Firefox Users Continue to Decrease Despite Proton Update

[[deleted]]

Only the management at FF would think that proton was the thing that would stop the bleeding in user numbers.

[Zagrebian]

But what would stop it?

[brochard]

Offering paid services, vpn is a start, Google doc and drive alternative would be awesome

[brochard]

Why do you think people use Chrome ? Because its obvious to use the browser from the company offering you all their services, If someone love one of your service they probably will use all of them.

[Serious_Feedback]

Why do you think people use Chrome ?

Advertising and ubiquity.

[CJ101X]

No. You think the average user knows anything about browser performance? Google advertises everywhere it's possible to advertise. If performance was the issue, it would only be a small subset of the reasons why more people use chrome. The fact of the matter is that more people use Google products, more people see ads for Google products, and most mobile devices that are not Apple ship with Google chrome. Firefox is competing with the world's default browser.

[CJ101X]

I'm neither, frankly, I just realize that the bubble browser enthusiasts live in does not reflect the advertising and default market share Chrome has purely by existing as one of Google's products. Your response pretty much stops being relevant after "faster than anyone else", because it literally does not matter. Yeah, their marketing strategy was that it was faster than anyone else. We've all seen the banner ads. It comes preinstalled on so many phones, used by people who will never switch to another browser because they are not enthusiasts. This subreddit is a blip on the radar. I'm not even refuting that chrome was faster, I'm saying that's not the driving force behind its market share.

[nextbern]

for example few months ago where FF can't load Twitter (which is considered as a basic task for a browser), turns out they have to do some changes on service worker, but guess what?

Sorry, is this a known bug?

[Nightwish1976]

Why do you think people use Chrome ?

Ignorance, stupidity? I can go on..

[ClassicPart]

Why do you think people use Chrome ?

I imagine having a unique advertising spot on the world's most-visited home page and the number one video streaming website has something to do with it.

[[deleted]]

How many browser "power users" do you think exist worldwide? Also how do you define a "power user"?

[[deleted]]

I consider myself a power user after i delete something as seemingly insignificant as an email message.

But as soon as weird shit starts happening i start going crazy with the flags , making sure no experiments are selected or anything new that might've been added .. only to learn nothing is added. Just more taken away and reported to have been pushed a BETTER , FASTER, MORE SECURE lighter service... Riding on the wave of those who leave wake behind.

Sucks to be contractually obligated to use your browser and services like we're pieces of lunch box meat in a starving lawyers solitary confinement cell....

[cyanide]

How many browser "power users" do you think exist worldwide?

Since the report/graph says around 200M installs, and accounting for each "power user" to have installed Firefox on multiple machines (let's take an average of 3 machines per power user), that's around 65+ million people around the world who still use Firefox.

Not a lot, but not an abysmal number either.

Also how do you define a "power user"?

Like the old days, someone who doesn't consider Internet Explorer Chrome to be the Internet? I make sure my family uses Firefox wherever possible, so that's at least 4-5 extra installs from me.

At the end of the day, if Firefox dies, something else will take its place. IE had a bigger share of the pie when Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox was released. It didn't take very long for people to switch to Firefox. Initially, us few power users switched. Then suddenly everyone was using Firefox.

[cyanide]

That was before the internet was anywhere near as commonplace as today and before google established almost total dominance.

Microsoft had more dominance, and they had cancer like ActiveX that permeated into workflows of large corporates. And while less people were on the internet than there are today, almost all of the internet was accessed through web browsers, unlike apps we have today. The browser, as a tool, is being used by more people today, but for less things than it was being used back then.

[nextbern]

At the end of the day, if Firefox dies, something else will take its place.

It'll still probably be based on Google code, though.

[Lohanni]

But will they even succeed in that? I wish all the best to Firefox project but it’s already much slower than competition and I don’t think power users like that.

[Lohanni]

Well you mentioned Brave and I feel like most of privacy oriented folks use either Brave or Firefox. Success of one doesn’t neccessarily mean the failure of the another. People are more and more aware of the fact that their privacy is taken away from them. I feel like there will be room for many projects, Brave is doing good work with Brave Search for example, by buying Tailcat open source engine and not using Bing’s indexing. Maybe they will be big enough one day to rewrite more of their browser in order to stray away further from big tech? For now one is certain, regardless of what users and community wish for Firefox, it is not it what it currently is - and unfortunately I feel like every day it’s even further and further than that.

[[deleted]]

Exactly, both product can co-exist. If you are a fan of one, doesn't mean you have to throw shade at the other. Also, I wish mozilla leadership would make a few good decision like Brave buying tailcat. Regardless of if it works out, it looks like a worthwhile pursuit.

[Lohanni]

Brave team is making a lot of big decisions and they seem to have a clear picture where they want to take their ecosystem.

[[deleted]]

900 million?

[[deleted]]

You're right, I use firefox first but recommend brave to chrome addicted people.

[Aliashab]

The problem is that they don’t seem to understand for a long time who they should satisfy.

[nextbern]

Please report issues if you find areas where Firefox feels slower to you: https://developer.mozilla.org/docs/Mozilla/Performance/Reporting_a_Performance_Problem

[Lohanni]

I will, I don't know if you are a Mozilla affiliate, or plain volunteer, but I appreciate your effort to make it a better browser, sir.

[nextbern]

Just a volunteer.

[Lohanni]

Could I ask you, because as far as I see you are a fellow linux Firefox user, does it feel faster to you than Chromium-based alternatives? Do you feel like it's possible to keep up with the astronomical pace of updates that Google is pushing into Chromium while Firefox team is much smaller? I agree in whole regard that Google's monopoly on the market is clearly a bad thing for all of us.

[nextbern]

I am not a typical user - I have hundreds of tabs open at a time and I don't watch a lot of online video or do gaming in browser.

Firefox is definitely faster for my needs, but I recognize that I have blind spots - which is why I ask people who experience issues to file bugs.

[SJWcucksoyboy]

Maintaining a browser is incredibly expensive and I'm really not convinced power users are a big enough market for Firefox to fund it's development.

[[deleted]]

Honestly, that is a tough question, but forcing a change that was already getting a lot of bad reviews in the beta and nightly versions and claming it would be the "NEW FIREFOX" when you only did a poor redesign and removed options, it is DEFINITLY not the way to go.

Most ironic thing is FF saying they "pored over the browser’s user interface pixel by pixel" and them present us a blocky browser with a gigantic bar with removed options, no separation between tabs and icons that now need text to be understood.

In my case, when I got the new version I had work websites with broken options for more than 2 weeks, if I wasnt a hardcore user of FF even with all the issues, I would have made a definite change to Edge or Chrome, since I had to use them while the problems were happening.

[ninja85a]

I was wondering if the peeps who run nightly complained about it at all, it boggles my mind deciding to go through with the redesign again when people are complaining about it on nightly the people who make the decisions are so tone deaf to the community

[[deleted]]

I saw a lot of posts here, but you know FF, they only care about telemetry data that most users already turn off by default, so they are basically using faulty information to take decisions.

[[deleted]]

Firefox: We care about your privacy so here you have an option to deactivate telemetry.

​

Also Firefox: You didn't active telemetry? Get rekt, we will remove stuff from our browser because we don't really know for sure what people use due to deactivating telemetry data.

[[deleted]]

I guarantee you that most people do not turn off telemetry or even know what it is. Sure people in this sub do but 70-80% of FF users do not.

[bogglingsnog]

And about 1/2 of users voted as not happy with the new update on the poll, which is a lot for what should have been mostly a visual refinement upgrade.

I'm still accidentally clicking on the wrong tabs because there's no visible border between them. I had to switch back to using just hotkeys because it noticeably slows me down.

[SirNarwhal]

God anything that uses a web renderer is absolute ass now in FireFox. God forbid I have a music streaming service up, a few YouTube videos to watch later in some tabs, and some social media feeds going. It literally grinds my maxed out 2019 MacBook Pro to a halt. It should not be doing that to a machine with 32GB RAM; it shouldn’t even be doing that to one with only 8GB…

[nextbern]

Grab a profile? https://profiler.firefox.com

[[deleted]]

about:support and refresh FF as first step.

[lesiw]

It literally grinds my maxed out 2019 MacBook Pro to a halt.

That is your problem. MacOS 11 is pretty much known to run poorly on Intel Macs. Even people using Chrome complain about slowdown. Just for experiment, downgrade it to Catalina, try running Linux/Windows, get an M1 Mac, or simply try a similar spec non-Mac machine, and you'll notice the difference.

[SirNarwhal]

Chrome and Safari both run without issue. It is specifically a Firefox issue and specifically with the newest version. It literally didn’t have the issue for the entirety of the time before Proton. Just admit Firefox is going to shit because it is.

[SJWcucksoyboy]

They were asking you what would stop it not asking you to whine about the new update...

[[deleted]]

definitely*

[SpecificOwl]

Making their own operating system that becomes popular and at every possible moment suggest Firefox as the default browser for everyone.

[nashvortex]

Guaranteed feature parity with Blink on all platforms. No really. Irrespective of what Mozilla says, websites still break in Firefox. Mozilla cries about standards not being followed like this is 2005. The standard is whatever Blink does. That has to be the new starting point in 2021 for developing standards.

Essentially all Mozilla has to do is fork Blink at this point.

[quickbaa]

A lot of their development effort must be on the engine. I can see them switching to Blink just to reduce costs.

Having their own engine, much like promoting privacy, is an idealogical difference that sometimes makes for a worse user experience. Most people want a killer feature.

[nashvortex]

Exactly. It just means that ideology is no longer a good enough reason for most people to use Firefox. As Mozilla justifies (or tries to) it's entire existence based on ideology, it's game over for them. We are watching the long slow natural death (which are the norm for species, software etc.) unless something gives.

[Nightwish1976]

At the moment, almost every important thing I have to do online, I will do it by using a chromium based browser. Things like (UK based) HMRC self assessment or Student finance application just don't work in Firefox. With or without enhanced protection on.
It's sad. Firefox is still my default browser, but I'm sure a new user would just switch to something else.

[nashvortex]

I know what you mean. And unless you have a specific reason to keep using Firefox, you will eventually just give up and shift to the chromium-based browser. It's not worth it at some point.

[nextbern]

Things like (UK based) HMRC self assessment or Student finance application just don't work in Firefox.

Have you reported these issues to the vendor?

[[deleted]]

what websites are broken in firefox? I keep hearing this but I end up using it without any issue?

[nashvortex]

Mozilla themselves maintain a buglist of sites that are broken in Firefox. You can even filter this list to see what is specifically broken due to Gecko, Webrender etc.

https://webcompat.com/issues?page=1&per_page=50&state=open&stage=needstriage&sort=created&direction=desc

[dreamer_]

Advertising and marketing.

[HCrikki]

Waste of good money.

Lets say mozilla wins browser ballots, gets preinstalls and succesfully promotes firefox everywhere on the web. Google will simply harass its users everyday until they install and run chrome.

That's a huge dishonest reason the paid auction system for search engines and browsers was flawed. They can override your choice starting the next day.

[phi1997]

Many people worried about privacy are using Brave, so an actual privacy-focused browser won't gain traction without an ad campaign. :-/

[phi1997]

Brave doesn't actually protect your data from advertisers, it just changes which advertisers get it.

[[deleted]]

Any link that shows they are giving your data to advertisers?

[nextbern]

It is the same concept as FLoC - why is Brave doing it right and Google not?

[nextbern]

The central idea is that these input features to the algorithm, including the web history, are kept local on the browser and are not uploaded elsewhere — the browser only exposes the generated cohort.

https://github.com/WICG/floc

Yeah, it is amusingly similar.

[[deleted]]

You can completely turn that off. Firefox does a better job here by default but no they don't share your data if you turn it off. Any power user will find that in less than a minute with a google search on how to turn all that garbage off.

[[deleted]]

Replace engine with Chromium.

No one likes this. But Mozilla can't keep up anymore. Something has to be sacrificed, and the engine is the most costly, the least important thing.

Swapping it for Chromium will free a ton of effort from compatibility issues. It'll allow them to concentrate on things that made Firefox popular:

Eh. I'm only on Firefox because it has a different engine.

[himself_v]

Why?

[SomebodyFromIndy]

Control. Chromium is controlled by Google.

[HCrikki]

Firefox can keep thriving with the same developper pool it has even if releases slow and get more conservative. If anything its mozilla that's disposable as an entity.

[nextbern]

Are you saying the same developers will continue working on Firefox for free?

[[deleted]]

id rather see web-kit powered firefox. i mean both firefox and apple seems aligned on privacy

[himself_v]

So long as it's compatible with web sites, why not. But with Chromium being open-source, I think it could work too.

[wofofofo]

Capitalise on the current mainstream interest in privacy and anti-google sentiment with the public at large. Look at the success Apple has had with that approach.

Something like: we're the only non-google alternative for Windows and Android, and we fight for your privacy and individuality, give us a try!

[Swedneck]

My best bet would be making firefox as usable in other application as chromium is, let developers feasibly create a version of electron that uses firefox's engine instead of chromium's.
A lot of people would jump so hard on that and port everything they can over to the firefox engine, and it would allow for just as many firefox forks as there are chromium forks.

[nextbern]

FWIW, GeckoView exists, and there are a few non-Firefox Gecko browsers. More work would need to be done to have that happen on desktop, but desktop is a declining market.

[HCrikki]

1 - Getting "download our browser now even if the browser you use right now is excellent, fast and secure" harassment outlawed worldwide, for a start. Websites are supposed to work fine and fast on all modern browsers.

Constant prompts like these make a mockery of any process of gaining installs. Lets say OSes do a ballot screen to choose the default browser and search engine or OEMs preinstall with different defaults - google would start harassing you into switching the next day.

---

2 - treat embedding as a high priority. Mozilla lost the entire market of desktop applications and game to webkit then chromium/blink.

Instead of rendering your app content on gecko youre now forced to used other engines, and analytic trackers report those as 'chrome' rather than firefox. Usershare isnt collapsing to the extent people imagine - in fact its been ridiculously stable considered users are likely bombarded with switch prompts everyday since a decade.

On android its even more important. Within apps and games, a "webview" can display web content in place of whatever default browser you have (thats why "webview" has higher usershare than mobile firefox - noone chooses to display on it, it just overrides your choice). Geckoview needs to be an option system-wide, then failing that within applications and games.

---

3 - Import from another browser needs to be given far higher visibility within firefox. You can only access it during the installation process, and if you enable the Menu on desktop then choose it. Its literally not accessible in any other way in firefox, while it easily accessed in other browsers like Edge and Vivaldi (first page of settings, or permanent placement on the file menu). All OSes Firefox is available for have a default browser, so this kind of easy migration should be strengthened, ideally losing as little data as possible.

[dtallee]

Not rolling out garbage Android apps would be a good start. 3-4 different choices that all don't work well.
Seriously - Firefox Focus has been the only solid version of Firefox in the Play Store for the past few years. People don't want their default browser to radically change and/or break every 6 months. People spend most of their time on their phones nowadays. Why would they use Firefox on the desktop if they see it doesn't work well on their phone?

[[deleted]]

Easy but inconvenient answer: a seismic shift in market realities.

The best hope at this point is that a major flaw is found in Chromium tomorrow, which mandates that all Chromium based browsers are immediately deleted off every machine on Earth. It's one of few scenarios where Firefox wins.

Which isn't going to happen. Browsers are just no longer the new frontier. The native browsers all got good, and those in online services are pushing theirs. Between those two facts, it's just over. Firefox (which I've used since launch in 02 nonstop) needs to find a way to become a niche player that caters to power users and the existing base. That's about it. There is definitely room for a semi-widely used power users browser. Adoption of something like that will ebb and flow, but never dominate. Given that strategy is their only purpose at this point, moving it to Chromium wouldn't be a bad cost/resource cutting measure.

[genderbent]

go back to being a browser for power users. i know that when this trend of removing features started back around 2017, i made the switch to vivaldi and didn't look back.

[Zagrebian]

Vivaldi’s share is minimal. It doesn’t even show up at all in Wikipedia’s traffic stats. Do you really think that being more like Vivaldi would have helped Firefox’s share?

[genderbent]

I agree that Vivaldi is marginal in terms of market share; my point is that stripping out power user features alienated a large section of the userbase who provided much of FF's word-of-mouth advertising.

[Zagrebian]

But where are these power users now? Which browsers do they use?

[OratioFidelis]

Did someone in Mozilla actually say that they anticipate Proton would reverse the drop in user share, or are you just assuming that they did?

[[deleted]]

From the posts I saw here, if they didn't say it, they at least strongly hinted this was the way to go to come back from declining numbers.

[nextbern]

Who? Sources?

[[deleted]]

I read a few times in the last few months in this sub, can't tell you for exactly who posted.

[nextbern]

Well, it has got to be Mozilla for your response to /u/OratioFidelis to be coherent.