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> The real (and often downvoted) answer is that Mozilla compromised on their core values. A "death by a thousand cuts", as it were. I expect it's downvoted bec

> The real (and often downvoted) answer is that Mozilla compromised on their core values. A "death by a thousand cuts", as it were. I expect it's downvoted because it's laughable. 99% of browser users don't give a shit about those things. If a poll were to be taken of the HN users who switched to Chrome, I doubt even a quarter would cite that as the reason. It was indeed a death by a thousand cuts, but the thousand cuts were * popup advertisements for Chrome on the frontpage of the most visited website on the planet * Google paying off Adobe, AVG, Avast and others to make their installers include Chrome using disgusting dark patterns * Android, the collapse of desktop browsing in comparsion to mobile browsing, and people that will just default to using the same browser on their laptop/desktop as on their phone * Netflix DRM that didn't work on Firefox for a few months * Youtube, Google Meet and Google Docs refusing to work properly on Firefox * The word "Google" becoming as synonymous with simply using the internet as the internet explorer icon was in the 2000s * Chrome was and to some extent still is legitimately snappier than Firefox

jozvolskyef 5y ago
> * Youtube, Google Meet and Google Docs refusing to work properly on Firefox One vote for Google Meet being the reason. I didn't want me dropping out of meetings and rejoining in a different browser to become a regular thing.
- Ironlink 5y ago
  I use Google Meet with Firefox on my M1 Mac every day. The only thing that doesn't work for me is camera backgrounds. Would be nice to be able to share audio when presenting, but I almost never present.
  - jozvolskyef 5y ago
    Is sharing audio output even supported by Meet? By the way, I'm on linux. Searching "firefox google meet linux site:reddit.com" suggests it wasn't just me.
selfhoster11 5y ago
Why not both? Firefox was really heavily damaged by both internal and external factors/attacks.
jacquesm 5y ago
99% of browser users is not relevant, the question is how big a percentage of FireFox' users (the ones that remain, that is). Because if you lose those that is a much harder thing to recover from than to not win back the other 99% that you don't have anyway. And I suspect that the FF users of old care very much, though, of course I'm only speaking for myself here.
- dralley 5y ago
  >99% of browser users is not relevant You should do that math again. >And I suspect that the FF users of old care very much But do they? Firefox's rise was largely due to IE6 being pure trash, and the average user of a web browser in 2008 being a lot more knowledgeable than the average user today. Marketshare, by definition, is the share of the market. The market has expanded dramatically, but desktop browsing itself has plummeted, and a lot of users are just going to default to whatever they're using on their primary device (their phone), which is Google. "Google" is synonomous with using the internet in the same way that the internet explorer logo used to be in the mid 2000s.
  - jacquesm 5y ago
    > You should do that math again. No, I don't. Even if it is one percent (which I highly doubt) and that one percent is committed enough then that's enough of a core to guarantee the success of the project. It doesn't need a team of 1000 to build a browser, much less to keep an existing one patched and rolling along.
    - PeterisP 5y ago
      Quite on the contrary, even a team of 1000 won't be sufficient to maintain compatibility if your marketshare is so low that website and webapp builders ignore your concerns. A non-Chromium browser needs to maintain a critical mass of users to be sufficiently large to ensure that the world wants to stay compatible with it, and having 1% of marketshare is not sufficient for that, no matter how committed these users are - if firefox drops to 1%, then it becomes irrelevant and the project has failed at its goals as the "web standards" become equivalent to whatever chromium does. Browsers get influence to keep the web as we want it to be mostly based on the quantity of browser users which websites want to attract and keep; without that all the best code in the world is useless and doesn't even give you a seat at the table, much less a strong say for how the de-facto standard web practices will change.
glenstein 5y ago
Agreed, these are the macro-level events that really drove user adoption. The narrative (especially the Mr. Robot thing!) are totally out of proportion to their actual impact on user adoption and aren't the all-or-nothing tests of credibility or integrity that people are suggesting they are.
- grey_earthling 5y ago
  — but they are symptomatic. The Mozilla of 2004 wouldn't even think of doing user-hostile stuff like that, because they were trying to make a useful tool rather than a lifestyle brand. Those things will have disillusioned people who used Firefox because their goals were aligned. I agree that Google being Google will have lost people who used Firefox simply because it was a good tool.

jozvolskyef 5y ago

> * Youtube, Google Meet and Google Docs refusing to work properly on Firefox One vote for Google Meet being the reason. I didn't want me dropping out of meetings and rejoining in a different browser to become a regular thing.

Ironlink 5y ago
I use Google Meet with Firefox on my M1 Mac every day. The only thing that doesn't work for me is camera backgrounds. Would be nice to be able to share audio when presenting, but I almost never present.
- jozvolskyef 5y ago
  Is sharing audio output even supported by Meet? By the way, I'm on linux. Searching "firefox google meet linux site:reddit.com" suggests it wasn't just me.

selfhoster11 5y ago

Why not both? Firefox was really heavily damaged by both internal and external factors/attacks.

jacquesm 5y ago

99% of browser users is not relevant, the question is how big a percentage of FireFox' users (the ones that remain, that is). Because if you lose those that is a much harder thing to recover from than to not win back the other 99% that you don't have anyway. And I suspect that the FF users of old care very much, though, of course I'm only speaking for myself here.

dralley 5y ago
>99% of browser users is not relevant You should do that math again. >And I suspect that the FF users of old care very much But do they? Firefox's rise was largely due to IE6 being pure trash, and the average user of a web browser in 2008 being a lot more knowledgeable than the average user today. Marketshare, by definition, is the share of the market. The market has expanded dramatically, but desktop browsing itself has plummeted, and a lot of users are just going to default to whatever they're using on their primary device (their phone), which is Google. "Google" is synonomous with using the internet in the same way that the internet explorer logo used to be in the mid 2000s.
- jacquesm 5y ago
  > You should do that math again. No, I don't. Even if it is one percent (which I highly doubt) and that one percent is committed enough then that's enough of a core to guarantee the success of the project. It doesn't need a team of 1000 to build a browser, much less to keep an existing one patched and rolling along.
  - PeterisP 5y ago
    Quite on the contrary, even a team of 1000 won't be sufficient to maintain compatibility if your marketshare is so low that website and webapp builders ignore your concerns. A non-Chromium browser needs to maintain a critical mass of users to be sufficiently large to ensure that the world wants to stay compatible with it, and having 1% of marketshare is not sufficient for that, no matter how committed these users are - if firefox drops to 1%, then it becomes irrelevant and the project has failed at its goals as the "web standards" become equivalent to whatever chromium does. Browsers get influence to keep the web as we want it to be mostly based on the quantity of browser users which websites want to attract and keep; without that all the best code in the world is useless and doesn't even give you a seat at the table, much less a strong say for how the de-facto standard web practices will change.

glenstein 5y ago

Agreed, these are the macro-level events that really drove user adoption. The narrative (especially the Mr. Robot thing!) are totally out of proportion to their actual impact on user adoption and aren't the all-or-nothing tests of credibility or integrity that people are suggesting they are.

grey_earthling 5y ago
— but they are symptomatic. The Mozilla of 2004 wouldn't even think of doing user-hostile stuff like that, because they were trying to make a useful tool rather than a lifestyle brand. Those things will have disillusioned people who used Firefox because their goals were aligned. I agree that Google being Google will have lost people who used Firefox simply because it was a good tool.