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Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

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Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#401

Post by cpleppert »

granzymes wrote: post #274
criley2 wrote: post #237

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.

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…

Not trying to defend Microsoft’s behavior here by any means but the justice department clearly lost the case. The original favorable ruling splitting up Microsoft was conclusively rejected by the court of appeals on almost all points. The general consensus of the academic commentary on the case I have seen( not universal by any means) is that asserting that Windows is itself a monopoly is problematic; mainly due to the lack of evidence that demand for windows is not influenced by pricing.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#402

Post by wqTJ3jmY8br4RWa »

Browsers are like "commons" in the Internet space. It is super critical to have a neutral provider that adheres to open standards to have a substantial market share. We need to legislate every device sold (smart phone, PC, mac, iPad etc) to be shipped with a Firefox and/or other neutral open source browser.

I've been a loyal Firefox user since Day 1. Every time I open an Chrome/Edge I get a pop up or notification to change my default away from Firefox. This is pure anti-competitive behavior by the tech giants and needs to stop.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#403

Post by agigao »

Here comes another sad ex-FF-user.

I've been using Firefox since early days and the latest UI bumbling forced me to look elsewhere.

Surely I tried alternatives over the years but my main browser has always stayed FF. Now, times has come to actually change the main browser, which turned out to be Edge. UI is slick and functional out of the box.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#404

Post by jbluepolarbear »

csmpltn wrote: post #126

I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now. My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular leaves me very disappointed and frustrated. The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness. I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A…

I used Firefox since it released. I changed to chrome after they broke all my extensions for the 2 time in five years. Austrailis change is where I dropped. I use edge now and it’s fine, just fine.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#405

Post by arp242 »

eitland wrote: post #208
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.

Have you used Firefox with Google Docs Calendar or YouTube over the last ten years? (Multiple more examples exist for those willing to dig: at one point the search results page would peg one processor core briefly every 30 seconds as long as you stayed on that page - and used Firefox) Edit: and as you mention, the situation with Chrome on mobile is basically a 1-1 of IE on Windows.

I never have any problems with YouTube; it works well for me. What problems are there? I use Google Docs only sporadically (mostly to read .doc(x) files sent to me), and it's kinda slow, but that's not necessarily Google's fault. Slack is (was? Haven't used it in year) unusably slow on Firefox too, and don't get me started on the "new" Reddit that couldn't even scroll right last time I tried it.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#406

Post by eli »

prepend wrote: post #315
eli wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Firefox has its own funding issues but I don’t trust a browser that exists to support a cryptocurrency.

I trust it because it’s an open source project and I can see what goes in and comes out. Of course, maybe it won’t work forever, but it works for now. I’m not a crypto person and don’t use Brave’s crypto features, but I think it’s a more sustainable future than relying on Google’s largess.

Relying on google’s rendering engine is worse IMHO. And I think they are going to end having to pivot on funding.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#407

Post by arp242 »

semiotic1 wrote: post #348
chiefofgxbxl wrote: post #316

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been a Firefox user for at least 15 years as well, and the recent UI updates in v89 is the first instance of me refusing to update Firefox. I updated my user prefs file to permanently disable updates, so I'm remaining on pre-ProtonUI v88. Of course, I don't know how much longer I could sustain that because I'd also not receive security patches, but in the short term it's what I'm doing. The new Firefox UI is inc…

https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix fixes most of the frustrating bits of Proton you describe. It's arguably not the same as a sensible out-of-the box design, but far better than sticking to old versions just because of the UI.

I didn't care much for these entire UI revamps as I felt they were far too complex, so I wrote a much simpler one: https://github.com/arp242/MartinFox

2174 lines of CSS vs. 53 lines :-)

I don't overly care how every pixel looks or what the icon is and such; I just want my tabs to have some contrast.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#408

Post by hbt »

ohgodplsno wrote: post #307
hbt wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

true. their api is now a dumbed down version of chrome. I still remember the days of vimperator and treetabs in xul. firefox did this to themselves. they dont deserve support.

Tree Style Tabs exists: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta... Vimperator replacements exist: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl Additionally, XUL was a steaming pile of shit, and there was no saving it. Multithreading was only possible by ripping out XUL.

I use and forked SurfingKeys on Chrome https://github.com/hbt/Surfingkeys

Calling tridactyl a replacement for vimperator ignores all the features and extensive customization available through the old Firefox API. I've used vimperator and pentadactyl and tridactyl doesn't even come close (because of the awful API limitations).

My point is: Firefox API is now a cheap version of Chrome API. Why would you develop extensions for Firefox instead of Chrome? As a power user, it makes no sense to support Firefox. It offers less than chrome.

They had firebug back when Chrome dev tools was crap, an amazing API for extensions and customization; they threw it all away for this mediocre crap chasing average users and are now playing the privacy / save the web card and guilt tripping people for not choosing them.

They can offer better APIs, they are not entitled to power users.

Power users write extensions, write tools for web developers, developers are the most importance resource. Who even bothers to test on Firefox now? For what, 7% market share?

All that money and support; just all gone. Complete waste.

Anyway, I sunk a lot of time into Firefox over the years and it was my browser of choice for years; I'm definitely still bitter about it. They literally abandoned power users. Fuck them.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#409

Post by denton-scratch »

antman wrote: post #7

Former Firefix advocate, after the plugins breakage and senseless ui changes I had to check out. Kiwi on mobile from an HN recommendation

> senseless ui changes

This is what annoys me most. And most of all, UI changes that they've made to promote features I don't want; Pocket, Sync. I shouldn't have to dive into about:config to make a useless UI component disappear (after googling to find out what setting I need to fix). Sync should not default to storing my data on Mozilla servers. The sync icon shouldn't appear unless I've configured Sync. There should be a single option in Preferences to disable ALL suggestions.

DoH is a rotten idea. Or at least, it's not ready for prime-time; it's less secure than plain old DNS (through a local recursor).

Dropping support for ALSA output also got my back up; I won't have Poetteringware on my system.

I'd pay money for a browser that only connects to the internet when I tell it to; doesn't care what I'm interested in; and whose devs are responsive to (paying) user demand.

I'll go on using FF until I can no longer crowbar it to meet my requirements. Then it will disappear in my rearview mirror.

It's very sad; Mozilla made maybe two good products, FF and Thunderbird. They dropped Tbird (which I love), and they're trying to wreck FF. I wish I knew what cock-eyed incentives are making Mozilla behave this way.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#410

Post by Shorel »

todd3834 wrote: post #221

Meanwhile: Brave Passes 25 Million Monthly Active Users https://brave.com/25m-mau/ 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.

I can assure you that after 20 years using it, I still don't want JavaScript in my browsers.
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