3 ms·

I don't agree that the reason that Firefox is losing market share is outside of the control of Mozilla. Most people seem who stop using Firefox seem to do so f

I don't agree that the reason that Firefox is losing market share is outside of the control of Mozilla. Most people seem who stop using Firefox seem to do so for concrete reasons within the control of Mozilla: speed (now perhaps a historical issue), compatibility with sites and user experience (the various controversial changes to the url bar over the years for example). These are all within the control of Mozilla. I'm sure that marketing is an important point and it's true that Google can promote Chrome in many places. However Firefox gained considerable market share against internet explorer under (IMO) more difficult circumstances: it was pre-installed, Microsoft were considered as or more trustworthy by the public than Google now is and of course some sites could never work well with Firefox as they used proprietary features like ActiveX. Word of mouth is one of the primary reasons that browsers (other those that are pre-installed) are adopted and the word-of-mouth on Firefox has been poor relative to Chrome for some time.

pfraze 6y ago
The difference in resources between the companies obviously factors into product quality as well. The four-way focus of speed, security, compatibility with an evolving web spec, and extensibility is demanding to say the least.
roca 6y ago
Regarding speed: it's not that Firefox got slower, it's that Chrome set a new performance bar that Firefox had to meet --- and largely has met! Though a cost of meeting that performance bar was dropping XUL extensions, which is one of those changes that people still complain about. Contribution to Mozilla's defeat of IE is one of the great accomplishments of my life, but having been there for both fights, the fight against Chrome definitely was much tougher. Microsoft took their eye off the ball and basically stopped working on IE for a few years, which gave Mozilla a huge opportunity; no such luck with Chrome. The complexity of Web sites has increased a lot which makes it much harder to keep up and surpass a more well-resourced browser.

pfraze 6y ago

The difference in resources between the companies obviously factors into product quality as well. The four-way focus of speed, security, compatibility with an evolving web spec, and extensibility is demanding to say the least.

roca 6y ago

Regarding speed: it's not that Firefox got slower, it's that Chrome set a new performance bar that Firefox had to meet --- and largely has met! Though a cost of meeting that performance bar was dropping XUL extensions, which is one of those changes that people still complain about. Contribution to Mozilla's defeat of IE is one of the great accomplishments of my life, but having been there for both fights, the fight against Chrome definitely was much tougher. Microsoft took their eye off the ball and basically stopped working on IE for a few years, which gave Mozilla a huge opportunity; no such luck with Chrome. The complexity of Web sites has increased a lot which makes it much harder to keep up and surpass a more well-resourced browser.