24 ms·

Why Firefox has been in decline for 12 years

• brador 5y ago
  Sabotage with the dangling carrot of a job at Chrome + red letter for privacy obfuscation.
• greatgib 5y ago
  Really great piece this article. Very good idea to have mapped the rants that have accumulated over time to the historical evolution of Firefox. It is often that you hear that a minority of complainers are just adverse to change and that the majority agree with the stupid changes. But, in fact, the majority of person will disagree in silence and just switch to alternative solutions without a vocal complaint. So, it is important to listen to vocal complainers, even in minority, because most of the time they are your canaries in coal mines. The one in front of new problems, ready to give some of their time and energy to save you. An additional point not mentioned in the article is the general lost confidence with the Mozilla organisation that more and more looks like to use the Firefox cash cow to fund useless random activities and insipid Management.
  • guerrilla 5y ago
    > But, in fact, the majority of person will disagree in silence and just switch to alternative solutions without a vocal complaint. That's an interesting point. The #1 Linux distribution on distrowatch for the last 12 month is now MX Linux, a non-systemd distro. Of course, the next 15 distros use systemd, so maybe that says nothing after all.
  • lavabiopsy 5y ago
    >So, it is important to listen to vocal complainers, even in minority, Maybe in some cases this is true, but I can't agree with that in terms of taking product direction from social media. In my (anecdotal) experience with areas where I have expertise, the loud and vocal complainers are almost always completely wrong about something or missing some key piece of information. In fact the angrier and more emotional the complaining, the more likely it seems to me that the complaint is based on false information. Maybe I'll have to do a comprehensive study on this at some point. If you meant "listen" only in terms of hear what they have to say in order to educate them then sure, that can be important for marketing to explain product changes, but it's not a way to drive product changes.
• BoumTAC 5y ago
  Because they are always super late. It's 2021 and we still don't have form and CB auto completion. It's been in chrome for more than 10 years already. It's such a basic feature, you earn a lot of time at not filling your address every time and even more with your card number you always forgot the number. A few month ago they finally add the tab feature for directly researching in a site except it still a lot worse user friendly than chrome and it worked on a few website only
  • shartacct 5y ago
    Savvier users would prefer this isn't saved at all. It's extremely easy for malicious software to datamine browser files for cookies/saved password/form data.
  • thefr0g 5y ago
    > we still don't have form and CB auto completion Yes please save all of your personal and payment information in your browser, I don't see how that could be a bad idea.
• pwdisswordfish8 5y ago
  > Then Google decided to make the tabs on top standard for its Chrome browser, which was designed for mobile devices not desktops. On a smartphone it may make sense, as there isn’t room for a full desktop style menu layout. On a desktop it is counterintuitive and breaks workflow with all other programs. Funnily enough, moving tabs to the top is actually one of the few UI changes I actually agree with and find more logical. Since the address bar and navigation buttons only control the active tab, they logically belong ‘inside’ the tab: switching to a different tab should also switch to a ‘different’ address bar and buttons. (Internally they may be the same object, but that’s just an implementation detail.)
  • sorenjan 5y ago
    I agree. Having tabs on top also makes sense from a Fitts's law perspective. I change tabs much more often than I use the title bar, so making it easier to click the tabs is good UI. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fitts%27s_law
  • hypertele-Xii 5y ago
    The most logical tab position is on the left or right, on desktop, because most of the space on a wide screen display is on the horrizontal axis, and you want to reserve as much vertical space as possible for scrolling websites (which happens vertically, and pretty much cannot be changed at this point, as it is baked into the web). There's an addon for that, but you no longer can hide the default tab bar! So now it just wastes space up there for me. Mozilla... just one day removed the option to hide it. First from the GUI, then from about:config. And also addons can no longer hide it either.
    • BeefWellington 5y ago
      > The most logical tab position is on the left or right, on desktop, because most of the space on a wide screen display is on the horrizontal axis, and you want to reserve as much vertical space as possible for scrolling websites (which happens vertically, and pretty much cannot be changed at this point, as it is baked into the web). This assumes a landscape-oriented monitor. I would suggest trying this out on a portait oriented monitor. Tabs on top make the most sense there. Also, I would generally suggest trying out a portrait oriented monitor. It's quite useful for coding, reading, etc.
• antimaekrej 5y ago
  Mozilla is kept alive by the money from Google, which is happy to keep Firefox on life support as a shield against anti-trust investigations and as an excuse for developers that there is not a browser monopoly now.
• fulafel 5y ago
  Isn't FF the only major browser that allows good adblocking extensions (uBlock origin etc) on mobile? I can't see how most people would live without that (or maybe i'm wrong about other browsers adblocking)
• Rijek33 5y ago
  Less ideology more technology
  • eska 5y ago
    Less promises, more keeping them.
  • dralley 5y ago
    Mozilla / Firefox isn't lacking in new technology. Firefox has made far more aggressive under-the-hood improvements than Chrome over the past 5 years. Rust, WebRender, Stylo, Pathfinder, wgpu, Dav1d, asm.js (which resulted in WebAssembly) etc. And they helped bootstrap a lot of efforts that benefited everyone massively. Take the list above and add: LetsEncrypt, Cranelift, AV1, Opus, WebGPU, Wasmtime Plus tooling like the reverse debugger (https://rr-project.org/ https://rr-project.org/) and sccache and Bors
• knob 5y ago
  One year ago they launched their new Android version, which is godawful. Just read the reviews on the android store. Why Firefox, why?!
  • dunefox 5y ago
    > Just read the reviews on the android store. 4 1/2 stars with over 4 million reviews. I use it regularly and have no real problems with it.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
    • kunagi7 5y ago
      Well, it did drop to 3.9 stars. Initially, Google Play reviews got filled with 1 star reviews from users complaining that a lot of their workflows were broken, things that they liked were removed, extensions not working (unless you used the initial nine excluded extensions). The rating dropped from 4.7 to 3.9 in less than a month. After that, some one star reviews were removed (maybe google thought it was review bombing or Mozilla used some kind of third party service for that). Ratings started to go up a bit after that. And suddenly a lot of 5 stars reviews with little to no content (thumbs up emojis, Nice/Great/Good, or just dots) started to appear and the rating almost returned to the previous normal. Nowadays is just a mix of good and bad reviews, most of them quite lengthy.
  • scrollaway 5y ago
    Firefox on Android is pretty fantastic. I feel like it's the one thing Mozilla did really right. As someone who has their laundry list of issues with regular Firefox, I have no serious complaint against their Android port.
    • blendergeek 5y ago
      I believe most of the complaints stem from the fact that a year or two ago, Mozilla removed most of the features (including the ability to install almost all addons). This mass feature removal is just one more data point in line with what is discussed on the article.
• FinanceAnon 5y ago
  After a year of using Firefox on Macbook, I've switched back to Chrome. The laptop was running really hot just from having a few tabs opened and Youtube playing in the background. It's been much better after I've made the switch to Chrome. For privacy reasons, I would rather stick to Firefox, but I feel like the performance is worse.
  • capableweb 5y ago
    Yup, the performance of browsers are highly dependent on their host. Firefox performs best on Linux (and beats the other browsers for Linux too), so the default on my Linux machine is Firefox. For Windows, it's Chrome and for Mac is Safari. Wish there was some syncing utility between the three of them, as switching between them has always been a bit of a hassle.
    • Arech 5y ago
      I strongly disagree regarding Windows. I use Firefox on Windows as a primary browser and occasionally Chrome, - Firefox offers much better performance even having some extensions installed while Chrome is in vanilla state. The only issue with FF for me is exactly as the other commenter said - Mozilla likes to piss off its core userbase.
      • ipaddr 5y ago
        I strongly disagree. I have it installed on Windows 7, Windows 10 and the performance has gone so far down in the last few years I've had to switch to chrome.
        • magicalhippo 5y ago
          What kind of performance are you talking about? I've been using it as my only browser at home (Win10) for years and I haven't noticed much. edit: Really just curious, I'm assuming I'm using it differently.
        • helij 5y ago
• MrPatan 5y ago
  I use firefox as my daily. For several reasons I've started to also use Brave and Edge. And I am quite happy with them, I have to report! And I use Chrome to keep it logged in to my gmail only there, I'm logged out of Google (with blocked cookies) everywhere else. Firefox only on mobile, and I'm quite happy. I haven't tried the others yet.
• pteraspidomorph 5y ago
  I agree with this opinion piece. Firefox is a product strangely hostile to its core userbase. It's almost like they've been deliberately trying to sabotage themselves for years. I don't use it because I approve of all their stupid pigheaded UI choices, I use it because it has been the least bad option despite those choices. That might not go on for much longer, though.
  • Torwald 5y ago
    > I don't use it because I approve of all their stupid pigheaded UI choices I don't use Ff because I can't approve with exactly one of their UI choices: tab closing button on the wrong side. I am on Mac and this just messes with my muscle memory too much. (It used to be that the buttons where on the right side, which is to say the left side.) However, other than that I see a lot of UI love in both the macOs and iOS Ff interfaces. One can feel the team works from their hearts. I wish they would use their brains more. Painful irony. EDIT: Anybody an idea why this got downvoted?
    • Tagbert 5y ago
      Perhaps people think that basing your choice of browser on a minor point like the arbitrary location of tab close buttons is questionable. On second thought, that is a very HN type of reasoning so… I can’t explain it.
  • greypowerOz 5y ago
    i use ffox on android because (for some reason) it's the only one I'm aware of that has ublock origin addon...( happy to be proven wrong :) I also used to use reader mode once in a while...
    • znpy 5y ago
      Firefox on Android used to just freeze for me. I'm happily on brave mobile, which does block ads.
      • 5y ago
• yosamino 5y ago
  I use Firefox exclusively, but the only thing I can think of to write in this box are all the unneccessary frustrations they are putting me through. The list is long. Item one: Why does Mozilla have so many ways to file bugs* ? Which is a pity, because, besides the fact that Chrome has almost all of the marketshare, they also basically own Mozilla financially (is this still correct ?) and technologically Firefox uses Skia and Harfbuzz for rendering, both heavily dependent on Google. So there is basically no competition for Google in the browser market. This can't be good.
  • guerrilla 5y ago
    How is HarfBuzz heavily dependent on Google? It's been around forever, spawn of FreeType.
    • junon 5y ago
      It is owned and maintained by Google and Facebook. https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/main/COPYING https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/blob/main/COPYING
      • payamb 5y ago
        HarfBuzz is maintained by Behdad Eafahbod who _used_ to work in Google and Facebook.
        • junon 5y ago
          Doesn't matter who maintains it. It matters who owns copyrights.
          • dvdkon 5y ago
            That doesn't matter, since it's FLOSS with an irrevocable licence. That's the great thing about free software.
            • 5y ago
• eptcyka 5y ago
  Firefox is great and all, but its consistently buggy with its clipboard on Gnome/Wayland for the past year.
  • thefr0g 5y ago
    > its consistently buggy At least it's consistent :D For me it is: I can't copy from the URL-bar to other apps. Inside of firefox works, copying from everywhere else works. I didn't care to investigate though as I rarely need to do that and I was pretty sure it's my fault for locking it into it's own user namespaces.
    • eptcyka 5y ago
      For me, copying into Firefox can lock it up, and trying to paste from Firefox into non-Firefox can also lock it up. I tried looking into this, and it might be related to running X apps side-by-side, but it feels like a weird interaction between Firefox and gnome-shell. Regardless, it seems like other applications are working fine, so I think this is an issue with Firefox.
• trm42 5y ago
  My personal pet peeve is that the Chrome's different User Profiles is so easy to use. I'm aware of the different plugins that can offer similar functionality but the setup Chrome is offering is so simple and intuitive that switching feels annoyingly too complicated. Otherwise I've been really surprised how much better Firefox has gotten in the last two years. Good to see old giant still alive.
  • _fat_santa 5y ago
    Have you tried firefox containers? They basically do the same thing as chrome but you can run tabs from different contains right next to each other.
    • deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
• lousken 5y ago
  Idk about 12 years but I know about last two years - many companies and workers had to switch to WFH. So that means using some sort of chat&video&audio software/website. What did Firefox do to fix the compatibility e.g. with Teams? That should've been the highest priority. Instead, it took them years to get at least the GPOs right, autoupdate is the same story... so many things in corprote env were or still are PITA to set up in Firefox. So unfortunately no wonder it's Chrom(ium) for every single big company out there. And don't get me wrong, I try to use exclusively Firefox whenver I can, but this is really frustrating to me as sysadmin.
  • Yoric 5y ago
    That's the vicious circle: 1. Google basically controls the web. 2. Whenever a new Web API shows up, browser vendors have to decide between implementing the standard and copying the bugs, exotic behaviors and extensions that are implemented in Chromium. 3. Websites are tested on Chromium, so they start to rely on Chromium's bugs, exotic behaviors and extensions. 4. When a website breaks in Firefox (or Safari), people claim that it's the fault of Firefox devs and switch to Chromium. The early web got tired of this when it was Microsoft at the wheels, but it feels that few people are particularly interested in fighting the good fight these days. Much easier to blame Mozilla.
    • 0xCMP 5y ago
      On the other hand, how many of these browsers are actually building or inventing any of these new apis to support things like screensharing, video, audio, and etc so they're not hacks except for chrome?
      • Yoric 5y ago
        Well, given that WebRTC was mostly invented at Mozilla, at least one.
    • lousken 5y ago
      I can blame whoever I want, but at the end of the day, the problem that I have to deal with is the user saying - Teams doesn't work. What am I supposed to do with it?
• bertman 5y ago
  HN hug of death? Google Cache version: https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1Pr-MHwO09kJ:https://news.itsfoss.com/firefox-continuous-decline/ https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:1Pr-MH...
• laurent92 5y ago
  My Firefox has become adware. Adware for Mozilla, but still: Every new tab I open, there is a “WE CARE FOR YOUR PRIVACY” message awaiting for me. Every restart, “LOOK AT HOW WE HAVE FEWER ADS, MORE PRIVACY”. And from time to time, if I don’t open a tab by myself, it will install Pocket and/or open two tabs at startup, one for the release notes and one for browsing, but still with the little mention “Firefox has been awarded the Firefox of the year by Firefox, thanks to how we don’t let the bad guys follow you with ads. Also please create an online profile so we upload all your passwords to the cloud. Because you’ll be safer.” Honestly, Mozilla has lost the big picture. The whole point of it was to have fewer messages that occupy the mind and disrupt tasks, and Chrome does it better, as long as I’m logged in.
  • corty 5y ago
    Also, in my mind, exchanging Chrome's insistence on Google logins is just the same as Firefox's insistence on their proprietary sync and pocket. I'll say no to every one of those things, because I do value my privacy and none of them provide proper self-hosted options.
    • ragesh 5y ago
      I thought it was possible to host your own sync server for Firefox. Is this no longer true?
      • corty 5y ago
        It is theoretically true. They have changed the protocol at least three times, there are no user-accessible settings (just about:config) to point at your own sync server, there is no documentation. And at their rate of breaking stuff, your sync server will be obsolete as soon as you get it running. Happened to me, will never waste time on it again. And the open-source version of the sync server is bad software, age-old python, tons of code smells. I'd wager it is not what they are using themselves.
        • cnst 5y ago
• drunkpotato 5y ago
  Not a direct response to this piece, but the two things keeping me on Firefox these days, besides it being a decent browser generally, are container tabs and tree style tabs. They’re both very convenient for my workflow. I think all the browsers are pretty good, but those two features are great.
  • avh02 5y ago
    I'm always amazed at people's resistance to the concept of tree style tabs (or even just tabbing vertically instead)... The horizontal space is far less valuable on widescreens (most websites are just a column down the middle anyway) and top/horizontal tabbing systems are worthless when you have a non-trivial number of tabs.
    • JohnFen 5y ago
      It's just a matter of taste, is all. I personally hate vertical tabs (or vertical tasks bars, etc). They're just a pain the butt for me. But clearly there are others who love them. Vive la différence! But, with tabs specifically, I very rarely have more than two going at a time. That probably matters.
    • drunkpotato 5y ago
      Chrome's tab groups are pretty good. Not quite as useful to me as tree style tabs, but better than nothing. I use Firefox as my primary browser, Chrome for some things, and Safari for others. It's good to have the variety, I think.
• tiahura 5y ago
  Look at Mozilla’s leadership page. Why would you expect a tech company run by HR and D&I to be successful? It would appear that Mozilla has become captive to a single person as their personal hustle to enrich themself and a few others to the organization’s detriment.
  • mkr-hn 5y ago
    I got as far as what looks to my apparently naïve analysis like a qualified CEO who's been there from the start and realized I have no idea what you're talking about. A random sampling shows people who've been there since the 2000s, or come with what passes for solid engineering credentials in tech. Maybe you could expand this out a little for people who aren't In The Know. Specifics on why each person on the page isn't qualified to lead a browser company will help a ton. Thanks in advance.
• clement_b 5y ago
  I use both Chrome (for work) and Firefox (personal) on Windows. Beyond a few specifics, I often can't remember which I am using. There might be many differences under the hood, but in a regular usage Firefox is really damn good. Even on Google's properties. I also use Firefox exclusively on mobile, and same. At the end of the day, they are two very mature, slightly different executions of the same concept. I get the frustrations that may exist on the power user / dev side, but I think our crowd is generally not fair enough in recognizing the tremendous efforts it take to compete with Google with a fraction of its resources. Note: I use Chrome for work to 1/ isolate my work from personal sessions without the hassle of containers or profiles, and 2/ because I work for a web app targeting Chrome (per the market share).
  • aero-glide2 5y ago
    In desktop, there is barely any difference now (Chrome's save as pdf feature is more accurate with tables). In mobile however, Chrome seems noticeably faster.
    • alserio 5y ago
      Counter point: install ublock origin on firefox mobile (which you cannot do on chrome) and the web is very noticeably faster on firefox.
      • nsonha 5y ago
        this and "Video on background fix" which allows you to "listen" to youtube and multitask. I don't use the youtube app to avoid all the addictive features and tracking, and even it doesn't play in the background.
        • stjohnswarts 5y ago
          Newpipe is great for youtube background listening.
        • webmobdev 5y ago
• wopwops 5y ago
  I nearly stopped using it with the terrible color changes to the tabs (no contrast) in v92. I mean, I thought, this is finally the last straw. But I found that I could customize some colors, especially the active tab, with an add on called Firefox Color. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/firefox-color... Maybe it will help someone who has the same problem. I really miss the old and customizable Firefox.
  • JohnFen 5y ago
    > I really miss the old and customizable Firefox. This is really the largest beef I have with Firefox. Firefox had been making poor (IMHO) UI decisions for a very long time -- but it didn't matter, because it was customizable enough that you could fix them. Now that it's much less customizable, though, there is so much that can no longer be fixed.
• bm3719 5y ago
  There's a theory in the Free Software community that BigTech sponsorship of Mozilla was intended to bring about the current state of affairs. The idea is that MS, Google, and others really have no reason to donate to a direct competitor. Perhaps they did so because they knew it would give them control. That control was exercised over the years and now Mozilla is more a social justice advocacy organization than a foundation that develops a web browser. The sorry state of FF was the inevitable result. Whether you buy this narrative or not, the fact is there remains no effective threat whatsoever to the massive data collection that occurs whenever you use Chrome or Edge. 10 years ago, MS/Google had no ability to spy on the web surfing of the vast majority of computer users. Now they do.
  • krylon 5y ago
    Well, once upon a time, Microsoft invested quite a bit of money in Apple to keep them alive. Allegedly, they did this so they could tell the DoJ with a straight face that they were not a monopolist, after all they had a competitor. I would not be surprised if Google's support for Mozilla is based on similar reasoning.
    • GekkePrutser 5y ago
      I don't think that was the only thing. There was also also the friendship between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Monopoly laws care about marketshare and Apple's was tiny at that point, especially in the business market
    • nerdponx 5y ago
      This theory is frequently stated as fact here on HN, so clearly you're not the only one to feel that way.
    • JohnFen 5y ago
      But Apple and Microsoft weren't competitors then. Apple was a hardware manufacturer. Microsoft was a software manufacturer. While there was some overlap in their product offerings, they were in different businesses and so weren't really competitors.
    • 5y ago
• kiryin 5y ago
  I use Firefox exclusively on all of my devices, but my opinions on both the browser and Mozilla are pretty grim. Apart from the advancements in first-party isolation and containerization I can name very few "features" intorduced in the past 5~ years that I view in a positive light. Firefox has become less configurable, in other words more hostile to the user, chasing after chrome with every new pants-on-head UI decision, while abandoning important technical research like Servo that could've brought them to the bleeding edge of browser development. I've come to terms with my position as being held hostage, simply because the only other option is Google and thus infinitely worse, but I am not happy. Change is needed.
• secondcoming 5y ago
  Firefix has been my choice of browser for years. I've never had an issue with it. I've not noticed any broken websites, but I'm not a webdev.
  • widea 5y ago
    I agree.
  • alexruf 5y ago
    Also using Firefox for years as my main browser. Can't complain. Never really considered switching, since there is no real alternative for me in today's browser market (especially in terms of privacy).
• Yoric 5y ago
  I have an alternative set of explanations regarding why Firefox is seeing a continuous decline for the last 12 years. 1. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are not public but I would be surprised if Google didn't have 10x more people working on Chrome vs. the number of people working on Firefox. 2. Mozilla is competing against Google. Numbers are again not public but I remember reading estimates that the equivalent ad budget for promoting Chrome during year 1 was about 6x the entire budget of Mozilla for that period (writing "equivalent" because webside, Google is its own ad agency). 3. Mozilla is competing against Google. Google owns countless properties besides Chrome, from Google Docs to Google Translate to Android, and leverages all of these (great products) to lead users towards Chrome. Case in point: many properties that don't/didn't work or work correctly with Firefox could be made to magically work if you changed your user agent to Chrome. 4. Mozilla is competing against Google. While Mozilla was front and center on many things open-source, relying on volunteers, Google employs countless (talented) Tech Evangelists and managed to attract considerable goodwill, much of it at the expense of the army of volunteers who used to help Mozilla. 5. Replace "Google" with "Apple" in the above points, adapt product names and repeat. 6. In 2011, predicting that the only way out of this was to outmaneuver Google and Apple on mobile devices/silos, Mozilla bet the farm on Firefox OS and lost. Mozilla never recovered. 7. During the Brendan Eichgate, Mozilla became a hapless victim of the US culture wars, mostly acccidentally. Mozilla never recovered. Now, I'm not claiming that Mozilla never made any other mistake wrt technology or UX or PR. We've all seen a number of them. What I'm claiming is that these mistakes have next to no influence in comparison to the points above.
  • phillipseamore 5y ago
    To points 1-4, where would FF be without $400m a year from Google?
    • ndiddy 5y ago
      I suspect Google thinks the $400m/year is worth not having to deal with antitrust proceedings due to having a competing desktop browser.
      • 5y ago
• tucosan 5y ago
  FF corrupted my profile twice during the update process. It's a known issue for years. After I lost all tabs and bookmarks for a second time, I decided to bite the bullet and go back to Chrome.
• deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
• altgans 5y ago
  I just want to say that Firefox doesn't yet appear to have a way to a) change the hotkeys (!) b) export the browser history* *except by manually getting the needed records from the places.sql file
• nakovet 5y ago
  Due to the shrinking user base another thing becoming more common these days is broken websites on Firefox. Sometimes something small like WebRTC processing, other times the site simply won't load. 1x/week I open a website in Chrome incognito to use it due to not working on Firefox, last week was a restaurant reservation website.
• fbhabbed 5y ago
  Blog posts like those feel more and more like some sort of weird propaganda, to be honest
• yawaworht1978 5y ago
  Go to the dev tools and then to console. You need to approve pasting by typing out the words. This is one of the examples. The browser itself is not bad, better than Safari, but Chrome does everything better, bookmarks, history, the list never ends.
  • lpcvoid 5y ago
    Why can't Chrom(e/ium) drag tabs to bookmarks or toolbars in 2021?
• sleepless 5y ago
  Longtime Firefox user here. Oddly I have no problem with Tabs on top (I prefer that UI design), low contrast between tabs (there are favicons and text which clearly indicate the tabs, I am not lacking anything to make out where a tab is), removing XUL (only using few add-ons and those transitioned), performance (is fine for me on a macbook pro). Sometimes it feels to me as if there is a trend to bash on weaker projects like fediverse, encryption projects, open source browsers, ... For me the main argument to use Firefox is not living in the Google universe which is quite a huge value in itself and the fact that it is open source. Oh and they finally added proper dark mode on macOS and did quite some work for Firefox to look and feel more at home on macOS in the last versions. This is really nice to see and appreciated. Btw Firefox has seen a bottom in 2021 June and user numbers have been going up slightly since then: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worldwide/#monthly-202007-202109 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/desktop/worl...
  • pasc1878 5y ago
    The last version messed up macos dark mode completely. It ignores much css including including add-ons like tree style tabs which is the main reason I use firefox. So I am stuck on v90 The bug says fixed but the nightlies show it hasn't
    • sleepless 5y ago
      What do you mean by "it ignores much css"? I am using tree style tab add-on and it shows fine for me.
      • pasc1878 5y ago
        If you use high contrast it breaks css
        • sleepless 5y ago
          You mention a bug but did not link the bugzilla ID. Want to share the link to the bug for this problem?
• invalidname 5y ago
  Tabs on top correlates to Chrome coming out and dominating the market then Firefox playing catch up. That's why usage is down. Chrome. It was actually a better browser for a long time and Firefox made the effort of aping the good ideas the Chrome team had. It's finally pretty close and surpasses Chrome on many fronts but turning the tides is pretty hard. I agree that listening to users is important but some users hold you back in a competitive market. Firefox takes cpu in the background because websites have JavaScript code and so do plugins. Chrome does the same thing.
• dgan 5y ago
  I always use FF sync feature between laptops The only regular pain for me is bad webrtc support, which makes me use Chromium for meetings.. otherwise it just doesn't work
• morpheos137 5y ago
  I wish somebody would make a light weight web browser that was compatible with modern standards. I like Opera but I don't think it is available for my operating system (OpenBSD) any more.
• 0xbadcafebee 5y ago
  I would pay money for a browser that was more like the first Firefox. Not insanely bloated and slow, virtually no features to speak of, simple, small, functional. Even if it only works on 80% of the web, fine with me. I want to browse text and pictures, not run an entire second operating system just to browse text and pictures. And add back the options and user functionality they removed over the years so it's less of a pain in the ass to use.
• 8eye 5y ago
  they should look into making an AI browser, that helps users cross reference sources to articles, that would help curb misinformation campaigns, have site details listed, age of domain, score, possible sources, reddit and other sites opinions of that site, also they should create a decentralized app store that is like a mixture of the app store with the github app, it can be used like tor but harness the open source community. there’s a lot of things they could do
• nickthemagicman 5y ago
  I just couldn't get over the PROFILE UI. Switching profiles was unpleasant and confusing. They already have them implemented, why not give it a good UI like Chrome? if they got that sorted I would be a Firefox user for life.
• indymike 5y ago
  Unpopular opinion: Personally, I'd love to see Mozilla take on Apple in court. Firefox, Gecko rendering engine and all, should be on iOS. Not allowing competing browsers is more anti-competitive than not allowing third party payments for in-app purchases, and would lead to incredible amounts of innovation.
  • tgv 5y ago
    That would then lead to Chrome being allowed on iOS too, undoing any potential gain in a day. There's (IMO) nothing anti-competitive about not allowing other browsers. They all serve the same web pages. Cynical take: if Mozilla were to start such a law suit, it would be to avoid Google having to disclose how much money they make from Chrome users.
  • arepublicadoceu 5y ago
    Not unpopular at all around here, except that Mozilla going to court against a behemoth is a sure way to drain all their funding for little to no gain (there’s no evidence that firefox would gain more users with their engine on iOS). Mozilla should use their money to improve their browser on desktop and mobile. Firefox on iOS shows how little Mozilla cares about the platform. For instance, no real adblock, they only have a tracker blocker which blocks most ads but misses a LOT of web annoyances like cookie banners and YouTube ads. Example of third party browsers with full featured adblockers: - edge have adblock plus - brave have a built in adblock - iCab Their reader mode is extremely amateurish compared to safari. Increasing font size makes the title of the article absolutely huge.
    • SV_BubbleTime 5y ago
      > Firefox on iOS shows how little Mozilla cares about the platform. I agree, but also aren’t alternative browsers on IOS still just window dressing? Since the backend is always Safari?
• stingraycharles 5y ago
  Since the original source is down and I couldn’t find any other mirror, here’s an AMP mirror: https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.itsfoss.com/firefox-continuous-decline/ https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.itsfoss.com/firefox-contin... If someone has a better one that’s not AMP, please post it. :)
• Krasnol 5y ago
  Chrome spread like malware. Bundled with Freeware on PCs and being the de facto browser on most mobile phones on this planet. Firefox never had a true chance to compete on the same level and I'm happy they didn't and still exist.
• bryan0 5y ago
  Tree style tabs have been the best web browser innovation for me in the past several years. https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-tab/ https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...
  • nerdponx 5y ago
    Tree Style Tabs, uBlock Origin, and Tab Session Manager. Together these extensions make the browser feel like an actual useful tool. As long as Firefox supports plugins like this (and hopefully we have already seen the end of major breaking changes to the plugin APIs), I will use it. Not to mention container tabs.
• sys_64738 5y ago
  I use FF for all financial/banks website stuff as I don't run any sort of blocker with it. Everything else is done in Vivaldi. Got to isolate the former.
• egberts1 5y ago
  and just NOW, YouTube (also owned by Google) has turned off captioning support in Firefox for Apple iPhone. Only Safari and Chrome will support captioning.
• throwaway210911 5y ago
  Firefox has been in decline for 12 years because it only exists for the FAANG companies to throw money at so they can dodge claims of being a monopoly. It is not there to be useful nor to make a profit. Their core business is taking money from large companies and performatively acting like a company to look like 'competition.'
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    This looks ever more like the most plausible explanation for anything about Mozilla. It explains, for instance, the conspicuously overpaid CEO: In this context, that's not only "not a big negative", but an actual positive: it's very "corporate".
• ianbicking 5y ago
  I think in each step the choices Firefox made usually made sense. As Firefox removed or changed features at each juncture they really tried to choose what would work for the most people. A kind of utilitarian product design. And yet it declined, and the critique here isn't entirely wrong (but I think it's mostly wrong). Neither the path Firefox took, nor the path described here, would be enough to stop that decline. A bunch of hidden and obscure features that don't make sense in totality is not a great approach. I personally felt strongly, when I was with Mozilla, that differentiated products would help get out of that quagmire. I never had any influence at a meaningful level - probably my own fault - so the idea never went anywhere. But with multiple products you can provide niche features that are meaningful and attractive. If there are ways to use interacting features to achieve some end that is not a marketable approach: there's no story, there's nothing to attract the user to return after installation. By saying "here's a browser for research" (or studying, watching videos, managing an online store, programming, etc) you come up with an understanding between the user and product maker about purpose. Chrome had, and still has, a lock on the kind-of-good-enough-for-everyone market. A niche approach like Vivaldi is still less successful than Firefox is today. Firefox needs to find entirely different approaches.
  • JohnFen 5y ago
    My problem with what happened to Firefox is really simple -- the changes that they've made have made the browser dramatically less usable for me. I've been using an older version of Waterfox for years now because it kept the things that made Firefox great for me. However, as more and more websites are unusable with an old browser, I finally reached a tipping point that forced me to switch to something more recent. I investigated every (as near as I can tell) offering on the market today. Sadly, the modern Firefox was the least bad option after all, so I'm now using that. I despair for the state of web browsers these days.
• herf 5y ago
  Before Chrome launched in late 2008, Google promoted Firefox as the browser to get. That changed when Chrome launched. It's amazing to read about things Firefox did "wrong" right after that in 2009 - correlation just isn't causation here.
• deadalus 5y ago
  I knew Mozilla was going downhill when they started purging words from the project. When your inclusion efforts start alienating moderate users it might be time to rethink them. * Removing "meritocracy" from the governance docs - https://blog.mozilla.org/careers/words-matter-moving-beyond- https://blog.mozilla.org/careers/words-matter-moving-beyond- * Changing "master password" to "primary password" - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/primary-password-replac https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/primary-password-replac * Removing "crazy" from the codebase - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675987 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675987 * Removing words deemed as reference to mental illness - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675986 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675986 The difference in the project from 15 years ago is stark. The Mozilla mission 2005: "Established in July, 2003, with start-up support from America Online's Netscape division, the Mozilla Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project." The Mozilla mission 2021: "Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent." Where they once were just supporting a software project they're now a political movement. They spout "equity", "justice", and "advocacy" all over mozilla.org. No thanks, I just want a decent software.
  • deleted 5y ago
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  • noasaservice 5y ago
    ^^ How to say you're a white male in tech, without specifically saying you're a white male in tech. meritocracy - To whom? Who decides? That's right: the kingmaker. And the kingmaker decides on those who share significant amount of the same traits. And most of these "kingmakers" in tech are 20-30 something white male. master to primary - Again, "master" in US culture has a very very bad connotation that <drumroll> equates with US slavery of black peoples. ""find . -type f -exec sed -i 's/master/primary/g' {} \; "" takes seconds to run, and only infringes on alt-right sensitivities. crazy - Is a garbage word. Has no real definition, and just really shouldn't be used. If there's a problem with a person and their choices, the issue with that should be stated, not by calling them "Crazy". Same goes for the rest of the words in your mental illness link. Enumerate the problem at hand, not by labeling the problem with a garbage word that equates to crazy. > Where they once were just supporting a software project they're now a political movement. FLOSS has always been political. The predominant license (GPL) is a anti-capitalist license that seeks freedoms from creators to make everyone owners. The AGPL was made to challenge cloud operators in using and not sharing their changes. Again, political. And the whole FLOSS ecosystem itself is and isn't about computers. It's about how humans interact with computers and other humans using computers - and guaranteeing individual rights when using computers. FLOSS is a human rights issue. So yes, it's completely understandable that high profile projects would seek to include everyone.
• johnklos 5y ago
  This piece highlights the underlying problem, about which the specifics are just symptoms: the attitudes of Mozilla people. They have been outright dismissive, almost hostile - they think they know what's right, they think they "know better", they may even really believe they're doing pro-"privacy" stuff - but in the end, they're wearing blinders. For example, there's no reason in the world to change things in a way that's actively hostile to those who don't want those changes, yet version after version requires non-trivial amounts of work to figure out how to simply not change. Then they do things like aggregating all DNS for people in the US to one monopolistic company WITHOUT ASKING, because, they say, people don't know what's good for them. They only relented after lots of negative publicity, not after sitting and considering that not everyone trusts Cloudflare just because they say they're not evil. So it's the attitude that comes from design-by-fiat that has turned me off completely, and I see no evidence that anything is changing in any way that's good. To the contrary - I see more examples of making decisions without the slightest concern for technical discussion. I fear that declining market share will only strengthen their resolve to force things on their user base.
• patrick451 5y ago
  Homosexuality is immoral, so it is logical to ask the state not to condone it.
  • dang 5y ago
    Flamewar comments will get you banned here. No more of this, please. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28492732 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28492732.
  • deleted 5y ago
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• ksec 5y ago
  As someone who started using Firefox before it was even called Firefox, this put a smile on my face. I was there, and I remember every single quote and Mozilla's response. :) The memory issue the post mentioned was a really long time ago, I remember they did Generational GC, Compact GC and the most important project from Mozilla, MemShrink from Nick. That was before e10s and all of that was what made Firefox memory efficient today. ( I think Nick is working at Apple now ) The failure of FirefoxOS, was mostly because of two opposing goal or ideal. They want the OS to be web based and everything to be made with JS or Web Technology. The believe of JS will be good enough and that JS VM will be fast enough runs deep inside Mozilla at the time to be point I remember FirefoxOS engineers were even afraid to speak out on why dont they just code this in C++. The other goal was they want Firefox OS to be running on low cost $50 Smartphone and somehow thinks the Smartphone hardware price will drop while performance continue to improve. I was surprised, and it was only many years later I realise most software developers have absolutely zero understanding of hardware, BOM cost, supply chain, and long term component cost development. And I still think, FirefoxOS was a distraction for Mozilla. Spreading themselves too thin while battling Chrome on PC. They really should have fought Chrome first before their move on Smartphone. And 10 years later we really do need a third OS option in the Smartphone market. Although arguably Firefox OS still lives on as KaiOS. But again, I say this a lot on HN, and as someone who pushed through hundreds of installation of Firefox in different places, nearly every single response of switching away to Chrome was because Chrome was faster. Way faster. And I thought it is a good time to remind ourselves, good faith and ideals only last so long. Ultimately you need to have a better product to retain your users. Edit: And there was another point missing from the article. Mozilla refuse to support DRM and H.264 codec, a lot of users simply wanted their browser to work just left.
  • emerged 5y ago
    Good faith and ideals also stop working when your company repeatedly demonstrates that it no longer has either.
• freediver 5y ago
  Firefox simply lost touch with its community. Golden era was around 2005-2010 when Mozilla was running product innovation experiments such as Ubiquity or Tab Candy, "Design competitions", sending "Thank you" cards to beta testers, people like Aza Raskin having regular blog posts about development... My oh my, looking at those in archive.org and seeing treasure throve of comments, 100+ on each post, the excitement in the air with each new announcement feels just magical. Roll forward 15 years and Mozilla Labs is about AR/VR(?), interaction with Firefox is through 3rd party sites like HN and real product innovation stagnates for years. The real reason Firefox is losing market share is a simple fact that it is inferior to its competitors as a product, which is the direct result of this loss of connection with its userbase that it had and the passion for creating the world's best, most innovative, browser.
  • damagednoob 5y ago
    Well, when your competition was IE 6-8, it's easy too look good. The process-per-tab architecture of Chrome was a revelation when it was released in 2008.
• Someone 5y ago
  FTA: “The argument that it was “too hard to maintain” a single setting enacted by 2 lines of code in a 4 Million line codebase is just insulting to the intelligence of users.” I don’t grok that logic. Hard to maintain is about developers, not users. “Code isn’t a lawn. It doesn’t change if you leave it alone for a few weeks.” I disagree with that. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_rot As to the main reason Firefox is losing users, I would say a) increased competition from (mostly) Google and Microsoft and b) lack of (short-term) incentives for Mozilla to listen to its users. As to b), take a look at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-2019-short-form-0926.pdf https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201.... If I interpret that correctly, contributions and subscriptions bring in less than $20M a year (probably closer to $10M, as $14M of that is labeled “Subscription and advertising revenue”) Royalties bring in $450M. That’s money they get from search engines. “Other revenue” is $338M (can’t find where that comes from) => To me, it appears they have more income from advertising than the $3M they get from user contributions. They certainly get way more memory from search engines. If you were CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, wouldn’t keeping the royalties flowing in be more important than raising user contributions?
  • CRConrad 5y ago
    > If you were CEO of the Mozilla Foundation, wouldn’t keeping the royalties flowing in be more important than raising user contributions? Sure. Because as CEO my multi-million-dollar salary is dependent on money flowing in, more than my "Foundation" actually fulfilling its purpose. If I were anyone but that multi-million-dollar CEO, though, i.e. if I maybe even gave a shit about what the foundation is supposed to be for in the first place, then perhaps I'd also listen a little to the actual users of the product that is ostensibly the whole raison d'être of the foundation. Idunno, maybe I'm odd that way?
• thayne 5y ago
  > We have hundreds of millions of users. 5000 people complaining doesn’t represent the majority of users” That's incredibly naive. Only a tiny fraction of people who don't like it will complain. Others will just switch to another browser. And most will probably put up with it. And if that happens once, it might not hurt you too much. But when you do something like that over and over, you are going to bleed users, including the ones who initially put up with it as the list of things they don't like piles up. > People don’t use Firefox because of add-ons. Our telemetry shows 80% of users never install any add-ons Uh huh. You know why I started using Firefox over a decade ago? Because of addons. And as has been mentioned before, a lot of users disable telemetry, especially power users who are likely to install addons. So how reliable is that telemetry? And how many Firefox users are only using it on the recommendation of a friend relative or IT specialist that does use plugins. I'm not optimistic for the future of browsers. I still prefer Firefox to chrome, but I'm not happy with the direction things are headed. One final thought. Here's an idea for getting some funding independent of search engines: a Kickstarter like program for users to pay to get some of these features back. Though on second thought, maybe that would give Mozilla even more incentives to rip stuff out...
• maverick74 5y ago
  Sooo true!!!
• terracatta 5y ago
  > You succeed by giving users what they want, not telling them what they should want This closing statement is missing so much context that it's misleading. When you have more than a handful of users, their wants will eventually conflict, often directly. (Ex: Tabs on top vs Tabs on Bottom). Other times a majority of users will ask for things that provide fleeting short-term benefit but in the long-term could kill your product (ex: We need Flash support on Firefox Mobile). Telemetry and research helps you consider the needs of a silent majority, but it can alienate the vocal minority that proselytize your product. To appease both, you need to come up with a clear vision, validate it's right, and then ruthlessly steer your product toward it. If there is a vision for Firefox, I don't know what it is. So why, as a user, should accept Firefox's many faults today when Mozilla has failed to paint a clear picture of tomorrow?
• cryptos 5y ago
  I see parallels to the Gnome desktop. Users are patronized in the same way and features are crippled, because the developers know best what users actually want! I stopped using Gnome and although I like Firefox for being the last free browser, I fear that sooner or later I'll have to switch to chrome or one of its descendants.
  • JohnFen 5y ago
    That's another good point -- Mozilla was (maybe still is, I don't know -- I pretty much stopped listening to Mozillians) very condescending and dismissive of any opinion that they didn't already agree with. I'd rarely seen a company put so much effort into alienating their fan base.
• MrDresden 5y ago
  I'm along time Firefox user, and frankly I couldn't be happier. Use it on Android as well as my Linux machines.
• jollybean 5y ago
  Can someone help me understand the Tabs issue? Did they do 'Tabs on Top' before or after Chrome, and how could that be a problem, given that it seems this is the way everyone does it now?
• betwixthewires 5y ago
  I used to be a Firefox exclusive user. I no longer use it at all. The last straw for me was the proton update. I updated on mobile, it was faster, I liked that, the UI was interesting, and then I went to install my usual add ons. No dice. "We are only allowing select add ons, most people don't use add ons anyway." Fuck. That. I raged out and removed Firefox from all of my devices. They shortly afterward backpedaled and said it was temporary. There was no technical reason for it though. I now use various chromium forks that have features I need and don't talk to google. Currently that's ungoogled-chromium, Bromite and Kiwi Browser, for it's extension support. If Bromite merges extension support in from Kiwi I'll stop using kiwi.
• mikl 5y ago
  All these complaints are true, and there’s many similar ones. Firefox (née Mozilla) is a terribly mismanaged company. Instead of focusing on their core business, making a great browser, they keep launching weird also-ran side projects that inevitably fail, to name a few: Firefox VPN, Firefox Notes, Firefox Lockwise, Firefox Monitor, Firefox Send, Firefox Hello, Firefox OS, Mozilla Persona, etc. It’s one thing to fritter away your fortunes and engineering talent on fun side projects when the main business (and money-maker) is doing well, but to do so when it’s floundering is massively irresponsible. Baker & co. are making off like bandits, paying themselves lavish salaries while running the company into the ground. Unfortunately, there’s no Firefox stock holders that can sue them for mismanagement. So as the Google/Apple browser duopoly is slowly cemented, we can only blame Mozilla management for destroying the only truly open and independent browser left.
  • ymolodtsov 5y ago
    Firefox Lockwise actually makes sense. It allows users to keep their passwords in Firefox on desktop and then access them on iOS, for instance. Chrome just recently turned itself into a password manager on iOS. Agree about all the other projects though.
  • soundnote 5y ago
    I think stuff like notes, Pocket in general, VPN and password management make sense as side activities for a browser maker. Firefox OS is rather ambitious, though. Not that they were the only ones who tried, see eg. Ubuntu's failed phone OS.
  • dralley 5y ago
    Make up your minds "Mozilla get 95% of their revenue from Google, that's terrible! They shouldn't be so dependent!" "How dare Mozilla try to make money from products other than Firefox!"
• stereoradonc 5y ago
  The write up ticks a lot of my confirmation biases. It made me shift towards Vivaldi instead.
• hkai 5y ago
  I quit Firefox partly because I don't like them going into political activism instead of making a browser. And all that on my donations? No thanks. I switched to a little known Chromium-based browser and feel happy every moment I'm using it. Firefox is still okay for its dev tools though.
• nsonha 5y ago
  what is Firefox's value proposition? Customizable doesn't count.
• happyjack 5y ago
  I'll get a lot of flack for this, but I'll speak my mind as to what I think Mozilla needs to do going forward.. I think Mozilla needs to have a rock solid mission statement ("Our mission is to keep the web open blah blah no one controls it blah blah make technologies that make the world better blah blah open blah blah do no harm") and within that, get large corporate clients that foot the bill for legitimate development / tech transfer and solve real problems within the corporate world. The corporate world has protocol issues, privacy issues, ad nausea. Get business clients to pay for that. Within that framework, they can have working groups or community groups whatever that package the browser for Linux distros / Windowz / Mac and push it out. They can even have specialty versions that focus on privacy, media, vanilla versions, add-ons, whatever. When you go to firefox.com as a consumer you get the "corporate" or "vanilla" version. If you're a HN or tech crowd, you'll know where to find your version; whether that's privacy focused, add-on focused, or a specific build for specific operating system or mission. I think core "user base" is a misnomer in Firefox. My 2 cents. I know there's a ton to the browser world and my view is just a tiny part of the big picture.
• mmis1000 5y ago
  I though I agree most of the points in this article except `Auto-updates you can’t switch off`. Well, It never should, at least not done easily. The windows xp told us a serious lesson about that. Countless of systems compromised due update disabled. Although I also think push feature removal updates forcefully is silly. The only thing should be forcefuly updated is bug fix.
• raffraffraff 5y ago
  I've stuck with Firefox since replacing Mozilla browser with 'Phoenix' 20 years ago. Right now, Firefox containers is the killer feature.
• ymolodtsov 5y ago
  Saying that tabs-on-top killed Firefox when it's literally used by the winning browser (Chrome) as well as Edge and Brave is such a peak Hacker News moment. Nitpicking for the one detail that person didn't like and making it look like an obvious mistake everyone else should have seen but somehow hasn't. Firefox lost because they couldn't keep up and there was little justification for why do you need to use it unless you have sophisticated needs. And the fewer users they had, the less money (coming from the deal with Google) they had to spend on development. This feedback look is what killed Firefox and left it a niche project. Mozilla's management is also to blame. They expanded into a whole plethora of projects that all have been killed, they bought Pocket and did nothing with it. Yes, it's a non-profit, but there have been discussions on their salaries and bonuses that weren't exactly tied to the one and only metric that mattered – Firefox's share of the total market. When I first started using Firefox it was Firefox 1.5. Back then it was literally useless without addons and you'd build it yourself, basically. And that made sense because the alternative was to use IE 6 (or Opera). But Google managed to produce a browser that was good enough and every tech person installed it at their parents' computers.
  • dralley 5y ago
    > Mozilla's management is also to blame. They expanded into a whole plethora of projects that all have been killed, they bought Pocket and did nothing with it. Pocket is one of the few external revenue sources they actually have.
• slightwinder 5y ago
  > “People don’t use Firefox because of add-ons. Our telemetry shows 80% of users never install any add-ons” > i.e. the telemetry that any tech savvy person immediately turns off > because they don’t want their browser spying on them and about which we have also complained numerous times. There are other means to get usage-numbers of addons, like server-side stats. And those numbers support this claim. Even the most popular addons have just some millions of users at best. Adblocker barely make some ten million, meaning they are used by just 10-20% of the users. And those number did not change much in the last 10 years. Though, there were IMHO already heavy loses before IMHO. Firefox 3 & 4 (released 2008 & 2011) were heavy damage for addon-communiy, killing many beloved tools. The question is whether usage-numbers before this were significant higher.
• throwawaybutwhy 5y ago
  ...because it sold out to Google just like LibreOffice sold out to Microsoft? ...because they fired Mr.Eich? ...because they are more interested in spending Google's hush money than listening to their users?
• sam-s 5y ago
  I can offer two salient datapoints: 1. bug [New windows/tabs should inherit current page, back button/go menu history](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18808 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=18808): `Opened 22 years ago` and `Updated 14 days ago`: they can neither implement nor reject a feature in 22 years?! 2. "We need more than deplatforming" blog post that promotes suppression of Free Speech. Would you trust a _browser_ that wants to _limit_ what you can read?!
• phendrenad2 5y ago
  I'll get a lot of hate for this (which is why I'm posting it long after this story was on page one), but Firefox is missing the writing on the wall. Now is the time to throw their weight behind becoming a Chromium fork like Brave, Vivaldi, and Opera. Let's look at the facts: 1. They still have good brand recognition, for now. 2. They lack the engineering capability to keep Firefox on par with Chromium-based browsers. The usual objection is "but browser diversity, Chromium browser monoculture, monocultures are bad". To that I say: Why aren't you complaining about the world's most popular operating system kernel, the one with zero forks and also zero serious open-source competitors, you may have heard of it, what was it called, oh yeah Linux.
  • cnst 5y ago
    They've already tried this with Firefox Focus on mobile. It was the silliest idea ever. The whole point of Firefox is that it provides an alternative. What sort of alternative would it be if it's the same as Chrome?
    • phendrenad2 5y ago
      Focus wasn't the same thing at all. Mainline Firefox undermined it, it was a highly-privacy-focused browser, and it was only available on mobile. > The whole point of Firefox is that it provides an alternative Maybe to some people, but I think most people who use FireFox do so out of nostalgia or wanting to get away from FAANG-controlled browsers. Chromium rebranded to "Firefox" would be enough to make them accept it.