[slightwinder]

> It was always the extensibility.

Going by the numbers, that's far from the truth. Majority of user never used addons, not even adblockers. Even the most popular addons are only used by a small minority of users.

I'm also a big addon-user and complain what firefox has lost over time. But we should also admit that we are a minority, and addons are simply not the major selling point for a mainstream product's success.

[antisthenes]

You shouldn't be afraid to cater to the minority of power users. Power users are the ones that make browser recommendations to an outsized group of people, e.g. friends, relatives and coworkers. They are also the ones that drive new standard adoption.

It's entirely plausible that when you alienate a power user, you also alienate their entire social circle, dependent on them for tech advice, so you lose 20x-100x of your audience/users.

I'm not saying that's exactly what happened, but it definitely happened to some degree. Personally, I no longer recommend or use Firefox to anyone. The techy people in my circle use Brave or ungoogled Chromium.

The untechy ones use Chrome/Edge and maybe have Opera/Vivaldi as their backup browser or Safari if they're big Apple fans. Almost no one uses FF anymore. Without its extensibility, it simply doesn't compete anymore.

[sillystuff]

> Majority of user never used addons

Do they get those numbers via telemetry or from the server-side? If the former, those stats may be skewed by the overlap between the users who use several extensions and those who disable all telemetry.

In a mozilla bug report where they discuss removing user.js, they point to telemetry that indicates that no one uses this functionality. I'd argue that the Venn diagram between users of user.js and those who disable telemetry approximates a single circle.

[OkayPhysicist]

I suspect that this actually explains a lot of Mozilla's decision making that seems utterly disconnected from their userbase. They don't seem to realize that compared to Chrome, their userbase is disproportionately tech savvy enough to reject telemetry. They talk about the importance of privacy and security and whatnot, but then make all their decisions based around the behavior of the people that don't care about their privacy.

[ryanklee]

"userbase is disproportionately tech savvy enough to reject telemetry"

You need data to support that claim. To me, it sounds unlikely. My guess, most users accept telemetry, tech savvy or not.

For instance, I'm tech savvy, and explicitly choose telemetry when on non-work computers because I want to enable companies to understand my behaviors so they can in the best cases deliver better features to me.

[rurp]

I think it's hard to tease out the size of effect. Extensions are only used by a minority of users, but that's mostly the set of vocal power users that are likely to be the go-to tech person within their social circles.

I'm sure I'm far from the only HNer that has recommended or installed Firefox for many friends and family. I mean, I used to recommend and install Firefox before their terrible management turned the org into a dumpster fire. They've lost both myself and everyone I would have turned onto Firefox.

[slightwinder]

That might have been 20 years ago when Firefox grew from it's grassroot-movement. But Chrome started without extensions and grew more through marketing and Googles fame. Power users have their influence even today, but I'd say it's not as strong as it was in the old days. Most users have emancipated themselves from us, and can choose now on their own, because this kind of information is not arcane anymore.