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>Firefox peaked at 31.82% in November, 2009 — and then began its long slide in almost direct proportion to the rise of Chrome. It will be a sad day when Firefo

>Firefox peaked at 31.82% in November, 2009 — and then began its long slide in almost direct proportion to the rise of Chrome. It will be a sad day when Firefox is truly dead. But what did Mozilla expect? They spent so much time and energy on activist bullshit that doesn't really matter for THE BROWSER.

malermeister 3y ago
The browser itself is good these days. All these complaints are themselves activist bullshit that doesn't really matter.
- sergiotapia 3y ago
  Is it? Firefox has had this sheen of "jank" for the past 6 years.
  - irrational 3y ago
    Have you used it? I've used it as my primary browser for both personal use and web development for years and it has not been janky, at all.
  - jandrese 3y ago
    I don’t know where that comes from, Firefox has worked just fine for ages. The only place it sucks is on iOS.
  - FourHand451 3y ago
    What exactly do you mean?
  - hooverd 3y ago
    I use Firefox as a daily driver and it just works.
- jacquesm 3y ago
  Well, yes and no. It does matter because if they had spent that money and effort on the browser and made it possible to donate directly to the browser project then there is a fair chance that those numbers would be better.
nathanaldensr 3y ago
Maybe it was never really about the browser, but the platform. Safari dominates all Apple devices. Imagine if all computing was truly open and we could run any app anywhere. Would Chrome have had a reason to exist to begin with, or would Firefox have become truly ubiquitous?
- acuozzo 3y ago
  > Imagine if all computing was truly open and we could run any app anywhere. This was accomplished in the 1990s by Bell Labs with Plan9 and later, at the application layer, with Inferno. It was additionally accomplished in the 1990s at the application layer by Sun Microsystems with Java and its applets. Frankly, the history of computing is littered with well-engineered solutions to this problem and many of its variants. The fundamental issue here is that businesses are involved and giving a business a monopoly over something so fundamental is usually a bad idea. The WWW succeeded because it grew somewhat organically.
bryanlarsen 3y ago
The financial statements are also currently on the front page. That's a nice hot take, but the number that really stands out is 25% of revenue on management, a full 50% of salaries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530382
tompagenet2 3y ago
I think there are plenty of decisions worth consideration, but this is nothing to do with why Firefox is declining. It's because if I buy an iPad it comes with Safari and doesn't really let me use anything else (only a skinned version of Safari). If I buy a PC it's Edge. If it's an Android device it's Chrome. A Mac? Safari. Firefox is the default nowhere, and in this world because Google has almost limitless marketing power and owns one of the world's most popular websites they can push Chrome to mean that on PCs and Macs there is a strong push for people to move from the defaults to Chrome. Firefox works great for me. It's just incredibly hard to get anyone to use it.
- pjmlp 3y ago
  Maybe a better execution of Firefox OS would have helped. Nowadays KaiOS profits from it.
seanw444 3y ago
Activist bullshit, and redirecting the dwindling funds to making sure their CEOs always have a minimum of 3 yachts on standby.
ravenstine 3y ago
Although it would be a shame to not have a company behind it, couldn't a derivative of Firefox continue to exist with community support? It's not like Firefox is so lacking today that a lot needs to be done to compete with Chrome. If I didn't update my Firefox installation for a year, I likely wouldn't notice or care. It's a really good browser no matter what other people say, IMO. Mozilla either giving up on Firefox or kicking the bucket might even be a good thing for the Firefox codebase because it could open up opportunities for new companies to own a derivative and work on it.
- catwalk_moto 3y ago
  [dead]
dblohm7 3y ago
It was the explosion of mobile browsing that did it.

malermeister 3y ago

The browser itself is good these days. All these complaints are themselves activist bullshit that doesn't really matter.

sergiotapia 3y ago
Is it? Firefox has had this sheen of "jank" for the past 6 years.
- irrational 3y ago
  Have you used it? I've used it as my primary browser for both personal use and web development for years and it has not been janky, at all.
- jandrese 3y ago
  I don’t know where that comes from, Firefox has worked just fine for ages. The only place it sucks is on iOS.
- FourHand451 3y ago
  What exactly do you mean?
- hooverd 3y ago
  I use Firefox as a daily driver and it just works.
jacquesm 3y ago
Well, yes and no. It does matter because if they had spent that money and effort on the browser and made it possible to donate directly to the browser project then there is a fair chance that those numbers would be better.

nathanaldensr 3y ago

Maybe it was never really about the browser, but the platform. Safari dominates all Apple devices. Imagine if all computing was truly open and we could run any app anywhere. Would Chrome have had a reason to exist to begin with, or would Firefox have become truly ubiquitous?

acuozzo 3y ago
> Imagine if all computing was truly open and we could run any app anywhere. This was accomplished in the 1990s by Bell Labs with Plan9 and later, at the application layer, with Inferno. It was additionally accomplished in the 1990s at the application layer by Sun Microsystems with Java and its applets. Frankly, the history of computing is littered with well-engineered solutions to this problem and many of its variants. The fundamental issue here is that businesses are involved and giving a business a monopoly over something so fundamental is usually a bad idea. The WWW succeeded because it grew somewhat organically.

bryanlarsen 3y ago

The financial statements are also currently on the front page. That's a nice hot take, but the number that really stands out is 25% of revenue on management, a full 50% of salaries. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530382 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38530382

tompagenet2 3y ago

I think there are plenty of decisions worth consideration, but this is nothing to do with why Firefox is declining. It's because if I buy an iPad it comes with Safari and doesn't really let me use anything else (only a skinned version of Safari). If I buy a PC it's Edge. If it's an Android device it's Chrome. A Mac? Safari. Firefox is the default nowhere, and in this world because Google has almost limitless marketing power and owns one of the world's most popular websites they can push Chrome to mean that on PCs and Macs there is a strong push for people to move from the defaults to Chrome. Firefox works great for me. It's just incredibly hard to get anyone to use it.

pjmlp 3y ago
Maybe a better execution of Firefox OS would have helped. Nowadays KaiOS profits from it.

seanw444 3y ago

Activist bullshit, and redirecting the dwindling funds to making sure their CEOs always have a minimum of 3 yachts on standby.

ravenstine 3y ago

Although it would be a shame to not have a company behind it, couldn't a derivative of Firefox continue to exist with community support? It's not like Firefox is so lacking today that a lot needs to be done to compete with Chrome. If I didn't update my Firefox installation for a year, I likely wouldn't notice or care. It's a really good browser no matter what other people say, IMO. Mozilla either giving up on Firefox or kicking the bucket might even be a good thing for the Firefox codebase because it could open up opportunities for new companies to own a derivative and work on it.

catwalk_moto 3y ago
[dead]

dblohm7 3y ago

It was the explosion of mobile browsing that did it.