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The only reason Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox got a foothold was that IE6 was basically abandoned and there was so much low hanging fruit (Tabs! Ad blockers!). But
by Eridrus 8y ago
The only reason Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox got a foothold was that IE6 was basically abandoned and there was so much low hanging fruit (Tabs! Ad blockers!).
But then Firefox got complacent with their performance, giving Chrome an in, and in the meantime IE/Edge got a lot better, so there is less incentive to try something else.
At this point, Firefox doesn't really solve any pain points for most users. Some people like the greater flexibility Firefox has (had?) with extensions, some people care about the anti-tracking work they're doing, but at this point the selling point seems to be an abstract notion of competition/freedom, which most people don't really care about.
Firefox needs a vision of what is missing from the browser that really resonates with people. They seem to be banking on the idea that privacy is that differentiator, and it's smart in the sense that it's not a direction that Google will go with Chrome, but all signs point to people not actually caring that much about privacy.
My personal take is that Firefox should really invest heavily in their Android browser (e.g. improve reliability of the media stack, get e10s, etc), build in an ad blocker, or bundle uBlock in the default install, and market that. Chrome will never ship an ad blocker on Android, and blocking ads is far more of a thing people care about than privacy.
[EDIT]: Maybe all the Rust stuff will pay off and Firefox will have a really good performance/security(battery life?) story. That would be a good path as well.
- bdcravens 8y agoAre you describing a situation where Firefox should be the dominant one instead of Chrome?
- Eridrus 8y agoI don't have a strong opinion on what the market share of various browsers should be, but I don't think "we're a competing implementation that exists to keep Google/Apple/Microsoft honest" is really enough of a reason for most people to care about it. If Firefox wants to see their usage grow, they need to be providing a real value proposition to users, because there are real costs for users of using software with low adoption numbers, e.g. in compatibility & support.
- Kye 8y agoReading view keeps me coming back to Firefox. Some articles are good enough to read, but not enough to bother with sending to a reading app. It's usually when I'm busy researching and really need the one page with the right information to stop bouncing around. I'd spend more time zapping elements in uBlock Origin than I would reading it. The growing unfriendliness of the web has reached meme status, so it might be a good selling point. One-click usability.
- cmroanirgo 8y ago> Firefox should really invest heavily in their Android browser ... build in an ad blocker, or bundle uBlock in the default install, and market that You're really selling Brave browser when you mention a bundled android solution with an adblocker. However, you can install 'android' supported plugins into your android FFox... I'm running uBlock, decentraleyes, etc, etc, and it's great! See here: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/android/