Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

data.firefox.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

561–570 of 618 posts

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#561

Post by soundnote »

mfer wrote: post #205
Nextgrid wrote: post #161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word of mouth; whether it’s power users recommending it or people having it on their work computers (because their IT mandates it) and wanting the same great browser at home. The problem is that Firefox is basically a Chrome clone at this point, all the way down to the privacy-invading features such as telemetry, so using it nowadays is more down to ideology than a…

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.

They have tab groups. Tab groups are huge, and their implementation on mobile is excellent.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#562

Post by soundnote »

aftergibson wrote: post #269
rmsaksida wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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!

They have paid products like Pocket, VPN etc. Those are sold by the for-profit corp that develops Firefox, not the non-profit foundation that owns the corp.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#563

Post by soundnote »

guilhas wrote: post #133

Firefox: Lets remove tab groups, no one uses it Chrome: Lets add tab groups, seems like a good idea Firefox: why are users leaving?.. The constant addons breakage and UI changes, feature removal. I could bare the speed difference, but these inconsistencies are just too much Still Firefox continues to be the best browser in theory

Yup. Firefox experience:

Like compact mode: Scheduled for deprecation.

Find Chromium tab groups and get addicted: Oh, FF used to have tab groups and killed them.

Search keyword sync via bookmarks: Scheduled to be deprecated, not functional on mobile.

PWAs: Development aborted.

Meanwhile Vivaldi's like "we're adding a third interface style for tab stacks" and Brave's building truly standalone revenue sources to be able to sell tinfoil.

Which is not even getting into the "we need more than deplatforming" spiel - do they hear themselves?

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#564

Post by soundnote »

f32jhnjk33jj wrote: post #232
cs2733 wrote: post #218

In the last decade, the proliferation of smartphones led to billions of newly "connected" people using the default browser, not knowing or caring about what a "browser" is. Firefox doesn't ship its own hardware so... ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I switched to Firefox on Android, because I can use uBlock Origin (adblocker) extension with it and stop watching nonsense ads. It's also good for battery life and protect against some malware. Chrome on Mobile, on the other hand, doesn't allow extensions.

Yeah, that's what HN readers do. Most people don't even understand what a web browser is, or even use one at that. A staggering amount of modern web traffic is driven by a Google search widget on people's phones.

There's a completely depressing number of people who go to even familiar sites by googling them.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#565

Post by soundnote »

PufPufPuf wrote: post #550
rishikeshs wrote: post #468

Are you guys aware of Brave? It's the best browser I have ever used

I find Brave's business model unethical. Blocking ads... well, fine, everybody does that anyways. But monetizing on it by replacing website ads with your own, pocketing the revenue, and pretending that it's fine because you give everyone your custom made-up currency? Genius move by taking advantage of modern trends (ad-blocking, cryptocurrency, micropayments, ...), but it's not the "web revolution" they pretend it to…

Wouldn't recommend Edge. They do great work, but their sync features aren't all zero knowledge. Firefox's, Brave's and Vivalid's are by default, and as far as I know stock Chrome's can be made to be, but on Edge there's no way to have all sync categories be end to end encrypted.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#566

Post by dathinab »

dmitriid wrote: post #388
dathinab wrote: post #322

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> No, IMHO they should be forced to comply with web standard The problem is that they ram whatever internal Chrome APIs they want through standards bodies and call it a standard. Others just can't keep up: https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence

Maybe I should have called it "industry web standards" to explicitly exclude "google forced web standard"?

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#567

Post by soundnote »

christophilus wrote: post #303
DoingIsLearning wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

...And the great add-on purge! What the hell was that about? Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea or acceptable?

That is the thing that made me jump ship. The UI changes and Pocket and promoted favorites were a nuisance, but minor. But add-in’s? The web is just broken without ad blocking.

The mobile version should have uBlock Origin?

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#568

Post by gifnamething »

Nextgrid wrote: post #230
gifnamething wrote: post #210

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>telemetry Maybe they're more likely to cater to users who don't turn off the method they use to decide what to cater to.

They don’t need in-browser telemetry to see that uBlock Origin is one of the most downloaded add-ons, and it’s yet to be built-in to the browser despite its license allowing it. They also don’t need telemetry to read threads like this one and there’s been plenty of those on HN (and I’m sure elsewhere) and the general consensus is always that Mozilla is letting power users down in favour of trying to copy Chrome. Give…

Reading threads is a poor metric. People are bad at reporting their usage and only the most vocal people post on tech fora.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#569

Post by prepend »

freediver wrote: post #520
prepend wrote: post #512

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To my understanding there is no data sent from my Brave client to any Brave servers. So my data are not stored or used by Brave servers, so I don’t care too much about their source. Of course, there’s nothing magical about open source that makes it more privacy respecting. It’s just that open source let’s me know what my browser is doing. For example, Chrome is reporting everything I do to Google. It’s possible to kn…

> To my understanding there is no data sent from my Brave client to any Brave servers. That would be wrong. By Brave's own confession, there are 70 requests it sends "home" on startup [1]. Regardless of request payload, each of them contains your PII (IP address at the very least). There is plenty of opportunity for your data to be stored and used (not saying that it is). If and how is that data actually used, we do…

> Do not want to be harsh but I assume you didn't actually look into the Brave's source code.

This is a weird assumption to make on HN. I have. I also didn’t say that viewing source code is the only part of understanding a browser’s security. It’s a useful portion. Network monitors are also good.

I’m not talking about startup telemetry, I mean browsing history and activity. Chrome reports this, Brave doesn’t.

I don’t think Brave is perfect, I just think it’s better than Chrome and Firefox.

Re: Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

#570

Post by PikachuEXE »

I used Firefox until old extension format abandoned and I switch to Palemoon + Vivaldi. Vivaldi for daily use and Palemoon for tabs opened all the times (with lazy loading).

Tab grouping is never done good enough on Chromium based browsers (even Vivaldi). Also those browsers all have memory usage issue and I don't keep them opened for too long.

Post reply on HN