[dfabulich]

There are basically four votes that matter, corresponding to the four major browsers: Google (Chrome), Apple (Safari), Microsoft (Edge) and Mozilla (Firefox).

Google claims that "browsers" support an API if it's supported in Chrome and in Microsoft Edge, a Chromium-based browser.

I think that's a fair claim, because MS does sometimes block Chromium features that they don't like. https://www.techradar.com/news/microsoft-edge-becomes-latest...

Microsoft could have blocked File System Access, for some of the same reasons that Mozilla did, but they didn't; they elected to enable the feature.

Since Microsoft + Google together have 70% share of desktop web, and since Microsoft agrees with Google that the File System Access API is a good thing for the web, I think it's not wrong to say that "browsers" support this feature.

Now, you might say, "Microsoft shouldn't count!" but Edge's market share is bigger than Firefox, and we all agree that Mozilla's vote should count (at least as long as they can hang on to 3% market share).

[ysavir]

How reliable is the 3% rating?

Looking at the sources used on the wikipedia page[0], it seems pretty skeptical. For one, the services for collecting the data seem to be depending on tracking APIs from partnered sites. Does Firefox typically allow those through? Is it reasonable to question whether that's a reliable methodology when one of the values of the browsers is preventing such tracking in the first place?

And it shows NetMarketShare data being as current as of May 2021, despite NetMarketShare not providing data beyond Oct 2020[1]. And the last dataset of NetMarketShare has Firefox at 7%. Publicly, at least. Looking around the site it seems people may have access to the internal API, but questions about data integrity remain (now in conjunction on whether unverifiable data from an API should be used on Wikipedia).

Is there something more I and others should know about these data collectors?

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su... [1]https://netmarketshare.com/ "...we are retiring NetMarketShare in its current form. October, 2020 is the last month of data."

[dfabulich]

I got the 3% number from https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

As you noticed, https://netmarketshare.com/ is not a great site for browser share data. For one thing, as you point out, they stopped providing new data points in Oct 2020.

But also, for some reason, NMS automatically filters the view by "desktop/laptop."

If you click the yellow "Delete" button on the right-hand side, it'll show you all browsing data as of Oct 2020. https://netmarketshare.com/?options=%7B%22filter%22%3A%7B%7D...

As of Oct 2020, NMS says that Firefox's overall percentage was 3.32%, and that Edge overtook it over the course of the previous year.

GlobalStats StatsCounter says that as of May 2021, Firefox has 3.36% share, down from 4.38% the prior year. Focusing on desktop browsing, Firefox had 8.91% share last year, and has 7.36% share today.

If Firefox loses another 1.5 points of desktop market share this year (and I see no reason why they wouldn't), they'll dip below 5% desktop share; and well below 3% share when you add in mobile.

[Sleepytime]

Mozilla is also funded nearly half a billion dollars a year by Google, so that makes three that are controlled directly or indirectly by G.

[nicoburns]

In practice I don't think google exerts much control over Mozilla.

[Sleepytime]

In practice when Mozilla is the only real competition to Chrome and wouldn't exist without Google's funding, it's a conflict of interest regardless.

All it does is make the situation more 'death by a thousand papercuts' than any single standard/extension.

[dfabulich]

> Mozilla is the only real competition to Chrome

Apple is the only real competition to Chrome. Apple has 18% market share, compared to Mozilla's 3%. https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

[Sleepytime]

I don't consider a closed source browser on equal footing. Is there a safari equivalent to chromium?

[corobo]

It still has market share no matter how open or closed it is lmao

[samatman]

Not entirely, but sort of.

https://webkit.org

[marcthe12]

Safari has an open source browser engine which is also used by gtk and gnome(Gnome Web)

[dmitriid]

And the only reason Google sponsors them is to pretend there's competition.

[staunch]

Sure, Mozilla just decided "independently" that building in ad-blocking would not be a competitive advantage vs Chrome.

[nicoburns]

They did independently decide that they'd maintain the extension APIs that allow ublocj origin to work even though Chrome is probably dropping them

[staunch]

And yet they don't make uBlock Origin a pre-installed plugin for 500 million mysterious reasons.

[beebeepka]

As a long time noscript user, I would be pissed if Mozilla were to install an ad blocker on any of my devices.

[OJFord]

> Now, you might say, "Microsoft shouldn't count!" but Edge's market share is bigger than Firefox

That honestly surprised me, but you're right [0] - though only 0.01% (StatCounter) or 1.65% (NetMarketShare) in it, depending who you listen to.

I'm not sure about the latter, but I'd have thought 0.01% is down in the noise of misreported user agent, which FF users are probably the most likely to be doing.

[0] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Su...

[gentleman11]

Largely because they are falsely and anti-competitively claiming that Firefox is unsafe with warning text and/or pop ups if you try to install it on windows

[mr_toad]

> Microsoft could have blocked File System Access, for some of the same reasons that Mozilla did, but they didn't; they elected to enable the feature.

Microsoft thought ActiveX was a good idea.