7 ms·

I think you're really overestimating Firefox's influence. Firefox has less than 4% browser share. Even less than Edge! This is also a change to Chromium itself

by culi 4y ago

I think you're really overestimating Firefox's influence. Firefox has less than 4% browser share. Even less than Edge! This is also a change to Chromium itself and not just Chrome so even those Edge users will be affected Firefox has never even held 10% browser share

SpaceManNabs 4y ago
> Firefox has never even held 10% browser share I distinctly remember firefox having at least 25% share in 2010. No source besides my memory.
- jve 4y ago
  30% per statcounter https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2009-2022 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2009-...
  - jahewson 4y ago
    That number is incorrect, per Mozilla: https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2009/11/09/firefox-hits-25-market-share-on-its-birthday/ https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2009/11/09/firefox-hits-25-... The peak was 25%.
    - SpaceManNabs 4y ago
      yup this is exactly what i remember. 2009 though. guess i am unreliable.
justinclift 4y ago
> Firefox has never even held 10% browser share That's very inaccurate. Firefox held a ~30% market share way back in ancient times (~2009), which decreased to around ~10% through to ~2018. The substantial drop from ~10% to it's current position only happened in the last few years. Animation of the browser market share over time, if that helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es9DNe0l0Qo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es9DNe0l0Qo
- culi 4y ago
  Thanks for the correction. Regardless, the mobile-focused web landscape today is a very different one than 2009. Also those numbers seem to be highly inflated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
- jahewson 4y ago
  At the time, it was a common talking point that Firefox never got beyond 25% market share. I’m not sure why statcounter has questionable data for that period. Here’s a Mozilla blog post from 2009 celebrating hitting 25%: https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2009/11/09/firefox-hits-25-market-share-on-its-birthday/ https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2009/11/09/firefox-hits-25-... That was the highest point.
malermeister 4y ago
> Firefox has never even held 10% browser share Firefox held 32% market share in 2010. It rose because Internet Explorer sucked and us technical folks made our relatives switch along with ourselves. Same story with Chrome: pre-Quantum, Firefox was getting pretty slow and Chrome was the new, fast kid on the block, so we changed browsers and dragged the tech-illiterate along. It's time for this to happen again. The Chromium monopoly is bad for the open web, and now that Google has consolidated power, they're using it to push ads. It's time we switch back to the only viable, truly open source alternative and drag all our acquaintances along.
- raxxorraxor 4y ago
  To be fair, the problem was predictable already in 2010, so switching to Chrome was a bad idea in the first place. I understood it for webdevs, Googles tools were a bit better very quickly, even if that was a domain for FF previously. Chrome still fails to render a lot of scaled images though: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37906602/blurry-downscaled-images-in-chrome https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37906602/blurry-downscal... I doubt most users will go back though.
- therein 4y ago
  This is very true and I think it is often understated, the influence that we developers have over the spread of a certain trend or technology through the mechanism you described. Now imagine if you're a company that have 50k or 100k developers on payroll. Even that alone will actually spread your influence if you indoctrinate them right, might be worth hiring them just to double down on that influence, even if you may not necessarily need them.
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  >It's time we switch back to the only viable, truly open source alternative and drag all our acquaintances along. I can tell you with absolute certainty it won't happen, at least so long as we're talking about Firefox as the alternative in this kind of manner, and here's why: Both the Firefox and Chrome usurpations happened organically without too much ideological dogma getting tossed around. It just happened: IE6 sucked ass, Firefox was great, usurped. Firefox (read: Mozilla) became putrid after usurping the throne, Chrome was great(ish), usurper usurped. It was all ultimately just happenstance, the commons did commons things. Contrast now, where Firefox is being thrown around by a select handful as the supposed returning saviour with dogmatic fervor. As a witness of the original usurpations, I will say this isn't what happened ~15 years ago and it is impossible to force something to become a thing. Chrome will eventually be usurped, but it's probably not going to be Firefox and it's going to happen regardless whether anyone forces the issue or not.
trinovantes 4y ago
Or maybe most Firefox users disable trackers and thus don't show up on Google Analytics

by culi 4y ago

SpaceManNabs 4y ago

> Firefox has never even held 10% browser share I distinctly remember firefox having at least 25% share in 2010. No source besides my memory.

jve 4y ago
30% per statcounter https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2009-2022 https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share#yearly-2009-...
- jahewson 4y ago
  That number is incorrect, per Mozilla: https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2009/11/09/firefox-hits-25-market-share-on-its-birthday/ https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2009/11/09/firefox-hits-25-... The peak was 25%.
  - SpaceManNabs 4y ago
    yup this is exactly what i remember. 2009 though. guess i am unreliable.

justinclift 4y ago

> Firefox has never even held 10% browser share That's very inaccurate. Firefox held a ~30% market share way back in ancient times (~2009), which decreased to around ~10% through to ~2018. The substantial drop from ~10% to it's current position only happened in the last few years. Animation of the browser market share over time, if that helps: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es9DNe0l0Qo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=es9DNe0l0Qo

culi 4y ago
Thanks for the correction. Regardless, the mobile-focused web landscape today is a very different one than 2009. Also those numbers seem to be highly inflated https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers
jahewson 4y ago
At the time, it was a common talking point that Firefox never got beyond 25% market share. I’m not sure why statcounter has questionable data for that period. Here’s a Mozilla blog post from 2009 celebrating hitting 25%: https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2009/11/09/firefox-hits-25-market-share-on-its-birthday/ https://blog.mozilla.org/metrics/2009/11/09/firefox-hits-25-... That was the highest point.

malermeister 4y ago

> Firefox has never even held 10% browser share Firefox held 32% market share in 2010. It rose because Internet Explorer sucked and us technical folks made our relatives switch along with ourselves. Same story with Chrome: pre-Quantum, Firefox was getting pretty slow and Chrome was the new, fast kid on the block, so we changed browsers and dragged the tech-illiterate along. It's time for this to happen again. The Chromium monopoly is bad for the open web, and now that Google has consolidated power, they're using it to push ads. It's time we switch back to the only viable, truly open source alternative and drag all our acquaintances along.

raxxorraxor 4y ago
To be fair, the problem was predictable already in 2010, so switching to Chrome was a bad idea in the first place. I understood it for webdevs, Googles tools were a bit better very quickly, even if that was a domain for FF previously. Chrome still fails to render a lot of scaled images though: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37906602/blurry-downscaled-images-in-chrome https://stackoverflow.com/questions/37906602/blurry-downscal... I doubt most users will go back though.
therein 4y ago
This is very true and I think it is often understated, the influence that we developers have over the spread of a certain trend or technology through the mechanism you described. Now imagine if you're a company that have 50k or 100k developers on payroll. Even that alone will actually spread your influence if you indoctrinate them right, might be worth hiring them just to double down on that influence, even if you may not necessarily need them.
Dalewyn 4y ago
>It's time we switch back to the only viable, truly open source alternative and drag all our acquaintances along. I can tell you with absolute certainty it won't happen, at least so long as we're talking about Firefox as the alternative in this kind of manner, and here's why: Both the Firefox and Chrome usurpations happened organically without too much ideological dogma getting tossed around. It just happened: IE6 sucked ass, Firefox was great, usurped. Firefox (read: Mozilla) became putrid after usurping the throne, Chrome was great(ish), usurper usurped. It was all ultimately just happenstance, the commons did commons things. Contrast now, where Firefox is being thrown around by a select handful as the supposed returning saviour with dogmatic fervor. As a witness of the original usurpations, I will say this isn't what happened ~15 years ago and it is impossible to force something to become a thing. Chrome will eventually be usurped, but it's probably not going to be Firefox and it's going to happen regardless whether anyone forces the issue or not.

trinovantes 4y ago

Or maybe most Firefox users disable trackers and thus don't show up on Google Analytics