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’ve never experienced any slowness with Firefox, so I don’t know what people are talking about. But Chrome is still the default browser on Android and I guess it’s the major reason why people are installing Chrome on their computer.
It’s improved a lot recently and even surpasses Chrome in some benchmarks, but it took them a really really long time to catch up with Chrome’s speed.
Chrome split up web pages into their own processes very early on, while Firefox still had to mostly run things single threaded. That made a huge difference especially on laptops with 4-8 slow threads.
Chrome also turned to the GPU for acceleration really early on too. That’s also something Firefox took a really long time to catch up with.
Like many, I’ve been on Chromium since the single digit days, and only switched back to Firefox in anticipation of the manifest v3 fiasco.
Chrome was just way too good to not use it. Chrome beat the shit out of Firefox the way Firefox beat the shit out of IE6 back then. It was so good I sucked up the lack of extensions or Flash Player support. It was faster to load ads than use Firefox to block them.
can anything be done legally about Chrome being the default browser on most android phones? I mean, there has to be some default browser but maybe Android manufacturers should be forced to pre-install a FOSS browser instead of chrome ig, idk (or maybe the user can be asked to install it when they are logging into their phones for the first time, this sounds better)
Iirc the some people in the EU wanted to take a look at googles almost-monopoly on the android market but I don’t think anything came out of it. It’s virtually no different from MS using Edge as default browser on Windows; as long as you can get an alternative, there isn’t anything wrong with it legally.
iirc, they already had to impelement, that you can choose the default search engine in Androids first setup.
I agree majority of the regular people don’t even install a second browser on their device. My brother use chrome on android and edge on windows. Sad, but he likes it enough. I use firefox on all my devices. Because of the implication.
“Most people” probably can’t name the browser they use. They just open “the internet” on whatever device they’re on.
Then why isn’t Edge more popular?
This isn’t the early 2000s anymore; people know how to download a browser.
Most don’t. Edge is increasingly becoming more popular as consumers switch to Windows 11.
The only non-techies I know that use Chrome are those I have installed Chrome for.
Most people who “just use the computer” these days DO use edge, in my experience.
lol you would be surprised
I’ve seen it plenty of times that they use chrome AND edge. Simply because some things open in edge by default and they don’t know how to, or aren’t bothered to switch it.
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So many times I see screenshots shared by my non-IT friends of websites and it’s full of ads. Trying to get them to install an adblocker is a real challenge. Some of these people are actual engineers too, so fairly smart people otherwise. The “internet” is whatever browser is on their PC that works.
Also, a lot of people are using absolute potato PCs where the performance difference between Edge/Chrome and anything else used to be noticeable for years.
Let me introduce you to … “The Internet Icon”
Most does use it. It just come with some weird quirks, like my cousin’s Edge wiped itself clean after a Windows update, and I guided him towards FF
Ugh, sadly I feel like this is the most accurate answer. So many people don’t apply critical thinking to their device and don’t even understand they are using a browser to access the web.
Because not only do you (the end user) have to go out of your way to get it, but you get spammed by Microsoft/Edge and Google/Chrome to install a “faster” and “more secure” browser. Additionally, on the mobile side, Apple is preventing all iPhone/iPad users from picking a real alternative browser that isn’t just webkit re-skinned, putting half the population at a disadvantage and to their own corporate interests.
The Apple part might change quite soon, with the EU’s Digital Market Act. Apple will have to allow users to download apps from other markets than the Appstore.
That would be great! Hopefully they don’t screw it up and decide to make the feature available only if you’re in the EU.
With these companies nothing would surprise me.
They’re absolutely going to make it available only in the EU unless other countries also push for it with legislation.
It’s also going to have a lot of scary “Are you sure u want to compromise your safety?” boxes.
What do you mean about the apple part? I use FF on my iPhone.
It’s uses safari’s engine, which is the only one allowed by Apple. Doesn’t matter what browser you download from the store.
Thanks, I did not know that.
All browsers on iOS are just reskinned Safari, because that’s the only thing iOS allows you to install.
This is a really great reason not to use iOS.
I think you think too much, most people just want a browser that works and they have one preinstalled on their phone / computer. So when you arrive and recommend Firefox they just hear “Hey ! You have a browser that works, why won’t you spend time installing this one that works just as fine, I swear”.
Extensions and privacy might look like killer features but they are a bit too abstract to be adoption arguments (why would you even need extensions if your browser is so good).
I was using Firefox before Chrome when it took significant market share from Internet Explorer.
In my view a large reason was corporations made the (IMO) big mistake of using Chrome for applications and as a browser.
It’s the classic Microsoft effect of people get comfortable using it at work and then don’t change.
It also doesn’t hurt that Chrome is tied to the majority of smart phones.
I do not see any killer feature of Firefox right now. Even the Mozilla’s official browser comparison site indicates Microsoft Edge being on par with Firefox, based on Mozilla’s own criteria!
This will change in the future. Firefox will be the only major web browser on Android with full-fledged addon support.
I am already using some extensions on Vivaldi (like Consent-o-Matic, some transliteration addons), but this could make me switch to Firefox.They could also have put in an “Possibility to disable telemetry and tracking from browser vendor”
Support for mv2 uBO is the killer feature of Firefox and its forks.
The killer feature is cookie containers, aka no cross site tracking by default.
Less bloat and the direction of the browser. They’ve been around forever and they have a consistent track record. Vivaldi is a good example of why it’s bad to cram every single feature into a browser creates clutter. Not to mention you’re supporting the only non-Chromium browser, which we’re seeing the disastrous effects of their monopoly pushing user harmful changes.
I’d guess that:
- Google is a bigger brand that attracts many people as a lot of them are already using some of the company’s products
- These other products are well integrated with the browser: browser history is shared across devices along with passwords and extensions
- Google advertises Chrome in the Google Search, it’s a default search engine even in Firefox
Most people are not tech savvy and/or privacy-oriented.
Firefox is honestly just kinda always lagging behind on supporting features. If you want to use the latest tech, Chrome is always first to have it.
One that irks me a lot of the lack of any proper PWA support. On both mobile and desktop, you can install websites as apps, and they behave like apps. Slack, Discord, Spotify, YouTube Music, and a whole bunch of others you can install as a PWA and they look just like their desktop counterparts but much lighter, they’re sandboxed and safer to use, and generally perform well. You click an external link on Slack as a PWA? It opens in a new regular browser window. Push notifications get routed to the correct window when you click/tap on it.
Firefox can do that with extremely hacky extensions on desktop, and just can’t on mobile. Best it can do is make a shortcut. But if you receive a notification it opens it in a new tab in the browser, it’s just not nearly as good of an experience.
I rely a lot on PWAs like The Lounge to use IRC as my primary messaging app. I could wrap it in a dummy Cordova app or something but then it’s still running Chrome under the hood anyway, because Firefox also doesn’t support being Android’s WebView plugin.
That’s changing but Firefox on mobile currently only supports like a dozen extensions and that’s it, you can’t even force install them unless you run nightly builds.
Firefox’s engine was also extremely laggy on mobile but that fortunately has also improved a fair bit recently.
Then there’s all the useless features literally nobody asked for like Pocket, sponsored links in the new tab page, Mozilla VPN, and other addons they bought over time with questionable privacy policies. Just make the browser good before you venture into other bloatware.
Firefox just hasn’t had any reason to be used in recent years other than not being related to Google/Chromium. And even then, we’ve had ungoogled Chromium forks since the beginning. It’s the political party you picked for the sake of being against the other worse one.
Firefox PWAs seem to work for me on mobile. To be fair I’m on nightly, but I can see a menu item that says “install” if the webpage has a PWA manifest. I was using voyager with it for a while before they released the play store version.
Yeah I had the same experience with PWAs for a while now and I’m not on the nightly.
Firefox being slow has almost nothing to do with Mozilla’s incompetence or the browser’s inability to handle websites.
When devs build websites, they usually build them for the most popular browser, aka Chrome. They couldn’t be bothered to help the minority of people who use Firefox. Also, cost. Building a website to work with 2 different engines is more expensive than building it for just one engine that’ll work for 99% of users. That’s why a lot of banking websites never support FF.
Another primary reason is Google’s Monopoly. Almost everyone uses some Google service or another. Google’s websites are tailored to perfectly fit Chromium, not FF. This is why you’ll sometimes see websites break or even crash. YouTube’s recent ambient mode made the site choke quite a lot on FF. An average Joe ain’t got the knowledge to know or even troubleshoot the issue and they’ll just shift to Chromium, where everything just works.
It’s almost like web is built on open technologies, and you would expect the same code to run without issues on different engines.
Until one engine goes berserk because they know they can and no one will stop them.
Was this an AI answer or something? It’s really weird to go out of your way to bold all the brand names…
For me, until all below are supported Firefox can’t be my primary browser.
- PWA not supported and only possible with FirefoxPWA. I can’t rely to anything but native, Mozilla could break FirefoxPWA any time they want.
- I use my browser for my multimedia needs and I use my own Emby Server. Firefox doesn’t support mkv container and the most important it desn’t support HEVC. Please do not tell me about HEVC royalties and how much Mozilla would have to pay MPEG-LA. Chromium based browsers have enabled hardware HEVC decoding and they pay nothing to MPEG-LA because the royalties have been already payed by my graphics card. Mozilla simply doesn’t care.
Yeah, not having a PWAs is a bummer
Mozilla could break FirefoxPWA any time they want.
That seems to be a very shallow argument … besides the point that any software can break at some point, chrome/google is constantly 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 enough time to adjust/workaround the necessary change.
I use my browser for my multimedia needs
Most people would use a mediaplayer application for this …
Firefox is kinda like Linux in my opinion. Yes, some games might not run on linux and some games don’t run as good as on windows, but most run just fine. But since I don’t use windows I don’t know the difference and so I don’t care about it either. Same thing with firefox, chrome might do x better, but then I have not used it in years so I just don’t care about it. Blissful ignorance I suppose? Either way I am happy with linux and firefox since both have not only downsides, but plenty advantages too in my opinion.
One reason is that if you use Gmail, every two weeks appears a “y u no use chrome” nag popup that can’t be permanently dismissed
If I’ve ever seen this message, I don’t remember it. Crazy what uBlock Origin can do for one’s peace of mind.
I’ve used Firefox for years and I love it on Android, but on my work laptop (MacBook) I really enjoy using Arc. The vertical tabs let me organise things better, the spaces let me isolate tabs properly in a visually pleasing way, and I don’t really care for extensions on desktop as I don’t really browse much outside of work. I also prefer chromium dev tools, though it isn’t that bad to switch to Firefox’s dev tools.
If Firefox adopts few features from Arc, both in form and function, I wouldn’t mind coming back. I know sidebar exists which lets you have vertical tabs via extensions, but damn Arc does it the best so far, natively!
Edit: oh, another reason was lack of background blur effects for Google meet. It’s coming soon I think (I filed it on bugzilla), but damn it was needed like 3 years ago.
Let me introduce you to the fabulous world of TreeStyleTabs.
I did check it and it is pretty cool. Though you’ve to use user css to hide actual tabs and even then it isn’t as polished experience as Arc. I guess it is one of the features that needs to be part of browser chrome to be really good.
Same here, I used Firefox for a long time but Arc just captured me with its beauty and polish. Sideberry for Firefox kinda replicates the vertical tab experience, but man it’s so much better when the solution is native to the app.
I also prefer chromium dev tools, though it isn’t that bad to switch to Firefox’s dev tools.
I actually vastly prefer Firefox’s dev tools to Chromium’s. There are keyboard shortcuts to open every tab, it has a color picker, it has a multi-line Javascript console, and in general I find it more intuitive. Chromium developer tools seem to be less complete than Firefox and harder to use.
I just learned Chromium technically has a color picker tool, but you need to scroll through CSS propetries to find a color selector, click the color, then click the color picker. With Firefox, I tap
CTRL+SHIFT+Ito open dev tools, click the color picker which is front-and-center, and it copies the hex code to my clipboard. This is a microcosm of my overall experience with Chromium’s developer tools. Everything is slower or further out of reach.I don’t know how it ended up this way.
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.
If you’ve been on youtube for the past 6 months or so, there were a lot of OperaGX sponsorships given to large creators and a decent majority of people have used it, liked it, and started recommending it to others via youtube comments.
There’s also the fact that chrome is the browser that, at least here, is the most well known at this point and is usually preinstalled on school computers, so this builds up familiarity.
And probably a smaller reason why is because mozilla itself - it hasn’t been that great of a company and the firefox over the years has gotten somewhat worse and worse.
