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
I used to use Firefox before Chrome came out, because it was better than IE. When Chrome came out it was a breath of fresh air. A real third option! (konqueror didn't really count). And it was faster, cleaner, lighter than Firefox. Just better at everything. So I installed it on all of my family's computers, which they allowed me to do because IE by then was so bad it was an obvious improvement even for the layman.
Then in the intervening years Firefox dwindled to basically no market share and IE died, so now Chrome isn't a third option, it's the only option. And so I switched back to Firefox basically as a political sacrifice, but there's no way I'm going to be able to convince any of my family to switch because Firefox isn't better for them in any perceivable way. It's just different and they don't care. If Firefox had 30% market share I'd almost definitely be using Chromium still myself.
So probably that, but a million times. There was a period where every nerd moved all their associated people to Chrome because it was new, great, and non-dominant. It was hip and indie. And now they're still there and there's no reason for them to move that they care about.
But Konqueror is where we got Webkit from!
Opera was also an option... I used Opera from ~2003 until when they switched to Chrome's engine (2012 I think?)
Netscape had the best gif-icon though, that star fall was gorgeous
Netscape 🛞 Navigator
Yes, I do have a soft spot for Netscape Navigator. It will always be my first...
I'll admit I used to use Konqueror for a while. Plus I much preferred it as a file browser to Dolphin (even now I begrudgingly accept Dolphin). Problem for me was always plugins. I've used most browsers under the sun, but I can't ethically support Chrome or Edge. I remember early versions of NS and AMosaic, Phoenix, Firebird (the latter two were what Firefox used to be called).
I will openly admit Mozilla has made some huge "WTF?" calls though. They alienated a lot of people with some of their design/technical decisions that I think fucked them more than they realised.
I've basically made my parents use firefox for 15 years now. With adblocking and cookie warning disabled and stuff like that. Since a few years they're more and more on the iPhone, not on laptop with firefox... "why are there so many advertisements on the phone? Can't you fix it like on the laptop?" Nope. I can't, you chose iPhone. Had no idea all these years how much they were shielded from bs by firefox. For an average user it just boils down to 'it's too complicated', use whatever shit software they force on them and don't ask fundamental questions... Firefox became the browser for privacy nerds, lost its mainstream appeal in the period that chrome definitely was a lot faster and smoother and was still a bit less evil corp about addons