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Let's be honest here. There's nothing Mozilla can do to prolong the life of Firefox. Once you lose marketshare it's more expensive to gain it back. Just look at

Let's be honest here. There's nothing Mozilla can do to prolong the life of Firefox. Once you lose marketshare it's more expensive to gain it back. Just look at what Microsoft spent at getting IE/Edge to where they are today. And Mozilla is in a worse position than Microsoft.

Retric 10y ago
Mozilla started from Netscape which had already lost a lot of market share before surging back. Browsers are free which makes it fairly easy to gain or lose marker share. All it takes is the current leader to stumble and people quickly jump ship. I suspect it's easer to catch up as you have some goal to target.
- bobajeff 10y ago
  Mozilla isn't Netscape rather it's a spin-off. Also, Netscape at its highest was 100% marketshare. Netscape is gone. It never "surged" back.
  - IntelMiner 10y ago
    Mozilla was literally made from the original Netscape source code. I think you need to learn your history Also Netscape never had "100% marketshare". According to http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-04-1996/graphs/use/intend_browser.html http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-04-1996/gra... (sourced from Wikipedia) they had roughly 89%. Still significant, but not complete control
    - bobajeff 10y ago
      Mozilla was spun out from Netscape but it itself is not Netscape as Netscape was aquired by AOL. 89% is still a far cry from anything Firefox has managed. Either way you look at it Netscape did not bounce back.
chme 10y ago
Strange, from my perspective Firefox is very widely used. And for me Chrome/Chromium has just to many usability bugs, to be used productive. E.g. Tabbar doesn't scroll, not very good extensions available (e.g. regex search) and its more difficult to select head of tail of the url (in firefox just click in middle and drag down/up wards)
- bobajeff 10y ago
  In terms of marketshare Firefox is in the single digits now. Regardless of what is the better browser Firefox is, relative to Chrome and IE, not that widely used.
  - chme 10y ago
    Hmm... The thing is, it doesn't matter that much how widely a piece of software is used, but by whom.
    - bobajeff 10y ago
      It matters to the search engines that pay Mozilla for that default search setting plus royalties for referrals. Which in turn funds all of their projects including Firefox.
      - wpietri 10y ago
        It also matters to developers. Who even tests on Opera, which is ~1% of market share? Once people stop caring about whether your browser works, you lose all ability to lead how browsers work.
        chme 10y ago
        Market share is nice, but when many developers use Firefox, guess what gets developed even if they don't get money for it?
        10y ago

Retric 10y ago

Mozilla started from Netscape which had already lost a lot of market share before surging back. Browsers are free which makes it fairly easy to gain or lose marker share. All it takes is the current leader to stumble and people quickly jump ship. I suspect it's easer to catch up as you have some goal to target.

bobajeff 10y ago
Mozilla isn't Netscape rather it's a spin-off. Also, Netscape at its highest was 100% marketshare. Netscape is gone. It never "surged" back.
- IntelMiner 10y ago
  Mozilla was literally made from the original Netscape source code. I think you need to learn your history Also Netscape never had "100% marketshare". According to http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-04-1996/graphs/use/intend_browser.html http://www.cc.gatech.edu/gvu/user_surveys/survey-04-1996/gra... (sourced from Wikipedia) they had roughly 89%. Still significant, but not complete control
  - bobajeff 10y ago
    Mozilla was spun out from Netscape but it itself is not Netscape as Netscape was aquired by AOL. 89% is still a far cry from anything Firefox has managed. Either way you look at it Netscape did not bounce back.

chme 10y ago

Strange, from my perspective Firefox is very widely used. And for me Chrome/Chromium has just to many usability bugs, to be used productive. E.g. Tabbar doesn't scroll, not very good extensions available (e.g. regex search) and its more difficult to select head of tail of the url (in firefox just click in middle and drag down/up wards)

bobajeff 10y ago
In terms of marketshare Firefox is in the single digits now. Regardless of what is the better browser Firefox is, relative to Chrome and IE, not that widely used.
- chme 10y ago
  Hmm... The thing is, it doesn't matter that much how widely a piece of software is used, but by whom.
  - bobajeff 10y ago
    It matters to the search engines that pay Mozilla for that default search setting plus royalties for referrals. Which in turn funds all of their projects including Firefox.
    - wpietri 10y ago
      It also matters to developers. Who even tests on Opera, which is ~1% of market share? Once people stop caring about whether your browser works, you lose all ability to lead how browsers work.
      - chme 10y ago
        Market share is nice, but when many developers use Firefox, guess what gets developed even if they don't get money for it?
        10y ago