Firefox lost 50M users since 2019 | Hacker News Reader

Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

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377 pointsfreediver598 comments

I have contacted local authorities twice about anti competitive behavior from Chrome.

If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should start to look like an earthquake ;-)

Same if ten - twenty Germans or Brits or French do the same.

I would mention:

1. that some of their web properties (calendar and YouTube) have been intentionally incompatible with Firefox as evidenced by how well they work in Firefox if one changes how the browser identify itself.

2. How they have pushed Chrome as a "better browser" on the front page of Google (were no one else have been allowed to advertise) to Firefox users since way before Chrome was anywere nearly as good as Firefox, making it both a lie and - more importantly - a massive abuse of dominance in one market to gain monopoly in another just like Microsoft did with IE.

As we saw yesterday with AWS authorities are willing to punish rampant abuse if they have a good case and this definitely is one.

Edit: since this comment is getting a lot of attention the relevant authority in Norway is Konkurransetilsynet with web address https://konkurransetilsynet.no

(Finding the exact correct form on that site and for this purpose seems to be an art and/or science it seems but if you can't find any just submit somewhere and explain the situation.)

It would be beautiful if everyone could post underneath with the address to the equivalent office in your jurisdiction.

My child's school uses Google Classroom. The Google experience is unusable in Firefox. Meet doesn't work (e.g. he sees nothing when the teacher screenshares). This seems really quite anti-competitive.

My child cares about privacy and switches browsers. Chrome for Meet, Firefox for most non-Google things.

I was having crazy issues in GDrive and GDocs where I could download nothing using FF - no PDFs, no .docx files, none of my other backed-up files, you'd click download and nothing would happen. Do the same in Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera, even changing my user-agent to Chrome, and it works flawlessly.

My solution to this problem was move everything off GDrive and into self-hosted options. If Google is going to intentionally hinder usage on non-Google software when no real technical roadblocks exist, I'll gladly use literally anything else.

Meet absolutely works in Firefox, there's nothing anti-competitive going on. As do Google products generally (though there are occasionally performance issues where Firefox simply doesn't provide an API that Chrome does and the polyfill is slower, but then Firefox catches up).

But try disabling browser extensions and see if that fixes it -- a majority of the time that's the culprit. With videoconferencing specifically, it's often an extension or setting to block videos from autoplaying.

Something is wrong with their system then. I use Meet in Firefox and it works. Sometimes it's buggy but I can always get it to work.

You can improve the situation somewhat by using bromite/ungoogled-chromium instead of chrome, for the purposes when Firefox doesn't work.

Huh, just an anecdote, but Meet runs perfectly fine on FF for me at work. Only issue is I can't blur my background unless I'm on Chrome.

Unless Meet and other Google apps are really tailored to subperform under firefox I don't think it's a solid case.

If google devs code doesn't run as fast in firefox why should google take the blame ?

or maybe google is using non html5 apis to tap into chrome for faster perf in which case things are muddy.. since whatwg kinda allows unofficial apis

I believe Chrome also has better support for new technologies/APIs thus the reason firefox doesn't work that well. But as others said that's not always the case.

We use Google Meet at work, and I use Firefox.

The "Change background" feature was not "supported" in Firefox, then suddenly I could use it so I thought they finally implemented it for Firefox as it was working perfectly.

Two days later the feature disappeared, and I keep getting that "your browser doesn't support this feature" popup since.

That sucks, but take the time to imagine what might be going on on the other side.

There's a dev running an experiment to whitelist more combinations of the huge space of (Device, CPU, GPU, OS, OSVersion, Browser, BrowserVersion) to use that feature. What would you do after seeing that the metrics show that most of the users on your experiment had a bad experience? In that case you'd want to rollback your experiment right away and figure out what's wrong. You really expected all, if not most of the combinations you selected to actually work well, but it's apparently not the case.

> anti competitive behavior

Have some examples? On Desktop, I don't see any, but I would get if you mean Mobile since Chrome is still the default browser there for Android.

Google sheets used to be broken `BASED ON USER AGENT`.

https://support.google.com/docs/thread/18235069/google-sheet...

After i found that spoof browser agent fixed it. They locked the thread coincidentally and the bug is also fixed coincidentally a few days after.

I don't know if it is really a coincident, but I definitely have 0 trust of them after it.

This thread from a former Mozilla exec: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686?s=20

Have you used Firefox with Google Docs Calendar or YouTube over the last ten years?

(Multiple more examples exist for those willing to dig: at one point the search results page would peg one processor core briefly every 30 seconds as long as you stayed on that page - and used Firefox)

Edit: and as you mention, the situation with Chrome on mobile is basically a 1-1 of IE on Windows.

Even if just mobile I'm still not sure how they get away with it. They have 71% of the global mobile marketshare, my phone came preinstalled with chrome, I cannot remove it, only disable it.

How is that any different at all to what Microsoft was doing with IE in the 90's?

Youtube on iOS is deliberately changed in a way that it breaks playing video/audio in the background. iOS is capable of that by default with HTML5, but Youtube sells background play as a paid feature.

I remember when gmail outright crippled itself when I used it some 5 years ago. I also remember other Google services disabling some features only on Firefox.

Google Ads is practically unusable with Firefox

>If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should start to look like an earthquake ;-)

That 5 people wrote to them?

Yes. It is my sincere belief that very few people notice && care enough to figure out who to contact, how to contact them and actually do it.

To be fair Google's products are not great as they were. GDrive sometimes does not work at Chromium. You can't disable 3rd party to download cookies. Console is a pile of errors. UX is not consistent. And new services don't integrate properly even with Google services.

> How they have pushed Chrome as a "better browser" on the front page of Google (were no one else have been allowed to advertise) to Firefox users since way before Chrome was anywere nearly as good as Firefox, making it both a lie and - more importantly - a massive abuse of dominance in one market to gain monopoly in another just like Microsoft did with IE.

Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle. Windows was the product everyone wanted, and Microsoft abused its dominance in operating systems to increase its share of the browser market by refusing to sell you Windows unless you also took Internet Explorer.

By contrast, Google does not condition the use of Search on the use of Chrome. There’s nothing wrong with promoting a product to customers who use one of your other products (or we’d have to break up pretty much every multi-product company).

>Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle.

Nope. That's what some people complained about, but it wasn't their legal issue (which is why today every OS vendor still does it).

The actual complaint, which is pasted below, shows it in much greater nuance, as it wasn't that they "required OEMs to buy the bundle" (in fact, there wasn't any buying, IE was free part of Windows).

No, Microsoft's primary offense was making non-Microsoft tools awkward. Windows without IE was awkward. Windows wasn't done until it gave odd error messages on DR DOS. Borland always seemed to have incomplete documentation, late. Etc.

Google works poorly enough on non-Chrome browsers that it's the same thing.

Microsoft's crime was doing it in the 90s. What Apple has done with iOS and OSX takes Microsoft's bundling, third-party lockout and lack of consumer choice to an exponential level, and it's celebrated as a feature now. iOS literally disallows any other browser technology from running, requiring them all to use less-featured versions of the first party tool. Microsoft must be jealous seeing them get away with that.

How do you know this is because of Chrome in the first place? Another explanation is that it could be Edge or even users moving to use mobile (browsers) more?

Genuinely curious where the market share and total number of users in the market (broken down) has shifted.

It may also not exclusively be anticompetitive behavior from Chrome, but just Mozilla's stewardship of Firefox. They constantly manage to generate shitstorms around updates (how does this never happen with Chrome?) and then the plain disregard/making fun of user feedback [1] is just a kick in the teeth. For me at least, that's in large part why I moved to Chrome.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211652/https://twitter.c...

Mozilla is killing firefox by introducing hostile behaviour, breaking user expectations, not delivering on promises and ignoring voices of MANY users.

I used to be firefox user since Phoenix, but I gave up on it after 89 when context menus were broken, megabar was still as shitty as when introduced first tie, and new stupid mobile look on my 4k screen? It's almost like they are killing firefox on purpose, but I realised that loyalty to a software product is stupid and moved to Brave.

Why do you care about Firefox and not Safari or Samsung browser?

thanks for the info. Will also report this issue to the authorities.

I love keyboard driven browsers and had also some issues with nyxt and qutebrowser. I want to avoid installing chromium on my linux box and I just can't.

Recommending others also to report it.

If some googlers are reading this, please push the chrome team to be more interoperable. "Don't be evil!" :-)

> If some googlers are reading this, please push the chrome team to be more interoperable. "Don't be evil!" :-)

Second this.

I want to like Google and did for the longest time.

You do so much great stuff but some stuff like this is so damaging for both the ecosystem and for you, because as long as this is going on my best hope is a giant fine.

First world problems

Are problems of the first world a priori invalid because they are of the first world? What makes you think that non-first world people also don’t care about these things. Even the concept of first world seems a little data anymore. Between urbanization and the internet a lot of those categories have blurred in the last few decades.

How can you 'lie' about an opinion like 'better'?

I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now.

My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular leaves me very disappointed and frustrated.

The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness.

I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for professionals, by professionals. I want a consistent UI that remains stable over time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a browser.

Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any suggestions for what to try next?

Just to give a contrasting data point: I always see people complaining about resource consumption in Firefox in these threads, but I have honestly almost never had trouble like this and I use it for hours every day with lots of tabs and lots of rich media websites open. It happened more in the past (maybe 5+ years ago), but I am sure some of the blame in those cases would have been down to Flash. Now that I think more about it, that whole time I've also blocked ads, which surely helps too.

A friend of mine has over 4,000 tabs open in Firefox at the moment - they just never close a tab, ever. Their Firefox' memory usage is only a little higher compared to mine with 3 open tabs.

This might not be the fault of Firefox. The problem is that Chrome is the most used browser even amongst web-devs, so you tend to profile/benchmark your site in that browser and optimize for it.

In my experience, Firefox uses a lot more memory on Windows than on Linux. It feels faster on Linux, too. The reasons might rather complex, though.

Try using Firefox on the world's most popular streaming site Twitch.Tv and report back, let it sit there for a while and try for example use multiple streams to check different perspectives. It slows down to a halt.

Also I can't for example leave Firefox alive while playong some games or it starts to create stutter in the games.

I tried profiling but the Firefox profiler just hangs all the time or uses so many resources it becomes unstable ironically

The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update.

Ive been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and this is my biggest complaint. Stop hiding menu options, my monitor is bigger and you're suddenly trying to save real estate.

The only reason Firefox got as popular as it did is because technical people liked it, and they encouraged their non technical friends to use it. If you're going to dumb it down then technically inclined users will not feel as pationately about it.

I was personally responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of people switching from ie to Firefox when I worked at the help desk of a small ISP. I don't think I would do the same now. It's still my main browser, but it feels like an abusive relationship.

> The slowness and slugishness.

Mozilla has a nice tool to help identify sources of "slowness and slugishness"[1], you may want to give it a try -- oftentimes it's found that the issue is not Firefox itself, but some extensions, external processes, or undesirable modifications in `about:config`.

---

[1] https://profiler.firefox.com/

That is indeed a powerful tool that gives you the god view of everything what could happened.(Which normal web devtools definitely can't) However, it is also sometimes really hard to interpret the results. There are so many data there, some of them comes from Firefox internal, some of them comes from 3rd extension. Something in different thread actually chains together, but the ui does not show. I think it need some improvements to help the user reading the results.

I've been a Firefox user for at least 15 years as well, and the recent UI updates in v89 is the first instance of me refusing to update Firefox.

I updated my user prefs file to permanently disable updates, so I'm remaining on pre-ProtonUI v88. Of course, I don't know how much longer I could sustain that because I'd also not receive security patches, but in the short term it's what I'm doing.

The new Firefox UI is incredibly frustrating, and feels like it walks back sensible UI principles. Removing icons in the main menu was celebrated as "de-cluttering" [0], when in reality icons improve ease of use. The "floating" tabs feel more distracting [1], when they claim the opposite. Heck, even user prompts no longer colorize the "primary action" button [2].

Also, what's with modern UIs becoming increasingly childish and watered down? The word I'd use to describe the new proton UI is "blurry".

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-... [1] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-...

I have a theory why people have dissenting views on the performance of Firefox. I have a laptop dedicated to doing business online. Firefox has no addons on that machine. Some websites are painfully slow and my laptop fans kick on. I have debugged these issues and in every case it was javascript bogging down the CPU's, all 8 cores! gaming laptop I am not a web developer, so it is perhaps unfair for me to pick on the quality of the javascript.

Disable javascript and well... the site isn't usable any more for business transactions, but the slowness and CPU load vanishes. The website becomes snappy, highly responsive and easy to browse. The fans spin down and memory usage goes way down.

I've never used Chrome. Does chrome not ever get bogged down by javascript? Do they have a different javascript library/engine? I assume they must. Can you change the javascript libraries used by Firefox and Chrome? Apologies in advance if this is a dumb question.

My understanding of the current browser landscape is that you've got Firefox; browsers that build upon Google's browser engine (Chrome/Chromium/Edge/Brave/Vivaldi/Opera/etc); and Safari.

There are a number of good options, but very few that don't further cement Google's control over the world's browser-engine code.

(Yes, I know there are some other very minor players that lag behind on features and standards support. I don't think that's what the parent commenter is looking for.)

I'm the complete opposite. I don't have any problem with firefox. Everything works perfectly.

>The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness.

>I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for professionals, by professionals. I want a consistent UI that remains stable over time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a browser.

>Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any suggestions for what to try next?

That's my experience as well. I was using FF from v 1.0 back in 2004. Upgrade to Quantum almost gave me a heart attack because it ruined majority of addons and disabled custom themes. Upgrade to "megabar" was a final straw for me. I've spent ~ 3 hours, but finally migrated to Pale Moon ... and it's like I'm back in 2004. Even Noia theme is working again.

FF, in my opinion, went full circle: from being the most functional and the most customizable browser to being the new IE6. There are no redeeming qualities left really.

I used Firefox from launch until about two years ago. I stopped for reasons similar to what you listed.

I’ve really enjoyed Brave as it is just a simple browser that works (and has lots of privacy features).

> The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness.

Is that firefox or Google pulling a Shadow Dom v0 where they use an API only Chrome implements and fall back to software emulation on everything else?

Funny, I’ve used it on and off for 12 years, switching to other browsers when they started doing rapid release since it was noticeably slower than the competition. But since 2017 when the Quantum update came out I’ve completely switched to it because it’s speed became comparable to the competition. I like it even more when they added container tabs so I can switch between accounts easily. Reading this thread is really strange based on my experience. I do agree that Google makes it hard to use their products like Meet or Drive outside of Gmail and Calendar (the only Google products I use).

Between Firefox and Chrome, the performance is almost identical. What is different is the smooth scrolling behaviour: it is far smoother in chrome than in Firefox, and that has a dramatic impact on how performant the browser “feels.” If Firefox tinkered with that a bit, it would be game changing.

(The few times I’ve had perf issues in Firefox were all either addons or sites designed to work only in chrome)

At least we can override UI redesign changes with userChrome.css and userContent.css. I'm sticking with Firefox as long as its problems have workarounds, because the only options left are Chromium and Safari (or forks like Librewolf), and I find its pros still outweigh its cons.

Slowness could come from several different sources. One quick improvement is to use AdBlocker, or even block Javascript if your workflow allows it. This makes browsing extremely fast. Another one is missing support for upcoming and non-standard web technologies, that usually are implemented in Chrome (Blink) first, that leaves Firefox (and other browsers) using slower performing polyfills. As much as I hate the direction Firefox UI is going, there are no decent browser alternatives, especially those who support adblockers at such low lever as Firefox.

I used Firefox since it released. I changed to chrome after they broke all my extensions for the 2 time in five years. Austrailis change is where I dropped. I use edge now and it’s fine, just fine.

> The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness.

I think this drives many people off Firefox. I am willing tinker with Firefox's internal CSS to tame some of the UI nonsense, but the rest of people just want a browser to get their work done; not to spend a couple hours every month to get rid of Firefox's new UI overhaul.

Same for me with Chrome on Android. This forced tab grouping is totally killing my workflow.

> Any suggestions for what to try next?

I'm in the same boat as you -- a Firefox user (and evangelist) from the beforetimes. But Firefox stopped meeting my needs when the revamp occurred.

I haven't really found a modern browser that is acceptable, though, but it's not for lack of looking. In the meantime, I stick with an older release of Waterfox.

If you want to customize your browser (as far as using your own CSS) you can try Vivaldi. I've been using it for years and after the 3.7 update it feels fast and snappy (at least on my computer). It has tons of custom settings around tabs, commands, windows, toolbars, etc.

At least on Linux it gets out of my way quite nicely. Things like easily accessible Profiles help me quite a lot with my workflow.

If you're really strict about privacy there are browsers like ungoogled-chromium, Bromite (Android) and Orion Browser (only on Mac, iOS) which promise 0 telemetry, connections against their services, etc. Brave is nice but has connections against their services (internal addon updates, safe browsing, updates).

When things don't work in Firefox I try Edge (Canary) and then Safari. Right now, Edge is about 10% of my web usage but it's growing.

I was in the same boat until a year or so ago. The resource consumption kept getting worse and worse, I’d have to restart Firefox every day.

I really miss Firefox but the memory leaks were just a deal breaker.

I also want a browser that when you start it doesn't let you wait for an update. Got too impatient too often with that.

Are you perhaps not using an adblocker and thereby being trapped into wrongly believing that the slowness induced by ad+tracking Javascripts is the fault of Firefox?

It's honestly a pity. Firefox is it perfect but the Internet is becoming worse because of chrome. Google is able to fast track any non standard Web tech and the hordes follow. Soon after, that become the standard. I don't want to cheer for a broken browser, but only Safari is able to stop this madness now.

Also, Firefox on the Desktop is really good and still let's you do so much more than chrome clones. But it suffers specially when using Google websites.

I dont worry. I have seen these cycles with IBM and Microsoft. And they all blow up eventually because the unintended consequences keep increasing.

So Google has got itself locked into that same trajectory for a long time now. "Features" are total bullshit. Its all about making sure every small thing is in the cloud or eventually gets pushed into it.

That vision is as dumb as moving the DNA in every cell in your body into a nearby lake and visiting the lake everytime you want to read 1 bit. With a Google toll booth at the lake entrance. Its doomed to fail.

Just look at the consequences. If you have a webpage on your local hard drive and want to use the browsers javascript to access it to make it look better, the Google Chrome team will come running like well programmed alert robots to call it a security violation and disable api access to your own disk.

This is how empires fall.

IE was essentially a one-trick pony (the browser)

Chrome is being used on the browser (with a mobile footprint Microsoft never had), the desktop (VS Code, Slack, etc), and v8 is driving a substantial part of the web's backend (Node). Even the smaller use case of web scraping is moving towards Puppeteer.

Yeah chrome features stopped being features a long time ago. Why else would they force upgrades to be so persistent yet secretive? Because that's what you have to do when people value the existing feature set over security updates, if they're attached to new features like cookieless tracking.

Chrome is already the standard. Firefox usually works, but more and more often nowadays I encounter a glitchy or poorly performing page, which I switch to Chrome to use properly.

I use Firefox to not be part of the Chrome monopoly, not because it's actually a fundamentally better browser.

Chrome is not better because you witness some pages to render better in Chrome. It is actually the opposite: pages are more and more built for and with Chrome in mind.

And that omnipresence of Chrome allows Google to force their own moves as de facto standards, which is dangerous overall.

Firefox is better because it follows standards and it is open-source and it is not tied to a behemoth like Google.

The authors of pages you see perform better in Chrome are indeed not building for the web but rather building for Chrome.

I have used Firefox for about a decade now and I can't think of a single page that did not work. I'm not saying it's impossible, but incredibly rare. I'd be more inclined to just give up on the site than install Chrome.

> I use Firefox to not be part of the Chrome monopoly, not because it's actually a fundamentally better browser.

For me there is - in addition to not wanting to support Chrome - still a few things that Firefox does better.

As for websites that only support Chrome I consider them broken which means I don't use them or if I have to I try to notify the operator.

> I encounter a glitchy or poorly performing page

When you have the time, you should note it here: https://webcompat.com/

That's my experience too. Unfortunately I don't think it's possible for complex standards to be well specified in human language instead of in code so a reference implementation is what will always win in the end.

At least chromium is open source. The best we can hope is maybe that organizations adopting chromium other than Google can wield more influence over it.

As I point out here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27222818 human language is not precise enough to write good specifications. Natural language words are polysemic and contextual. See the meaning of "break" for example: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/break

Kolmogrov showed that fully specified information distills down to computer programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length

The ideal language for a specification might be a mix of natural language and code with a test suit, something like Literate Programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming) or its descendants along with modern pull request based discussions that are tied to version controlled code.

I wish Mozilla or a similar organization adopted the chromium core. We really need a well funded non-profit managed release of the reference browser.

>only Safari is able to stop this madness now

Safari is usable on less than 20% of machines, it absolutely will not be stopping anything. It's also the bane of my existence as a web developer.

I’m guessing a huge percentage of the lost users switched to Brave since it had 25 million as of February and is affiliated with Brendan Eich.

https://brave.com/25m-mau/

> Safari is usable on less than 20% of machines, it absolutely will not be stopping anything

You forgot mobile, iOS users are big chunk of it and websites want to work on iOS browsers.

Once Safari is gone you're not a web developer you're a ChromeOS developer

I'm curious. I'm not "frontend", but I do write code that runs in the browser, and write parts of the visualization UI for our products. I do get to determine how we build our products. I've gone with vue/typescript, and that hasn't caused any problem so far. A part of our software has to be able to run everywhere, and that unfortunately still includes IE11, so there I do take care of using a minimal feature set, but I can't remember the last time Safari caused me a problem. What problems does Safari cause?

The past few years I've been saying "Safari is the new IE" in terms of web development. I can't tell you how many bugs I've had to fix because Safari was doing something weird with JS/CSS.

IE11 is going EOL "soon" and at that point Safari is really going to be the odd one out. Chromium and Firefox are at least _mostly_ consistent with each other, save for when Chromium adds some crazy new feature that's nonstandard (but at that point only niche websites are usually using the new feature).

> It's also the bane of my existence as a web developer.

I would say as a Chrome developer then.

I keep using Firefox on the desktop as a kind of resistance factor,. however the truth is that the war is lost, the Web has turned into ChromeOS for all practical purposes.

Specially since Microsoft has always been on the same boat as Google, remember that such kind of features go back to Active Desktop.

Additionally, everyone pushing Electron apps is basically contributing to Chrome market share.

Exactly. They just shipped a UUID implementation to stable chrome before it was even finalized. They barely discussed and now it’s live. But hey they wrote a proposal so it’s all good.

> it suffers specially when using Google websites

I keep seeing this rhetoric, but I've never experienced this myself. I use Firefox as my main driver and use Google Search, Docs, Mail, Sheets, Slides, YouTube, and whatever other Google products literally every day and everything works just fine. I've tried them out in Chrome/Edge/whatever and they all work exactly the same.

The only thing that doesn't work 100% is search on Firefox on Android, but there's no reason for it and changing the user agent fixes all the problems (Google intentionally makes it bad to try and drive you to Chrome).

> Firefox on the Desktop is really good

I strongly disagree with this statement. My opinion is that it's the opposite.

I always get sad when I think about modern Firefox. I loved Firefox dearly before the transition, and I tried really hard to love it after the transition, too. But it failed me and lost much of what I loved about it. Then every subsequent release was just a little worse, excising more of what made Firefox great.

Eventually, I just had to give up on it.

> Safari is able to stop this madness now

Apple stopped developing Safari for Windows nine years ago.

> only Safari is able to stop this madness now

Safari is a hard sell when one can't install an ad-blocker on it (work on the street is you can but not easily)

You’ve been able to use ad blockers in Safari for years.

You can install plenty of ad-blockers directly from the Mac App Store

And that is the price they pay for trying to be Chrome clone UI wise and not listening to to the "power users". I hate to use the words "power user" but it is the small group of very active and enthusiastic users that you need to give the appears to every one else that they are missing out on something cool.

I still use Firefox because it works reasonably for my usage but I stopped promoting it to other people around me. For the average user Chrome is good, very good even. And Firefox lost its uniqueness and UI differences that made it stand out. And if nobody talks anymore about your product then you are done.

We shouldn’t just look at power users. Google and Microsoft, for example, constantly advertise to use their browser when you visit their properties. I imagine this has an impact.

But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word of mouth; whether it’s power users recommending it or people having it on their work computers (because their IT mandates it) and wanting the same great browser at home.

The problem is that Firefox is basically a Chrome clone at this point, all the way down to the privacy-invading features such as telemetry, so using it nowadays is more down to ideology than actual technical merit.

Google, yes. But Microsoft? I haven't noticed, and I'm on Office 365 all day (my client uses that) while running Firefox / Linux.

Microsoft does keep asking me to use Edge on my Windows gaming machine, although it's the only browser I have installed...

But I guess the point is... where is Mozilla going to ask people to use Firefox?

the irony is that just when I voluntarily stop using chrome to help mozilla, they then get into the fads which really dont align with my usage :D

true. their api is now a dumbed down version of chrome.

I still remember the days of vimperator and treetabs in xul.

firefox did this to themselves. they dont deserve support.

Yeah, I've got zero interest in using their software after they broke TreeStyleTabs, what replaced it was crap.

I'm quite happy with Vivaldi, which, while based on Chrome, at least seems to understand what users need.

Tree Style Tabs exists: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Vimperator replacements exist: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

Additionally, XUL was a steaming pile of shit, and there was no saving it. Multithreading was only possible by ripping out XUL.

Oh come on. "Power users" are both negligible in market share _and_ do not contribute to spreading the software around. Nobody in your family is going to use Firefox because you tell them "Look, I can customise my UI to arrange my windows in the form of a poop emoji when my custom sideloaded extension detects I'm on a Google owned website". "Power users" however are very good at yelling loudly when their never-used-by-anyone-except-them feature is removed, because they're such power users they opt out of usage tracking and never contribute to anything except maybe a bug report sometimes.

Fun fact: Under current conditions (200M users) it looks like Google is paying $2-2.25 per active user annually to be the default search engine in Firefox.

"Mozilla renewed its search deal with Google in 2020 for three years. The organization will receive an estimate of $400 to $450 million per year from the deal alone. "

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/12/10/mozillas-revenue-jumped-to...

Come 2023, pray that Google doesn't alter the deal further, with the remaining FF user base in the low single-digit figures. It's a matter of when, not if, Mozilla goes down given this trajectory. Or, Mozilla get's actually paid for working with Google on "web standards" and producing a browser as a fig leaf for the monopoly the WWW has become and counter measure against antitrust (with US antitrust a lame duck anyway), in a Mafia-esque way. It's not like we haven't been telling this all the time, with the HN crowd however cheering Mozilla's erratic ventures into Rust, WASM, and whatnot.

(For the record: I'm using FF and actually prefer it over Chrome, especially their DevTools for CSS which I find pretty meh on Chrome, and of course for ad blocking).

If Firefox goes down, Google has a problem because of browser engine monopoly an Windows.

And yet this gigantic amount of money hasn't resulted in a marked increase of users/functionality etc.

It's almost like the Mozilla execs get paid the big bucks no matter how badly they do their jobs. Go figure.

Given how they make a minimum $450M a year in revenue, how on Earth is Mozilla not swimming in cash?! How high can their expenses be?

Mozilla pays millions of dollars per year to their CEO, despite the decrease in usage and user base. Could be a symptom of a larger problem in the organization.

How many developers do you think a browser engine needs? How much do they cost?

But also, the answer to your question is at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201... and https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-2019-fo... (the 2020 numbers are not up yet because the audit starts when the tax return is filed and lasts for several months, so isn't completed yet).

Just for comparison, last I checked Chrome's marketing budget was estimated to be in the ballpark of Mozilla's total budget.

Disclaimer: used to work for Mozilla.

There is a year of lag, but you can read Mozilla's financial statements and Form 990. The latest ones are linked at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2019/

> how on Earth is Mozilla not swimming in cash?! How high can their expenses be?

Mozilla launches a new idiot side project like once a month. As a Firefox user, it's deeply frustrating to watch bug tickets go unfilled while a multimillion-dollar rebranding rolls out.

That is a very good deal for google. As ads on the search results are looking more and more like normal results any user without adblocking will click multiple times on these ads in a year. And the cpc prices depending on the topic are really high.

I was thinking the same. It's a bargain and now I understand why Google pays them so much.

It's also insurance against antitrust intervention.

Chromium - chrome, edge, brave, V8, V8 isolates, node.js, electron, etc.

Firefox - Firefox, Torbrowser, spidermonkey.

Chromium project became the cpython of JavaScript and web browsers, because you could package it's components and embed them in your own applications. Firefox does not have competitive equivalents or better features. Therefore it loses users.

This was a big topic years ago when FF started removing XUL and any ability to extend the browser. You need a reason for people to use your tech, not just your product.

> Chromium project became the cpython of JavaScript and web browsers, because you could package it's components and embed them in your own applications. Firefox does not have competitive equivalents or better features. Therefore it loses users.

XULRunner was Electron before it was cool. Though they werent prevalent there was a small but promising variety of applications based on XULRunner [0]

Then of course Mozilla administration axed it in their infinite wisdom.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_...

The big issue I see with Firefox is that they lost a lot of power user's when the removed XUL extensions and the underlying engine doesn't have good third party wrappers like QtWebEngine (that I know of) so creating reskined browser's is pain.

I don't pick a browser for the Firefox or Chromium engine (unless a site needs it), I pick a browser based on the UI and configuration management. So I use Qutebrowser that is keyboard based and a declarative configuration. It happens to use QtWebEngine but that is not why I picked that browser.

Since I don't use Firefox... I don't really recommend it to anyone. Firefox's early success was driven by educated user's telling other people to drop IE for the better product. It also means a lot fewer developer's are using the Firefox engine when developing websites... especially the developer's that would put in the effort to submit bug reports & patches.

(At least last I checked, recreating a Qutebrowser like experience in Firefox was at best just really annoying and would still lack features).

The end of XUL was necessary to make Firefox faster. Doenload an old XUL Firefox version and surf the web. If you don't notice a difference in page load speed, startup time, and overall responsiveness, you might have a very, very fast computer, which most people around the world don't have.

The 3 or 4 thousand power users that needed native interop were (and still are) of no interest compared to the then bad performance of Firefox in relation to Chrome. Even HN was full of people who complained about Firefox' performance. Now it's full of people who recommend to give Firefox another shot because it's fast again.

Firefox is also currently the only browser where uBlock Origin can use all of its features, Chrome is intentionally limiting APIs. Are people using Firefox because of it? No. So XUL add-ons would not have helped Firefox.

If you still want XUL, there are many forks out there that claim to support it.

My number one reason to use Firefox is uBlock Origin. It does an exceptional job and web is way more annoying without it.

Anyone who’s been around /r/firefox this last year or so knows that Mozilla systematically ignores users feedback.

Even someone like me that uses Firefox since it’s inception just gave up. I feel like Mozilla is alienating its userbase to cater for new users. It’s a failing strategy as it will never be able to compete with the hand that feeds (google).

My hope is that Mozilla fully dies and Firefox is able to continue as a community project like arch or Debian. It will never be popular but the community will have some control.

Each to their own. I'm a happy Firefox user and will continue to be on all my devices (including my phone which I'm writing this now with)

I am too, but I have telemetry disabled since their stunt with the Mr Robot extension they installed remotely for everyone [1]. I also run uBlock on both desktop and mobile. I am one of the 50M users counted as lost?

[1]: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozilla-back...

I have been trying to switch to Firefox since long but have never been able to completely switch. There have always been some problems that send me away.

On my phone (Android), Firefox is quite good except a few UX issues (that I don't mind too much) but the sync with my desktop has NEVER worked.

On the desktop, FF has always been slow - in booting, loading pages. The same with Edge and Chrome just work.

If I could get it to sync, and if the desktop version worked, I would never go back to Chromium.

Happily returned to firefox a couple years ago when they jumped ahead in speed and have been happy to stick around. I experience absolutely no bugs nor compatibility problems on desktop and mobile is A-OK as well.

Me too. Firefox on both my Windows and GNU/Linux laptops. Firefox Focus in my phone - I use a phone browser only for reading and Focus works perfectly for that use case.

Same. The only device I don't use it on is the Chromebook - ChromeOS doesn't seem to be Firefox' target market.

If only. Google's monopoly will make Firefox harder and harder to use.

switched full time and i'm a hppay camper myself. haven't used firefox since chrome 2 came out.

In other news:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/14/mozilla-plans-to-remove-th...

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-fir...

These right there, and all the other issues in the same vein are the probably the reason.

Sure, make a simplified browser interface by default. But don't forget to give power users an escape hatch to get more control over the browser, and make it do what they want. They are the ones that recommend the browser to other users.

Here's what one of Firefox's Android developers thought of users after they raised concerns over the abolition of extensions and the rushed, buggy and inferior release:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200731235001/https://twitter.c...

Meanwhile Mozilla's CEO continues to fleece increasing millions of dollars while being responsible for a massive collapse in market share (she increased her pay 400%, while destroying the company).

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/23/1528219/firefox-usa...

That about sums up why I switched from Firefox to brave.

Firefox: Lets remove tab groups, no one uses it

Chrome: Lets add tab groups, seems like a good idea

Firefox: why are users leaving?..

The constant addons breakage and UI changes, feature removal. I could bare the speed difference, but these inconsistencies are just too much

Still Firefox continues to be the best browser in theory

Yup. Firefox experience:

Like compact mode: Scheduled for deprecation.

Find Chromium tab groups and get addicted: Oh, FF used to have tab groups and killed them.

Search keyword sync via bookmarks: Scheduled to be deprecated, not functional on mobile.

PWAs: Development aborted.

Meanwhile Vivaldi's like "we're adding a third interface style for tab stacks" and Brave's building truly standalone revenue sources to be able to sell tinfoil.

Which is not even getting into the "we need more than deplatforming" spiel - do they hear themselves?

Let's be honest - since the removal of XUL addons, all my add-ons have been working just fine. Let's stop repeating this ... thing - it's long lost its relevance and nowadays it's just a falsehood.

Until version 89 reaches ESR I will continue to use Waterfox classic with XUL addons archive. Not only is faster but I have more addons

All your addons are not everyone's addons. Some people have different, or more, or more specific addons

There are addons that disappeared and are not possible to do today. And maybe you can do something similar, even if clunkier or slower. But a lot of developers have moved anyway, which created holes in the ecosystem

And just having to go and find replacements was difficult since it took a lot of time for addons to reach parity. And people have a day job to get on with

TreeStyleTab still breaks today, sometimes the side bar disappears or is empty

I had an addon that would highlight all bookmark link in all pages, including google results, and on mouse over would show the tags and description. Can you find a similar now?

In what way is it a falsehood? There is an entire class of addons that are simply impossible to create under the new paradigm. These used to work, now that don't. Firefox broke them intentionally.

the only thing that really broke for me was my favorite downloader. Everthing else had an add on for the new non-XUL api fairly quickly. I think some people just hold a grudge. I think programmers are well known for that.

I still use Firefox - primarily for the container extension which is exactly the awesome type of privacy and internet control we need. I simply don't want google that into my ecosystem. When they have to be there, I want them in a penalty box.

Firefox lost their way technically, and their focus on users when Brenden Eich was forced out. Mozilla's focus seems to be far more on the social to the detriment of their technical efforts.

Their fragmentation trying to chase other goals then browser has really cost them.

Want mozilla to take a stand on a policy issue? Great. Responsive. Respond to user requests? Not so much.

To be clear, I defend anyone's right to have a position and make the world a better place. But please improve the product that you are actually working on. The number of users you claim to speak for is shrinking.

I switched from Firefox to Brave for two reasons:

1. Brave is building new tech like IPFS, BAT, and Brave Search that are really compelling reasons to use it. Firefox's main selling point is that it simply exists as an alternative to Chrome. Firefox feels like it's digging its heels in to resist Google, while Brave feels like it's going on the offensive.

2. I disagree with Firefox's politics. They cancelled their CEO because he donated to the Wrong Side(TM). They want more deplatforming, they want more fact checks [1]. That is radical compared to mainstream thought in America just a few years ago. This new direction the left is taking is not good for the Internet, IMO. After January 8, I took a hint and left Firefox for Brave.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

It’s close to losing me too. I stuck with it in a major part to prevent a monoculture, but It’s much slower than Chrome, causes major memory issues on my machine (M1 Mac) and with Mozilla on a kamikaze mission I don’t think it’s going to get better any time soon.

Literally the only thing keeping me there are Tree Style Tabs/Sidebery. Give me a Chrome based browser with that and I’ll switch (Edge’s vertical tabs don’t really count, it’s still not a tree).

I see many reasons for Firefox’s demise, but TL;DR I’m just done.

Orion (WebKit based) has native tree style tabs, plus runs Chrome/Firefox extensions. Currently in beta (disclaimer: founder)

Why doesn't it have a status bar? All the software I use has a status bar, but for years it has become fashionable not to have one in browsers.

Thanks for the hint, I signed up!

Meanwhile: Brave Passes 25 Million Monthly Active Users

https://brave.com/25m-mau/

This seems relevant as it was started by the former co-founder of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript. Maybe Brendan Eich is good at finding out what people want in a browser.

now if it just had multi-account containers.

Still running the monoculture problem....

I can assure you that after 20 years using it, I still don't want JavaScript in my browsers.

That boat sailed a long time ago.

At the rate they “improve” the UI it’d be a miracle if even most staunch users won’t jump the ship.

That clown act they pulled in the recent release with tabs and decimated context menus was the last drop that forced me, the loyal user of 15+ years, to disable Firefox updates on all machines under my control. FFS, do they put any thought into these pointless disruptive changes that do nothing else but mess up existing users experience?

They should stop making changes in a hope of attracting new users and give a long and hard thought to how to retain what they already got. Because they will end up with neither.

Hmm, I really love the recent UI redesign. I've also been using Firefox for at least 15 years and every time they change it, it's been enjoyable for me.

The recent changes to the address bar and the terrible new "Photon" UI are really annoying. Don't annoy your loyal users.

They've been chasing Google's tail for a while now. They keep making decisions that make little sense. Given the drop in user count I'd say those decisions aren't even paying off. Every time I update FF, I actively dread to see what they ruined this time.

Sadly, creating a new browser is impossible these days, unless you're sitting on a very considerably sized pile of cash. There's over a thousand W3C specs, and you'll need to implement most of them in order to have a functional browser.

It's maddening that the steward of the best browser codebase is doing such a shitty job. They fired a whole bunch of people last year, even though they seem to sitting on plenty of cash, they don't seem to give a crap about what their users actually want. But, sadly, there is no alternative, and there won't be.

I'm sort of used to it by now, but I also don't see it as a real reason to stop using Firefox. Chrome also changes. So how big of a factor would UI changes be in this user loss? I'm suspecting there are more trivial and indirect causes too, such as people changing machines: Firefox isn't pre-installed, and then they just pick whatever that also works.

Possibly quite big. It basically drives down the cost of switching. If someone has to learn a new interface anyway, why not switch to the best supported browser at the same time?

And if you add up enough annoyances that don't matter, eventually it becomes something. Mozilla still hasn't reclaimed the lofty peak when something like ChatZilla was feasible. A minor annoyance. One among many.

Firefox is basically in head-to-head competition with Chrome and has a very similar vision of what a web browser should be - just with less dev hours doing maintenance. That plus this user data suggests there isn't any reason to use Firefox.

Its funny that you mention the not really annoying shit and forget about the push for pocket, the constant push for some of their free services like firefox sync, send, vpn, etc that, the reappearing ebay bookmark i deleted like 12 times by now, the removal of live bookmarks, etc... and those are just the things they can control.

> firefox sync, [...] the reappearing ebay bookmark i deleted like 12 times by now

Maybe you need to delete it, just the once, from whatever device it keeps getting synced from?

I'm ashamed to admit that I'm an avid Facebook user, it helps me keep in touch with friends and family living abroad, despite it's obvious negatives quitting it would mean losing out. I'm saying this because to me one of the benchmarks of a browser is how well it runs Facebook's awfully-optimized front-end code.

In that regard Safari used to be a disaster and now it works alright but Firefox seems to be consistently worse. It's a shame because FF is very important to the future of the internet, in my opinion, and on macOS their performance is not that great. My backup browser for this sole reason is Brave. I wish that wasn't the case because the browser is stuffed with... things.. that I don't need or want in it so I always have to go and hunt down how to turn all of them off when I install it on a new machine.

To me a browser needs a UI that's small, unobtrusive but clean, no BS on the "new tab" page (I don't need random wallpapers loaded from who knows where or news) - just a list of bookmarks, speed and support for the few extensions I use (adguard, sponsorblock, bitwarden).

Please fix FF, I wanna use it as my main browser!

I see no evidence of poor performance on macOS. Have you used a recent Firefox? Could you be blaming the browser for the behavior of a particular extension or web site?

what specifically is happening? I use Facebook a lot in a "container" in firefox without any issues. The only one I have noticed is when I scroll way way way way down the feed it kind of starts chugging in a way that chrome doesn't. That's the only fail that I've seen.

Exactly

I use Firefox since it was Phoenix and I will keep using and recommending it. Chrome was great when it came out, now is Google's trojan horse that everyone is happily embracing. It's one of the clearest Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategies ever pulled off.

I'd say ~30M, rather than 50M.

They explicitly call out the summer holidays effect above the first graph: "Generally, MAU fluctuates over the course of a year, dropping in the summer months and during holidays." So comparing the peak of Jan 2019 to the low of Jul 2021 isn't giving a good idea of the total loss.

  Jan 28 2019: 253.9M
  Jan 27 2020: 229.5M
  Feb 01 2021: 219.7M

  Jul 22 2019: 224.2M
  Jul 20 2020: 214.1M
  Jul 19 2021: 200.4M

Still, definitely not good; we've seen what happens when web developers believe only a single browser (engine) matters, and we _need_ an organization like Mozilla, which puts user interests above commercial interests, to have a seat at the table.

> They explicitly call out the summer [and winter] holidays effect above the first graph

Given that this is a measure of "Desktop clients active in the past 28 days", that means that there are people tech-savy enough to be regular users of Firefox on a desktop – but who go an entire month without using Firefox because it's Christmas. And enough of those people to show up on this graph.

That blows my mind a bit. I don't doubt it, but wow.

Remember FF has been bundled in installers and OEMs have preinstalled it. Out of 200,000,000 users there are probably more users that simply aren't tech-savvy enough to have changed to a different browser than are still on it because they are tech-savvy.

With Google's relentless Chrome dickbars for anyone daring to use one of their services without it, I don't see how any other browser stands a chance.

They even push Chrome when you dare to use their services with another Chrome based browser that isn't theirs like Edge Chrome.

I am a Firefox user on all my devices and will be so until the Mozilla Foundation stands, but my gut feeling tells me that Firefox won't bounce back from its downfall.

I still wish for it to become the browser with most users.

Here comes another sad ex-FF-user.

I've been using Firefox since early days and the latest UI bumbling forced me to look elsewhere.

Surely I tried alternatives over the years but my main browser has always stayed FF. Now, times has come to actually change the main browser, which turned out to be Edge. UI is slick and functional out of the box.

I moved back to FF after Quantum but haven't been happy with the latest round of UI changes (which also seems to have turned the buttery performance of quantum into a stuttery mess on my machine)

Guess firing those people that brought you those improvement really paid up for Mozilla execs.

Mozilla(Firefox's parent) has supported pro-social justice and progressive causes that ticked off a lot of users. There were a lot of discussions about it in 4chan from 2017-2019. Many people vowed to never use Firefox ever again and instead switched to alternatives like Waterfox and PaleMoon.

I also doubt that it's a large segment of users but count me as one among the millions who dumped Firefox in 2020. I knew it was going downhill when they started purging words from the project. When your inclusion efforts start alienating moderate users it might be time to rethink them.

* Removing "meritocracy" from the governance docs - https://blog.mozilla.org/careers/words-matter-moving-beyond-...

* Changing "master password" to "primary password" - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/primary-password-replac...

* Removing "crazy" from the codebase - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675987

* Removing words deemed as reference to mental illness - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675986

The difference in the project from 15 years ago is stark.

The Mozilla mission 2005:

"Established in July, 2003, with start-up support from America Online's Netscape division, the Mozilla Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project."

The Mozilla mission 2021:

"Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent."

Where they once were just supporting a software project they're now a political movement. They spout "equity", "justice", and "advocacy" all over mozilla.org. No thanks, I just want a decent software.

Mozilla is far better at delivering social positions then good software.

4chan and it's black sheep twin 8chan aren't really very important in the grand scheme of browser wars I would warrant.

Somehow I doubt many of the tens of millions of people who switched have any idea about this minor tech feud. Blaming this for Firefox's fall would be just as silly as me assuming the tens of millions of people who use Brave know what kind of person is CEO and support his views. Most people don't look that deep into the tools they use.

FF has not done anything to push me away yet. I am open to change and not always happy with their decisions, but their product remains usable and favorable to me.

Former Firefix advocate, after the plugins breakage and senseless ui changes I had to check out.

Kiwi on mobile from an HN recommendation

> senseless ui changes

This is what annoys me most. And most of all, UI changes that they've made to promote features I don't want; Pocket, Sync. I shouldn't have to dive into about:config to make a useless UI component disappear (after googling to find out what setting I need to fix). Sync should not default to storing my data on Mozilla servers. The sync icon shouldn't appear unless I've configured Sync. There should be a single option in Preferences to disable ALL suggestions.

DoH is a rotten idea. Or at least, it's not ready for prime-time; it's less secure than plain old DNS (through a local recursor).

Dropping support for ALSA output also got my back up; I won't have Poetteringware on my system.

I'd pay money for a browser that only connects to the internet when I tell it to; doesn't care what I'm interested in; and whose devs are responsive to (paying) user demand.

I'll go on using FF until I can no longer crowbar it to meet my requirements. Then it will disappear in my rearview mirror.

It's very sad; Mozilla made maybe two good products, FF and Thunderbird. They dropped Tbird (which I love), and they're trying to wreck FF. I wish I knew what cock-eyed incentives are making Mozilla behave this way.

Same. I was 100% FF until they broke my AD blocker on iOS. The internet is unusable without it, so I switched to Brave.

I do align philosophically with OSS, and community organization, though, so I may switch back at some point.

I do think Mozilla’s executive team needs a real shakeup, though.

Edit: haven’t heard of Kiwi. Looks interesting. Why’d you land on that vs Brave or whatever else?

It's almost as if focusing on ugly UX (which hinder power users and do not engage casual users) and useless paid-for services, being sponsored by your main competitor, focusing on anything but making the browser work, and a plethora of well known annoyances was not the best strategy to retain users.

(FF user since Netscape-era)

Well, even if you ignore that Firefox is inferior compared to Chromium, Mozilla is not a respectable company anymore in my opinion. So i see 0 reasons to use Firefox. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

All thanks to the Chromium ecosystem that have made it 'desirable' for web devs to build on, companies like Microsoft, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi all have their browsers depending on Chromium and for users to be running almost everything in either a browser or an electron desktop app.

This is a two horse race. Chrome vs Safari and Chrome is still winning.

Not only that, Chrome is 'the standard' and we happily helped them become that after pushing out IE. The control of the web standards has just switched hands from one tech giant to another.

Firefox has no chance of catching up. They are already on life support by Google.

Allow me to mention that we are adding another horse to the race, a WebKit based browser no less, Orion [1]. There are many things we believe Safari could do better and we are set to do them.

[1] https://browser.kagi.com

My take: Firefox on Android is one reason for their problem.

I tried the new version a year ago and restored my TB backup bcs it was so bad. I thought I'd try it again yesterday but man it sucks so bad! No search in history, no bookmark tag support as far as I see, somehow the synced data from desktop doesn't get searched when typing in the address bar, multiple times my entry in the addres bar wouldn't load, the amount of supported add-ons is abysmal. Thats not all but I stop.

My point: If mobile doesn't work it might be one reason people start switching on desktop, too.

I won't. I like to be tortured.

Look at their CEO and leadership team. Why would you expect anything but failure when a company is run by the HR and D&I departments?

Many major video conference applications don't even try to support Firefox, so I'm not surprised that during this time frame a lot of users where forced/coerced to switch.

Offenders include:

- Teams

- Slack

- Zoom

Sure there are codec license issues, but all(most) of them do use different codecs depending on the context, so they could totally support Firefox as long as no one in the conference is on a of Android device or similar.

Each of those has a native app. Why would anyone be forced to switch browsers? Just install the app.

personally, i knew things were headed in the wrong direction when they added that big orange button in the top left corner. i guess that was version 4. i felt like it was the beginning of the end.

Around that time, they also added that Keyhole shaped back and forward buttons that looks off on all platforms. That's one of the first instance where I felt they prioritized what they want - a brand identity, over what the users want - a consistent user interface.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120725235602/https://blog.mozi...

Does anyone know what the browser usage stats are for HN?

Edge is the biggest threat to Chrome and Firefox is still great. uBlock Origin does not even work as well in Chrome as it does in FF which will always create demand for alt browsers. I can't deal with with Chrome but if everything else goes away, Edge is fine. Ms is doing exactly what Google did with webkit, what can you do?

One of the problems with Edge is that it sends 350+ requests "home" to Microsoft on startup (in good-old fashioned way Windows does). A big no-no from a privacy standpoint.

>uBlock Origin does not even work as well in Chrome as it does in FF

AFAIK Firefox is the only mobile browser that supports uBlock Origin.

Given Edge is based on Chromium, I don't see how it's Chrome's biggest threat, there's all sorts of tricks Google can pull to cripple Chromium so Edge is also punished.

Look at what they've done with Android and the massive "Google Play Services" bolt on. If you try and take away any of its permissions you get a warning that "this may cause basic functionality to stop working"

It's a shame. I'm dreading seeing the demise of Firefox. I really like it. It's a little slower than chrome, but I swear I don't notice it 99% of the time. It works for all the sites I use, but I extricated myself from the google ecosystem a while back. I hope the trend reverse but I wouldn't bet on it.

One small thing: Firefox developer edition can’t edit files like chrome or their old firebug plugin. Therefore, apps get developed on chrome; therefore, they work better on chrome.

That's not even close to the main reason. Chrome has a much much higher share of the market. So much so that web developers can basically ignore firefox users without much uproar. They can justify their lack of testing in firefox as a budgetary trade off.

Hmm, conversely, I switched to Firefox (from Chrome) as my main web browser this year!

Yeah, me two (coming from Edge).

I would argue that Chrome is better in some aspects, but using Firefox is the least thing one can do to stop Googles dominance.

I also quite like the UI changes and would say that Firefox now has the best looking chrome after Safari (highly subjective).

Switched from Chrome to Firefox around 2017 then to closed-source Chromium-based Vivaldi and haven't looked back since.

Whatever architectural changes Firefox made around '17-19 broke the browser for me. Tabs would randomly go dead, accepting no input. Mobile Firefox was worse.

The old Firefox was perfectly fine, save for being noticeably but, for me, acceptably slower than Chrome. Then Firefox Aurora or whatever happened and things went from stable went to crap. I'd try and go back to see if things got better occasionally, but then gave up and uninstalled it.

Most aggravating is when you have negative feedback about Firefox in forums, including on HN, you immediately get "have to tried" suggestions from avid fans. The intent is good, no doubt. I get that it works for you. But I'm beyond trying already.

closed-source == not secure

FF CPU usage is terrible compared to Safari on OSX, they need to put more effort to make it as efficient as Safari. May be increased sales of ARM based Macbooks will help them.

Just watch a twitch stream on Firefox vs Safari, there is at least 10c CPU temp difference between 2 browsers

I still use Firefox on my iPhone and computer. It generally works great.

I would use it if they implemented the content blocking API on iOS.

I can use Firefox Focus as ad blocker with Safari, but not with Firefox!

Arbitrarily removing access to about:config (in Android) must account for a loss or two. I personally perceive it as a flagrant expression of contempt for their users. I keep Nightly around, but fully reciprocate perceived contempt and hope such losses grow.

That includes me. Hard to be a huge advocate for Firefox when they continually don't deliver. Brave is my browser for the time being.

Firefox kinda pissed me off. They silently removed the network.trr.bootstrapAddress option, which allowed your browser to not get it's DNS queries hijacked and always use DoH. The workaround now is to... add an entry in your hosts file for the DNS server. I know it's a small thing, but why did they remove such a useful feature? I literally couldn't find any info on it other than this one reddit post.

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nqqhsl/trr_mode_3_...

Firefox lost me as a user shortly after the megabar change and the massive reworking of the mobile app UI. I still keep up to date on what's been going on since then, and I can't say I regret my decision in the slightest.

Well, it won me back in the past year, for work related things because, working in the identity space I can be signed in with an unlimited number of different accounts in the same site using Firefox containers.

I currently use Fennec on mobile, but it's just sad how they're adding stupid bulls*t (pocket, collections) and removing useful features. The bloody thing can't save a webpage as PDF anymore

Anyone else install ESR to avoid the new interface?

In general people really need to stop using Chrome. It's a tracking browser for an ad-company. The incentive structure is to send data to the mothership, and show you ads.

You can see this, because uBlock Origin works a lot better on Firefox.

But worse is also: Chrome just plain isn't fast or memory efficient anymore. It gets big speed ups on one or two things, but for the life of me it seems to consume a huge amount of memory and CPU compared to modern Firefox. That advantage was short lived.

If chrome had a container engine for enhanced privacy I would leave FF in a heart beat. The only thing keeping me to FF is the privacy aspect.

Pity FF keep eroding that advantage also

The main thing driving me away from Firefox is the speed. Chrome is notably faster for me.

How did you come to the conclusion that chrome was faster?

Personally, I’ve found all the browsers to be fast enough.I did some analysis leg work to come to that conclusion. I look at other characteristics such as privacy.

The new Firefox 89 is equally faster

No idea why. Firefox is an amazing browser.

Firefox has also been shooting its own feet. Their insistence on automatic updates, especially ones that require a "restart" is infuriating. Especially when the restart fails and loses all your tabs. They are also destroyed tons of useful plugins several years ago. They starting defaulting the home page to Pocket. I'd rather use firefox, but they don't seem to want me as a user.

I often hear on this website that "Firefox isn't slow".

Firefox does feel slower than Chromium based browsers. I don't know the technicalities but this is the reason why I moved to Chromium (Opera).

However, I like the fact that Firefox does allow me to mute audio and stop video playback by default, which Chrome does not (Opera does though).

Finally I'm not sure I like the all idpol noise coming from the Mozilla Foundation...

Are you guys aware of Brave? It's the best browser I have ever used

I would posit that vivaldi is better if you must use a chrome-a-like browser. Brave is fine but vivaldi has a lot more power user features.

I find Brave's business model unethical. Blocking ads... well, fine, everybody does that anyways. But monetizing on it by replacing website ads with your own, pocketing the revenue, and pretending that it's fine because you give everyone your custom made-up currency? Genius move by taking advantage of modern trends (ad-blocking, cryptocurrency, micropayments, ...), but it's not the "web revolution" they pretend it to be.

If you want to stick to Chromium, both Edge and Vivaldi are better options.

I have no problems with Firefox (with hunderds of tabs open and best set of extensions), and it didn't lost me.. yet.

The problem is with modern web, sites excepting JavaScript and things like canvas fingerprinting etc. for working.

I have JavaScript disabled, for regular browsing I'm stuck with Firefox version<57 - so, for me, there is no future.

> for regular browsing I'm stuck with Firefox version<57

What? Why? That’s not covered by ESR support anymore; are you just running without security patches?

Those annoying Pocket ads maybe?

And how do you quickly disable JavaScript for the page you’re on? I can never find that in Firefox.

You can't with Firefox, but with uBlock Origin you can turn JS off globally and whitelist specific pages that require JS (Most pages work fine with JS disabled)

Why is this article on the second page and not on the first? Continued anti-competitive behavior from some chrome fanboys?

As much as I don't like Mozilla's company direction (pocket, VPN etc.) Firefox is a symbol for the free web for me. I recommend it over any other big browser (edge, chrome, safari).

> Firefox is a symbol for the free web for me.

Can it really be when/while it is entirely dependent on Google for revenue?

had no idea people have that much trouble with the new UI. Looks quite alright to me, although I did lose compatibility for 2 plugins so that was a pain in the butt.

When you can't tell which tab is the current tab, that means you haven't done any basic hallway usability testing.

Firefox somehow managed to have a prophetic moment and plan their recent reskin to look and feel exactly like Windows 11.

So now when you use the newly released Windows 11, the several month old Firefox reskin matches the taskbar and controls perfectly. That was clever. I wonder if they had any inside help.

But by the time Windows 11 becomes popular, Firefox will already have reskinned itself again. Mozilla just can't seem to help it. :(

I stopped using it for a simple reason: it bogs down my laptop. I don’t care why, so save your long winded explanations, it just does. And it’s a shame, because hey Mozilla, I like Firefox better than any other browser when it’s not slowing down my machine.

I find many of the behaviors of google anti-competitive too, and slowly moved away from most of the things related to it.

Using a different email provider, storage service, firefox, search engine etc. However I still have to keep chromium/chrome around since some features I noticed just don't work properly with firefox.

On reading about recent http/2 and http/3 development (https://ripe76.ripe.net/presentations/10-2018-05-15-bbr.pdf) and google's approach to it, one megacorp deciding what is best for the rest of us feels too much power in someone's hands.

In the last decade, the proliferation of smartphones led to billions of newly "connected" people using the default browser, not knowing or caring about what a "browser" is. Firefox doesn't ship its own hardware so...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I switched to Firefox on Android, because I can use uBlock Origin (adblocker) extension with it and stop watching nonsense ads. It's also good for battery life and protect against some malware. Chrome on Mobile, on the other hand, doesn't allow extensions.

In World War 2 the Allies didn't win because they had the best tanks and airplanes. They won because they - the US, really - could build them much faster than Axis. It's a numbers game.

Edit: One could argue this isn't what the news article is about but what's losing 50M in a market of billions? A device, specially a smartphone, is a delivery mechanism for services and in this day and age when internet access (apps) has become massified, having "choice" is irrelevant as far as browser marketshare goes. I do hope Firefox continues because I quite enjoy using it but if they do fold someday I won't be surprised.

I would imagine it's partially because of increased adoption of Brave and Safari.

Been on firefox since it was firebird.

It feels like a no-brainer for me. I'm never going to use chrome unless I have to.

I use a lot of google products, but I see no reason to give them even more data on my browsing habits by using their browser.

Do any other browsers support containers? That has been the killer feature for me.

Brave does. They call it profiles, I think.

I switched to Opera because Firefox forces invasive updates that require a forced restart. For someone who likes to keep a web browser running for a long time and put their laptop to sleep rather than shutdown, that is not acceptable.

I use Linux so I could get around that by excluding the package from updates but I don't want to run an outdated web browser that might have security vulnerabilities.

I raised this a few times on their Reddit page, but it became so disturbing to my workflow that I just had to stop using it. Chrome is not a sane alternative, so I resorted to Opera. Good old Opera.

Good old closed-source, Chinese-controlled, chromium-based Opera.

Just use the official version instead of your distro's version if you don't want your distro to control the update timing - seems like a self created problem. Official Firefox has a setting for "Check for updates but let you choose to install them" which will alert you but let you choose when instead of forcing it.

Does Google browsers not also require a restart to update? So are you not just running an outdated version with security vulnerabilities until you restart it?

I'm not on desktop ow and can check later. But I'm pretty sure you can disable auto updates on the about:config page.

Opera is based on Chromium now, FYI.

Opera is closed source which means it is not secure.

Librewolf has been a lifesaver, I highly suggest people check it out. https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/

Browsers are like "commons" in the Internet space. It is super critical to have a neutral provider that adheres to open standards to have a substantial market share. We need to legislate every device sold (smart phone, PC, mac, iPad etc) to be shipped with a Firefox and/or other neutral open source browser.

I've been a loyal Firefox user since Day 1. Every time I open an Chrome/Edge I get a pop up or notification to change my default away from Firefox. This is pure anti-competitive behavior by the tech giants and needs to stop.

Looking at the version history, support for version 52 ESR ended in September 2018.

Since that version was the last supported version with XUL, the lack of XUL after that might be one of the reasons.

I try to use it as my daily driver, but it really sucks.

Audio issues, logged out of everything issues, auto fill issues, it just doesn’t work in Firefox issues.

Containers made me want to like it, but cmon.

If you want to help, report the sites you have issues with here: https://webcompat.com/

I used Firefox until old extension format abandoned and I switch to Palemoon + Vivaldi. Vivaldi for daily use and Palemoon for tabs opened all the times (with lazy loading).

Tab grouping is never done good enough on Chromium based browsers (even Vivaldi). Also those browsers all have memory usage issue and I don't keep them opened for too long.

Suprised by some of the comments here. Happy firefox user here for the last 5 years and don't see it changing.

I moved to firefox aftet Chrome became like swimming in treacle, and good to get away from the Google ad bullsh!t. Suprised they haven't sunsetted Chrome yet.

Pssst, Google, you've ruined Youtube too. Sunset that too.

went downhill after JavaScript creator left and created brave.

I see no real differences between browsers nowadays feature wise. They are all good enough.

However, chrome has better integration with the rest of what google offers. And safari with what apple offers. Synchronization of profiles, open tabs on other machines, etc.

Firefox is a good product, the others are commoditized services.

Wondering why this is on the second page? Why would smb flag the story?

Using alternative browsers is important. I have the same issues as others described in the chat. Meet-up does not work well in Firefox (video hangs, screenshare not working well ). In chromium no problem.

Zoom and others work like a charm.

I have the same frustrating problem. Only time I use Chrome is when I need to jump onto a Meet call. Anyone has a solution to use Meet reliably on Firefox?

Firefox is a breeze to use with great dev tools. Don’t even have Chrome installed atm, but may have to soon because of lighthouse.

Definitely pushing for Firefox to be part of default installation at workplace, we need to fight monopolies.

And Firefox gained me.

I was a Chrome user since I left Opera in 2017, until short ago, mainly for performance and ease of use.

I just love container tabs, and to be able to send URLs from one computer to the other.

And Pocket integration, great when you have a Kobo reader.

Considering that there is no point in using Firefox on iOS due to Apple restricting Add-Ons (and thus the crucial uBlock Origin), I'd say that Apple is having a similar impact to Google on Firefox's user count.

I dont use Chrome except on some websites that dont work well with Firefox (some bank and government websites).

I am ok with the speed, I dont have too many plugins. I see no reason to every go back to Chrome as my main browser.

And it will become worse as Chrome will be (even more) key to Google Business after the death of 3rd party cookies, as FLoC will be running out of it so they will need you to use it to be able to segment you.

Not a popular opinion but I’ll say it - Firefox was my daily driver until the CEO made comments about censoring conservatives that went beyond just deplatforming them. I now use ungoogled chromium or Edge.

Firefox no longer has XP support. There are a lot of XP users with older Firefoxes that cannot upgrade. Plus Microsoft Edge isn't as bad as Internet Explorer was.

According to Microsoft there's about 1.5 billion Windows users, about half a percent are still on XP. So that'd be about 7-8 million XP users. Say a third are potential Firefox users, that'd be a drop in the bucket in this statistic. And for the sake of the market share on other platforms it's probably a good idea that they're not investing resources in XP.

None of the other current browsers support XP either. Chrome stopped supporting XP a few years back. Edge isn't available at all on XP. Even IE wasn't backported so XP users are stuck with the last version of IE with XP support. If anyone is still on XP they should upgrade to an OS (either Windows 10 or even Linux) that can run a modern browser.

JFYI, there are forks of Firefox adapted to work on XP, that are not at all bad.

I am reluctant to provide a link because they are highly experimental, but if you wish to try them, knowing that YMMGV, here it is what I personally find the best one (serpent/basilisk):

http://o.rthost.win/basilisk/

I don’t understand myself, why I choose chrome over firefox. Mayba as a web dev, I want to make sure most people will get my website right

You should be testing in the top 3 browsers.

Firefox has been breaking down on me the past few months. This inspired me to go back to Chrome.

Guys, what do you think about switching Firefox to WebKit or Blink engine? This will greatly cut the development costs and will make Firefox almost 100% compatible to Chrome. FF is the only major browser with an engine different from Webkit/Blink.

Having a different engine from Chrome itself is a selling point for Firefox. I don't like a world in which every web browser is a re-skin of Google's monopolized product.

I may be the odd one but I dropped FF after the drama over brendin eich and his support of prop 8. I just did not feel the same after seeing how he was attacked for his personal contributions.

There was just some hateful stuff that came from both sides that really uncovered some toxic personalities in the FF legion.

Yeah, that and the other political commentary + dropping most of their projects (rust, ffsend) really isn't helping.

Really wish they'd focus on one mission (making the web free) and not address anything else.

Now you're using Lynx or what? Because something tells me you will find people with stupid opinions in every corporation of a reasonable size. Moving to Google is a really counter-productive move if you value minorities.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/business/brave-brendan-ei...

I don't feel bad for this guy - He says and does things regularly that are hurtful to society with no signs of becoming a better person.

The Mozilla corporation has to contend with a substantial portion of their community that thinks a $1,000 donation (an unrelated donation, no less) weighs similarly on the scales as something like 20 years in service vigorously supporting the open internet and a long history of technical success.

They're going to struggle to focus on their mission with friends like that.

When you're a CEO, you're also the face of the company. His "personal contributions" were to support banning of same sex marriage, and it was just 5 years earlier. That's just unacceptable, even in 2014. It really showed how politics work inside companies like Mozilla.

But you're not alone. That year lots of users dropped Firefox.

Is there anything you could imagine he could be doing with personal contributions that you would consider worth "attacking" him over (at which point I guess we could reverse engineer that you consider that activity notably "worse" than what Brandon Eich actually did) or do you feel like there is nothing that someone could be doing in their "personal" lives that should cause them to not be a good public face of a project like Firefox?

Will Firefox go extinct like Netscape did?

Firefox was born from the ashes of Netscape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla#History

I fear it will. I use it daily because it is the best at protecting my privacy, no other browser has containers, but it seems too few people care. At least as long as mobile Safari exist, Chrome isn't able to swallow everything and resistance is not yet futile.

I suggest Firefox implements a premium paid variant without taking away any features from the free version. This is to increase revenue for development.

They make $450 million a year. A premium Firefox would barely move the needle. Revenue is not the issue, but how it's allocated.

Chrome is free to download. I click a link and get Chrome, done.

Why should I go through the hassle to register, give out my CC info, and pay?

I have to confess I am the culprit. In 2019 I started to move from yahoo to protonmail and from chrome to firefox. I brought the bad juju it seems

I think a part of it could be explained by the way things have been in recent times.

As of July 2021 (according to the linked metrics), ~25% of the displays used are 1366x768px while ~40% of them are 1080p. Yet when the "Proton" refresh aimed to promote usability and while certain level of cross-platform was reached, the increase of padding simply made the experiences of people using displays with "less than optimal" resolutions worse. While the proton's hidden and "unsupported" compact mode had a decent height for a 14" FHD display, the same did not look as good on my 15.6" display with the same resolution. When I complained on reddit like many others about the increase in whitespace, I don't think it was given what I believe to be a proper consideration. Why would the main menu be bigger despite having fewer items? And where are the icons? It was a concern back when it was in nightly and many of the concerns remain now even though it has had a stable release.

Another thing that is problematic is the colour-scheme. The newer style incorporates less contrasted colours and does away with what made the preceding Photon design better in certain ways: look at how the tabs on FF used to have a markedly different colour than their backdrop and how there used to be separators between tabs. The fact that the newer design is a bad one somehow eluded those in charge of it and the fact that the contrast between the active tab and its surrounding elements being low being an important issue is an afterthought is telling.

Moreover, the dropdown for the megabar suggestions used to have full-window width but now it is limited to the megabar width for no apparent reason other than looking "cool" (which it does not btw; especially when you compare it to Chromium's counterpart). They introduced the megabar-expansion-on-focus behaviour, kept a config to disable it for a major release or two and then dumped the old one. Also, when you selected multiple tabs, upon a right-click, it used to tell you the count of selected tabs - which no longer seems to be the case. Needless to say, looking at userChrome.css to be _the_ solution for undesirable changes would not work well for anyone in the long run.

Firefox, unlike Chromium-based browsers, does not support XDG base dir spec. It does not bother me very much and neither does FF flickering every once in a while on my main system. What bothers me is that with each new release I feel like FF is losing bits of its magic. Back when FF Quantum was released and was stripped of what many considered the level of flexibility which appealed to them, I was concerned but ultimately accepted it. But this time around the changes feel like marketing speak. Mozilla already has a discourse instance but post-Proton-release they also have a crowdicity instance...

The way things have been going is genuinely upsetting and many users are just reacting to that.

I stopped using Firefox because all my apps did not work on it. My Salesforce app, for example, didn't work on it. Part of my VOIP, which I depend on, does not work on it. And when I called support, all they say is to use Chrome. I'm not an assembly language programmer so I can't go to the bare metal to figure it out. That's what Firefox is supposed to do. I don't have time to figure any of it out, I have a job to do. Maybe it is my fault that some toggle is switched wrong, and I gave a cursory DuckDuckGo search to try to figure it out, but after an hour of looking, fruck it, I got other shlit to do, man.

Plus, Firefox is slow as molasses over the last year, so much so that I have to reboot several times a day. Starts out ok, but gets up to 100% disk and 100% memory usage. Using Chrome, it works fine without maxing out disk and memory.

I've used Firefox forever, and would prefer to keep using it, but it's just reached the tipping point for me this year. It kills me to go to chrome (Brave, actually) and I kept using Firefox a long time after it started giving me issues. But at some point, just gotta let go.

I know that the incompatibility is caused by Google on purpose, it pisses me off, but I still have to get work done. What can one do?

Hrm, so many people dunking on FF, and I’ve recently swapped back as it feels like it’s improved a lot. This is within the last month. This is on both Mac and Windows. It’s snappy, doesn’t feel heavy, and generally feels faster than Chrome. And on Mac, better than Safari.

Firefox threads are ways the same: self proclaimed power users complain about minor changes to colours and shadows. That's been going on since v4, which was what, a decade ago?

So, my takeaway is that Firefox has become a punching bag for people to vent on. Sad state of affairs. Especially because it would be really hard, if not impossible, for Mozilla to shed this image

The mobile version had quite a deep change and lost a number of features, including bookmark keywords, the tab queue, reordering tabs, and about:config.

Personally, I don't mind the UI changes.

I hate how Firefox _forces_ me to restart my browser when it arbitrarily decides to update. Makes webdev a headache.

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