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Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

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Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#351

Post by mmis1000 »

thayne wrote: post #280
s17n wrote: post #232

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox was/is trying to be a top browser in global market share. The "core userbase" is irrelevant to this mission. You wouldn't really even talk about Chrome's "core userbase" because they aren't trying to make a niche community happy, they are trying to best serve their billions of users, something that the author of this piece clearly knows nothing about - eg, when your userbase is this large, the only meaningful…

Well, they are doing a terrible job. The more they become like chrome, the less people have a reason to use it instead of chrome. And most people probably don't make a conscious decision about which browser to use. A lot of Firefox's momentum comes from tech saavy users who recommend it to friends, family, coworkers, etc. So losing "core" users cause a chain effect of losing non "core" users.

Yes. How on the earth should I recommend Firefox to other? By saying firefox will `constantly remove functions you use and change the UI in random way that make it less useful`? I am a firefox user since firefox 3. But If a non tech user ask me about it today, I will probably recommend `edge` instead. At least it don't do so many offending changes and cause so many frustrations.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#352

Post by lavabiopsy »

thayne wrote: post #350
lavabiopsy wrote: post #344

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't mean to be disappointing, but usually out-of-context internet commenters saying that they use something doesn't carry much weight. The reason why they have telemetry data is so they can so say for certain what people are using, with actual numbers. If the telemetry shows that a feature isn't being used, and another feature is being used, then the one being used is what they will put resources towards. Think o…

> And technically only the setting was removed -- you can still customize all that but you'll have to modify the browser itself You are suggesting that I replace a simple configuration change with familiarizing myself with a very complicated code base, creating a patch, and running a build that on my machine takes multiple hours, then repeat the process for every update? Yeah, I have no idea why more people don't do…

If you cared about this change a lot, to the point where if you didn't have it then it was going to lose you a lot of money, then yes, I would expect you to do all that. Am I wrong? It just seems in a lot of ways to be a sad case where no one wants to shelter the cost for this, it's either a money losing proposition for Mozilla, or it's a money losing proposition for the users, and nobody wants to be the first to pay it.

I'll also mention that only one person needs to create the build, once you do that then anyone else can run that build. That's usually how development works, and in fact this is already the gist of how Mozilla tests their unstable builds.

>the customisability is decreasing, more features are being removed than added

I can't agree with this, maybe the amount of visible settings in the preferences has been reduced, but currently there are a few thousand about:config options, and the number seems to keep growing.

>But they are also bleeding users, so something is clearly not working for them. And maybe, as the OP suggests it is because of changes that anger a minority of their users.

For many years I asked people why they were switching to Chrome and I got various answers, very few of them were because of something negative about another browser, and most of them were about what they liked about Chrome. That's just my personal anecdote. It also just seems to me that Mozilla is in a bad place where people say they drop Firefox because they like Chrome, so Mozilla switches gears to make it more like Chrome, and then people complain it's not unique enough anymore and it's missing some old non-Chrome feature. How could they possibly win here?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#353

Post by recursive »

timw4mail wrote: post #338
recursive wrote: post #208

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been hearing this for the last decade also. I wonder if those saying it were around for the dominance of IE. Chrome is like the opposite of IE. IE didn't ship an update for like 6 years. Chrome ships updates every ~6 weeks.

It updates too often, introducing yet more APIs that will be "deprecated" and re-implemented, forcing yet more incompatabilites.

If you use the standardized ones, you won't have much to worry about. That wasn't the case with IE.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#354

Post by thayne »

lavabiopsy wrote: post #352
thayne wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And technically only the setting was removed -- you can still customize all that but you'll have to modify the browser itself You are suggesting that I replace a simple configuration change with familiarizing myself with a very complicated code base, creating a patch, and running a build that on my machine takes multiple hours, then repeat the process for every update? Yeah, I have no idea why more people don't do…

If you cared about this change a lot, to the point where if you didn't have it then it was going to lose you a lot of money, then yes, I would expect you to do all that. Am I wrong? It just seems in a lot of ways to be a sad case where no one wants to shelter the cost for this, it's either a money losing proposition for Mozilla, or it's a money losing proposition for the users, and nobody wants to be the first to pay…

Well I don't think it is possible to beat chrome by becoming chrome. They need something that chrome doesn't have. They seem to be focusing on privacy, but I don't think that is compelling enough for the general population, though I'll grant you customizability probably isn't either.

> but currently there are a few thousand about:config options, and the number seems to keep growing.

But those configurations are not very discoverable, not well documented, are in constant flux, and if you set them incorrectly can really mess up your browser (I speak from experience).

> I'll also mention that only one person needs to create the build, once you do that then anyone else can run that build

From my understanding, if I were to distribute my custom build I would also need to change all the firefox branding, since Mozilla has trademarks on it, which increases the effort even more.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#355

Post by lavabiopsy »

thayne wrote: post #354
lavabiopsy wrote: post #352

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you cared about this change a lot, to the point where if you didn't have it then it was going to lose you a lot of money, then yes, I would expect you to do all that. Am I wrong? It just seems in a lot of ways to be a sad case where no one wants to shelter the cost for this, it's either a money losing proposition for Mozilla, or it's a money losing proposition for the users, and nobody wants to be the first to pay…

Well I don't think it is possible to beat chrome by becoming chrome. They need something that chrome doesn't have. They seem to be focusing on privacy, but I don't think that is compelling enough for the general population, though I'll grant you customizability probably isn't either. > but currently there are a few thousand about:config options, and the number seems to keep growing. But those configurations are not v…

The problem with saying they need something Chrome doesn't have is that a lot of others seem to expect them to have feature parity with Chrome, both in the GUI, and in the backend rendering engine. I don't think it's economically feasible, it seems you can have one or the other but not both. Unless of course you're willing to outspend Google, which not even the very wealthy Microsoft wants to try to do (they dropped their own browsing engine and switched to Blink). To be clear what is on the table here: not keeping pace with Chrome means that some websites will just stop working in Firefox because some new web API is missing. So that's what you would be trading.

I think the huge number of about:config options is actually a major problem for Firefox, there is no possible way to test all those options and ensure they stay working forever and have zero regressions. You won't like this, but a lot of them probably need to be removed.

You would need to change the branding but I think some of the other Firefox modifications have systems in place to deal with that. If you ever need to do it, maybe it would be worth asking them.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#356

Post by hkai »

I quit Firefox partly because I don't like them going into political activism instead of making a browser. And all that on my donations? No thanks.

I switched to a little known Chromium-based browser and feel happy every moment I'm using it.

Firefox is still okay for its dev tools though.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#357

Post by kaba0 »

BlackLotus89 wrote: post #244
temphnaccount wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say other way around is true. HN crowd won't like this but it's very hard to continuously update a product for the core userbase that Firefox has. (small sample size but I maintain a small privacy focused app and from my experience, most of the reviews I get are how it's missing features which competitors have or how it's unusable because it can't handle stuff without jeopardizing privacy focused nature of the ap…

How can anyone call firefox privacy focused when they use telemetry so fucking heavily? Per default telemetry is active, disable it and you still got telemetry/pings whatever. You have to opt out of everything. It's not even limited to the user side look at this https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1460678#c20

And again, you throw out the baby with the bathwater and go back to Big Google that does worse on every privacy-related issue by a mile.

Like, no matter what, telemetry is useful to the product, and defaults matter. Like the infamous “the opt-ot organ donor vs opt-in countries have a staggering difference of 90% difference”. Should firefox throw away 90% of its userbase’s useful telemetry, most of who would have no problem with providing it?

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#358

Post by GekkePrutser »

ndiddy wrote: post #91
phillipseamore wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To points 1-4, where would FF be without $400m a year from Google?

I suspect Google thinks the $400m/year is worth not having to deal with antitrust proceedings due to having a competing desktop browser.

I think so too. But in that case its declining userbase is also a concern. A tiny competitor isn't going to stave off antitrust action. For that there must be substantial competition.

I wonder if they'll continue bothering with the deal when Edge continues to grow. Sure, Edge is just a reskin of chromium but it's run by a different company so that'll be most likely enough for market regulators.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#359

Post by kaba0 »

freediver wrote: post #173
temphnaccount wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd say other way around is true. HN crowd won't like this but it's very hard to continuously update a product for the core userbase that Firefox has. (small sample size but I maintain a small privacy focused app and from my experience, most of the reviews I get are how it's missing features which competitors have or how it's unusable because it can't handle stuff without jeopardizing privacy focused nature of the ap…

> it seems most of the customers of privacy focused products want all the other features of competitors; most of the times without paying any money This is a business model question, right? Nothing prevents someone from making a great privacy focused browser and actually charging for it vs being directly (Brave?) or indirectly (Chrome, Firefox?) ad-monetized. Also in this context, referring to "customers of privacy f…

Google needs firefox just as much as firefox needing google. Don’t see conteo in everything. Firefox is the only thing stopping google from some insane monopoly/anti-comp lawsuits. It is in their best interest for firefox to continue to exist.

Re: Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

#360

Post by kaba0 »

freediver wrote: post #225
dralley wrote: post #214

Earlier quoted context omitted.

150k / person doesn't account for benefits or office expenses. And they have closer to 750 employees.

It does if your team is world-wide. Does Gecko really need more than 100 people?

We are talking about a fking browser! Even microsoft dropped the ball on that one, it’s that complex of a problem!
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