Despite a steadily slipping market share, Firefox is snappy and feature-forward | Hacker News Reader

Despite a steadily slipping market share, Firefox is snappy and feature-forward

arstechnica.com

60 pointsalexrustic43 comments

I've stuck with Firefox through thick and thin because another browser mono-culture is something I'd strongly prefer to not happen.

Same, must have been 2005 or something when I switched from IE. Never used anything else. I'd like to say there are lofty reasons for that, but it's mostly that I just didn't like and never switched to Chrome when it came out. Do avoid Google in general these days though.

Tried Brave?

Based on Chromium

Better performance and bonus privacy features.

Eschewing Chrome for a browser based on Chromium doesn't do much to combat the browser monoculture, does it?

I never got quite the problem was with a browser engine monoculture if the engine is OSS and there are multiple parties with conflicting interests working on it.

You’re right, and I don’t care. That’s a deeply personal call. Having my browser not deciding what content is acceptable or not > Browser Monoculture I totally get it if you feel differently though.

If so, care to share your reasoning?

Why wouldn’t at least an engine monoculture help with incompatibilities and ease the development of sites? If all the browser makers agreed on a standard then websites wouldn’t have to show “your browser is not supported”. Saving sons and daughters across the world from many tech support calls from their parents, and aiding all the IT techs from having to keep different browser defaults depending on what team they are working with

Firefox has some really nice features like container tabs (example: opening a gmail session in a tab and another session in another tab). The vertical side panel is another thing I love, with a tree of all bookmarks (on -B or CTRL-B).

Firefox may be snappy and feature-forward, but I am reconsidering if I should keep using it considering Mozilla seems to support censorship and deplatforming: https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2021/01/08/we-need-more-than-d...

Unless you're giving Mozilla money your use of the Firefox browser doesn't impact what Mozilla supports.

I stopped donating on the grounds that they were taking divisive positions on things that had nothing to do with the internet or browsers. Even being in agreement with those positions, I wished they'd stay specific and inclusive rather than going general and divisive.

I think it does because it gives them market share and power, and it seems they are not the group I want to empower and trust with that kind of influence. I worry that Mozilla will one day enact browser-level deplatforming where it fits their political ideology and also am against "cancel culture" more generally.

I'd love browser-level deplatforming if I was in control of it and could enable/disable as needed. People are already "deplatforming" ads with optional ad-blockers.

Of course no, Mozilla is paid fir search engine placement, the amount depends on Firefox’s market share. There is too pricey for bing to get that 3% market share default search

What exactly is your alternative in that position? Browsers based on NetSurf? Because if you're strictly anti-censorship, I've got bad news about WebKit, Blink, Gecko and others...

I'm not sure there is one but it may be the Dissenter browser, which is a fork of Brave. It is ultimately based on Chromium tech, but we need to stat somewhere. The browsers will ultimately end up implementing their own censorship. I was surprised (but also not surprised) when Chrome and Firefox banned the Dissenter comments extension (https://reclaimthenet.org/dissenter-free-speech-browser/) and with that ban being normalized, it'll soon come to which IP addresses you can access.

> extension to help users resist online censorship and integrated ad blocking

The irony of this is amazing.

Does believing in freedom of speech while blocking advertisements make one a hypocrite? If it does, well, I'm going to keep doing it. Happy to be a hypocrite on that count.

I think both "it'll soon come to which IP addresses you can access." and recommending instead a browser which does pretty much that (just at url level) by default and says it's anti-censorship is hypocrisy, yes. Opting into that filtering - not as much.

Maybe, but I'm still pretty confident that no important or meaningful speech will ever come from an ad server.

Firefox may be snappy and feature-forward, but I am reconsidering if I should keep using it considering Mozilla seems to support censorship and deplatforming:

Agreed! My browser should not be deciding my content!

If you take the time to read, they're not asking for deplatforming or censorship, they're asking for more transparency in ads and content origin.

I'd consider the 2nd and 3rd derivative of market share more important. As far as I'm observing the status quo, both the 2nd and 3rd are positive already :)

Could you expand or source?

Firefox keeps making blunders that are killing it.

I doubt the internet drama has any real effect on the market share. It’s that chrome and safari work really well so there is no reason for the average user to go out of their way to install Firefox.

Honestly, the only reason I switched to Firefox, at first, was because of how ugly Chrome is to me -- on a literal basis, that is. I think Chrome is an eyesore.

I actually prefer the aesthetic of Chrome, but the functionality of Firefilox is better overall.

And Firefox UI is going through a redesign (Proton).

https://winaero.com/enable-the-new-proton-design-in-firefox/

I don’t use Firefox, but I agree! “Google has no taste”

> so there is no reason for the average user to go out of their way to install Firefox.

Why would FF be going our of your way, but not Chrome? Neither is the default on Windows.

Edge is chrome now.

I feel like they could take an anti-censorship, pro-privacy stance and target the 49% that is being de-platformed. Could partner with the Ben Shapirbros of YT getting millions of followers to download Firefox to avoid 'socialist google'. Maybe fund a decentralized, privacy-focused social network/messaging app. Maybe jump on the crypto hype train.

Mozilla's lameness is really the result of privilege and possibly a lack of incentives. When execs get 10m/yr for writing blogs about sexual socialism and BLM, why innovate?

Diving head first into a culture war seems like one of the most spectacular blunders they could possibly make.

You mean like what they just did? Re: “Deplatforming is not enough”

But that 49% is constantly being victimized by big tech. Politics aside, there's money to be made targeting products to this group. (For a company with competent devs ofc, don't need another Parler disaster.)

I recently had to switch from Firefox to Edge due to how non-snappy it was with Reddit. I wish it wasn't so.

Anyone who thinks Reddit is snappy in any browser needs some old.reddit.com in their lives.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/old-reddit-re...

Everybody's got their things they consider essential. Not being able to arbitrarily zoom with the trackpad is a killer for me, I use that constantly.

Firefox supports zoom using trackpad. (As does Chrome, not sure which way you meant that comment)

Firefox is dead, they just dont wanna face reality.

Bingo

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