tab page - enabled by default obviously). Lack of constant nagging? Firefox in its default configuration has always something to nag you about. Whether it’s Pocket, Firefox Sync or that it’s just updated and there are potentially new featur…

To be fair the push to connect a Google account and use Google services in Chrome is the ad, they don't need more.

But I definitely agree about the Firefox nags, I suppose it can be off-putting to new users and project a low-quality adware image (usually synonymous with more privacy violations, which is ironic).

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