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> Firefox has basically ceded its mass market usage to chrome. Is that so? What are the numbers? And how do they look absolute? Is there an absolute decline in

by berkes 6y ago

> Firefox has basically ceded its mass market usage to chrome. Is that so? What are the numbers? And how do they look absolute? Is there an absolute decline in firefox use? Or just a relative one? Which of those really matter?

devenblake 6y ago
Relative numbers: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201509-202009 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... Absolute numbers: https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity The numbers are worse when you look at American data alone. It looks like Firefox is slowly shedding users. Probably because of Mozilla's questionable practices recently (the enlarged awesome bar, the layoffs, etc).
- berkes 6y ago
  Maybe I am missing a zoom function, or the visualisation is poor, but I see an almost flat curve, in some cases even slightly upwards (hours per day, probably Covid/work-from-home effect?). US data does show a very small downtrend on some graphs, but so small, that it hardly counts as "trend", IMO.
  - devenblake 6y ago
    According to statcounter in September 2016 Firefox had a roughly 15% market share. It now has roughly 9%. In America it's 13.7% down to 7.1%. The monthly active users chart for Firefox shows that the last time there were 250M+ active users was April 2019 and the last time there were 240M+ active was October of that year. The graph as presented shows a very slight curve downward, it would be more clear if the Y axis started at 200M (which would however bring about its own caveats - data visualization sucks).
  - gilrain 6y ago
    Firefox usage is flat or slightly trending down. However, overall internet usage grows each year, which means their market share is shrinking.
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  Note that StatCounter measures "page views", not "users". They're proportional if all users use the web an equal amount, but that last bit is just not true.
john_miller 6y ago
very very ballpark: 2010: 2 billion internet users, firefox has 30% market share => 600mio absolute users. 2019: 4.1 billion internet users, firefox has 4% market share => 165mio absolute users. That's of course very rough and may be a severly off, but the absolute number of firefox users seem to have shrunk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/media/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-yearly-2009-2020_(updated_until_October).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m... https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...
- fouc 6y ago
  Just incredible how mozilla killed firefox with so many short sighted actions including taking google's money.
- berkes 6y ago
  Worrying and indeed not good for Firefox, if correct. However, when you simply multiply "browser share" with "amount of 'internet' users, you may very well make some grave mistakes. E.g. does "Browsing Tinder" count as 'internet user'? Someone updating their instagram app? If so, you do miss a lot and maybe the numbers go very far in either direction when corrected?
- bzbarsky 6y ago
  > 4.1 billion internet users, firefox has 4% market share Note that the denominator for market share as measured by StatCounter is "page views", not "browser users". So for example, say you have 4.1 billion users, who use their laptop and phone evenly for their web browsing. On their phone, none of them use Firefox. All of them load the same number of pages every day. In this scenario, 4% of page views corresponds to 8% of users using Firefox on laptop. Note that these are not realistic assumptions, of course: people vary widely in terms of how many pages they load, vary widely in terms of how their web activity is split between mobile and non-mobile, etc. For example, in 2010, I would bet that the average Firefox user used the web more than the average IE user, so the StatCounter number for Firefox was inflated compared to the actual fraction of users using Firefox. If you want to measure actual number of Firefox users, you need to use a data service that tries to measure users instead of page views (i.e. not StatCounter).
sam_goody 6y ago
There is no way to get even remotely close to accurate numbers. Firefox blocks many trackers, including Google Analytics, by default. Chrome does not block trackers by default, and has been known to connect to Analytics even with plugins meant to block it. Hence the numbers will show FF basically as non existing. Which is just where G wants them to be. They do have some stats based on their own (much maligned) analytics, but nothing that can be used comparatively (at least AFAIK - would be happy to hear otherwise).
- crazygringo 6y ago
  Sorry, but there are lots of ways to get accurate numbers, including through Google Analytics. Firefox blocks third-party cookies used for tracking, not first-party, which is what GA uses. [1] The story that spread last year that Firefox blocks GA turned out to be a myth. I don't know why you're trying to promote a narrative that Firefox is far more popular than analytics show, but that's simply not true. Heck, just dump user agent headers on your own websites and measure those -- nobody's blocking that. [1] https://www.upbuild.io/blog/firefox-google-analytics-data/ https://www.upbuild.io/blog/firefox-google-analytics-data/
  - acdha 6y ago
    Looking at the console I see Firefox blocking ga.js from loading, not just the cookies.
    - jefftk 6y ago
      Stock Firefox, with default settings? That's not what I see: http://www.jefftk.com/stock-firefox-google-analytics-big.png http://www.jefftk.com/stock-firefox-google-analytics-big.png
      - tyfon 6y ago
        I suspect a high proportion of firefox users also have ublock or something similar installed
eitland 6y ago
It subjectively feels like we are back in 2006 when I and many of my fellow sysadmins had already changed to Firefox and my manager and some others insisted we shouldn't care about compability as everyone could just use IE. Only at that time Firefox had a massive advantage because of enthusiasm and an API that allowed for crazy things, up to allowing extensions like IE tab that, on Windows, would allow you to run certain sites with an IE web view inside a Firefox tab..!

by berkes 6y ago

devenblake 6y ago

Relative numbers: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-201509-202009 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... Absolute numbers: https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity The numbers are worse when you look at American data alone. It looks like Firefox is slowly shedding users. Probably because of Mozilla's questionable practices recently (the enlarged awesome bar, the layoffs, etc).

berkes 6y ago
Maybe I am missing a zoom function, or the visualisation is poor, but I see an almost flat curve, in some cases even slightly upwards (hours per day, probably Covid/work-from-home effect?). US data does show a very small downtrend on some graphs, but so small, that it hardly counts as "trend", IMO.
- devenblake 6y ago
  According to statcounter in September 2016 Firefox had a roughly 15% market share. It now has roughly 9%. In America it's 13.7% down to 7.1%. The monthly active users chart for Firefox shows that the last time there were 250M+ active users was April 2019 and the last time there were 240M+ active was October of that year. The graph as presented shows a very slight curve downward, it would be more clear if the Y axis started at 200M (which would however bring about its own caveats - data visualization sucks).
- gilrain 6y ago
  Firefox usage is flat or slightly trending down. However, overall internet usage grows each year, which means their market share is shrinking.
bzbarsky 6y ago
Note that StatCounter measures "page views", not "users". They're proportional if all users use the web an equal amount, but that last bit is just not true.

john_miller 6y ago

very very ballpark: 2010: 2 billion internet users, firefox has 30% market share => 600mio absolute users. 2019: 4.1 billion internet users, firefox has 4% market share => 165mio absolute users. That's of course very rough and may be a severly off, but the absolute number of firefox users seem to have shrunk. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/media/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-yearly-2009-2020_(updated_until_October).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m... https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-internet-users-worldwide/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/273018/number-of-interne...

fouc 6y ago
Just incredible how mozilla killed firefox with so many short sighted actions including taking google's money.
berkes 6y ago
Worrying and indeed not good for Firefox, if correct. However, when you simply multiply "browser share" with "amount of 'internet' users, you may very well make some grave mistakes. E.g. does "Browsing Tinder" count as 'internet user'? Someone updating their instagram app? If so, you do miss a lot and maybe the numbers go very far in either direction when corrected?
bzbarsky 6y ago
> 4.1 billion internet users, firefox has 4% market share Note that the denominator for market share as measured by StatCounter is "page views", not "browser users". So for example, say you have 4.1 billion users, who use their laptop and phone evenly for their web browsing. On their phone, none of them use Firefox. All of them load the same number of pages every day. In this scenario, 4% of page views corresponds to 8% of users using Firefox on laptop. Note that these are not realistic assumptions, of course: people vary widely in terms of how many pages they load, vary widely in terms of how their web activity is split between mobile and non-mobile, etc. For example, in 2010, I would bet that the average Firefox user used the web more than the average IE user, so the StatCounter number for Firefox was inflated compared to the actual fraction of users using Firefox. If you want to measure actual number of Firefox users, you need to use a data service that tries to measure users instead of page views (i.e. not StatCounter).

sam_goody 6y ago

There is no way to get even remotely close to accurate numbers. Firefox blocks many trackers, including Google Analytics, by default. Chrome does not block trackers by default, and has been known to connect to Analytics even with plugins meant to block it. Hence the numbers will show FF basically as non existing. Which is just where G wants them to be. They do have some stats based on their own (much maligned) analytics, but nothing that can be used comparatively (at least AFAIK - would be happy to hear otherwise).

crazygringo 6y ago
Sorry, but there are lots of ways to get accurate numbers, including through Google Analytics. Firefox blocks third-party cookies used for tracking, not first-party, which is what GA uses. [1] The story that spread last year that Firefox blocks GA turned out to be a myth. I don't know why you're trying to promote a narrative that Firefox is far more popular than analytics show, but that's simply not true. Heck, just dump user agent headers on your own websites and measure those -- nobody's blocking that. [1] https://www.upbuild.io/blog/firefox-google-analytics-data/ https://www.upbuild.io/blog/firefox-google-analytics-data/
- acdha 6y ago
  Looking at the console I see Firefox blocking ga.js from loading, not just the cookies.
  - jefftk 6y ago
    Stock Firefox, with default settings? That's not what I see: http://www.jefftk.com/stock-firefox-google-analytics-big.png http://www.jefftk.com/stock-firefox-google-analytics-big.png
    - tyfon 6y ago
      I suspect a high proportion of firefox users also have ublock or something similar installed

eitland 6y ago

It subjectively feels like we are back in 2006 when I and many of my fellow sysadmins had already changed to Firefox and my manager and some others insisted we shouldn't care about compability as everyone could just use IE. Only at that time Firefox had a massive advantage because of enthusiasm and an API that allowed for crazy things, up to allowing extensions like IE tab that, on Windows, would allow you to run certain sites with an IE web view inside a Firefox tab..!