edited the heading of the question. I think most of us here are reasoning why more people are not using firefox (because it was the initial question), but none of that explains why it's actively losing marketshare.
I don't agree ideologically with Firefox management and am somewhat of a semi-conservative (and my previous posts might testify to that), I think Firefox browser is absolutely amazing! It's beautiful and it just feels good. It has awesome features like containers. It's better for privacy than any mainstream browser out there (even counting Brave here) and it has great integration between PC and Phone. It's open-source (unlike Chrome) and it supports a good chunk of extensions you would need.
This was about PC, but I believe even for Mobiles it looks great and it allows features like extensions (and I hear desktop extensions are coming to firefox android?), it's just a great ecosystem and it's available everywhere unlike most FOSS softwares.
So why is Firefox's market share dying?
I mean, I have a few ideas why it might be, maybe correct me I guess?
- Most people don't know how to use extensions well and how to use Firefox well. (Most of my friends in their 30's still live without ad blockers, so I don't think many are educated here)
- It's just not as fast as Chrome or Brave. I can't deny this, but despite of this, I find it's worthy.
- It's not the default.
- Many features which are Google specific aren't supported.
- Many websites are just not supporting firefox anymore (looking at you snapchat), but you would be right in saying this is the effect of Firefox losing it's market share not the cause (at least for now) and you would be right.
But what else?
I might take time (a lot of it) to get back at you, thanks for understanding.
occasionally I’ll find websites that don’t work 100% because they were coded primarily for chromium based browsers. FU Google
For me, until all below are supported Firefox can't be my primary browser.
That seems to be a very shallow argument ... besides the point that any software can break at some point, chrome/google is even actively breaking compatability, think Mv2 or jpegXL support for example.
IMO Mozilla is less likely to intentionaly break support without giving the user and developers a good reason and if possible with enough time to adjust/workaround the necessary changes.
Most people would use a mediaplayer application for this ...
First of all jpegxl was an experimental flag and option in chromium, it never made it as a "real" feature in chromium based browsers. Find a better example, that ain't it.
About your other comment, you have no idea how popular Plex, Jellyfin and Emby are. In desktop if they use Firefox they are stuck at re-encoding their videos on the fly to h264 and waste resources and quality. Many of them have no idea that chromium based browsers now support directplay on hevc. Everyday many of them are informed and leave Firefox.
So i assume you agree that Mv2 is a valid example, since you did not reply to that. 👍
If you have evidence for this i'd say that it would be a good move to open an idea on https://connect.mozilla.org (if there isnt one already) and maybe also try and find and link existing bugzilla issues to it. - Maybe those can be re-opened/prioritized. - Since you seem sure that many people need this, the request should get a large amount of votes/support in a short time and will surely get noticed by mozilla too.
Good luck. 👍
Yes, mv2 is a good example. But not a deal breaker for me because most chromium based browsers have a NATIVE adblocker on them. NATIVE adlocking, you know... ablocking that will never break because Chrome, Edge or Firefox don't have NATIVE adbloking on them and you have to rely on extensions for that.
There is demand for hevc. Just have a look at Jeffylin, Emby or Plex forums. No, Mozilla doesn't care, they have been mulitple requests and they close them all with RESOLVED WONTFIX. People won't keep begging Mozilla, they are just switching to another browser.
Lets gather some facts ...
Quotes from https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332136
Makes sense, since mozilla has limited amount of resources available and has to prioritize.
This is another matter which is understandable. Who invest work into something that you might not be allowed to use.
So far seems like reasonable understandable decision. I think i would do the same in their shoes and only change/revise my decision if i get a strong impulse/feedback from the community or something else changes that might impact the the 2 points.
But lets dig around a little further
Seems like you are right that most other browsers support it, so that might be a good argument to make for an idea on connect.
This might be the biggest hurdle but maybe having it integrated as a loadable module like widevine would be an options that could be something to propose and dicuss. Maybe that would help with the whole license situation, but not sure.
Seems like at least some people are intersted, as you said.
And a last idea, maybe you could ask around in the communities of some of the other firefox forks ... waterfox, librewolf ... and see what the situation and stance is ... maybe one already has a solution/support.
They are focused on AV1. Good, I will focused on it in future, I hope it beats MPEG-LA's VVC.
That's not the point, in case you don't know everybody is focusing on AV1 including Google.
Google is actually the main developer of AV1.
Nobody asks from Mozilla to include software HEVC decoding. They would have to pay a lot of money for it and honestly they shouldn't give to MPEG-LA a single dollar.
They could do what Chromium has done and include ONLY hardware decoding support.
Chromium pays nothing to MPEG-LA for that because they use our own hardware, our graphics card, and the manufacturer of the graphics card has already paid for it.
I also don't see any issue coming from it with widevine, if there isn't any issue from it in Chromium, I don't see why it would cause issues only to Firefox.
They proparly don't have the resources to include support for it. Totally understandable. But I will be selfish on this, my choice of my primary browser would be based on my needs....
Who knows maybe even that is seen as too much effort in regards to the cost of development or it just isn't seen as a good enough effort investment because they are sure that AV1 (or something else) will replace it in the near future. - I am not sure but i dont remember an explicit statement in regards to passthough hardware support, but i might just have missed it.
Absolutely! - If this feature is more important to you than anything else firefox currently provides to you, like ...
... just to name some, then i dont see any reason why you should not switch.
Maybe if you like just sometimes check back and see if your priorities/needs and/or firefox might have changed and match up again.
Anyway, whatever you decide, i wish you a nice day and hope you find a solution that works for you.