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Now, I know the reasons why Firefox is falling... apart... The fox's downfall explained

Archer Allstars on May 05, 2023

UPDATE 07 May 2023: Fixing some typos and grammar errors. First, I want to let you guys and gals know that I moved from Chrome to Firefox yester...
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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

Those are your reasons and as such that are valid.

At the same time, they are probably like the top 42th, 69th and 83th reasons why the average internet choose chrome over Firefox.

Mostly the question itself is wrong, the average user doesn't choose.

Chrome comes installed on their Android and Chromebook, or it's what the IT department installed for everyone, or it's the top browser on everyone's mind from a marketing point of view, or it's what that little website called google.com recommend him to use.

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archerallstars profile image
Archer Allstars • Edited

I guarantee, with these issues that I wrote about in the article going on, even if the users went out of their way and tried Firefox, they wouldn't be able to endure it.

What do you think will happen when they change the browser and can't cast, can't understand some foreign pages, Facebook is broken, Google Search can't highlight search queries, and have no way to create nice icons for their favorite websites on their desktop?

Chrome or Google isn't the reason users don't use Firefox. I changed to Firefox myself and I don't plan to stay here for long.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard • Edited

Problem here is that you are assuming that you know the audience, that you know what users will do and say instead of going out of the building and ask them.

Try it out as an experiment: go out of the building, and ask people what are the reasons they chose A over B.

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archerallstars profile image
Archer Allstars • Edited

No, I didn't assume, but the numbers do the talking here.

Both Firefox's market share and the users that would affect by these issues in the billions, I can't say otherwise.

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jmfayard profile image
Jean-Michel πŸ•΅πŸ»β€β™‚οΈ Fayard

We all know the numbers but you assume you know the reasons without asking the users. That's what people often do and the Lean Startup movement was started because precisely that approach works surprisingly not well.

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archerallstars profile image
Archer Allstars

IDK, you might as well assuming that a load of users on Mozilla Connect page that I linked in my article are not... the users... And you might as well assuming that people would want to browse on a broken website, instead of a working one. People might as well don't want to understand any content on any page they're browsing.

However, I believe those are not the cases...

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codenameone profile image
Shai Almog

Subjectively, these are all great reasons for me to keep using Firefox.

  • PWA is absolutely terrible. I don't want that.
  • I tried using Chromecast but it is so far behind Airplay. It's just very flaky.
  • I haven't logged into facebook in ages and don't plan to.
  • I barely use Google search
  • The translation feature on Chrome is so annoying and intrusive. I really don't like it.

All of these are symbolic of Google. They display either lack of respect for privacy or Googles monopolistic control. This also Ignores the huge advantages Firefox delivers in this regard.

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leob profile image
leob

LOL funny you are - so in essence you say that LACKING certain features is a great thing, because you happen not to like or use those features? Billions of people use Facebook and Google Search on a daily basis ... the numbers do the talking here.

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Peter Franken

The "URL Fragment Text Directives" concept from #4, whilst undeniably useful and indeed sorely missing from Firefox, isn't actually an official web standard or even in the process of becoming one. Also explained in the document you linked:

This specification was published by the Web Platform Incubator Community Group. It is not a W3C Standard nor is it on the W3C Standards Track.

And, yes, Mozilla has been making quite a few exceptionally confusing and estranging moves in some rather questionable directions.

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archerallstars profile image
Archer Allstars

Firefox won't survive the market with its current direction. However, I don't care very much for Mozilla, but Firefox is the default browser on Linux, average users who try Linux could have a misunderstanding about Linux just because Firefox is doing worse, not Linux.

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dogers profile image
Dogers

Yep, I've been using Firefox since it was the full Mozilla suite and they definitely seem to lose their way every so often. Hopeful they get another boost to bring it back again like they have in the past, but we'll see..

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Archer Allstars

I don't think Firefox can be improved any further. The browser seems like it's developed without internet users in mind. I won't hold my breath πŸ˜‚

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tnypxl

If Chromium did anything, it proved that the Gecko engine doesn't carry the same weight it did in the past. Browsers are competing on external features that make browsing more productive. Mozilla completely missed the turn in that regard.

Firefox doesn't offer anything that I can't get from even the most obscure Chromium-based alternatives. All the while Mozilla insists that common features in competing browsers are not worth it's time.

Mozilla has made their bed and it's ridiculous that diehards can't see it.

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eBitzu

the fact that firefox is way behind in adopting web standards speaks more that a few missing functionalities. firefox has become the new IE as far as web devs see it. Spent some time on caniuse.com and most browsers keep up with the standards, not firefox. So it's death is iminent

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alex_beyer_ac13b049a9f978 profile image
Alex Beyer

My issue is it just becomes literally unusable, no matter what PC I'm running it on, or how much free RAM I have available. I have a 64GB DDR5 7845HX system, with 1TB hard drive (60% FREE), and then after a few tabs open, and youtube playing after a few hours just starts crippling the system. I've applied all the about config fixes suggested, know the hardware isn't the issue, it's FIREFOX, and how every update is just worse and worse and worse. I don't like CHROME or CHROMIUM since I want my ad blockers and 90% of web ads are Google Ad Sense. Not to mention the complete crap that is Firefox spellcheck with the ENGLISH dictionary compiled by a GERMAN GUY. That's like putting me in charge of the German Dictionary, why? I don't speak German, I know a lot of it, but not enough. Then when you right-click for their suggestions 9/10 times it's not even relevant and they throw in letters that aren't in the word you tried to spell. Half a decade I've brought this up in their forums and they refuse to fix it. Old Firefox supported DIC files you could upload to expand the database. l

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archerallstars profile image
Archer Allstars

At this point, they won't be back. Anyone who believes otherwise needs to smell the coffee.

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Funk5Thousand

Was this written by AI? Why are there pictures of airplanes all over the place?

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Andrew MacNeill • Edited

Agreed. I tend to think that it may simply be that English is not the primary language of the author ( in which case kudos for writing in that language) but the grammar in certain parts certainly looks like it was passed through a bad translator or AI. Do a quick run through on Grammarly or another tool to clean it up and the article would read 100% better.

Please take this in the spirit in which it is intended. Constructive criticism on the grammar - not the content.

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archerallstars profile image
Archer Allstars • Edited

Thanks for your suggestion ❀️

English is not my main language. I will try my best to improve on this in the future.

EDIT: I didn't use AI to write any of my articles πŸ˜‚

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deathroll profile image
deathroll

The arguments stated in this article seem to be highly subjective, and affect only a certain group of target users, though valid. There are lots of peopleβ€”like myselfβ€”who don't care about any of the above features. For example, PWAs feel weird and crappy to me, as opposed to native desktop applications.

Chromium-based web browsers sometimes may be lacking in terms of features as well. On-page search is one of their weaknesses compared to Firefox.

It all just comes to personal preference, I think. One cannot satisfy everyone's desires for features.

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Archer Allstars • Edited

I am not talking about an individual here. All the issues are linked with their respective Mozilla Connect pages, which representing the real users.

Moreover, I talk about some millions-billions of potential users who could switch to Firefox if the browser didn't do as bad as it did.

EDIT: I am not sure when Facebook or Google Search doesn't work correctly in the browser, it will affect only a certain group of target users... (some billions of people).

And about PWA:

PWAs market is expected to reach a value of 10.77 billion dollars by 2027, that's 30% YoY growth. And the desktop installations of PWAs have grown with 270% since 2021.

Good luck for any browser vendor that's not investing on PWA.

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deathroll profile image
deathroll • Edited

Well, there must be reasons to not implement some features, or to remove others. Who knows what goals Mozilla tries to achieve.

Also, I don't think that one can get significantly more users by just implementing a few features already present in another piece of software.

On top of that, each new feature introduces a couple or a dozen of new bugs and takes precious development resources, requires to modify things that are already polished.

Modern software already suffers from feature creep, so why to continue this trend.

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archerallstars profile image
Archer Allstars • Edited

In this situation, I don't think Mozilla can hope to maintain their users, let alone getting more. However, I am not talking about some features or some themes that I don't like either, but I am talking about some very basic feature set, i.e., the most viewed website in the world should work without any issue. Does this one worth investing? Or should the most used social network in the world break only in Firefox?

On top of that, each new feature introduces a couple or a dozen of new bugs and takes precious development resources, requires to modify things that are already polished. Modern software already suffers from feature creep, so why to continue this trend.

So true, this is the concept of GNOME Circle which is a collection of high quality small apps from indie developers. But come on, we're talking about Mozilla here. They generated $585 million from their search partnerships, subscriptions, and ad revenue in 2021 alone! I don't think resources is one of their issues, especially when Firefox usage is down 85% (in 2020) despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400%!

There's a recent Reddit thread about why we should stop supporting Firefox, see here. I don't know, since I didn't read it yet. But I am sure it will be a good read.