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This graph only covers the last decade, but it's enough to show that the trend for Mozilla ends in irrelevance. I personally think it's already there, but I wan

This graph only covers the last decade, but it's enough to show that the trend for Mozilla ends in irrelevance. I personally think it's already there, but I wanted to keep my original post a little more pragmatic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/media/File:StatCounter-browser-ww-yearly-2009-2020_(updated_until_November).png https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m... How can you look at that graph and say "you got this, Mozilla"? I personally think a big part of the problem is that part where you said they implement "most of the web standards". Most isn't good enough, especially when the web standards are growing. We need the web standards to grow so that web applications can successfully compete with apps in walled-garden app stores. That's what I care about. I care about not being beholden to Apple, Facebook, and Google taking a cut of my revenue or having a say in what content I publish. I have apps that would be hobbled to the point of being nearly unusable because of missing web standards in Firefox. I can release very high-tech apps in Chromium-based browsers that can go toe-to-toe with native apps on features and performance. I can't do that in Firefox, both because they have given up on several platforms that I care about and because they are falling behind on web standards on the other platforms that are left.

acdha 5y ago
How much of this is technical versus the constant promotion on Google.com, youtube.com, etc.? It's been a _long_ time since I had significant issues supporting Firefox (and the warts I do find are just as commonly Chrome as Firefox) but using it primarily I see fairly regular upsells across Google properties and near-constant friction from Google developers choosing to implement features in a non-standard manner with user-agent checks or use of Chrome's earlier APIs rather than the standard ones (they blocked U2F/FIDO from Safari users for a long time after release, for example). The GCP console breaks Firefox every month or two, Meet is the lone service which can't reliably do video chat, etc. That's probably not an explicit goal but it definitely highlights the risks of a single company setting priorities for so many different popular services.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  This is all the same sort of environment that Chrome entered into back in 2008, versus Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Yes, you've accurately described the challenges that Mozilla faces. If anything, it was easier for Chrome, because at that time Firefox had successfully clawed about 1/3 of the market from IE. So yes, things are harder for Mozilla today. Which is my point! That's all just excuses for the inevitable failure of Firefox as a viable platform. It is not a viable plan for making sure Firefox survives. It's self-pitying, backwards-looking, naval gazing, and as long as Firefox's biggest proponents continue to engage in it as their main line of defense, Mozilla will never claw back any market share.
kaba0 5y ago
Out of the big 3 (with edge being basically chrome at this point), safari is waaay behind firefox and chrome in terms of number of implemented standards and they still have plenty of market share — as if market share would at most correlate slightly with technical merit. And I don’t think that firefox would have gaping holes in terms of standard-compliance.
- moron4hire 5y ago
  Safari is A) only available on two operating systems, both owned by Apple, B) is mandated on one of those OSes (iOS), which C) just happens to be their most popular OS. I don't think it's very surprising that share of Safari for browsers across all OSes closely matches the share of iOS. Safari on macOS is only about 1/3rd of an OS that has 6 or 7% of the market, so you're only going to get about 2 points there. Firefox on macOS mirrors the rest of the market. Chrome is #1 on all platforms except iOS, where it just literally does not exist. Safari's relative popularity over Firefox is due to lack of choice on iOS. So no, I don't think you can make that claim that technical merit does not matter. If Apple were forced to allow other vendors distrubte their browsers on iOS (and they should be forced to), you would not see any uptick in Firefox's numbers, but a relatively big uptick in Chrome's numbers. I'm guessing like 10 points.
  - CrendKing 5y ago
    Exactly. It appears the market share of a browser is more linked to marketing, publicity, promotion, monopoly, rather than the coverage of web standards, as you pointed out. I bet if we give Firefox to Google and give Chrome to Mozilla tomorrow, Firefox will still end up having 60% market share. How much resource you have determines how big the territory you can enclose.
r00fus 5y ago
> Most isn't good enough, especially when the web standards are growing. Sorry, not following. Honestly, what I want is privacy and not seeing ads (esp. malware laden ones). FF is better than Chrome in that respect.

acdha 5y ago

How much of this is technical versus the constant promotion on Google.com, youtube.com, etc.? It's been a _long_ time since I had significant issues supporting Firefox (and the warts I do find are just as commonly Chrome as Firefox) but using it primarily I see fairly regular upsells across Google properties and near-constant friction from Google developers choosing to implement features in a non-standard manner with user-agent checks or use of Chrome's earlier APIs rather than the standard ones (they blocked U2F/FIDO from Safari users for a long time after release, for example). The GCP console breaks Firefox every month or two, Meet is the lone service which can't reliably do video chat, etc. That's probably not an explicit goal but it definitely highlights the risks of a single company setting priorities for so many different popular services.

moron4hire 5y ago
This is all the same sort of environment that Chrome entered into back in 2008, versus Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Yes, you've accurately described the challenges that Mozilla faces. If anything, it was easier for Chrome, because at that time Firefox had successfully clawed about 1/3 of the market from IE. So yes, things are harder for Mozilla today. Which is my point! That's all just excuses for the inevitable failure of Firefox as a viable platform. It is not a viable plan for making sure Firefox survives. It's self-pitying, backwards-looking, naval gazing, and as long as Firefox's biggest proponents continue to engage in it as their main line of defense, Mozilla will never claw back any market share.

kaba0 5y ago

Out of the big 3 (with edge being basically chrome at this point), safari is waaay behind firefox and chrome in terms of number of implemented standards and they still have plenty of market share — as if market share would at most correlate slightly with technical merit. And I don’t think that firefox would have gaping holes in terms of standard-compliance.

moron4hire 5y ago
Safari is A) only available on two operating systems, both owned by Apple, B) is mandated on one of those OSes (iOS), which C) just happens to be their most popular OS. I don't think it's very surprising that share of Safari for browsers across all OSes closely matches the share of iOS. Safari on macOS is only about 1/3rd of an OS that has 6 or 7% of the market, so you're only going to get about 2 points there. Firefox on macOS mirrors the rest of the market. Chrome is #1 on all platforms except iOS, where it just literally does not exist. Safari's relative popularity over Firefox is due to lack of choice on iOS. So no, I don't think you can make that claim that technical merit does not matter. If Apple were forced to allow other vendors distrubte their browsers on iOS (and they should be forced to), you would not see any uptick in Firefox's numbers, but a relatively big uptick in Chrome's numbers. I'm guessing like 10 points.
- CrendKing 5y ago
  Exactly. It appears the market share of a browser is more linked to marketing, publicity, promotion, monopoly, rather than the coverage of web standards, as you pointed out. I bet if we give Firefox to Google and give Chrome to Mozilla tomorrow, Firefox will still end up having 60% market share. How much resource you have determines how big the territory you can enclose.

r00fus 5y ago

> Most isn't good enough, especially when the web standards are growing. Sorry, not following. Honestly, what I want is privacy and not seeing ads (esp. malware laden ones). FF is better than Chrome in that respect.