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> The decline of Firefox is because of one thing only - the enormous marketing and engineering clout of Google and their utterly ruthless, relentless, anti-comp

> The decline of Firefox is because of one thing only - the enormous marketing and engineering clout of Google and their utterly ruthless, relentless, anti-competitive pushing of Chrome across Android and all their web properties and even through ads all over the world. That probably had an effect, but I don't agree that its the single biggest factor. Before Chrome arrived, my experience in general was that Firefox had gotten slow and buggy, and when one tab crashed the whole browser went down with it. It was a once great product that had stagnated. Compared to that, Chrome was a breath of fresh air, so me and many people I know migrated and then recommended it to friends and family. That had nothing to do with the Android version; at the time I didn't even have a smartphone, and many other tech people that migrated had iPhones. The desktop browser was simply a better product; and since at the time Google wasn't considered evil, and its Chromium base was open-source software, there was no reason not to use it. I eventually migrated back to Firefox myself, and am currently very happy with its performance, stability, and exploration of privacy features like Container Tabs. However, it wasn't before e10s I felt I could really recommend Firefox over Chromium to anyone else.

tarkin2 6y ago
I worked in a non-tech office where people used Firefox. At one point firefox was taking 30 seconds to load. I’d experienced this too and it seemed to be a bug in the profile manager. Nonetheless my colleagues were unimpressed. This was before Chrome was released. And when Chrome was released it was frankly better for most users, even without extensions at the start. Yes it was heavily advertised, but it also felt faster and gave a better experience. Now Firefox after the quantum reactor, and getting rid of XUL, upsetting plugin users, has caught up with Chrome—but they did this from what was once a leading position, and getting back those users lost seems less likely.
- Izkata 6y ago
  > I’d experienced this too and it seemed to be a bug in the profile manager. I'd experienced this as well, and the most common fix was indeed to create a new profile and import your bookmarks/etc - but at least for me, it was totally unnecessary: All I had to do was delete history older than 6 months, and it was back to being snappy as new.

tarkin2 6y ago

I worked in a non-tech office where people used Firefox. At one point firefox was taking 30 seconds to load. I’d experienced this too and it seemed to be a bug in the profile manager. Nonetheless my colleagues were unimpressed. This was before Chrome was released. And when Chrome was released it was frankly better for most users, even without extensions at the start. Yes it was heavily advertised, but it also felt faster and gave a better experience. Now Firefox after the quantum reactor, and getting rid of XUL, upsetting plugin users, has caught up with Chrome—but they did this from what was once a leading position, and getting back those users lost seems less likely.

Izkata 6y ago
> I’d experienced this too and it seemed to be a bug in the profile manager. I'd experienced this as well, and the most common fix was indeed to create a new profile and import your bookmarks/etc - but at least for me, it was totally unnecessary: All I had to do was delete history older than 6 months, and it was back to being snappy as new.