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In a previous thread (these "Mozilla is dead" threads appear perennially) someone pointed out that Firefox's apparent marketshare drop is potentially indistingu

In a previous thread (these "Mozilla is dead" threads appear perennially) someone pointed out that Firefox's apparent marketshare drop is potentially indistinguishable from their deployment of privacy-improving features, including stubbing out Google Analytics when "Enhanced Tracking Protection" is enabled. I'm a Firefox user, so I have a vested interest in Mozilla's long term health and financial viability. But "marketshare nosedives" appears to be primarily an editorialization to fit the post's larger narrative.

wmf 3y ago
I would assume that Firefox revenue is proportional to usage and revenue is only down a few percent. This implies that Firefox usage is declining much slower than people say.
- halflings 3y ago
  Not if you account for the increase in ad revenue from the company paying them.
- bee_rider 3y ago
  I don’t understand how to read their “assets” table; but it looks like most of their revenue comes from “royalties,” which I’m sure has some specific meaning for these kinds of reports, but I’m not sure if it scales with numbers of users or not. If that’s the money they get from Google (huge guess alert, I’m probably wrong!), then I’m not sure if it would scale in the short there with the number of users; I guess they must re-negotiate their contract every couple years, right?
  - lupusreal 3y ago
    Mozilla Corp pays royalties to Mozilla Foundation to use Mozilla Foundation's trademarks. Mozilla Corp makes money by selling the default search engine position to Google, spends some of that money on Firefox development, and sends a lot of the rest to Mozilla Foundation in the form of those royalties.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      So if we’re reading this and concerned about the level of support for Firefox, then we should be somewhat consoled by the fact that the Mozilla Corp uses the money for Firefox development before it even hits the Foundation?
yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> Firefox's apparent marketshare drop is potentially indistinguishable from their deployment of privacy-improving features, including stubbing out Google Analytics when "Enhanced Tracking Protection" is enabled. That's an interesting angle. I suppose we could compare against Mozilla's stats on download numbers and telemetry? Though between users downloading from distro mirrors and disabling telemetry (I suspect Firefox users are far more likely to be privacy conscious and/or Linux users) those will also be fuzzy.
KennyBlanken 3y ago
Firefox has all sorts of telemetry reporting so they know exactly how much usage the browser is getting.
- woodruffw 3y ago
  It's not clear to me that these numbers come from Firefox's own telemetry. I couldn't find the graphs in either of the reports on their own page.
- fabrice_d 3y ago
  Indeed, and the data is mostly public: see https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity to check monthly active user evolution. It's going slowly down - something that is unlikely to improve unless Firefox gets better distribution channels, especially on mobile. Giving up on FirefoxOS cut them from having the "default" browser anywhere. They are working on a gecko-based iOS browser since the UE is likely to mandate browser diversity, so maybe that will improve things a bit - though this will only make the situation on iOS on par with Android where Firefox is not doing well market share wise.
- remram 3y ago
  A lot of those can be turned off. Some are turned off by Linux distributions.
yawaramin 3y ago
Wouldn't that be easy to verify by just looking at the relative market shares of different browsers and checking if there is an 'unknown' browser whose market share is increasing proportionately to Firefox's decrease?
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Not if the metrics come solely from analytics like GA. It would appear as an absolute decline in browser numbers instead (which would probably be indistinguishable from noise in most samples).
  - yawaramin 3y ago
    All I'm saying is you just need a table like this: | Year | Firefox | Chrome | Other | | 2020 | 20% | 75% | 5% | | 2021 | 19% | 75% | 6% | | 2022 | 18% | 75% | 7% | This would make it pretty obvious, no?
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      No, because there are multiple independent variables there: OEM mobile browsers, for example, and the fact that the overall number and distribution of observed browsers is not static.
Semaphor 3y ago
I posted some stats from our website a few weeks ago [0], GA was heavily undercounting FF compared to our server-side stats based on UAs. One other thing to remember, is to check the falling of desktop usage, because a large part of the modern internet users are mobile-only, and the amount of people who use anything but what Google tells them to (or Apple allows them to) is vanishingly small. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38533109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38533109
- mrazomor 3y ago
  > a large part of the modern internet users are mobile-only, and the amount of people who use anything but what Google tells them to (or Apple allows them to) is vanishingly small. I'm a Chrome user. Both on desktop and mobile because of the built in syncing. If I were able to switch to Firefox mobile (Android), I would. But the rendering is often broken or awkwardly different on Firefox mobile. I thought this is a thing of the past...
  - mehdix 3y ago
    Interestingly one reason I use firefox is because of its builtin synching. My tabs, bookmarks, and passwords are synced. Extensions could also sync their preferences (not sure about data). I also heavily use their "send tab to device" feature, which allows me to send tabs to specific devices to act on them later.
  - fl0id 3y ago
    ffx also has syncing.
  - Larrikin 3y ago
    Which specific websites?
    - mrazomor 3y ago
      I hit a few in the past. But, I'm failing to find any of them at the moment... Maybe I should give Firefox mobile another try. It could be that my baseline was the Chrome rendering, so any discrepancy was classified as "it's broken".
sharps1 3y ago
There is definitely a downward usage trend from Mozilla own stats. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
- woodruffw 3y ago
  Right; nobody is claiming that Firefox is doing well. But that downward trend is not proportionate with the claimed global downward trend; it's much smaller.
  - sharps1 3y ago
    Firefox has lost over 20 million users in 2 years. Jan 3 2021 210,085,100 Jan 1 2023 193,199,300 Dec 17 2023 185,599,100
    - woodruffw 3y ago
      I can read. The point is that the number doesn't translate: 7.5 million lost users over 2023 doesn't correspond to a 0.75% decline in global browser presence. 7.5 million is a tiny fraction of that.
      - mvdtnz 3y ago
        7.5M out of 193M is 0.39%, so it's off by about a half. Hardly a "tiny fraction". Presumably the growth in internet users in the period would increase the relative decline in market share, too.
        lupusreal 3y ago
        3.9%
        Liquid_Fire 3y ago
        You're comparing apples to oranges. The 0.75% decline from the OP is of market share across all browsers. The figure here is a 3.9% (not 0.39%) decline in Firefox users only. This would translate to 3.9% of 3.79% = about 0.14% of market share. It's not about half but more than 5x less.

wmf 3y ago

I would assume that Firefox revenue is proportional to usage and revenue is only down a few percent. This implies that Firefox usage is declining much slower than people say.

halflings 3y ago
Not if you account for the increase in ad revenue from the company paying them.
bee_rider 3y ago
I don’t understand how to read their “assets” table; but it looks like most of their revenue comes from “royalties,” which I’m sure has some specific meaning for these kinds of reports, but I’m not sure if it scales with numbers of users or not. If that’s the money they get from Google (huge guess alert, I’m probably wrong!), then I’m not sure if it would scale in the short there with the number of users; I guess they must re-negotiate their contract every couple years, right?
- lupusreal 3y ago
  Mozilla Corp pays royalties to Mozilla Foundation to use Mozilla Foundation's trademarks. Mozilla Corp makes money by selling the default search engine position to Google, spends some of that money on Firefox development, and sends a lot of the rest to Mozilla Foundation in the form of those royalties.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    So if we’re reading this and concerned about the level of support for Firefox, then we should be somewhat consoled by the fact that the Mozilla Corp uses the money for Firefox development before it even hits the Foundation?

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> Firefox's apparent marketshare drop is potentially indistinguishable from their deployment of privacy-improving features, including stubbing out Google Analytics when "Enhanced Tracking Protection" is enabled. That's an interesting angle. I suppose we could compare against Mozilla's stats on download numbers and telemetry? Though between users downloading from distro mirrors and disabling telemetry (I suspect Firefox users are far more likely to be privacy conscious and/or Linux users) those will also be fuzzy.

KennyBlanken 3y ago

Firefox has all sorts of telemetry reporting so they know exactly how much usage the browser is getting.

woodruffw 3y ago
It's not clear to me that these numbers come from Firefox's own telemetry. I couldn't find the graphs in either of the reports on their own page.
fabrice_d 3y ago
Indeed, and the data is mostly public: see https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity to check monthly active user evolution. It's going slowly down - something that is unlikely to improve unless Firefox gets better distribution channels, especially on mobile. Giving up on FirefoxOS cut them from having the "default" browser anywhere. They are working on a gecko-based iOS browser since the UE is likely to mandate browser diversity, so maybe that will improve things a bit - though this will only make the situation on iOS on par with Android where Firefox is not doing well market share wise.
remram 3y ago
A lot of those can be turned off. Some are turned off by Linux distributions.

yawaramin 3y ago

Wouldn't that be easy to verify by just looking at the relative market shares of different browsers and checking if there is an 'unknown' browser whose market share is increasing proportionately to Firefox's decrease?

woodruffw 3y ago
Not if the metrics come solely from analytics like GA. It would appear as an absolute decline in browser numbers instead (which would probably be indistinguishable from noise in most samples).
- yawaramin 3y ago
  All I'm saying is you just need a table like this: | Year | Firefox | Chrome | Other | | 2020 | 20% | 75% | 5% | | 2021 | 19% | 75% | 6% | | 2022 | 18% | 75% | 7% | This would make it pretty obvious, no?
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    No, because there are multiple independent variables there: OEM mobile browsers, for example, and the fact that the overall number and distribution of observed browsers is not static.

Semaphor 3y ago

I posted some stats from our website a few weeks ago [0], GA was heavily undercounting FF compared to our server-side stats based on UAs. One other thing to remember, is to check the falling of desktop usage, because a large part of the modern internet users are mobile-only, and the amount of people who use anything but what Google tells them to (or Apple allows them to) is vanishingly small. [0]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38533109 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=38533109

mrazomor 3y ago
> a large part of the modern internet users are mobile-only, and the amount of people who use anything but what Google tells them to (or Apple allows them to) is vanishingly small. I'm a Chrome user. Both on desktop and mobile because of the built in syncing. If I were able to switch to Firefox mobile (Android), I would. But the rendering is often broken or awkwardly different on Firefox mobile. I thought this is a thing of the past...
- mehdix 3y ago
  Interestingly one reason I use firefox is because of its builtin synching. My tabs, bookmarks, and passwords are synced. Extensions could also sync their preferences (not sure about data). I also heavily use their "send tab to device" feature, which allows me to send tabs to specific devices to act on them later.
- fl0id 3y ago
  ffx also has syncing.
- Larrikin 3y ago
  Which specific websites?
  - mrazomor 3y ago
    I hit a few in the past. But, I'm failing to find any of them at the moment... Maybe I should give Firefox mobile another try. It could be that my baseline was the Chrome rendering, so any discrepancy was classified as "it's broken".

sharps1 3y ago

There is definitely a downward usage trend from Mozilla own stats. https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

woodruffw 3y ago
Right; nobody is claiming that Firefox is doing well. But that downward trend is not proportionate with the claimed global downward trend; it's much smaller.
- sharps1 3y ago
  Firefox has lost over 20 million users in 2 years. Jan 3 2021 210,085,100 Jan 1 2023 193,199,300 Dec 17 2023 185,599,100
  - woodruffw 3y ago
    I can read. The point is that the number doesn't translate: 7.5 million lost users over 2023 doesn't correspond to a 0.75% decline in global browser presence. 7.5 million is a tiny fraction of that.
    - mvdtnz 3y ago
      7.5M out of 193M is 0.39%, so it's off by about a half. Hardly a "tiny fraction". Presumably the growth in internet users in the period would increase the relative decline in market share, too.
      - lupusreal 3y ago
        3.9%
      - Liquid_Fire 3y ago
        You're comparing apples to oranges. The 0.75% decline from the OP is of market share across all browsers. The figure here is a 3.9% (not 0.39%) decline in Firefox users only. This would translate to 3.9% of 3.79% = about 0.14% of market share. It's not about half but more than 5x less.