this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Firefox

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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?

  1. 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)
  2. It's just not as fast as Chrome or Brave. I can't deny this, but despite of this, I find it's worthy.
  3. It's not the default.
  4. Many features which are Google specific aren't supported.
  5. 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

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[–] Draedron@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

On my private PC I use firefox on my work laptop I use chrome. The gmail and gdrive integration just makes it easier.

Still on my private I have to switch to chrome for a few things because it just has more storage

[–] JackbyDev@programming.dev 5 points 1 year ago (4 children)

I used Firefox at work because my company had the enterprise version of Chrome and had a lot of options I couldn't change. Like the behavior on startup. It would only open the homepage, not reopen tabs.

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[–] freebee@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I still miss the print a webpage to pdf on mobile firefox.

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[–] thegreenguy@sopuli.xyz 4 points 1 year ago

Number 2 for me. And it's noticeable. I'd love to use it, but I just can't ignore the performance difference.

[–] FinallyDebunked@slrpnk.net 4 points 1 year ago (5 children)

I'm not so obsessed with foss, just use what is most convenient and Firefox turned up not to be it

[–] shapis@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

What issues did you have if you don't mind me asking.

[–] Dirk@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago (5 children)

Entirely to my system, but for me startup of Firefox takes 40 seconds and up to a minute and the UI feels very slow and unresponsive. No other application behaves like that and I have no idea how to bugfix because Firefox seems not to create any usable logs or prints anything useful to the terminal it's started from.

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[–] Echo71Niner@lemm.ee 4 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Shockingly, a lot of people have no clue how extension works, but Firefox will eventually sell out, they all do.

[–] WhyIDie@lemmy.ml 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

and when they do, another will step up to take its place. such is the cycle of enshittification

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[–] dangblingus@lemmy.dbzer0.com 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)
  1. It's actually faster than Chromium in recent build benchmarks. Firefox runs JS faster.
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[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 3 points 1 year ago

Because Mozilla sucks as a company. They should be coming up with new ways to promote Firefox. Instead they are just getting paid by google and selling vpns

[–] YoMismo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 3 points 1 year ago

Sadly, on pc many ppl that are not tech savvy assimilate internet to google chrome, I had some cases where they asked me "I want to install internet" when they means I want to install chrome to browse internet. I remember when chrome became more known by 2009/2010 Firefox had some issues, it crashes frequently and it was a bit slower, so people who found chrome faster adopted it fastly and it was more and more recommended. In my case I'm using FF since 2006 and I never stopped.

[–] Mio@feddit.nu 3 points 1 year ago

Firefox boot slower on Android. Webkit-based browsers boot much faster. I think they make use of some preloading of the browser itself.

[–] jfx@discuss.tchncs.de 3 points 1 year ago

I think a lot comes down to preinstalled SW on phones (Chrome/Safari) and the enterprise world. My rather large employer just switched from FF preinstalled to Edge for all work devices since it alreadz comes with Windows.

Maybe Firefox is missing a really compelling enterprise offering for Desktops? Everybody less savvy is on mobile anyways, which is dominated by the Duopoly Apple/Google.

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