They should be focused on giving a better smooth UI, make it faster, remove unwanted extensions like pocket, make all the sites work.
Let's see how valid this comment is in couple of years.
Firefox is not as popular as Chrome thanks to the intense Google advertising some time ago. Even nowadays Google still advertises "this sites runs best on Chrome", kinda like Coca Cola still advertises its products even if they are already the leaders in the segment.
You can just put a banner saying this website works well on chrome.
FF should be more active in making all the sites work on their browser.
How? By matching any bugs or spec incompatibilities Chrome has that makes the site only work in Chrome? Or by begging the site authors to fix the HTML or CSS or JS? Because I don't see any other options.
The first defeats the purpose of having an independent browser (or web standards). The second won't work -- or at least, its success is determined entirely by market share, not directly by what Mozilla does.
I'm really not sure what you're asking for.
What Chrome only features are you possibly using that would mean a separate Firefox version?
Indeed Chrome is the new IE
That aside, as commenters everywhere will tell you, Mozilla has made huge performance improvements in Firefox over the last few years and continues to do so. It's not like Mozilla has decided to stop doing everything except privacy.
It's like a privacy friendly social network can't beat Facebook.
Unless Google does something extremely stupid people are going to stick to it.
People use Gmail, YouTube, Docs,Google search, Android and all of them are in sync with chrome. It goes hand in hand with your life.
Same is for Apple, they make iPhone they have mail they have macos. Everything sync with safari. Makes life easy.
What does Firefox offer? Only a browser. And privacy is not going make people switch to them.
In what way are those sites in sync with Chrome? There's sync of tabs and such across devices, but Firefox has that too.
Like removing APIs used for Ad blocking effectively crippling Ad blockers?
> Everything sync with safari. Makes life easy.
Firefox can send tabs between your devices, not sure if it can sync them in their entirety. Not sure i'd want it to though.
Those are all things which do not differentiate Firefox from Chrome. They're focusing on that as well, but Chrome will never be able to copy their privacy-enhancing features, because that's Google's business model.
So I think we’ve reached a phase where performance is good enough on any hardware for people to start worrying about the big picture problems like privacy and tracking as well. Not to the exclusion of performance - but it’s clearly become more important to random non-tech folks.
The majority of regular users don't know the extent to which they are being tracked, because they don't have a good grasp of the technology or a good idea of what's possible.
Privacy is vegetables -- I know I should eat more, but I'm not going to go out of my way for it.
Now, everywhere offers a vegetarian option, it's normal. What it took was dedication by fanatics* and to increase mindshare amongst the young. I'd venture that the same conditions would reap the same rewards with privacy.
* that's a wee joke… or is it? :-)