[chinhodado]

I love Firefox, I use it everyday, I can't imagine using a browser without Tree Style Tab, or all the things that I can do in about:config.

At the same time, I can't shake off the dreadful feeling that it will eventually die one day. The market share keeps falling year by year.

What is the most realistic future for Firefox?

[bryanlarsen]

Firefox is way too valuable as a hedge against Google hegemony to let die. If they ever lose the Google search money hose and become threatened I do expect a Google competitor to realize that and step in with some funding.

Microsoft basing Edge on Chromium was a really stupid move on their part for this reason, and I suspect they are starting to realize it.

That being said, I only expect it to be maintained at a hedge level, not enough to shoot for dominance again. Think of it like Valve's Steam on Linux efforts -- it's not a major effort on their part, it's just enough to keep Microsoft honest.

[akmittal]

>Microsoft basing Edge on Chromium was a really stupid move on their part for this reason,

It is not true at all. After a long time Microsoft's browser share in increasing. They probably are quite happy about it,.

[kristopolous]

Also things like teams and skype at least on linux appear to just be electron webapps. Microsoft's safest long-term cash cow I think is still in these corporate contracts that combine all their tools in a confusing giant stew for every employee at those 1,000+ headcount companies.

Having more instrumentation over the platform they're doing it on is probably reasonable and realistically blink is already on every platform with over 1% usage share so that's a much easier road than supporting Trident, EdgeHTML or Chakra - the engine is not their core product - it's the stuff built on top of it.

I've used edge on linux - other than the weird thrill of seeing software that says "Copyright Microsoft" running on linux it's just a typical functional webbrowser -- that's exactly what they need.

[wooben]

I've been gradually switching to Edge and I'm sure Microsoft is happy with people like me who are too scatterbrained to change the default search engine (of course now I've spent more time writing this comment than I would have making the switch)

[endemic]

Plus Google can't intentionally cripple Edge without shooting themselves in the foot.

[spinningslate]

this. Firefox isn't a competitive threat for Microsoft; Chrome was. So Microsoft did what they're extremely good at: commoditising competitive threat where they were losing on market share. They've done it with Linux too. Whether you love them or hate them, you have to recognise the effectiveness of both strategy and execution.

[randomsearch]

You’re both right I think: short term needed users so adopt chrome... long term Firefox essential so MS would step in as a supporter (and potentially adopt it too should google become a problem).

[foepys]

Isn't the reason why many applications and libraries use Chromium due to Gecko's too Firefox-centric APIs?

I read a post here on HN a few months (years?) ago where a developer was really trying to use Gecko for their own application and got frustrated so much that they gave up and switched to Chromium.

[dralley]

Gecko is architected to be used as a framework, not a library, which means it tries to dictate a lot of aspects of how your code is supposed to be structured. Whereas Webkit/Blink is the other way around.

It predates KHTML/Webkit by several years so some additional legacy baggage is to be expected.

[rascul]

I've been led to believe that the APIs are mostly undocumented and often changing.

[faitswulff]

What makes you suspect Microsoft is starting to regret basing Edge off of Chromium?

[dblohm7]

I've heard that Microsoft doesn't have as solid a position at the standards table as they used to have pre-Chromium.

[IshKebab]

Do you expect a Google competitor to step in with $400m/year of funding though?

[JoshTriplett]

Yahoo outbid Google one year, and Firefox duly changed the default search engine for a while.

[hutzlibu]

FFs market share was a bit higher back then, though.

I see the main asset of firefox as being

a) not google tech

b) mobile browser with ublock

c) tech nerds with tons of custom FF addons, never wanting to switch

So I don't see them go away anytime soon, but I also see nothing to stop the decrease of their marketshare. That means, unless mozilla would focus on their core values again. They lost much trust with quite some shady actions now, over the years.

[mekster]

None of them are a guarantee for it to survive but diversity is important and hard to see a second option disappearing just like how BSD are surviving.

Imagine what kind of HN thread pops up if Firefox is abandoned by Mozilla.

Also Firefox is a single licensed product that is MPL, and for anyone who wants it that way commercially may support it.

[Macha]

I don't see a big comeback for Firefox unless there's a big backlash against the reduced effectiveness of adblocking due to manifest v3 in chrome. It's not like the days where "tabs and ad blocking" were only available in one browser (well two, but Opera was still (a) charging money or (b) including ads depending on the timeframe) and provided a huge incentive to switch from IE. Sync is the closest any browser feature has come to that level in a decade, but all browsers had that pretty quickly.

Mozilla also don't have the brand power to push their browser to people who don't actually care but just want the notification on google.com or youtube to go away, or had it bundled with flash player or their windows install or their AV program like a lot of Chrome's rise.

My hope is it bottoms out and finds a new stable equilibrium at brave/vivaldi levels. The question is if that's a large enough position to actually maintain a browser engine.

[coldpie]

I'm in the same boat and have the same worries. I give them a monthly donation to support the company, in hopes of showing that there are paying customers they may be able to fall back on in the future. I can't think of anything else I can do to turn back the tide of the advertiser-developed browser. (Yes, I already know the money doesn't go directly to Firefox development today, thanks.)

[mormegil]

Thank you for this inspiration, I've created my monthly payment now. I cannot imagine being forced to use anything else than Firefox... (Even though the Android version is barely usable after the rework...)

[ojosilva]

Two weeks ago I've switched to Iceraven, a FF for Android fork, and it's been fantastic so far.

It's compatible with many add-ons missing from FF on Android and has some additional features that were "lost" in the Fenix release.

https://github.com/fork-maintainers/iceraven-browser

[coldpie]

It is working well for me, although I'm not a heavy user and the week or two I had to go without NoScript was quite painful :)

[eeperson]

> Even though the Android version is barely usable after the rework...

Yeah, the initial launch was pretty bad. However, this has improved quite a bit from the initial launch if you haven't tried it in a while.

[mormegil]

Oh, I use it as my daily driver mobile browser. And I agree it has improved quite a bit (so that it is now usable, though with a lot of bugs/missing features/inconsistencies).

[washadjeffmad]

It's being outpaced by other browsers in a rapidly expanding field, not falling in usage.

Safari and Edge are defaults on iOS, MacOS, and Windows, and Chrome is the default on Android. I imagine we're primarily seeing the effects platform capture everywhere else.

[apozem]

Defaults are so powerful. There's a damn good reason Google pays Apple $8-12 billion every year to be the default search engine on iOS.

https://www.businessinsider.com/google-apple-search-deal-doj...

[rgbrenner]

Firefox says they have 200m monthly active users. In 2018, techcrunch wrote about that same report and said "this data shows a downward trend for monthly active Firefox users, which now measure about 250 million, down from well over 300 million last April."

So I would be concerned.. they're actively bleeding users... not just being outpaced in a growing market.

https://techcrunch.com/2018/08/28/mozilla-publishes-its-fire...

https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

[ksec]

>What is the most realistic future for Firefox?

Realistic isn't a word I see often on HN.

It wont die. Google will keep funding it just to say they dont have a monopoly in browser market. But it will continue its path towards irrelevant by mainstream usage. They will continue to shrink the engineering as budgets are cut. Until no more silly 20% project and management goals that drains resources ( they wont have that luxury anymore ).

And someday Firefox will require a reboot, not its code base but from a management perspective.

From a user point view, Firefox will stay pretty much the same for another 5 - 6 years at least. Both the Browsers and its Cooperation. There are still quite few improvement coming from Rust Servo in the pipeline. So technically it should be competitive enough.

- From someone who has been watching / following Firefox since before its birth.

[jhatemyjob]

Didn't they shitcan the Servo team?

[WizardAustralis]

They sure did. However Servo now lives on at Linux foundation.

[Siira]

But without any full-time engineers on it, no?

[bengalister]

It would be bad for Linux users. To my knowledge, it is the only web browser that offers without patching video hardware acceleration.

It works on both Xorg and Wayland.

But TBH, the last few releases from 79 showed some bugs and regressions that affected my user experience. From 79 to 81-82, I had to disable vaapi support otherwise it made video playing stutter.

And in 83, webrender caused some extensions popup Windows to be blank.

I hope Linux Wayland user experience will stabilize. But I switched to Firefox full time on my home laptop thanks to hw acceleration support and also tab containers.

[gnusty_gnurc]

> I can't imagine using a browser without Tree Style Tab, or all the things that I can do in about:config

Vivaldi is a configuration juggernaut in my experience. Reminds me of the glory days of Opera.

It has a wonderful vertical tab bar too - built-in.

[Macha]

It is unfortunately closed source, however.

[pt_PT_guy]

any suggestion for a good opensource browser? Firefox is my main browser (and the only one recommended by privacytools.io), but having a chromium-based one is good to have too.

- Brave: it has been pushing opt-in-by-default ads and crypto widgets

- Vivaldi: 5% closed source

- Edge: not open source (yet?)

- Chromium: lacks too many features

[gnusty_gnurc]

True, I don’t care though.

[eyko]

Interesting response considering your gnusername! :-) (sorry, couldn't help it!)

[mackrevinack]

vivalidi is open source https://vivaldi.com/source

you can't contribute to it like you can with something on github, but the source is open none the less

[Macha]

Per their own documentation, this is their patched version of Chromium and not the full browser (notably the UI HTML/JS code is not included): https://help.vivaldi.com/desktop/privacy/is-vivaldi-open-sou...

[samoa42]

since Tabkit died with xul and Tree Style Tab beeing a poor replacement (that crashes often) i use vivaldi althou its still not as good as the original opera or ff-tabkit were in regards to the vertical tab ux.

browser ux really seems like 'one step forward, two backward' over the last two decades.

[jakub_g]

I don't have the numbers, but I've read somewhere recently that while market share in % drops each year, the overall absolute numbers (millions of users) are somehow stable.

It's the pie that is expanding (especially on mobile, where Firefox has hard time competing).

[xyzal]

I can't understand why they still didn't put a "Support Mozilla" prompt anywhere.

[IshKebab]

It would be complicated due to Mozilla's structure. Mozilla Foundation is a non-profit that owns the for-profit Mozilla Corporation. You can donate to the foundation but they can't use the money for Firefox.

But the fundamental reason is that donations are only ever going to be a drop in the ocean. Google gives them $400m/year. Mozilla Foundation donations are like $3m/year. Even Wikipedia donations are only about $100m/year and they have way more users and push really hard.

[abdullahkhalids]

What's preventing the Mozilla Corporation from selling "e-merchandise", like a sequence of themes for $1, $5, $10, $100, etc, to raise money?

[IshKebab]

Probably nothing, but again I suspect they don't bother because it would be a drop in the ocean and certainly not worth the "Mozilla is selling out!" backlash you'd get from the sort of people that use Firefox.

[speedgoose]

I'm guessing the expected incomes are not high enough to compensate the impact on the brand.

[bzb6]

When you donate to Mozilla the money doesn’t go to the betterment of the Firefox browser.

[dorfsmay]

Correct. I wish a fund were created for Firefox, like the one for Thunderbird.

I'd love to give towards Firefox but have no desire to fund Mozilla mismanagement.

[dblohm7]

Your best options are:

* Use Firefox; * Consider Pocket Premium; * Subscribe to Mozilla VPN.

[skinkestek]

Does Pocket Premium go directly to Firefox?

If so I'm probably in (even if I don't use Pocket :-)

Firefox VPN isn't available for me yet.

[jamienicol]

It goes to the Mozilla corporation and will therefore mostly fund Firefox/Gecko, but also pocket, VPN etc

[paleogizmo]

I was of the impression that Mozilla had shed their side projects in the face of dwindling money from Google. Is that still not the case?

I am willing to donate to Mozilla in spite of their mismanagement given that we are creeping ever closer to another browser monopoly. Ignoring bad financial decisions, Firefox is a good product and I've been using it exclusively on PC since Quantum came out. I feel that people here hold Mozilla to some impossibly high standards and turn it into outrage porn. I mean, I don't see top-ranked comments on HN about threatening to stop using Chrome because of whatever sleazy thing Google did last.

[frongpik]

Firefox should sign a deal with EU and get funding from them. Their selling point could be "Unlike other browsers, Firefox won't send data to the US and will enforce GDPR even on sites that arent compliant". Otherwise Firefox will be an expense account of some google exec and be treated as such.

[dontTango]

Compete or die. I have 2 computers that can't run Firefox at a usable speed. No way to figure out the problem.

My fresh computer works fine.

And I'm currently using the Android app. It's buggy, but it could be Facebook or the Google keyboard. Chrome has different problems. Duck duck go has been my newest install. I still need to transfer over.

[ducktective]

Basic fear is that it becomes yet another chromium spawn some ~5 years down the line. Recent dramas surrounding FF on Android and unasked-for UI changes in desktop surely didn't win FF any new users...But...I'm still clinging to it.

[distances]

What's the drama on Android? It's been working great for me for years now.

[input_sh]

They've completely redesigned it about a year ago, making it much faster, but losing add-on compatibility. So pretty much the same thing that happened to desktops on v57, except a bit worse: only 17 add-ons are currently available in nightly.

Still more than what's available on Chrome and Safari on mobile, so it always remained my browser of choice on a phone.

[cpeterso]

You can install any add-on from addons.mozilla.org in Firefox Nightly for Android: https://blog.mozilla.org/addons/2020/09/29/expanded-extensio...

[CameronNemo]

IIRC fennec (from fdroid) is going to allow all add ons too.

[ce4]

Thanks for the info! What a relief, I'm currently still on v68 to not lose uMatrix, bypass paywalls, amp redirect to html, old reddit redirect and others.

I'm really waiting for this

[Macha]

Right, but choosing between power user features and stability is clearly worse as a user than not having to choose between power user features and stability.

Also isn't there more telemetry on by default in nightly?

[cpeterso]

Installing unsupported add-ons also risks instability. Mozilla didn't restrict the initial list of supported add-ons because they don't want to allow add-ons. They continue to expand the list of add-ons supported in Firefox for Android as more add-ons and APIs are tested.

Mozilla uses Firefox telemetry to fix bugs, identify areas to optimize, and guide product decisions. How else can Mozilla know which devices or problems to prioritize?

[input_sh]

Neat! I had no idea. Thanks for sharing!

[brianush1]

They removed about:config, for one

[cpeterso]

You can use about:config in Firefox Nightly for Android: https://support.mozilla.org/lt/questions/1300502

[ducktective]

Same but I've disabled its updates since like a year.

[lxgr]

Is that a good idea though, considering that your browser is arguably the largest attack surface there is on your computer?

[fwn]

It's not a good idea. That's also why it's very important to provide updates that do not disable functionality important for the user. That way you don't force users to choose between security or functionality.

Mozilla still does not allow non-store extensions on their new firefox. Until they're back I have to keep old Firefox around. ...which sucks.

[xnx]

Me too. Waiting for the current branch to properly support extensions, or for an Android Chrome fork to support the extensions I use.

[as_]

Kiwi Browser let install Chrome extensions :)

[xnx]

Yes! I've tried that, but one of my most-used save page extensions doesn't work.

[corty]

They broke all addons and made the Tabs and Bookmarks UIs unusable imho.

[sicariusnoctis]

Have you considered switching from Tree Style Tab to Sidebery?

[skinkestek]

I'm using it for my "logged out" browser.

(I keep a Firefox Developer edition which I use for reading documentation, news etc. It is fully stashed up with all my favorite extensions except Bitwarden.

My main browser is almost bare bones, just BitWarden, uBlock origin etc.

As for why: I'm conservative in more than one way. The more separation I can add between customer data and auto updating extensions the better.

[cat199]

r.e. realistic - no idea

r.e. market share: one problem is developers - web-oriented devs who deal with node.js invariably must use chrome simply for the server-side devtools, and then stick with it, leading to 'only in chrome' sites and 'all the cool kids' / new developers using chrome..

would love to see a well-supported spidermonkey-based server-side JS engine, electron replacement, and corresponding firefox debug tooling

[xnx]

Apache project? I feel like they could make more progress toward their goals as a fork of Chrome, like a "Chrome Pro" or something.

[takeda]

Me too, and I already went through it with Opera. I don't really have an alternative once Firefox is gone.

[mackrevinack]

well if they keep removing features at the current rate then there will be nothing left soon enough