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I am not a Firefox user, but I am baffled by the fact that every time I see news about it is because its developers are trying to push something that users disl

I am not a Firefox user, but I am baffled by the fact that every time I see news about it is because its developers are trying to push something that users dislike. All the comments I read always highlight how they keep wasting time and money instead of working on more important things. My impression is that this is the reason why they keep losing market share. I never see any positive news about Firefox or Mozilla, and the browser has nothing that would make me switch. Firefox gained market share because people recommended it and installed it on the computers of friends and family. They seem to have stopped, and its developers don't seem, from the outside, to be interested in doing anything to bring that back.

shawnz 11mo ago
Here are some of the things that make Firefox the best browser for me: - An extension system more powerful than Chrome's, which supports for example rich adblockers that can block ads on Youtube. Also, it works on mobile, too - Many sophisticated productivity, privacy, and tab management features such as vertical tabs, tab groups, container tabs, split tabs, etc. And now it also has easy-to-use profiles and PWA support just like Chrome - A sync system which is ALWAYS end-to-end encrypted, and doesn't leak your browsing data or saved credentials if you configure it wrong, like Google's does, and it of course works on mobile too - And yes, LLM-assisted summarization, translation, tab grouping, etc, most of which works entirely offline with local LLMs and no cloud interation, although there are some cloud enabled features as well
- stogot 11mo ago
  When/where was the PWA support added? I tried to test that this week and their docs say to use a third-party extension.
  - shawnz 11mo ago
    They're calling it taskbar tabs and it's behind a feature flag in nightly currently: https://windowsreport.com/firefox-is-bringing-web-apps-to-windows-11-with-taskbar-tabs-first-look/ https://windowsreport.com/firefox-is-bringing-web-apps-to-wi...
    - stogot 11mo ago
      Thanks
- uzerfcwn 11mo ago
  My favourite feature is userChrome. The default chrome sucks in both Chrome and Firefox, but at least Firefox allows me to customize it to my liking without forking the entire browser. On the flip side, changing keybinds in Firefox requires forking, but the defaults aren't too bad.
benatkin 11mo ago
Amen. Friends don't let friends use Firefox in the manner prescribed by Mozilla in its current state. It's horrid. I have LibreWolf and Chrome installed, but not Firefox, and I like part of Firefox in spite of, not because of, the rest of Mozilla. I'd be interested in Ladybird except they threaten to use Swift.
- DaSHacka 11mo ago
  Exactly this. I use librewolf, but for non-tech savvy, relatives where that would not be an option, I'm not exactly gonna recommend barebones vanilla Firefox either.
- pessimizer 11mo ago
  Exactly. I've never stopped using Firefox, I've stopped recommending it because I can't support it (literally, meaning guide the people I recommend it to through annoyances and problems.) I only use it myself through Debian, I cram it with extensions to get old functionality back and give me some measure of privacy, and make tons of userChrome changes to get everything to look halfway sane (i.e. like it looked out of the box in 2010.) I'm not helping somebody non-technical with that, and without that, I can't really recommend it over Chrome; they're both controlled by Google. I can tell them that Firefox is better for adblocking, for now, until they gaslight everyone and revert to following Chrome's tail on absolutely everything again. But if Firefox were a real public service browser, they would have brought uBlock in-house a long time ago by employing gorhill (along with a bunch of other extensions, especially Tree Style Tabs.) Instead, they danced around shutting down its APIs just like Chrome until they decided not to (or until Google decided for them, because Firefox doing that would have annihilated Google in antitrust hearings.) There is absolutely no reason to be confident that Firefox won't be "regretfully" or "unfortunately" right in on "Manifest V4."
  - k1musab1 11mo ago
    Excellent point. Google can point to this browser with sub 5% market penetration as an alternative in anti-trust hearings, so keeping it on life support is beneficial.
- 11mo ago
metabagel 11mo ago
I don't understand why anyone would choose Chrome over Firefox. I get that it's performant, but it's developed by a dominant advertising company. Why would you trust Chrome if you care about your privacy? Firefox is excellent, despite the grumbling of people who want it to have a narrower focus (which I'm not disagreeing with).
- DaSHacka 11mo ago
  > if you care about your privacy? I think you just answered your own questions.
  - godelski 11mo ago
    Then explain Brave then. They market as privacy but it has similar issues being chromium. The most critical being that by being chromium Google still gets to dictate how the internet works
  - s3p 11mo ago
    I'm not sure they did. What do you think is the answer to "Why would you trust chrome if you care about privacy?"
    - DaSHacka 11mo ago
      GP said: > I don't understand why anyone would choose Chrome over Firefox. I get that it's performant, but it's developed by a dominant advertising company. Why would you trust Chrome if you care about your privacy? I believe the vast majorty of people do not care about their privacy, answering GP's question.
- tim333 11mo ago
  I tend to use Chrome over Firefox although I have both. Plus points - better translate, google lens, slick and consistent. Minus points - Firefox containers are good. Re privacy it comes across to me as a bit tin foil hat worrying about the evil doers tracking my thoughts. I mean sure I don't want criminals to know my home address and bank account details but re Google knowing say I use mac and advertising some Apple stuff to me - what's the problem?
simianparrot 11mo ago
Every time I try Firefox it’s slower than Chrome or Safari. Every time. And since that never seems to improve, I suspect that’s why its market share keeps dropping because all the fluff doesn’t matter if the core feature is just worse.
- mattthebaker 11mo ago
  Personally, I don't really see the value proposition in being able to load and serve you ads faster, compared to a browser with a proper ad blocker.
  - mbonnet 11mo ago
    The average user does not care about ads being present. Speed is paramount.
    - thfuran 11mo ago
      Shouldn't getting rid of all the ads make things notably faster?
      - 1718627440 11mo ago
        It does. Fundamentally.
    - moooo99 11mo ago
      I disagree. I have installed adblockers on different relatives machines. Without fail, they mentioned how much better surfing now is. They did not not mind the ads, they just didn‘t know there is an easy way to get rid of them
    - munificent 11mo ago
      You are radically underestimating how much slow web performance is caused by the massive volume of ads and user tracking data attached to each site.
  - 11mo ago
godelski 11mo ago
There are plenty of us that have no problem with Firefox and use it. But I notice people love to hate Firefox. You also get a lot of people complaining who've never used it. Truth is it's a perfectly fine browser and the average person doesn't really notice the difference when you switch them over. Okay, "you" might be special and we're on a tech forum but most people don't. But we're also on a tech forum where people don't realize that a chrome/chromium dominance means Google controls how the internet operates. People love to complain about Firefox's lack of standards as if those aren't first protocols in chrome and then Google votes for them to become standards. That's the entire problem right there
- JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
  > I notice people love to hate Firefox They may be misplacing their hatred for Mozilla, which legitimately deserves the ire.
  - godelski 11mo ago
    At this point that doesn't matter, does it? Mozilla has no teeth in which to bite with. They're not even close to. So is that really the priority? In the meantime all these conversions accomplish is the sharpening of Google's teeth. Google not only has the capacity to bite but is actively demonstrating that they'll use their teeth. So why the fuck do we complain about a dog with no teeth while another dog is eating our legs? Let's get our priorities right. Let's talk after we're not being bitten or if that dog starts eating our other leg.
- ajkjk 11mo ago
  they hate it because all the news about it is bad, and falls cleanly into the unignorable modern narrative that "everything is being corrupted and turning against users over time". Embedding corporate interests in a browser that was supposed to be for people (see: all the examples of them doing that) is morally disgusting and everyone hates it. The repulsiveness of it is more about the trend that it represents than the feature itself. We are soooooooo fucking tired of good things becoming bad and being unaccountable for it. To win our confidence, the right number of "betrayals of user trust" is absolutely zero, and it's not right now... and since they're ostensibly non-profit/open source the dissonance of "pretending to win trust" and then "betraying it" is especially jarring. When Google does something evil every day you're not surprised, just resigned; when Mozilla does something evil you're truly disappointed because they have no reason to; they were supposed to be good the good guys.
dimal 11mo ago
> every time I see news about it is because its developers are trying to push something that users dislike Don't blame developers for management decisions.
0manrho 11mo ago
> All the comments I read always highlight how they keep wasting time and money instead of working on more important things. Nail on the head. Longtime Firefox user. All the way back to when it was called Netscape in fact, though I did roll chrome for a few years before coming back. It was sometime around Mozilla's acquisition/integration of Pocket that shit started going sideways. Though, aside from the ad/privacy bullshit recently, their decisions haven't necessarily been "bad" ones so much as strange ones, and are all too often opt-out by default instead of opt-in. I just constantly find myself asking "Why?" more than actively being against what they're doing. These days I use waterfox as it's Firefox without all the weird decisions (and telemetry), but truth be told the only reason I recommend Water/Firefox to anyone these days is by-and-large when they're bitching about ads and why their adblock doesn't work as well as it used to because of chrome and their MV3 chicanery. There are other reasons to use firefox, but for the average/casual user that's the main differentiator between it and chrome.

shawnz 11mo ago

Here are some of the things that make Firefox the best browser for me: - An extension system more powerful than Chrome's, which supports for example rich adblockers that can block ads on Youtube. Also, it works on mobile, too - Many sophisticated productivity, privacy, and tab management features such as vertical tabs, tab groups, container tabs, split tabs, etc. And now it also has easy-to-use profiles and PWA support just like Chrome - A sync system which is ALWAYS end-to-end encrypted, and doesn't leak your browsing data or saved credentials if you configure it wrong, like Google's does, and it of course works on mobile too - And yes, LLM-assisted summarization, translation, tab grouping, etc, most of which works entirely offline with local LLMs and no cloud interation, although there are some cloud enabled features as well

stogot 11mo ago
When/where was the PWA support added? I tried to test that this week and their docs say to use a third-party extension.
- shawnz 11mo ago
  They're calling it taskbar tabs and it's behind a feature flag in nightly currently: https://windowsreport.com/firefox-is-bringing-web-apps-to-windows-11-with-taskbar-tabs-first-look/ https://windowsreport.com/firefox-is-bringing-web-apps-to-wi...
  - stogot 11mo ago
    Thanks
uzerfcwn 11mo ago
My favourite feature is userChrome. The default chrome sucks in both Chrome and Firefox, but at least Firefox allows me to customize it to my liking without forking the entire browser. On the flip side, changing keybinds in Firefox requires forking, but the defaults aren't too bad.

benatkin 11mo ago

Amen. Friends don't let friends use Firefox in the manner prescribed by Mozilla in its current state. It's horrid. I have LibreWolf and Chrome installed, but not Firefox, and I like part of Firefox in spite of, not because of, the rest of Mozilla. I'd be interested in Ladybird except they threaten to use Swift.

DaSHacka 11mo ago
Exactly this. I use librewolf, but for non-tech savvy, relatives where that would not be an option, I'm not exactly gonna recommend barebones vanilla Firefox either.
pessimizer 11mo ago
Exactly. I've never stopped using Firefox, I've stopped recommending it because I can't support it (literally, meaning guide the people I recommend it to through annoyances and problems.) I only use it myself through Debian, I cram it with extensions to get old functionality back and give me some measure of privacy, and make tons of userChrome changes to get everything to look halfway sane (i.e. like it looked out of the box in 2010.) I'm not helping somebody non-technical with that, and without that, I can't really recommend it over Chrome; they're both controlled by Google. I can tell them that Firefox is better for adblocking, for now, until they gaslight everyone and revert to following Chrome's tail on absolutely everything again. But if Firefox were a real public service browser, they would have brought uBlock in-house a long time ago by employing gorhill (along with a bunch of other extensions, especially Tree Style Tabs.) Instead, they danced around shutting down its APIs just like Chrome until they decided not to (or until Google decided for them, because Firefox doing that would have annihilated Google in antitrust hearings.) There is absolutely no reason to be confident that Firefox won't be "regretfully" or "unfortunately" right in on "Manifest V4."
- k1musab1 11mo ago
  Excellent point. Google can point to this browser with sub 5% market penetration as an alternative in anti-trust hearings, so keeping it on life support is beneficial.
11mo ago

metabagel 11mo ago

I don't understand why anyone would choose Chrome over Firefox. I get that it's performant, but it's developed by a dominant advertising company. Why would you trust Chrome if you care about your privacy? Firefox is excellent, despite the grumbling of people who want it to have a narrower focus (which I'm not disagreeing with).

DaSHacka 11mo ago
> if you care about your privacy? I think you just answered your own questions.
- godelski 11mo ago
  Then explain Brave then. They market as privacy but it has similar issues being chromium. The most critical being that by being chromium Google still gets to dictate how the internet works
- s3p 11mo ago
  I'm not sure they did. What do you think is the answer to "Why would you trust chrome if you care about privacy?"
  - DaSHacka 11mo ago
    GP said: > I don't understand why anyone would choose Chrome over Firefox. I get that it's performant, but it's developed by a dominant advertising company. Why would you trust Chrome if you care about your privacy? I believe the vast majorty of people do not care about their privacy, answering GP's question.
tim333 11mo ago
I tend to use Chrome over Firefox although I have both. Plus points - better translate, google lens, slick and consistent. Minus points - Firefox containers are good. Re privacy it comes across to me as a bit tin foil hat worrying about the evil doers tracking my thoughts. I mean sure I don't want criminals to know my home address and bank account details but re Google knowing say I use mac and advertising some Apple stuff to me - what's the problem?

simianparrot 11mo ago

Every time I try Firefox it’s slower than Chrome or Safari. Every time. And since that never seems to improve, I suspect that’s why its market share keeps dropping because all the fluff doesn’t matter if the core feature is just worse.

mattthebaker 11mo ago
Personally, I don't really see the value proposition in being able to load and serve you ads faster, compared to a browser with a proper ad blocker.
- mbonnet 11mo ago
  The average user does not care about ads being present. Speed is paramount.
  - thfuran 11mo ago
    Shouldn't getting rid of all the ads make things notably faster?
    - 1718627440 11mo ago
      It does. Fundamentally.
  - moooo99 11mo ago
    I disagree. I have installed adblockers on different relatives machines. Without fail, they mentioned how much better surfing now is. They did not not mind the ads, they just didn‘t know there is an easy way to get rid of them
  - munificent 11mo ago
    You are radically underestimating how much slow web performance is caused by the massive volume of ads and user tracking data attached to each site.
- 11mo ago

godelski 11mo ago

There are plenty of us that have no problem with Firefox and use it. But I notice people love to hate Firefox. You also get a lot of people complaining who've never used it. Truth is it's a perfectly fine browser and the average person doesn't really notice the difference when you switch them over. Okay, "you" might be special and we're on a tech forum but most people don't. But we're also on a tech forum where people don't realize that a chrome/chromium dominance means Google controls how the internet operates. People love to complain about Firefox's lack of standards as if those aren't first protocols in chrome and then Google votes for them to become standards. That's the entire problem right there

JumpCrisscross 11mo ago
> I notice people love to hate Firefox They may be misplacing their hatred for Mozilla, which legitimately deserves the ire.
- godelski 11mo ago
  At this point that doesn't matter, does it? Mozilla has no teeth in which to bite with. They're not even close to. So is that really the priority? In the meantime all these conversions accomplish is the sharpening of Google's teeth. Google not only has the capacity to bite but is actively demonstrating that they'll use their teeth. So why the fuck do we complain about a dog with no teeth while another dog is eating our legs? Let's get our priorities right. Let's talk after we're not being bitten or if that dog starts eating our other leg.
ajkjk 11mo ago
they hate it because all the news about it is bad, and falls cleanly into the unignorable modern narrative that "everything is being corrupted and turning against users over time". Embedding corporate interests in a browser that was supposed to be for people (see: all the examples of them doing that) is morally disgusting and everyone hates it. The repulsiveness of it is more about the trend that it represents than the feature itself. We are soooooooo fucking tired of good things becoming bad and being unaccountable for it. To win our confidence, the right number of "betrayals of user trust" is absolutely zero, and it's not right now... and since they're ostensibly non-profit/open source the dissonance of "pretending to win trust" and then "betraying it" is especially jarring. When Google does something evil every day you're not surprised, just resigned; when Mozilla does something evil you're truly disappointed because they have no reason to; they were supposed to be good the good guys.

dimal 11mo ago

> every time I see news about it is because its developers are trying to push something that users dislike Don't blame developers for management decisions.

0manrho 11mo ago

> All the comments I read always highlight how they keep wasting time and money instead of working on more important things. Nail on the head. Longtime Firefox user. All the way back to when it was called Netscape in fact, though I did roll chrome for a few years before coming back. It was sometime around Mozilla's acquisition/integration of Pocket that shit started going sideways. Though, aside from the ad/privacy bullshit recently, their decisions haven't necessarily been "bad" ones so much as strange ones, and are all too often opt-out by default instead of opt-in. I just constantly find myself asking "Why?" more than actively being against what they're doing. These days I use waterfox as it's Firefox without all the weird decisions (and telemetry), but truth be told the only reason I recommend Water/Firefox to anyone these days is by-and-large when they're bitching about ads and why their adblock doesn't work as well as it used to because of chrome and their MV3 chicanery. There are other reasons to use firefox, but for the average/casual user that's the main differentiator between it and chrome.