4 ms·

Perhaps Firefox should research why Chrome is so successful and adopt that? I use Edge, Safari, FF Dev Edition, and Chrome, and I consistently return to Chrome

Perhaps Firefox should research why Chrome is so successful and adopt that? I use Edge, Safari, FF Dev Edition, and Chrome, and I consistently return to Chrome because of the smooth user experience. In my uninformed opinion, FF is losing for the same reason the FSF's products never went mainstream, which is they're focusing too much on their message than delivering a solid product. Which is sad, because I do remember when Firefox was released just how good it was.

toyg 8y ago
They could have the best browser on the planet and they would still be a bit player. Google owns mobile and webmail like MS owned the desktop, and most people will use what the platform owner tells them to use. As long as the ruler doesn't fall asleep at the wheel, like MS did with IE, everyone else will be a bit player. I think market share is the wrong metric to fixate on. FF market share has never been particularly big, that shouldn't be the target and it never really was. The target used to be improving the web and being the most innovative and reliable engine for web standards. This is what Mozilla was good at, before they started thinking like your run-of-the-mill big company ("we need to find the Next Big Thing! Market share! Leverage! Competitive advantage!"...) and wasted years in pointless side-bets.
- bzbarsky 8y ago
  Market share is important for two reasons: 1) If your market share is too low, sites don't bother testing in your browser. Since most sites are not written based on standards but rather by trying things until they work [1], this means that sites will start breaking in your browser and it will become harder and harder for anyone to actually use it. This is what happened with Opera and Edge. 2) If your market share is too low, you don't get much say in standards discussions. It's not about having "big" market share. Having 90% market share or whatnot is a not really a goal for Firefox. But it does need "enough" market share that it can actually meaningfully achieve its mission [2]. Producing a browser that no one can actually use in practice and having no impact on the evolution of the web would both be failures in mission terms. 0.01% market share is "not enough". 20% is "enough". Where the line is in between is hard to tell. [1] Hard to fault web developers for this; the standards are so complex that writing "to the standard", which requires understanding it, is hard. It doesn't help that recent web standards have had a tendency to be over-engineered, partly due to being created by a large company at the behest of other parts of that large company, so having a tendency to be designed to be usable by large companies but not necessarily worrying about anyone else. [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/
Yoric 8y ago
By this reasoning, users should have been flocking to Firefox since Firefox 57. It's technologically great, in terms of both performance and UX, in addition to the good message. Doesn't seem to work, though.

toyg 8y ago

They could have the best browser on the planet and they would still be a bit player. Google owns mobile and webmail like MS owned the desktop, and most people will use what the platform owner tells them to use. As long as the ruler doesn't fall asleep at the wheel, like MS did with IE, everyone else will be a bit player. I think market share is the wrong metric to fixate on. FF market share has never been particularly big, that shouldn't be the target and it never really was. The target used to be improving the web and being the most innovative and reliable engine for web standards. This is what Mozilla was good at, before they started thinking like your run-of-the-mill big company ("we need to find the Next Big Thing! Market share! Leverage! Competitive advantage!"...) and wasted years in pointless side-bets.

bzbarsky 8y ago
Market share is important for two reasons: 1) If your market share is too low, sites don't bother testing in your browser. Since most sites are not written based on standards but rather by trying things until they work [1], this means that sites will start breaking in your browser and it will become harder and harder for anyone to actually use it. This is what happened with Opera and Edge. 2) If your market share is too low, you don't get much say in standards discussions. It's not about having "big" market share. Having 90% market share or whatnot is a not really a goal for Firefox. But it does need "enough" market share that it can actually meaningfully achieve its mission [2]. Producing a browser that no one can actually use in practice and having no impact on the evolution of the web would both be failures in mission terms. 0.01% market share is "not enough". 20% is "enough". Where the line is in between is hard to tell. [1] Hard to fault web developers for this; the standards are so complex that writing "to the standard", which requires understanding it, is hard. It doesn't help that recent web standards have had a tendency to be over-engineered, partly due to being created by a large company at the behest of other parts of that large company, so having a tendency to be designed to be usable by large companies but not necessarily worrying about anyone else. [2] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/ https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/

Yoric 8y ago

By this reasoning, users should have been flocking to Firefox since Firefox 57. It's technologically great, in terms of both performance and UX, in addition to the good message. Doesn't seem to work, though.