An endangered internet species: Firefox

sad but true.

 

Being using Firefox for the last 10 years but lately I installed Brave and I must say that so far I like it a lot. Right now I’m switching from one to the other...

 

Mozilla Firefox Lost More Than 30 Million Users Since 2019
Surprisingly, average daily usage is on the rise.
July 31, 2021
https://fossbytes.com/mozilla-firefox-lost-more-than-30-million-users-since-2019/

 

I put it down to Chrome being bundled with so many other programs and Firefox trying to be more like Chrome.

 

I like Firefox. It's come a long way since pre-Quantum performance-and stability-wise. I like its UI too.

I think all the major browsers are more alike than they are different nowadays. Firefox is such a likeable under-dog, imo.

 

Part of its share loss may be due to the possible interpretation of some of Mozilla Foundations's blog posts. For example, here's a quote from https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplatforming/ that maybe seen as an intent to do away with anonymity/privacy of at least some users.

 

Mozilla was involved in a lot of projects in the past which went down, were stopped or given away because of lack of interests, fewer people for further development, dead end, what ever.

I would guess that those who left firefox and thus mozilla behind were not new users, they were long time users.

In direct comparison, mozilla <> google, mozilla has to lose - less money, fewer developers. And that has impact to firefox features as the dobbin?/draft horse for mozilla. why should i investigate into other services or software from mozilla when firefox is buggy or do not fit my needs?

mozilla for desktop is wonderful, on android (current final) its terrible. although mozilla is working on it is is not the same as v68, there is a lot missing.

and why should i trust mozilla software which is corrupting my (windows) system?
mozilla vpn software is known to corrupt an existing vcredist 2015-2019 installation - not only this software, a lot of other software after uninstalling is corrupting same way.

no google software did.

 

BTW, out of curiosity is was searching for stuff, and seems like Vivaldi and Brave make quite a lot of money, at least when it comes to revenue, don't know about profit. So even with a small amount of the market, you can still do quite well.

https://www.owler.com/company/vivalditechnologie

 

Vivaldi and Brave (and others) do not need to invent their own browser, only to modify existing chromium. mozilla has no blueprint. And because of fewer devs it takes much more time to the goal line

 

And yet they still push new versions out to a four week schedule.

 

there was rumour about the shortening 6 to 4 weeks, but feedback (telemetry) must have pointed out that people do not care about. i install updates manually because i create backups before and it concerns several firefox builds, i dont want a mixup. but i get the announcements about updates so i wont miss it while updates are disabled.

in most cases there is nothing to complain, if users want it different, there are options to have it different, either esr, or policy, whatever. those, who complain already have found a solution, but moaning in a group must have some benefits

 

As I read this thread and that somewhat biased article using an endangered species... I've been using Firefox since before it was Firefox. I've weathered the changes over the years. I still view Firefox as my browser of choice. The only annoyance I have with Firefox, that I have to see every day with when starting it, is the virtue signalling change in the name Master Password to Primary Password. I have consider other browsers but so far none of the offerings suit my taste. Until one comes along that does, I will stick with Firefox for my browsing pleasure.

 

Firefox 0.8 and Firebird somewhere deep in may archives, Phoenix was lost
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Firefox

due sync i can take my settings to any machine if i cannot use the portable, but meanwhile with a smartphone, not really needed. chromium meanwhile is able to recover its used extensions when used on another machine, passwords need sync or input. both get somewhere balanced, but at least firefox is my prefered choice because it runs still smooth when having lots of tabs (i mean > 1000) tabs open in rare cases. chromium is using strict isolation and need config switch.

for the stability, i needed to reset my android nightly because it crashed after changing addons. no addons, no benefit. sync and importing extension settings took less 5 minutes to recover. was on my way for head banging because firefox is simply not that easy way to configure because without root you cannot recover a profile. there existed a solution but firefox only would accept a just in time compiled extension for backing up with the right certificate which i am not able to create. pity.

i mean, recovering chrome - never tried, dont like chrome on android ^^

 

It really depends on what you look for in a browser. In Firefox you still have a stupid oldskool bookmarks and favorites manager that isn't tab-based. You can't put the tabs-bar on bottom, you can't double click to close a tab. In fact, I just saw that Waterfox is now the only other browser besides Vivaldi that let's you put the tabs on bottom. Shame on Chrome, Edge, Firefox and Opera!

Why did Mozilla never bother to offer this, I will tell you why because they don't care. They still got 229 million users, so they are still making quite a lot of money. But I couldn't care less about them, Vivaldi is so much better, without the telemetry stuff. I just wish they would upgrade the standard password manager and add more privacy tweaks like Firefox.

https://www.waterfox.net

 

46 million people have left Firefox since 2018
From a 30% market share to 3% in just over a decade
August 6, 2021
https://www.techspot.com/news/90692-firefox-loses-46-million-users-three-years.html

 

Mozilla tests Microsoft Bing as the default Firefox search engine (bleepingcomputer.com)

 

"Mozilla drags Microsoft, Google, Apple for obliterating any form of browser choice

If you've got no OS of your own, you've got little chance to compete, Firefox maker sighs

Firefox maker Mozilla is taking aim at Microsoft, Google, and Apple for using their operating systems to steer users to their browsers and stacking the deck against rivals who lack the same OS advantages. Like, for instance, Mozilla.

Having these few large companies dominate such an important tech market – Mozilla refers to browsers and browser engines as the heart of the web – has a monopolistic ripple effect that leads to few choices for users, a drop in innovation, a lack of openness, and low quality, insecure code thrust upon us, the Firefox developer concluded in a recent report..."

https://www.theregister.com/2022/09/23/browsers_mozilla_microsoft_google/

 

Quite the truth in those statements. Micro being the top dog O/S pretty much can steer the users to their ways, opinions, and suggestions unfortunately. MS should have had some serious O/S maker competition long ago and now it's too late. Also influences their user's choices they encourage to make.

 

Mozilla looks to its next chapter
By Frederic Lardinois @fredericl - November 17, 2022

 

Looks like Mozilla is still quite financially healthy, not bad considering how small FF's marketsize is. But it all comes down to the deal that they made with Google. I have said it before, FF is a crappy browser to me with barely any innovation, I'm done with them, Vivaldi is way better. The only thing good about Firefox is probably the Gecko browser engine.

 

It seems to me, that over the past few years, reports of Firefox's demise are exaggerated.

 

And what's so crappy about it?

And what would "innovation" mean in the browser realm?

Then use it.

 

I have already explained it in another post, will look for it. But it's mostly about functions that are missing in Firefox that you do get in Vivaldi, all out of the box. Firefox has let me down, the only thing I don't like about Vivaldi is that it's based on Chromium which is a resource hog.