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
Firefox on android is terrible. The UI is awful (how hard is to create a usable bookmark system?) and forced opening a new tab are my two pet peeves. Also, it is much, much slower than a chromium based browser in my experience and seems to take a lot more memory. Also, occasionally I'll find websites that don't work 100% because they were coded primarily for chromium based browsers. FU Google.
I quite like Firefox for Android, mainly because I can install UBlock Origin and block ads, which Chrome does not support.
agree to disagree, it's one of the best. What do you use that's better?
I don’t use anything else. I don’t like the long list of folders that doesn’t clearly show the tree hierarchy, ie. I can’t easily identify the child/parent relationship. The visual difference between parent and child is too minimal for my eyes. I realize it’s subjective but I really don’t like it.
Ah, agreed. There's like no indent at all in that list. Room for improvement
I personally use Fennec and Bromium whenever using Android (I'm a sick fuck who hot swaps between an iPhone and a Google Pixel phone). Fennec for a lot of stuff is fine, but much like the default Firefox, it's still slow- although better. Bromium and other Chromium based browsers on Android, especially on older shittier hardware, are really hard to beat. I find myself using Bromium a lot just because it's simply faster. Firefox/Fennec with native support for actual ublock origin though... nothing beats that browsing experience as far as replicating real desktop browsing. Bromium can't keep up and Google doesn't want Chrome to. Brave can offer a similar blocking experience but at what cost? I fucking H A T E crypto and even their features that you can turn off, just seeing references to them and such pisses me off. Honestly wish someone would spitefully fork Brave anonymously and remove any crypto references. Last time a team did it openly Brave got pissy and tried to get the project taken down... Even though it's open source. So, fuck them.
Do you have ublock origin installed? It eliminates all those popups in my experience.
Weird, for me that only pops up if I already have the app installed, and only when I navigate from a different website to that one. I'm using Firefox Beta if that matters.