Submitted 10 months ago by ConstableJelly@beehaw.org to technology@beehaw.org
Article seems pretty flawed. Relevance is a vague metric, and the author relies pretty heavily on data related to government site visitation, which seems subject to bias toward certain types of users.
Market share is likely still incredibly low, but Firefox’s relevance should be spiking right now due to Google’s shenanigans with Chromium. The fact that like 90% of revenue for its for-profit wing is from Google is still troubling.
Any alternative views out there?
Firefox is far from irrelevant. Pure stupid click bait. Market share of courses is a sad thing and may lead to irrelevance when most web sites stop supporting. In the late days of Netscape and the early days of Firefox that was the case… lack of website support. I am just starting to see that again.
Manifest V3 will force some people to go back to Firefox.
I wish so too, but I think you’re overestimating people.
firefox will stay relevant, even if only because alphabet really really wants to avoid antitrust lawsuits.
Article seems pretty flawed. Relevance is a vague metric, and the author relies pretty heavily on data related to government site visitation, which seems subject to bias toward certain types of users.
You mean like government (and business) employees that are forced to use some flavor of Internet Explorer Chromium?
Employees? I thought OP was talking about visitors and in that case a government site is as neutral as it gets.
And a lot of those visitors are people that are forced to use chromium - such as employees that use those governmental services as a part of work. As neutral as it gets, it doesn’t mean it is actually neutral.
For example, some government websites only work with chromium
People are idiots. I’ve used Firefox for nearly 20 years and have zero plans to change.
Same here, it’s only getting better. Especially lately with mobile firefox finally getting up to scratch. The desktop browser has alwaysbeen great.
Is Firefox considered bad? It works well for me and when I use Chrome or edge It feels full of junk features
I don’t think so. The article claims Firefox lost some of its lead developers to Google when it started developing Chrome and then took a long time to regain its footing around 2017. That sounds about right to my recollection. I had admittedly switched to Chrome myself for a while (I’m not terribly tech-savvy, maybe a little more than average) but switched back to Firefox last year. I am still pretty deeply embedded in the Google ecosystem though in other ways.
Firefox has been nice to work with on my end. And fast. Even the dev tools are way better than they were a decade ago. Almost all the important extensions work on it.
I don’t really understand how its market share is so low now.
I don’t really understand how its market share is so low now.
Everyone has a Google account, Chrome comes preinstalled on many web-enabled devices, people don’t realise how bad Chrome is compared to alternatives, people don’t understand they can search with Google on any web browser, etc. Most people are not particularly tech literate and don’t really understand what they are doing. They just use the most popular/advertised product and assume it is the best choice for them. Even in Lemmy privacy communities, where you’d expect users to be more tech literate, I’ve come across many people who don’t even know that browser export/import is a standard feature everywhere, or that other browsers have their own versions of cross device sync. They think they’re locked into Chrome and moving to Firefox would mean completely starting again from nothing.
It works for me, as well as family members who aren’t as technical / don’t care about why I picked Firefox
I think it’s mostly about convenience. Most people don’t care enough and have only learned how to install chrome (if it isn’t preinstalled)
For an article that tries to push a groupthink narrative to work, the people using the “discouraged” product need to believe the “encouraged” one has feature parity with zero downsides.
I guarantee that no one is accidentally using Firefox because they’re unaware of the alternatives.
Market share doesn’t equal irrelevance as others have said. I use Librewolf and without Firefox it wouldn’t exist. It likely wouldn’t exist at the quality it is without Mozilla taking Google Cash either. But it’s super important to have an alternative even if most people don’t use it. It DOES provide a limited check and balance against google doing whatever they want with the web because if the right people make the right noise then people will move over to something that’s easy, convenient, and free of whatever pain in the butt google puts in chrome that sends people over the edge. See Linux desktop and Valve for an example of how a software with very few users comparatively can force a larger company to play ball. Remember in Windows 8 when MS basically banned 3rd party software stores on the OS… or tried? And Valve made the “Steam Machine” and SteamOS? Everyone says the steam machines failed but they 100% did everything Valve wanted them to do. It was enough to have MS go back on their walled garden and allow Steam to keep operating as it had been. And now we have the steam deck on top of it.
So, it’s ok if Firefox has a small market share as long as it remains a worthy competitor.
That came as a surprise to me too. 2.5% is just so little.
It’s not that low everywhere. In Germany, it’s 9.79%, for example.
Most traffic nowadays comes from mobile devices and hardly anyone installs alternative browsers on them at all. They just use the default.
There sure has been a lot of propaganda being posted to Beehaw lately.
ah zdnet, a waste of CO2 if there ever was
I’ve recently moved away from Chrome to Firefox and the transition was so seamless that I’m surprised. The main reason for the change is that Firefox for android now allows addons, serious addons not just the mobile ones. Before I was using a chrome / kiwi browser combo. So happy that now I can sync my desktop and phone :)
What add-ons in particular made you make the change?
uBlock, Clean URLs, and “I still don’t care about cookies”
Are the must haves for me.
Bypass paywalls clean. It’s great for reading news articles under a paywall.
Not OP but the standard two ones: uBlock origin and NoScript. Added bonus is an addon to continue video view with screen off.
People constantly crying over the ads in their youtube app. Well i just watch in Firefox and if i want to watch an audiobook video to fall asleep to, i don’t even have to drain my battery.
I will be honest. I didn’t read that article because it’s too click-baity. Using gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share/ I see that Firefox is about 3% of 5b users. Not insignificant.
That 3% is about 150mil users. IMO, less than it should be. Google has great security, but terrible privacy. I switched middle of last year, from brave to FF for reasons I won’t get into here. Suffice it to say, they are numerous.
It truly is troubling that they don’t have independent funding. I, for one would pay $10/y for this service. Maybe I could donate?
Anyway, it’s a superior product in many ways.
I would say a good half of posts on Lemmy are too click-baity for me to actually look at. Every title clearly has picked a side and it’s rare to see something even attempt to be impartial
I can’t disagree with you. I feel like that’s the way of the world anymore regardless of platform.
That’s total browser market. On Desktop it’s 7.61%, in Germany 17.93%, making it second place (though Edge isn’t far behind). Europe is 10.56%, North America pretty much average, Asia and South America are dragging it down.
It truly is troubling that they don’t have independent funding. I, for one would pay $10/y for this service. Maybe I could donate?
Firefox is Mozilla’s cash cow, it’s how they’re earning funds for their charitable work. And google btw isn’t the only one paying them, which search engine is the default depends on where you are.
Firefox is Mozilla’s cash cow, it’s how they’re earning funds for their charitable work. And google btw isn’t the only one paying them, which search engine is the default depends on where you are.
Thank you that’s wonderful news! I don’t have the time to keep up on browser news like that so I truly appreciate the information.
the problem with firefox is that chrome’s marketing is just too prevalent among the general population; it’s built into their gmail, their phone, everything that they use.
on the other hand they also reached their goal of over $3m grassroots donations in 2023, which goes a long way to scaling back on the reliance of google donations.
you also have to remember that web statistics are largely done by third party sources - like google analytics - or through telemetry. in the first case, many firefox users or those with adblockers will disable that. in the second case, this is exactly why i implore people to not disable telemetry in firefox since it’s necessary for bug testing and usability studies but also for determining reach of software.
which goes a long way to scaling back on the reliance of google donations.
$3 million is about 0.67% of the money they get from Google and that money isn’t even going into Firefox development.
gives us a running count of the last 90 days of US government website visits. That doesn’t tell us much about global web browser use, but it’s the best information we have about American web browser users today.
Lmao article itself saying it’s a steaming pile of chrome
Ironic that ZD-Net is speaking of relevancy. Ha
Yeah, they are so 2010. I sometimes end up there when drying to dig up some obscure driver for outdated tech, but that’s really it.
I remember watching zdtv as a kid in jr high? Lol these days, after seeing that article, i think i muttered “they’re still around?”
Users that use Firefox are unlikely to show up in data used for these kinda articles I’d think
Use any metric you want. StatCounter, Wikipedia… They all show Firefox at around 5% globally and still dropping. It’s a very real alarm signal and there’s no time to waste in denial.
Peak Firefox was back in 2010/2011, almost 14 years ago, it has been steadily dropping market share ever since. This is not a new problem by any stretch.
Cold plain metrics can easily hide social complexity.
Assume 10 investigative journalists use modded privacy-friendly Firefox for year long investigation. Then their report is read by 10 million average news reader on stock browsers like Chrome. Network logics tell us that Firefox browser has asymmetrical value in the ecosystem than plain usage metrics can ever reveal.
The obsession with numbers (the more the better) is a major blinding effects in societies driven by hierarchical cultures.
The obsession with numbers (the more the better) is a major blinding effect in societies driven by hierarchical cultures.
So true!
Usage numbers are part of how they pay for ongoing support and development though.
Sadly, yes. One would hope the more core sectors use it, the more the general population would use such tools. But alas!
users can modify their useragent string, and sometimes they have to because some webdevs are morons.
some browsers actually default to using chrome instead of its own.
using a browser-reported useragent string to count marketshare itself is flawed from the start, using a very narrow and limited scope of web sites to measure it--even more so.
if i counted my own clients: home, soho and small business end users... it's about even between chrome and firefox on windows (chrome users doing so on their own, as we highly recommend firefox, and vivaldi over chrome for a chromium-based solution) with edge trailing far behind; and about 3 to 1 android (chrome) over safari on mobile with (so far, but soon to change) very few mobile firefox users.
Government websites are really bad about needing to fake the user agent string because of low bidder contracted work that often starts and ends with Internet Explorer/Edge and is rarely updated due to how government budgeting works.
I worked at a small MSP 2020-2021. Some of our customers needed access to government sites for reporting. The fact that some of these pages still had the “Best Viewed in Internet Explorer” badge or language was sad and frightening. Luckily there’s browser compatibility mode in Edge (which as you mentioned is probably just changing the user agent string), but still. My dad works in govt IT and even he’s encountered internal sites that require ActiveX. He has to sometimes figure out workarounds.
I did have one medical client that used some web charting/reporting platform. And it required a specific, long outdated version of Firefox. We had to intentionally turn off updates in Firefox so they could access it. Anything newer than that version and the site wouldn’t load. It was very strange.
Using a Chrome user agent in FF can result in broken video / audio playback on various sites.
i had to fudge the useragent to chrome yesterday to get 1080p out of azn.
users can modify their useragent string, and sometimes they have to because some webdevs are morons.
The minority of users does this or even knows about UA strings.
some browsers actually default to using chrome instead of its own.
Sure, but Firefox isn’t one of them
Sure, but Firefox isn’t one of them
but those that do inflate google's stats.
Are you just here to spark a browser war? Claims like “firefox is dead” are guaranteed to get a shit ton of comments stating the exact opposite, backed up with annecdotal evidence.
I feel obliged to do the same though. So let me tell you that I’ve recently switched back to firefox after years of chrome and I haven’t regretted it one single moment.
Me? Not at all. I actually posted this out of concern because, as I’ve said elsewhere, I’m a Firefox user, and my layman’s impression was that its reputation has been improving over the past couple years. I assumed its user base was doing the same as people grew increasingly concerned with Google’s intentions.
Apparently ZDnet has some reputational issues itself I was unaware of.
Mitchell Baker is being paid $7m a year to drive it into the ground.
I don't think the zdnet article adds much but it does link to https://news.itsfoss.com/firefox-continuous-decline/ which gets it about right. If anything has changed since it was written, evidence of it has not yet reached me.
but when you tell the moz fanboys why moz sucks you’ll find yourself in a meta/maga like echochamber. again and again moz made absolute shit decisions, the managing board is eating money like mad and google is STILL your default search engine. pathetic.
I didn’t think that the market share was actually changing much? Like it’s low but it’s still used, especially on Linux workstations with nothing else pre-installed
I guess Firefox market share will be closely related to Linux desktop market share
The day Firefox gets native mouse gestures is the day I swap. Until then will continue to be a very happy Vivaldi user.
I use Edge for corporate intranet, Safari for anything with real-life connected personal accounts, and Firefox for everything else. Have done so for over a decade (with Edge previously being Chrome and before that IE).
Only thing I miss in Firefox is PWA, but I still mainly use it.
What a ridiculous title, article and post.
I use Firefox on Linux, Windows (at work), and Android, and I like it.
rwhitisissle@beehaw.org 10 months ago
The day Firefox shutters its doors is the day the internet truly dies. Almost every “alternative” browser is chromium under the hood. Google’s next big plan is basically constructing a walled garden around the internet (at least the HTTP part) via complex DRM. Eventually, if you want to access an actual web page, it’ll have to be via a Chromium browser. Hell, even today a shitload of websites I visit on FF just don’t fucking render correctly and I’ll have to fire up a chromium instance just to access them. That’s only going to get worse with time.
Poggervania@kbin.social 10 months ago
I mean, you can argue that Google actually has a monopoly on web browsers right now. iirc Firefox takes a ton of money from Google, so if the choices are “Google’s proprietary browser” or “a non-Chromium browser backed by Google” (EDIT: unless you’re on Apple hardware and use Safari), then Google comes out on top either way.
Wish we could get another good browser engine that isn’t Chromium, WebKit, or Quantum.
otter@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
Ehh
There’s a clear difference between accepting money from an entity and letting it control things and make decisions. Pushing for a full and clear separation from any controversial entity is how projects die.
I’d love for Firefox to be fully funded through small anonymous public donations in an ideal world. As it is, I don’t see an issue from taking Google’s money to do something that most users would do anyways.
If the default search wasn’t google, I’m certain even more users would bail on Firefox. Anyone who does want an alternative search engine is capable of clicking on it during installation.
jmp242@sopuli.xyz 10 months ago
I’m still sad about the day the real Opera with the presto rendering engine died. And while Vivaldi is getting many of the features and functionality, it’s still a chromium rebuild. I guess it just takes too much money to build your own rendering engine anymore.
azdle@news.idlestate.org 10 months ago
*the web
The internet has so far been doing a much better job surviving as a proper decentralized system than the web.
Valmond@beehaw.org 10 months ago
curl -k IP_Address
Open in notepad.
Read.
Thymos@lemm.ee 10 months ago
Can you link to an example? I remember this from years ago, but haven’t encountered it for a long time.
Hypx@kbin.social 10 months ago
No. This is just a return to the days of the IE-only web. It will be problematic but it won't be the end of the web.
rottingleaf@lemmy.zip 10 months ago
It wasn’t really IE-only. People sort of could use Netscape, and then Mozilla, and then Firefox. And Opera which wasn’t free.
DarkenLM@kbin.social 10 months ago
Servo is being actively worked on. Maybe it can become a worthy adversary to chrome?
bilb@lem.monster 10 months ago
I thought Servo was basically dead since the layoffs at Mozilla in 2020, but your comment caused me to look into it and evidently funding was found to resume development on it at the beginning of last year. That’s good news! (to me!)
lloram239@feddit.de 10 months ago
Firefox is little more than just a Chrome clone itself. It doesn’t do anything to set itself apport. If they cared about an open Internet they should have put some effort into building it (support RSS, Torrent, IPFS, etc.). If Firefox dies tomorrow, nothing much would change as the rest of the Internet already didn’t care. It might however make room for a browser that actually cares about privacy and an open Internet, instead of just using those words for marketing purpose while still having telemetry by default.
ISOmorph@feddit.de 10 months ago
Do you have examples for the sites that don’t render correctly? I’m genuinely curious since I haven’t encountered that issue in like a decade.