Honest question... who did they lose to? Google Chrome?
For me personally, Firefox has been better than Chrome for several years now. The only reason I still load up Chrome is when I want to stream to my Chromecast.
Netscape lost. Original Opera lost. IE lost. Edge lost. As in killed off by creators and no new work is done on it.
Mozilla Firefox at this point is going strong and growing. It is a better browser than Chrome for me.
No surprise they lost all their market share.
- that started the race later slowing the to put certain "new" tech in it from the get to go instead of trying to retrofit it later
- Google had far more money for engineers and marketing.
- Google has a kinda unfair advantage through Android and Google Search.
Especially starting later after some technological shifts happend allowed them to get a technological advantage over Firefox for some time, combined with the much better image they had in the past and Android/Google search it was pretty hard for them not to become the dominant browser.
The question is why thinks didn't shift noticably in recent years?
This brings the problem that the futures doesn't look too good given the power Google now has to just push through theire stuff and given that there has been a bunch of cases where certain Google program _seem_ to have been intentionally "optimized" to be fast on chrome but _only_ on chrome and no other browser...
Edited for spelling fixes.
See this other comment I made: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22299884
There's s link to a video by DataIsBeautiful which, if you think of OS market share (notably switch to mobile big time at the detriment of x86 in the early 2010s), is as clear as it gets. Mainstream users in their vast majority do not even think of using a different browser — there's one out-of-the-box, right?.. more pressing concern is getting on with one's life.
The only reason I use Chrome now is for that pesky site that still hasn't gotten away from Flash. Unfortunately this is the case with some online training modules we are required to finish. At least now I can throw away Google Chrome and use Microsoft Edge. A tiny political victory, perhaps.
And that's a really, really hard thing to pull off.
I recall when Mozilla made it a central goal to adhere strictly to web standards, at a time when it was really tedious to get cross-browser compatibility, and other browsers followed them.
To me, that alone is a big win.
Arguably you could say they lost some market share to Chrome and Safari, but realistically they never won much in the first place.
And that is from someone who followed Firefox development before it was even called Firefox.
I tried fx_cast but it didn't work with Plex.
The code is already written, I just think they are still too scared to ship an extension that works against their primary sponsor.
It's quite clunky to set up though. To add a site to a container, I have to open a new tab in the target container, go to the website, check "always open in this container" in the container menu, then open a new tab, then say "yes, always in this container" at the prompt.
Since Firefox switched to Quantum, I am exclusively using it on my work, home and portable computers. Chromium on my Arch Laptop was buggy, had a memory leak, and would consume all my 16G of RAM after keeping tabs open for a while. Firefox solved that for me.
With uBlock, Privacy Badger, Cookie AutoDelete and FF's built-in blocker I have a functional defense-line against privacy violating practices (not totally immune against fingerprinting yet).
The reader mode helps me to get rid of the clutter and read the text, very happy with that.
I also use Firefox and Firefox Preview on Android. The latter is specially superior in performance and has less bugs. For example on Firefox Android I had non-finishing download bars, not any more in the Preview. The performance is obviously superior. Nighly builds support uBlock now.
The "Send Tab" feature is also very practical (I have a FF account for syncing purposes). I send tabs to my other devices which helps me to follow things on my other machines and also to memorize things by seeing them in a short while on another machine.
There are two things about FF that I dislike. First thing is the massive amount of outdated articles and ancient support tickets online. Good luck with searching for a technical solution for a FF problem!
Next thing is the source code. I have compiled it many times in order to fix a niche bug. I even bought a better PC to compile it faster. This aside, it is hard to understand the code. There are zillions of moving pieces, and ad-hoc bug fixing is not an option. You have to follow things for weeks if not months to get to the right information. This probably can be improved by better docs explaining the code to contributors and new comers.
Overall I'm happy with it. Moreover, it is important to have alternatives otherwise we might lose the open web as we know it.
Edit: add paragraphs
[0]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account...
Not only that, but it also connects to Google's SafeBrowsing servers. Is that required by their search engine contract with Google? Shouldn't be turned on by default.
Pocket is basically their version of Read Later, etc...And it’s completely optional whether you want to use it or not. So I’m not sure I understand this complaint.
Mozilla’s first integration of Pocket was poorly done, and rightfully raised complaints. But since they have purchased it, a lot of those complaints have been resolved.
As a privacy enthusiast, what's wrong with Google's SafeBrowsing service? It provides protection from low-hanging fruit with anonymized data (hashes of URLs).
Why Mozilla is hellbent on pushing this upon their users is beyond me, it just hurts their image in my opinon.
Off-topic, but I find current integration equally poor. Why do I have to spend extra clicks to login every time I want to add something to Pocket? Why it doesn't use stored credentials just like Sync does?
FWIW, I believe all the Pocket client code is open source.
"Equality, discourse, and diversity" are the very principles that enable people to "magnify divisiveness, incite violence, promote hatred, and intentionally manipulate fact and reality." Any attempt to promote freedom of expression while simultaneously silencing the worst of humanity is inherently at odds.
Hatred is a naturally occuring phenomina, not a learned behavior. You can't just quarantine it to make it go away. That only makes it worse.
The internet is not a breeding ground for hatred. It's just a reflection of how bad we can really be.
The question is - do you need to re-write the internet economy as Brave are trying to to achieve it, and not just block trackers?
The third element is that governments are becoming addicted to the vast trove of information gathered - will they be willing to give that up if a technical/business model solution takes off.
Interesting times.
I do agree that changing the internet economy would be great though, but at this point I'm not entirely sure I trust Brave to do that. They clearly want a piece of the advertising cake under the guise of "disrupting" things, but should they end up being successful I'm not yet completely convinced that it'll change things fundamentally. I'm definitely curious to see if they manage to do it though, even if it ends up as a failed experiment it will have been an interesting one.
If, for example, an effective adblocking browser takes off, huge amounts of revenue to content providers will disappear. So content providers will start to resist in the only way they can - by blocking people with adblockers.
If you want to avoid either massive reduction of content, or the blocking of ad blockers, then you need to offer an alternative.
As I said, whether Brave's model is the right alternative is an open question - but at least they are having a go.
Even something as simple and obnoxious as donation nagging, like Wikipedia, seems preferable to what Brave has proposed.
Technically the browser is nice, but there’s something nice about a for profit org whose incentives are aligned with mine. For now, I use a FireFox for similar reasons, but I like Brave’s mode for the web better than the “bad ad” model that google and Facebook push.
I used to like Opera for similar reasons.
The user just deposits something like $10/month from their credit card and spreads it across their favourite websites.
They can do that and be completely ignorant that everything is running on ethereum. Which is really the way it should be in the end. Ethereum is just a hidden value transfer backend that saves a company money.
I mean, I support their efforts and all but I am forced to use a chrome based browser because FF has poor windows/sso integration and absolutley horrible memory management. A tab of any tool's webui that does a lot of work with a lot of data will not only bring firefox to a halt but the entire system. I can at least try to use it for soft workloads but you never know when visiting the wrong page will cause this issue again. Why can't it manage it's impact on the rest of the system?
My job performance would tank dramarically if I used firefox exclusively!
Why can't they work to make it better than Chrome? They were throwing Rust at it a few years ago,so what happened? Do they just not test against the right sites?
I mean, the mozilla foundation is not poor. They have money. Is it just politics or do they think getting gmail and youtube to work is all that is needed? I am only saying all this because i like firefox. Mozilla needs a wake up call. Do they not get the problems at hand or do they not care or do they lack some resource or motivation? I mean I will be happy to even buy a license for firefox if they get it to even come close to Chrome's performance. Maybe they have too many well intended fanboy's cheeeing them on?
So my suggestion is to file bugs for any websites that perform particularly badly for you.
This changed recently with Firefox Quantum, which was v69 or v70. I noticed a significant speedup at that point.
https://mozillagfx.wordpress.com/2019/10/22/dramatically-red...
I keep 'Edge-ium' around if I encounter any rare use cases that necessitate it, but that's relatively rare
I just about exclusively use FireFox with nine containers on my Linux and macOS laptops. Being able to segregate data is a game changer.
On my iOS devices, I feel stuck with Safari since other browsers sit on top of Safari. I appreciate the privacy features in Safari but still feel the need to frequently remove all cookies and use private tabs when using sites like FaceBook. I just wrote about this yesterday https://mark-watson.blogspot.com/2020/02/protecting-oneself-...
Because I like to sometimes use my Chromebook, I am stuck using the Chrome web browser. Deleting all cookies frequently helps.
When non-tech friends ask how much of a hassle it is deleting all cookies, I point out that the passwords are saved and reliving in is quick.
All private tabs is obviously better, and I will do that more often.
More importantly, Safari is the anointed web browser that opens all web links. If you could designate Firefox to be the primary web browser, I'd do so in a heartbeat, because "Send to device" is so damn useful when you're using Firefox everywhere.
1) parameters that include word "telemetry"
2) everything that looks like a unique token
3) "mozilla.org" URLs
you'll see that the sum is steadily going up with every release. It leaves me under impression that Mozilla is trying to follow Facebook and Google. Lately they removed setting to use a custom page for the new tabs, leaving only choice between blank page and Mozilla-provided "interest based" homepage. I am still using it as the main browser, though, as "lesser evil", but discrepancy between Mozilla's slogans and actual features is pretty chilling.
Calling it anything except tracking is super bullshitty.
Firefox does let you disable the telemetry with one exception, though. The exception is that they have a special telemetry ping to tell them when someone has disabled telemetry. While that's obnoxious and prevents me from saying "it's perfectly done", that you can disable the rest is head-and-shoulders above pretty much everyone else.
I mean I mostly agree that telemetry is different, but how can we be sure Mozilla isn't sharing their telemetry information with ad networks to help fingerprint you?
It seems the only way to be truly sure is if we could verify the browser sent no information at all, right? Or else it's just about trust, same as any other browser.
They also disabled the ability for extensions to work on mozilla pages and things like about:addons by default, where mozilla uses google analytics.
They add new tracking crap on the browser in every release, so you are at a loss what to disable first in about:config as the online guides tend to get outdated easily.
> that's good for trolls and surveillance organizations and violent groups
Only "surveillance organizations" is relevant to privacy. The others make me think of centralisation and censorship.
The only real way to browse privately is to use a browser with javascript disabled and only a subset of css enabled over tor/isp. (but then you have to deal with cloudflare and broken sites)
The most relevant extension - uBlock Origin - works just fine on mobile Firefox.
It's a real game changer, especially with screen real estate and energy usage being quite important on mobile.
That extension alone is why I have and use Firefox on mobile phones (aside of the usual compatibility testing on other browsers for certain web projects).
I still use Firefox everyday since it's the best browser for linux but I also use Brave. Mozilla as a company in my eyes are a bit lost and they need more focus on their technology. It seems like they have realized this in the last two years or so and I hope that trend will continue. Firefox is awesome, focus on privacy is awesome. MDN is awesome. If they need money from other sources than Google, why not create some kind of subscription service for their MDN docs?
There is a bunch of things they actually need to fix like lack of PWA support in firefox (still) which is pretty bad that they don't have that enabled by default.
Focus on what matters, no one cares about your woke politics in the long run.
Marriage equality isn't a particularly ridiculous reason.
I believe you're trying to do what's right and care about the issue.
It appears some disagree that Mozilla was an appropriate venue to bring the matter up, though.
People use Mozilla for a web browser. Eich isn't making laws and Mozilla isn't ordained to marry. Mozilla is subject to the laws of the state of California and USA, regardless.
People are trying to say (if I may be so bold): it turned a technical, meritocratic culture into an organization that makes choices based on support of a political ballot.
That's the point of the parent, I believe. They didn't act as a technology foundation, they acted as a political grass roots organization. As a tech-spinoff of a progressive party, you couldn't keep Eich. As a browser manufacturer, his private political ideas are irrelevant and firing him because of it is clearly ridiculous.
This idea of an outrage culture is what makes Mozilla go down the shitter. No one cares about that shit except a very small minority in SF.
It's not like Google or most other for-profit company cares about marriage inequality either. Just because they don't explicitly say it out loud doesn't mean they care. They care about profits and market dominance only. If Google would make more money being anti same sex marriage, then they would most likely oppose same sex marriage and spend a lot of money on lobbying for the opposing view.
I'm certain that firing Brendan was probably one of the worst decisions Mozilla has taken so far. I trust Brave and Brendan far more on privacy issue since they only care about that and don't shove woke politics onto my face. I'm convinced that Brave will be larger than Firefox in market share sooner rather than later mostly because of this reason alone.
And opinion discarded
> That's how Mozilla works: slowly, collaboratively, trying to speak for everyone.
I don't remember Mozilla works collaboratively. By the way - remind me where they publish their income sources again?
> "the power of the internet used to magnify divisiveness, incite violence, promote hatred, and intentionally manipulate fact and reality."
Yeah, well, so has the printing press. When someone suggests we should keep a "healty press", that's oligarchic censorship. Reminds me of the US Comics Code.
> Mozilla has spent the last several years fighting harder and louder than ever for the future of the internet.
Must not have been loud enough, because I believe few people have noticed this.
> the company's vision of a more user-centric, privacy-conscious web.
"user-centric" web? Don't know what that means. It's like "reader-centric books". As for privacy - when something like uBlock Origin and EFF Privacy Badger is installed by default, and when TOR is an easily-accessible option, and when Mozilla funds some TOR endpoint routers (in countries outside US reach of course), then we'll talk.
> But what if people could also use them to keep Facebook from snooping as they traveled the web?
If Facebook was prevented from snooping entirely, that would not be that much of an issue.
> Firefox has long held the not-entirely-flattering distinction of being the most popular browser not made by a huge corporation
It's bankrolled by huge corporations. IIRC it was mostly Google for a while. Also, see below about their new VP.
I am reminded how Mozilla had, for years, neglected its email client in favor of the browser, thus effectively helping to promote webmail, stored and spied on by these corporations. It certainly did nothing to promote end-to-end encryption of email, which has been quite possible with Thunderbird, and would have prevented (some of the) spying on users.
> So far, Firefox has blocked 1.6 trillion tracking requests
That means it doesn't block most tracking requests.
> Alan Davidson ... new VP of policy ... has been working ... at Google and then as President Barack Obama's director of digital economy
So one of the top people at the spying-B-us corporation and the "can't have privacy and security" administration is the new VP who'll help protect us from his former colleagues and bosses? Uh-huh.
Maybe I'm too optimistic.
Update: Loved chrome, used it for years, I also love most Chrome engineering and all the innovation they added to the field - it's just good to have alternatives.
Its certainly low, but I also think FF usage is under reported due to built-in tracker blocking. For reference, FF uses the level 1 disconnect.me block list, which blocks StatCounter scrips from loading on 3rd party sites [1].
[1] https://github.com/disconnectme/disconnect-tracking-protecti...
Of course it's not perfect source, but CloudFlare for instance have client detection purely by SSL handshake fingerprint and it's show 6-7% for Firefox:
https://malcolm.cloudflare.com/
Long ago Wikimedia also had own statistics that was pretty much relevant, but I guess it's discontinued.
Sure you can spoof it, but it would be the same for the stat counter.
Now I say the same about chrome and find FF much lighter and efficient.
Delighted that FF are taking a bit of a stronger stand here in the privacy dept too .
I use it on my phone now as I don't support AMP at all, and it still has some weird issues compared to Chrome. The main annoyances for me are:
- Kinda hanging occasionally when you have 40 or 50 tabs open. Sometimes have to close and reopen it, sometimes it'll start being responsive again. Never had these problems in Chrome.
- Never ending loading bars. While it might be true that some script hasn't loaded, I don't need to know and it's just annoying to have a half complete blue bar at the top of the page. It adds to the perception that there's something wrong, and it feels like somethings wrong with Firefox Mobile not something's wrong with the web page.
- I want to pull down to refresh. I know it's silly but 6 months on I still do it out of muscle memory, and then remember you have to click the menu, then click the refresh. Pull down is just great, far superior to their solution.
- Thumbnails of old tabs that are still open get flushed, never happens in Chrome. What it means is that you can't scan the tabs for an old open tab you want by the look of the thumbnail. for example, I have a jambalya recipe I tried and like but haven't got round to transcribing and every two or three weeks have to hunt through the damn tabs to find it.
- Their tab solution is not as nice as Chrome's. I really don't like the layout, or find it as usable, even months on. When Chrome initially switched theirs I was sceptical, but really learned to love the concertina style.
I am also finding it quite hard to get proper ad blocking working. It's working for some sites, but no matter what I do I'm still getting google ads and now certain login pages hang completely including some google driven ones. Why is it so hard to do? I'm pretty competent with computers after all! (Yes, I've turned off things like acceptable ads and checked the whitelists).
Don't be optimistic, but don't be pesimistic either.
Do what you can - donate time or money, or just recommend everyone to not use the piece of carp that is Chrome. Anything based on Chromium counts as well, their codebase is dictated by Google, one way or the other.
My mom had so many issues with ads until I installed Firefox for her, and honestly, the ad blockers make the internet a much better for navigation.
Or if you are building web products, please use Firefox as your dev browser, that's what I'm doing and it automatically insures that whatever I build will work on Firefox.
As I understand it, donating money to Mozilla does not fund Firefox in any way but rather their other social initiatives (see the Mozilla Foundation page for a list). Firefox is under the Mozilla Corporation which is funded by things like search deals with Google.
The Modern US / Silicon Valley mentality is you have to be optimistic at all cost. Being Realistic is counted as pessimism.
I know my browser usage is used for marketing purposes, but as long as it doesn't harm me in anyway I can live with that.
Firefox also not only sync's between all of my devices, including my cell phone. Each device has the ability to send a tab to another device, which I don't recall Chrome having.
Just some data points in case you're ever interested in trying something different.
Might be obvious, but consider that more people than you estimated, while understanding implications and directions, decided differently than you did. It's dangerous to attribute behaviour different from your own to lack of understanding.
It's funny because Firefox has been pushing their login thing pretty hard (the yellow "oh no" exclamation mark icon if you're not logged in, the account icon that keeps placing itself back onto my toolbar, occasional full-page ad/nag screen, ...).
I've used and loved Firefox from before it was called Firefox. I really, really, really want to like the modern Firefox, but I just can't. I find it limiting and irritating. So, sadly, I don't. I don't use Chrome either, though.
I’ve actually used FF as my main development browser for most of those years because it’s the only browser where extensions aren’t controlled by our IT department, and I kind of need extensions on the fly. So I’ve seen the good and the bad of it. I personally prefer Chrome. I also like privacy, but I’ve tried the Duck and it just doesn’t work for my language, leading me to add the !g on almost all my searches, and if I’m google that much anyway, so I really benefit from using FF? Doesn’t FF also use one of Google’s engines to check site security?
Anyway I’m rambling, so let me get back on track. I’ve been testing the new Edge, and it’s Microsoft’s best browser, and what are the risks? Is it really better to have all the browsers on different engines instead of having multiple big guys work on the same open source engine?
2) Tracking from Google and Facebook
3) Cookie warning with no way to opt out
4) You can only opt out if you live in California:
> Opting out of the sharing of your personal information by Protocol with marketers: Please send an email to privacy@protocol.com with the following information: -Name -Email -Confirmation of California residency
It's at least 30 times slower than chrome. So somethings wrong Right?
> Making private browsing more private was a success, which is to say less data was collected and users didn't notice the difference.
> The same trackers, though, help users log into sites and pay for goods, and blocking them would break the internet for lots of users.
1) block all ads, by default
2) do not unblock Google's ads,
3) receive Adblock Plus-style bribes from Yandex or whoever to whitelist them, provided they don't harm privacy
This would kill several birds in one stone. First, break Mozilla free of Google funding. Second, hurt Google. Third, increase Firefox' market share. Fourth, help users' privacy.
As things stand today, Mozilla just exist so that Google can pretend they don't have a monopoly. Follow the money - who pays?
(A: Google pays nearly all of their budget, and they have next to no rainy day fund)
I doubt you can find one that doesn't harm privacy. And particulary Yandex will raise other concerns.
1) abandon tracking, earn ad revenue from Firefox and Chrome
2) keep tracking, earn no ad revenue from Firefox
Yandex ads will be more pleasant due to not having the large amounts of tracking, meaning they'll reduce page views less. As a result of blocking ads, Firefox will become much more pleasant to use. As a result, the first option will be more profitable.
Yandex' "other concerns" is the whole point - they are the only serious competitor to Google. The enemy of my enemy is my friend. If you were to enter into such a deal with another American/European company, the regulator would crush them over antitrust concerns. This leaves Yandex (or the Chinese) as your only options.
"In fine, let us recognize that the adoption of my advice will leave us each citizens of a free state, and as such arbiters of our own destiny, able to return good or bad offices with equal effect; while its rejection will make us dependent on others, and thus not only impotent to repel an insult, but on the most favourable supposition, friends to our direst enemies, and at feud with our natural friends." –Hermocrates
It's the perfect way to kill one, actually.
1) Give them $0.2 billion a year in easy money
2) Their projects expand as per Parkinson's law so they spend $0.2 billion a year
3) Since they have easy money, they won't bother seeking alternative funding sources
4) They now find themselves in the same position as a crack whore vis-a-vis her pimp
Mozilla wouldn't ever abandon their fun pet projects, but with sufficient coercion they might abandon privacy for "fighting hate" or similar.
