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Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

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Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#61

Post by missedthecue »

Tagbert wrote: post #58
missedthecue wrote: post #24

Chrome is better. That's why. It's faster. JS loads quicker. Websites break, for instance Tidal streaming. There are three million tech support threads on the internet of people who can't use Tidal on Firefox. Firefox on desktop can't even translate pages yet, I have to use a janky third party plugin. As a fairly normie internet user, unless you have a hate-boner for Google or some arcane developer niche use case, I…

What is Tidal? Never heard of it. It is a video streaming service?

High-fidelity lossless music streaming service with several million subscribers

https://tidal.com/

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#62

Post by frostiness »

floren wrote: post #32
thesuitonym wrote: post #15

Good points have already been raised, but don't neglect the rise of smartphones. When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change? Add Chromebooks into the mix, and those meet a lot of people's needs, why change? Then, if you get a laptop, you'll want to have all of your passwords and bookmarks synced, so instead of using Edge, you grab Chrome…

> When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change? I know you're speaking in the context of the general public, but I've found that uBlock on Firefox Mobile does so much to make the web usable again that I'd never go without it.

On the other hand, as someone on an old android device, the performance difference between the two is massive and it isn't getting better. Some sites (usually the ones that are actually important such as restaurant menu) are perfect on Chrome and nearly unusable on Firefox, even with an adblocker.

Performance already matters a lot on desktop browsers, but when battery life is thrown into the mix, it matters even more.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#63

Post by wussboy »

wintorez wrote: post #17

I was an avid Firefox user, until it started adding services that I never asked for, namely Pocket. Things that should have been an add-on were now a core feature of the product.

This attitude has always confused me. “Firefox did something I didn’t like so I switched to a browser which does hundreds of things to undermine the free and open internet”.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#64

Post by NoboruWataya »

thesuitonym wrote: post #15

Good points have already been raised, but don't neglect the rise of smartphones. When you get a Google phone that already has Google's browser installed, and it works relatively well, why would you change? Add Chromebooks into the mix, and those meet a lot of people's needs, why change? Then, if you get a laptop, you'll want to have all of your passwords and bookmarks synced, so instead of using Edge, you grab Chrome…

> Finally, in the early 00's, Firefox users had a reputation for letting you know about it. Forums of the day were full of signatures with a Get Firefox link in them. You don't really see that level of fervor anymore, because the difference between Firefox and Chrome today is nowhere near the difference between Firefox and IE back then.

I agree that is probably the main reason - but another is simply that we don't have signatures anymore. So many of those forums were replaced by Reddit and other platforms which don't have signatures. One could argue they were a waste of screen estate but they allowed users to share a bit of their personality (including, in some cases, their choice of browser/OS) with readers in a non-awkward way.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#65

Post by whynotmaybe »

Edge comes preinstalled and is managed by one provider that manages the rest of your software.

If you add Firefox to a corporate standard computer, that's one thing more to manage.

When you really look at it, Firefox has nothing more than edge that really justifies it's existence in a corporate network.

The worst about it, now that edge is chromium based, more and more websites or saas are targeting chrome only and don't care about the "nerds" using Firefox.

IMHO, unless Linux gains more presence in the desktop world, Firefox usage won't increase much.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#66

Post by caditinpiscinam »

CamperBob2 wrote: post #41
barbazoo wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you be more specific?

It used to be engineered especially for power users, respecting their interests and needs. Not so much these days. Reverting my about:config settings every time I update, for instance, just conditions me to dodge updates.

One example of this is removing the ability to open local files on mobile. Or forcing browser restarts on the desktop in the middle of browsing.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#67

Post by [deleted] »

utopcell wrote: post #27
acheron wrote: post #13

Google wanted more control over the Internet, so they created a browser that they controlled and pushed it on people by leveraging their monopoly in a separate area. You know, the kind of thing we used to think was bad in the 1990s.

Leveraged their monopoly ? How does that work exactly for Windows, MacOS and iOS in your mind ?

[deleted]

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#68

Post by nonameiguess »

cebert wrote: post #8
seren wrote: post #4

I am still using Firefox as my main browser, but some sites are broken with Firefox and working fine with Chrome. So unless you are particularly motivated to stay on a given platform, practically it does not really makes sense as a user to stay committed.

I use Firefox as my daily driver and have not encountered any sites that work in Chrome but not Firefox.

It might be a specific security setting I've made more restrictive than the default, but Cloudflare's bot detector goes into an infinite loop on Firefox, thus making any site that puts that in front unusable, including OpenAI most notably. As a consequence, I don't use those sites, but I'm sure others would rather just give in and use a browser with settings that Cloudflare actually tests against and cares about.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#69

Post by xnx »

I previously used Firefox on Android for adblocking and other extensions, but the hoops I had to jump through to get working extensions became increasingly more ridiculous. I switched to Kiwi browser (Chromium based) and and have been very have a much easier time with extensions and it is much faster as well. The only disappointment is no syncing of tabs to a desktop browser.

Re: Ask HN: Why does Firefox have such a low market share anyways?

#70

Post by unethical_ban »

wintorez wrote: post #17

I was an avid Firefox user, until it started adding services that I never asked for, namely Pocket. Things that should have been an add-on were now a core feature of the product.

Like chrome has account sync? Like chrome has telemetry? Like chrome has a game built in? Like chrome has a read later feature?

You're mad because Firefox was silly enough to call it Pocket instead of Firefox Reading List.

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