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Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

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321–330 of 618 posts

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#321
Anyone who’s been around /r/firefox this last year or so knows that Mozilla systematically ignores users feedback.

Even someone like me that uses Firefox since it’s inception just gave up. I feel like Mozilla is alienating its userbase to cater for new users. It’s a failing strategy as it will never be able to compete with the hand that feeds (google).

My hope is that Mozilla fully dies and Firefox is able to continue as a community project like arch or Debian. It will never be popular but the community will have some control.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless Meet and other Google apps are really tailored to subperform under firefox I don't think it's a solid case. If google devs code doesn't run as fast in firefox why should google take the blame ? or maybe google is using non html5 apis to tap into chrome for faster perf in which case things are muddy.. since whatwg kinda allows unofficial apis

Obviously, a private company can do what they want and they shouldn't be forced to make their code run on other platforms.

No, IMHO they should be forced to comply with web standard and at least try to work with browsers they don't support first class. (Microsoft simply doesn't allow you to open any of their web apps, weather it's for teams or some of their other apps.)

Especially if it involves quasi monopolies.

I.e. the it's a quasi Monopoly of chrome like browsers spear headed by Google and Microsoft.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#323
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…

UX. Mozilla is being outpaced by all competitors here, especially on mobile.

I generally am not a fan of mobile browsers, but for me Firefox is the only passable mobile browser because it supports uBlock Origin.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#324
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

can you explain what the value is of having that many tabs open? i hear people do this but never understood it. what's the point?

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#325
post #197
post #24

Each to their own. I'm a happy Firefox user and will continue to be on all my devices (including my phone which I'm writing this now with)

I am too, but I have telemetry disabled since their stunt with the Mr Robot extension they installed remotely for everyone [1]. I also run uBlock on both desktop and mobile. I am one of the 50M users counted as lost? [1]: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozilla-back...

>Mr Robot extension they installed remotely for everyone

Absolute bullshit. The Looking Glass extensions was installed through their SHIELD experiments program, only for people who had enabled it, and to a very small proportion of those, too. Additionally, it did not capture any data, as creepy as it was.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/retrospective-l...

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#326

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 isol…

And that's why I regard anti-trust laws as inconsistently applied cudgels and not as legal gospel. If tying (assuming there's a consistent definition of the word) is such a bad idea to begin with why does it matter whether it's done by a company at 90% or 10% of market? Equality under the law should be the measure.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#327
In general people really need to stop using Chrome. It's a tracking browser for an ad-company. The incentive structure is to send data to the mothership, and show you ads.

You can see this, because uBlock Origin works a lot better on Firefox.

But worse is also: Chrome just plain isn't fast or memory efficient anymore. It gets big speed ups on one or two things, but for the life of me it seems to consume a huge amount of memory and CPU compared to modern Firefox. That advantage was short lived.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#328

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Obviously, a private company can do what they want and they shouldn't be forced to make their code run on other platforms.

No, IMHO they should be forced to comply with web standard and at least try to work with browsers they don't support first class. (Microsoft simply doesn't allow you to open any of their web apps, weather it's for teams or some of their other apps.) Especially if it involves quasi monopolies. I.e. the it's a quasi Monopoly of chrome like browsers spear headed by Google and Microsoft.

I agree, I should've made clearer I was being sarcastic. The quasi-monopoly thing is often ignored when it comes to Big Tech silencing voices.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#329
Mozilla(Firefox's parent) has supported pro-social justice and progressive causes that ticked off a lot of users. There were a lot of discussions about it in 4chan from 2017-2019. Many people vowed to never use Firefox ever again and instead switched to alternatives like Waterfox and PaleMoon.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#330

I'm ashamed to admit that I'm an avid Facebook user, it helps me keep in touch with friends and family living abroad, despite it's obvious negatives quitting it would mean losing out. I'm saying this because to me one of the benchmarks of a browser is how well it runs Facebook's awfully-optimized front-end code. In that regard Safari used to be a disaster and now it works alright but Firefox seems to be consistently…

I see no evidence of poor performance on macOS. Have you used a recent Firefox? Could you be blaming the browser for the behavior of a particular extension or web site?
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