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I noticed in the comments below how somebody mentioning Firefox's limited market share was heavily downvoted. I'm a Firefox user since forever, and will keep u

by fleddr 5y ago

I noticed in the comments below how somebody mentioning Firefox's limited market share was heavily downvoted. I'm a Firefox user since forever, and will keep using it. I also want Mozilla to win, and strongly empathize with their engineers whom are trying to make the best of it. That said, I think the reality check should not be avoided. There is no good in do-good software without reach. Based on statcounter, Firefox's market share went from a 2009 peak (32%) to a mere 3.29% as we speak. Just in the last year alone, it bleeds market share from 4.25% to 3.29%. So it keeps bleeding market share, 12 years in a row. The reason it's still losing market share likely is due to the mobile market still growing in size, whilst Firefox has no presence there: 0.48%. I have access to a handful of web properties, one of which very large and global (billions of page views). In our dashboards, Firefox does not even exist. It's not in the top 10. Above it are Chromium clones most have never heard of. So to the "ordinary" world, those without a particular stake in open source, it's a dead browser. It's even smaller than weird regional browsers that most businesses wouldn't explicitly support. (note that "support" is overstated as most web tech works just fine out of the box in Firefox) Besides the ordinary world, the grip on the developer community is also lost. Increasingly, I'm seeing developers coding up demos and experiments that break in Firefox, it's not even considered at all, where just a few years ago it was a developer-default browser. It's an extremely harsh reality check. Effectively Apple, an enemy of the open web, is our only savior against a full Chromium monopoly. Apple actively sabotaging and blocking the progress of the web, is our "hope". How bad can it get? Anyway, I'm sorry to bring this up, in particular in a release announcement. I bring it up because I believe impact is central to the discussion and trumps any feature and any engineering. If the crash is not reversed somehow, it is inevitable that very hard questions have to be answered. It's not what I would want. I hope an independent implementation will keep existing forever.

joelthelion 5y ago
As a side note, I don't understand why nobody uses Firefox on Android. It's an excellent browser, has ublock which is fairly rare on mobile. Why not use it?
- ergot_vacation 5y ago
  The lead developer has open contempt for the users, for one thing. Also, anyone with a few neurons to rub together can tell the UI is absolutely terrible from a functional perspective. Form over function, on a browser whose target demographic was supposed to be power users (long ago, in the misty past).
- wyre 5y ago
  Because Chrome comes standard on Android and Firefox has little marketing.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Not an Android user, but I can speculate about reasons. Most people don't install browsers. They barely know what a browser is. So they use the one pushed to them, or the one familiar with. In the case of Android, I believe Google Chrome is typically shipped as the default browser. And as it works fine, there's no incentive to install anything else. I doubt young/new internet users would even know about Firefox. If not set as default browser already, Google pushes it from widely popular services like Youtube. Bottom line, Google can reach billions of people, Mozilla none. Please remember this: people do NOT chose browsers, compare them, pick their favorite. They do none of these things. It's a collective illusion by us tech folks.
- AlexSW 5y ago
  To add to the comments not mentioned any UX reasons, I wanted to use Firefox on my phone as I do on my desktop and laptop but when using it I disliked the tab organisation compared to Chrome, and that's pretty much all I need the Web browser to be good for on my phone, where I'll often have up to 100 tabs open. Maybe it's changed now but Firefox had an impractical 3D scroll through tabs showing only the top IIRC, whereas Chrome has a much more practical grid of page previews that allowed for easy navigation. It also now allows one to group tabs very nicely. I hope Firefox has changed, or that there's a setting hidden away somewhere for these.
  - kbrosnan 5y ago
    Firefox has never had a 3d tab view on Android. It has had a grid or list view. Pretty sure the same is true on iOS but I don't use it as often as Android.
ergot_vacation 5y ago
Oh it's absolutely dead man walking at this point. Just a question of when they finally decide to admit it, turn off the lights and go home.
- fleddr 5y ago
  That's a crude way to put it, but yes, I can't see how this can go on. With limited resources, trying to keep up with giants speeding away from you, whilst market share keeps shrinking. I'm trying to think of a good exit plan, but I don't see any. Switching to Chromium, which would be a humiliating defeat, solves nothing. Chromium + privacy is Brave. Donating the entire project to the larger open source community won't do miracles either. It's highly questionable how many contributions will be made, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that there's no reach. It's not an engineering problem. If you can't push a browser as a default or plug it from a billion user platform, you're out of the game.
  - zarzavat 5y ago
    Firefox needs to become the default browser for web developers. They need to go all-in on developer tooling. The manifest v3 issue may help by poaching technical users from chrome. They also need to stop being so "principled" about features such as WebMidi. If I have to keep another browser around certain websites that Firefox is too principled to support then why bother using Firefox at all.
    - fleddr 5y ago
      They can't out engineer Google on dev tooling, or the dev ecosystem. They just don't have the resources. Chrome dev tools is vast and very rapidly evolving. Google has large evangelists teams dedicated to explaining dev tools or web tech in general. They are everywhere, on Twitter, Youtube, blogs, conferences, in web standards proposals. It's Google all the way down. If I'm not mistaken, Mozilla doesn't even have any evangelists anymore.
      - zarzavat 5y ago
aceazzameen 5y ago
I wish Firefox had a better mobile experience, which might help entice new users through word of mouth. Their biggest issue (on mobile at least) isn't speed, it's the UX. Obviously, they'll always be gimped on iOS unless something changes there. But the latest Android version still doesn't have feature parity to Firefox 68. And Firefox 68 wasn't perfect either. Some simple UX issues with current versions come to mind: All basic browser functionality is hidden behind a kebab menu, pull-to-refresh isn't live yet, if the toolbar is at the top then the new tab button is still at the bottom, the length of a drag to dismiss a tab is too long, tab management in general, etc. General users just won't bother with a browser that has an inferior UX to Chrome. Mozilla really needs to analyze browser affordances, specifically Chrome's, and look at how they can make it better, because Chrome isn't perfect either. It needs to be a top priority, so they can use mobile as a gateway for desktop installs. Ad-blocking is all it's got going for it on mobile, and that's not good enough for general users to convert. All that being said, I love the desktop experience. But they're hurting their brand on mobile, and they don't even know it.
- greazy 5y ago
  I'm not sure if you've used FF on mobile recently but the last update was good change to UX. Personally I prefer FF over Chrome on mobile. It's all I use now on mobile and rarely do I notice a difference. I think FF is relegated in people's minds to being broken on mobile. Which it was a while ago but now it's solid.
yborg 5y ago
FF market share isn't a technical or ideological issue - it's marketing and platform capture. Chrome is the new IE and has the entire Google ecosystem tied in with it to make it a compelling platform. They were also smart to push the Chromebook into schools so a couple of generations of kids grew up with The Web = Google Chrome. Microsoft installs Edge by default on Windows. These two companies alone have hundreds of times the resources of Mozilla. And the resources they do have they apply to things like Mitchell Baker's compensation. Without any effort to gain mindshare, the technical an social merits of Firefox are irrelevant. This isn't something you can grass-roots with a 3% share, you need influencers to broadcast, and that pretty much means you have to lay out some money. Unless maybe you can get Elon to shill Firefox in a tweet or something...
- fleddr 5y ago
  Agree with most of what you said, but want to add some nuance to some statements. The IE comparison in dominance would be accurate, but it's worthwhile to point out that Google aggressively pushes web tech forward, whilst IE largely stagnated it. I think that's a meaningful difference, at least to developers. And it's not just a passing note either. Firefox' once strong position was made possible by the gap left behind by IE. There is no gap now. The dominant party is speeding ahead. Edge is an interesting case, as it shows the vast power of Google. Edge's market share is an embarrassing 3.4% in total, and on mobile about zero. This shows that even with a desktop monopoly, they can't push it effectively. Supposedly, desktop users still keep using Chrome. Why wouldn't they? Edge is Chromium. Further, Microsoft does not have a single mass consumer service (like gmail, youtube, etc) to push it either. On mobile, Edge has no meaningful presence, and if mobile is some 70% of traffic these days, one can only conclude that all powerful Microsoft is completely unable to push a browser. If they can't, how can Mozilla?
  - dannyw 5y ago
    You are right that Google is aggressively pushing the web forward, but it's debatable whether it's a good thing; if you look at recent initiatives like FLoC, Web Packaging and Manifest v3.
aembleton 5y ago
> In our dashboards, Firefox does not even exist. Where are your dashboards getting the data from? I use Firefox, but like many Firefox users I use uBlockOrigin so I block requests to trackers like Google Analytics and StatCounter.
- fleddr 5y ago
  From Adobe analytics and sometimes Google analytics. You're right that ad blockers are on the rise, but that's also true for Chrome. Note that the points I made regarding market share seem to be consistent across the board. Whether you check Statcounter, an alternative to that, or the analytics of large websites. The story is the same: Firefox is tiny, lost in a see of dozens of equally tiny browsers.
  - remram 5y ago
    Firefox users are running uBlock and Badger on mobile too
- asoneth 5y ago
  That may be true that dashboards are under-counting Firefox, but the ultimate impact is the same. Without some kind of evidence that more than a trivial number of hits come from Firefox why would any small business pour time into catering to an audience that might exist instead of pursuing one that does?
  - ric2b 5y ago
    Firefox sends an easily identifiable user-agent string with every request. If businesses want to operate on bad data (analytics that depend on JS), that's their fault.
- sharps1 5y ago
  Less than 40% use extensions. Of the most popular - uBO is less than 5%, so most people likely aren’t blocking it unless it’s the default. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/usage-behavior https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/usage-behavior
ryantgtg 5y ago
How much do these market share numbers change when filtering for desktop users? My assumptions: 1) most users are on their phones, and 2) most phone users just use the default browser (safari and chrome). Whilst desktop users are more likely to install a browser of choice.
- fleddr 5y ago
  Have a look yourself: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide#monthly-202006-202106 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... Firefox seems to be at 7% desktop market share. Chrome on desktop has almost 10 times more market share. So I guess that's the browser of choice. OSX, an operating system with a market share of only 15%, delivers desktop Safari, which still has a larger market share than Firefox across ALL desktops. So also on desktops Firefox is losing, and keeps losing: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202106 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... The trend is down, and down only.
  - ryantgtg 5y ago
    Thanks! Sure, it’s low and all, but that does seem to backup my assumptions. Personally, I think FF is great. I use it on desktop and I used to use it on Android. Now that I’m using an iPhone, I stick with Safari because there doesn’t seem to be any point in using Firefox for iOS (no addons!).
Pokepokalypse 5y ago
Ironically: Google and Apple (via mobile) are doing to Firefox what Microsoft failed to do. Kill it with an integrated browser.
- coffeeling 5y ago
  Microsoft is murdering Firefox on desktop with the new Edge. And rightfully so, it's a damn good browser apart from some privacy issues like hardware ID and sync not being zero knowledge. Overall user experience wise it's probably straight up the best browser atm.
simondotau 5y ago
> Effectively Apple, an enemy of the open web, is our only savior against a full Chromium monopoly. Apple actively sabotaging and blocking the progress of the web, is our "hope". Caution: the following is a controversial opinion. You could see it another way—which is that Google, through Chrome, is trying to define what "progress" is by unilaterally pushing new web features into Chromium as quickly as they can. If "progress" is whatever Google wants it to be, then I commend Apple from doing all of the blocking and sabotage they can. In my opinion, the web doesn't need such a rapid pace of change. It's great already. There's no need to agonise over the rate of progress—especially when progress is being dictated by so few.
- fleddr 5y ago
  This assumes that Google is actively pushing improvements to the web that are largely useless or solely beneficial to Google itself. I believe that to be far from the truth, minus a handful of exceptions. I believe a better and more capable web is the only still "open" platform developers have if they don't want to submit to app stores. You could of course support the idea of a more conservative pace, as dictated by Apple. I don't buy that. For that they need to be a stand-up citizen on the web. They are not. Apple doesn't document things, has no working feedback loop, actively hampers or obscures things important to the web.
  - simondotau 5y ago
    I’m not saying the changes themselves are necessarily bad, I’m saying the rate of change and the rapid increase in complexity benefits Google at the expense of anyone who dares to compete with them. The web used to be more like the Linux kernel; today it is a fully captured corporate-led platform where only billion dollar companies can play. The problem isn’t that Apple isn’t keeping up with Google; the problem is there aren’t more entities like Apple pushing back.

by fleddr 5y ago

joelthelion 5y ago

As a side note, I don't understand why nobody uses Firefox on Android. It's an excellent browser, has ublock which is fairly rare on mobile. Why not use it?

ergot_vacation 5y ago
The lead developer has open contempt for the users, for one thing. Also, anyone with a few neurons to rub together can tell the UI is absolutely terrible from a functional perspective. Form over function, on a browser whose target demographic was supposed to be power users (long ago, in the misty past).
wyre 5y ago
Because Chrome comes standard on Android and Firefox has little marketing.
fleddr 5y ago
Not an Android user, but I can speculate about reasons. Most people don't install browsers. They barely know what a browser is. So they use the one pushed to them, or the one familiar with. In the case of Android, I believe Google Chrome is typically shipped as the default browser. And as it works fine, there's no incentive to install anything else. I doubt young/new internet users would even know about Firefox. If not set as default browser already, Google pushes it from widely popular services like Youtube. Bottom line, Google can reach billions of people, Mozilla none. Please remember this: people do NOT chose browsers, compare them, pick their favorite. They do none of these things. It's a collective illusion by us tech folks.
AlexSW 5y ago
To add to the comments not mentioned any UX reasons, I wanted to use Firefox on my phone as I do on my desktop and laptop but when using it I disliked the tab organisation compared to Chrome, and that's pretty much all I need the Web browser to be good for on my phone, where I'll often have up to 100 tabs open. Maybe it's changed now but Firefox had an impractical 3D scroll through tabs showing only the top IIRC, whereas Chrome has a much more practical grid of page previews that allowed for easy navigation. It also now allows one to group tabs very nicely. I hope Firefox has changed, or that there's a setting hidden away somewhere for these.
- kbrosnan 5y ago
  Firefox has never had a 3d tab view on Android. It has had a grid or list view. Pretty sure the same is true on iOS but I don't use it as often as Android.

ergot_vacation 5y ago

Oh it's absolutely dead man walking at this point. Just a question of when they finally decide to admit it, turn off the lights and go home.

fleddr 5y ago
That's a crude way to put it, but yes, I can't see how this can go on. With limited resources, trying to keep up with giants speeding away from you, whilst market share keeps shrinking. I'm trying to think of a good exit plan, but I don't see any. Switching to Chromium, which would be a humiliating defeat, solves nothing. Chromium + privacy is Brave. Donating the entire project to the larger open source community won't do miracles either. It's highly questionable how many contributions will be made, but that's not the real problem. The real problem is that there's no reach. It's not an engineering problem. If you can't push a browser as a default or plug it from a billion user platform, you're out of the game.
- zarzavat 5y ago
  Firefox needs to become the default browser for web developers. They need to go all-in on developer tooling. The manifest v3 issue may help by poaching technical users from chrome. They also need to stop being so "principled" about features such as WebMidi. If I have to keep another browser around certain websites that Firefox is too principled to support then why bother using Firefox at all.
  - fleddr 5y ago
    They can't out engineer Google on dev tooling, or the dev ecosystem. They just don't have the resources. Chrome dev tools is vast and very rapidly evolving. Google has large evangelists teams dedicated to explaining dev tools or web tech in general. They are everywhere, on Twitter, Youtube, blogs, conferences, in web standards proposals. It's Google all the way down. If I'm not mistaken, Mozilla doesn't even have any evangelists anymore.
    - zarzavat 5y ago

aceazzameen 5y ago

I wish Firefox had a better mobile experience, which might help entice new users through word of mouth. Their biggest issue (on mobile at least) isn't speed, it's the UX. Obviously, they'll always be gimped on iOS unless something changes there. But the latest Android version still doesn't have feature parity to Firefox 68. And Firefox 68 wasn't perfect either. Some simple UX issues with current versions come to mind: All basic browser functionality is hidden behind a kebab menu, pull-to-refresh isn't live yet, if the toolbar is at the top then the new tab button is still at the bottom, the length of a drag to dismiss a tab is too long, tab management in general, etc. General users just won't bother with a browser that has an inferior UX to Chrome. Mozilla really needs to analyze browser affordances, specifically Chrome's, and look at how they can make it better, because Chrome isn't perfect either. It needs to be a top priority, so they can use mobile as a gateway for desktop installs. Ad-blocking is all it's got going for it on mobile, and that's not good enough for general users to convert. All that being said, I love the desktop experience. But they're hurting their brand on mobile, and they don't even know it.

greazy 5y ago
I'm not sure if you've used FF on mobile recently but the last update was good change to UX. Personally I prefer FF over Chrome on mobile. It's all I use now on mobile and rarely do I notice a difference. I think FF is relegated in people's minds to being broken on mobile. Which it was a while ago but now it's solid.

yborg 5y ago

FF market share isn't a technical or ideological issue - it's marketing and platform capture. Chrome is the new IE and has the entire Google ecosystem tied in with it to make it a compelling platform. They were also smart to push the Chromebook into schools so a couple of generations of kids grew up with The Web = Google Chrome. Microsoft installs Edge by default on Windows. These two companies alone have hundreds of times the resources of Mozilla. And the resources they do have they apply to things like Mitchell Baker's compensation. Without any effort to gain mindshare, the technical an social merits of Firefox are irrelevant. This isn't something you can grass-roots with a 3% share, you need influencers to broadcast, and that pretty much means you have to lay out some money. Unless maybe you can get Elon to shill Firefox in a tweet or something...

fleddr 5y ago
Agree with most of what you said, but want to add some nuance to some statements. The IE comparison in dominance would be accurate, but it's worthwhile to point out that Google aggressively pushes web tech forward, whilst IE largely stagnated it. I think that's a meaningful difference, at least to developers. And it's not just a passing note either. Firefox' once strong position was made possible by the gap left behind by IE. There is no gap now. The dominant party is speeding ahead. Edge is an interesting case, as it shows the vast power of Google. Edge's market share is an embarrassing 3.4% in total, and on mobile about zero. This shows that even with a desktop monopoly, they can't push it effectively. Supposedly, desktop users still keep using Chrome. Why wouldn't they? Edge is Chromium. Further, Microsoft does not have a single mass consumer service (like gmail, youtube, etc) to push it either. On mobile, Edge has no meaningful presence, and if mobile is some 70% of traffic these days, one can only conclude that all powerful Microsoft is completely unable to push a browser. If they can't, how can Mozilla?
- dannyw 5y ago
  You are right that Google is aggressively pushing the web forward, but it's debatable whether it's a good thing; if you look at recent initiatives like FLoC, Web Packaging and Manifest v3.

aembleton 5y ago

> In our dashboards, Firefox does not even exist. Where are your dashboards getting the data from? I use Firefox, but like many Firefox users I use uBlockOrigin so I block requests to trackers like Google Analytics and StatCounter.

fleddr 5y ago
From Adobe analytics and sometimes Google analytics. You're right that ad blockers are on the rise, but that's also true for Chrome. Note that the points I made regarding market share seem to be consistent across the board. Whether you check Statcounter, an alternative to that, or the analytics of large websites. The story is the same: Firefox is tiny, lost in a see of dozens of equally tiny browsers.
- remram 5y ago
  Firefox users are running uBlock and Badger on mobile too
asoneth 5y ago
That may be true that dashboards are under-counting Firefox, but the ultimate impact is the same. Without some kind of evidence that more than a trivial number of hits come from Firefox why would any small business pour time into catering to an audience that might exist instead of pursuing one that does?
- ric2b 5y ago
  Firefox sends an easily identifiable user-agent string with every request. If businesses want to operate on bad data (analytics that depend on JS), that's their fault.
sharps1 5y ago
Less than 40% use extensions. Of the most popular - uBO is less than 5%, so most people likely aren’t blocking it unless it’s the default. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/usage-behavior https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/usage-behavior

ryantgtg 5y ago

How much do these market share numbers change when filtering for desktop users? My assumptions: 1) most users are on their phones, and 2) most phone users just use the default browser (safari and chrome). Whilst desktop users are more likely to install a browser of choice.

fleddr 5y ago
Have a look yourself: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide#monthly-202006-202106 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... Firefox seems to be at 7% desktop market share. Chrome on desktop has almost 10 times more market share. So I guess that's the browser of choice. OSX, an operating system with a market share of only 15%, delivers desktop Safari, which still has a larger market share than Firefox across ALL desktops. So also on desktops Firefox is losing, and keeps losing: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-200901-202106 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl... The trend is down, and down only.
- ryantgtg 5y ago
  Thanks! Sure, it’s low and all, but that does seem to backup my assumptions. Personally, I think FF is great. I use it on desktop and I used to use it on Android. Now that I’m using an iPhone, I stick with Safari because there doesn’t seem to be any point in using Firefox for iOS (no addons!).

Pokepokalypse 5y ago

Ironically: Google and Apple (via mobile) are doing to Firefox what Microsoft failed to do. Kill it with an integrated browser.

coffeeling 5y ago
Microsoft is murdering Firefox on desktop with the new Edge. And rightfully so, it's a damn good browser apart from some privacy issues like hardware ID and sync not being zero knowledge. Overall user experience wise it's probably straight up the best browser atm.

simondotau 5y ago

> Effectively Apple, an enemy of the open web, is our only savior against a full Chromium monopoly. Apple actively sabotaging and blocking the progress of the web, is our "hope". Caution: the following is a controversial opinion. You could see it another way—which is that Google, through Chrome, is trying to define what "progress" is by unilaterally pushing new web features into Chromium as quickly as they can. If "progress" is whatever Google wants it to be, then I commend Apple from doing all of the blocking and sabotage they can. In my opinion, the web doesn't need such a rapid pace of change. It's great already. There's no need to agonise over the rate of progress—especially when progress is being dictated by so few.

fleddr 5y ago
This assumes that Google is actively pushing improvements to the web that are largely useless or solely beneficial to Google itself. I believe that to be far from the truth, minus a handful of exceptions. I believe a better and more capable web is the only still "open" platform developers have if they don't want to submit to app stores. You could of course support the idea of a more conservative pace, as dictated by Apple. I don't buy that. For that they need to be a stand-up citizen on the web. They are not. Apple doesn't document things, has no working feedback loop, actively hampers or obscures things important to the web.
- simondotau 5y ago
  I’m not saying the changes themselves are necessarily bad, I’m saying the rate of change and the rapid increase in complexity benefits Google at the expense of anyone who dares to compete with them. The web used to be more like the Linux kernel; today it is a fully captured corporate-led platform where only billion dollar companies can play. The problem isn’t that Apple isn’t keeping up with Google; the problem is there aren’t more entities like Apple pushing back.