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by chrisseaton 1309 days ago
Almost nobody uses Firefox - it's Safari that keeps balance in the browser world.
3 comments

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

To be fair, you are correct in the mobile space, and that is now the lion share of devices, but Firefox does have a healthy 7.5% usage in the desktop space if the metrics on this page are to be believed.

Why not just look at market share across all devices? Which makes chrisseaton's point: Firefox sits at 3.26% as opposed to Safari at 18.61%.
Because all browsers are Safari on the mobile platform that has 60% of market share in the US.
Well yeah that’s a fact that supports the point. Why exclude it?
You literally can’t run a different browser on the device.* If I’ve installed Firefox I’ve installed reskinned Safari.

“2.5.6 Apps that browse the web must use the appropriate WebKit framework and WebKit Javascript.”

From the App Store guidelines.

It’s not a choice thing.

*without jailbreaking

You choose the browser with the device.
That is irrelevant though.

It sucks that Apple does this but it doesn't actually change the fact that Firefox use is at 3%.

It affects usage rates of other browsers other than Safari on that platform, because other "browsers" are just limited chrome on top of Safari. The quality of Chrome, Firefox, etc on iOS will be behind the quality of the same browsers on platforms that they're allowed to improve and innovate upon.
Even 3% of market share could be hundreds of millions of people. Browser market size is extremely large. That's hardly irrelevant.

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

Because mobile and desktop are different markets
I use Firefox across all my devices. It's fantastic. The people who actually care about browsers (and, perhaps, "anonymity", or "doing the right thing") have all largely moved on from Chrome.
> I use Firefox across all my devices.

I'm sure you really tip the scales.

> The people who actually care about browsers (and, perhaps, "anonymity", or "doing the right thing") have all largely moved on from Chrome.

Well then clearly most people don't care do they?

Isn't that the point? Firefox isn't having a significant impact. They aren't achieving what they say they want to.

Safari's having much more of an impact.

> I'm sure you really tip the scales.

Why get so upset about someone whom you are apparently certain has no impact?

I’m not upset about anything.

But a datapoint of one is meaningless.

> Safari's having much more of an impact.

So what? Is there a limit to the number of browsers in the world?

So what is it’s Safari keeping balance not Firefox. The original comment wasn’t right. You can’t keep balance with single-digit market-share.
Okay, that's good. Hopefully they will continue. Goal is to not have single-browser monopoly, so everyone develop according to the standards not optimize against single engine.

What's the point in arguing who is better balance keeper?

Only because people are forced to.