Firefox was in its prime when it was the main competitor to IE. It was just a no-brainer for users: it was faster and it had tabs!
Now Chrome has become dominant. I don’t know all the reasons, though I’m sure marketing is a big one. Firefox can’t compete with Google’s marketing budget, and as a user and a web dev, I haven’t found any other compelling reasons to make FF my primary browser. Their dev tools weren’t as nice as Chrome’s the last time I checked, and it seems like common (for tech folks) Chrome plugins make up the privacy differences.
We do need a healthy multi-browser ecosystem in order to prune web tech to follow a user-centric direction. I want FF to convert me. I just haven’t seen the substantial arguments yet.
It’s kind of telling that Microsoft didn’t either, so they switched Edge over to Chromium, a tool from one of their main competitors. It’s possible that this puts FF into the same position of being “the outsider” that it was in before. I hope that stress makes them do something radical to sway more users. If they do, it will likely be related to browsing privacy (especially if it’s a default) and will upset the status quo again.
Firefox had kind of stagnated in terms of innovation and design when Chrome rolled around. Not to mention performance: we are spoiled today with recent versions of Firefox, but I remember a lot of people I know who switched to Chrome did so because of crash-resistance, performance, and the ability to run relatively large numbers of tabs. People like to complain about Firefox chasing Chrome in terms of feature set and design, but I think at least some of that chasing led to a better Firefox.
That at least explains how Chrome gained dominance. Sites that don't fully support Firefox + the "outsider" effect you identified are contributing to FF's continued decline. Safari will probably keep going for years and years solely because of users who don't care or know how to change their default browser (and some people do actually like it more than other browsers).
> a lot of people I know who switched to Chrome did so because of crash-resistance, performance, and the ability to run relatively large numbers of tabs.
Firefox was stable with a lot more tabs open than Chrome, because it didn't have a thread per tab. Chasing Chrome brought down the number of tabs you could comfortably have open in Firefox.
Why is that surprising? Firefox doesn't have a narrative that's compelling for the typical user and I'm not sure it's ever had one that was really viable. 'Not-google' really isn't good enough for the average user, and no amount of 'we care about your privacy' is going to convince the common user that Mozilla _does_, in fact, care about their privacy.
The reality is that most typical users care about their privacy a lot less than we might expect or want. That's probably not a great sign for society in general, but I think it's the truth.
They needed to differentiate themselves years ago. The value prop in the early days was "very light & fast, blocks popups, has tabs, is totally free with no ads". It was a no-brainer to install it on every barely-technical relative's computer a nerd could get their hands on. The only thing that approached it and wasn't incredibly obscure was Opera, and that either cost money or displayed ads.
FF is no longer "very light & fast" (it may no longer be possible to attain that and actually support modern web browsing—Safari is the only mainstream browser that's even close, AFAIK) and does have ads. Their various interface redesigns have made it confusing as hell to my parents. Old-school popups are handled well enough by ~every browser and they just about all use tabs and have for over a decade. Meanwhile they've added... what? To differentiate them? Plugins. But now those are the same as Chrome's. Very good dev tools—but now those are available elsewhere, too.
They needed to go all-in on something radical years ago to have a long-term shot at relevance. Decentralized social networking or chat built-in to the browser. Aggressive built-in ad blocking & unique user-empowering controls. More, not fewer, non-HTTP Internet protocols built in. Something. And clearly not Pocket.
Now I don't think their market share's big enough for even something like that that to save them. In fact now it'd likely just kill them even faster.
It does exatcly mean that Firefox is (by default) sending your searches to Google.
Mozilla also uses Google Analytics on their websites and keep testing the waters with putting ads right into the browser. Users are absolutely justified in not trusting Mozilla's claims about caring for privacy.
Webkit was made to be embeddable, so it spreads faster. More webkit-based browsers exist.
Firefox as a project seems directionless. New releases anger its users with unwanted feature. Its custodians wasted so much energy on silly projects that people are reluctant to donate.
Oh and of course the competition comes pre-installed on millions of devices. Operating systems even remind you when you're not using their bundled browser.
I ask this every time it comes up, but how do you know the market share of Firefox, and are you sure you aren't only counting Firefox installs with no ad blocking? There is definitely a larger ratio of ad-blocking on Firefox than Chrome, Safari, or Edge.
- Fingerprinting Protection, originally developed for use in Tor Browser, prevents Firefox from disclosing some data that uniquely identifies you. This feature needs to be manually activated. https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/firefox-protection-agai...
- uBlock Origin works on Firefox on both desktop and Android. While Chrome will block an API used by uBlock Origin in 2023, Firefox will continue to support the API. (https://github.com/uBlockOrigin/uBlock-issues/issues/338) The current version of uBlock Origin does not support Safari.
Firefox has stronger extension support on Android, since Brave doesn't support any extensions on Android at all. On the desktop, Firefox's container tabs feature allows you to log into the same site with multiple accounts without needing to open a new window for each account.* Firefox's Gecko engine gives me no issues on the web.
Brave is a better choice than Chrome and Safari, in my opinion. But Firefox still has some advantages.
On Mull, you can install any compatible extension from https://addons.mozilla.org even if it's not whitelisted.* But a whitelisted extension is no less of an extension than a non-whitelisted one.
> backspace and shift+backspace still work for back and forward.
That's no longer the default. It was disabled because it confused regular users and could cause data loss if people think they're typing in a form and the Backspace instead navigates back.
But good news! You re-enable Backspace as a keyboard shortcut to navigate back by setting the about:config pref "browser.backspace_action" to 2.
Firefox is sometime a good tool to have for webdev, in some case Firefox(desktop)(i think i need to us a camera) work more similar than chrome(desktop) in comparison too chrome(android), i will totally pay money for a tool-set web development of quality but as browser most advance things use some quirks of chromium to work, isnt as secure as other people say you need to twist thing here and there and download extensions, in general is more worth use brave, if you really want to have control use librewolf.net is a fork of Firefox focus on privacy and work out of the box
Use Firefox and if a site does not work just move on with your life. It passively improves our future to squander our attention on the less egregious actors.
> Use Firefox and if a site does not work just move on with your life. It passively improves our future to squander our attention on the less egregious actors.
I do this, and I do not remember the last time I actually had to 'move on' from a site because it did not work.
Anyone wants to start a list of sites that do not work with FF? I am genuinely curious which sites these are that do not work with FF.
Are you a dev logging into multiple profiles for the same service? Firefox has the Multi Account Containers extension. Also great for dealing with sites with limited article paywalls like Medium. Do you use Android? Firefox Mobile let's you install uBlock Origin. If you sign into the browser with a Firefox account on all your devices you can "send" a tab between them. This has proven to be way more useful than expected. That's all I can think of.
Those are total market shares including smartphones, which Firefox has very little presence. Most people look at Firefox market share tends ( or used to ) focus on Desktop market share. ( The term Desktop actually includes Laptop LOL, which used to be a separate category. )
Now Chrome has become dominant. I don’t know all the reasons, though I’m sure marketing is a big one. Firefox can’t compete with Google’s marketing budget, and as a user and a web dev, I haven’t found any other compelling reasons to make FF my primary browser. Their dev tools weren’t as nice as Chrome’s the last time I checked, and it seems like common (for tech folks) Chrome plugins make up the privacy differences.
We do need a healthy multi-browser ecosystem in order to prune web tech to follow a user-centric direction. I want FF to convert me. I just haven’t seen the substantial arguments yet.
It’s kind of telling that Microsoft didn’t either, so they switched Edge over to Chromium, a tool from one of their main competitors. It’s possible that this puts FF into the same position of being “the outsider” that it was in before. I hope that stress makes them do something radical to sway more users. If they do, it will likely be related to browsing privacy (especially if it’s a default) and will upset the status quo again.