Firefox lost 50M users since 2019 | Hacker News Reader

Firefox lost 50M users since 2019

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377 pointsfreediver598 comments

I have contacted local authorities twice about anti competitive behavior from Chrome.

If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should start to look like an earthquake ;-)

Same if ten - twenty Germans or Brits or French do the same.

I would mention:

1. that some of their web properties (calendar and YouTube) have been intentionally incompatible with Firefox as evidenced by how well they work in Firefox if one changes how the browser identify itself.

2. How they have pushed Chrome as a "better browser" on the front page of Google (were no one else have been allowed to advertise) to Firefox users since way before Chrome was anywere nearly as good as Firefox, making it both a lie and - more importantly - a massive abuse of dominance in one market to gain monopoly in another just like Microsoft did with IE.

As we saw yesterday with AWS authorities are willing to punish rampant abuse if they have a good case and this definitely is one.

Edit: since this comment is getting a lot of attention the relevant authority in Norway is Konkurransetilsynet with web address https://konkurransetilsynet.no

(Finding the exact correct form on that site and for this purpose seems to be an art and/or science it seems but if you can't find any just submit somewhere and explain the situation.)

It would be beautiful if everyone could post underneath with the address to the equivalent office in your jurisdiction.

> anti competitive behavior

Have some examples? On Desktop, I don't see any, but I would get if you mean Mobile since Chrome is still the default browser there for Android.

This thread from a former Mozilla exec: https://twitter.com/johnath/status/1116871231792455686?s=20

Very instructive, thanks for sharing.

I remember when gmail outright crippled itself when I used it some 5 years ago. I also remember other Google services disabling some features only on Firefox.

Google Ads is practically unusable with Firefox

Feature, not a bug.

Have you used Firefox with Google Docs Calendar or YouTube over the last ten years?

(Multiple more examples exist for those willing to dig: at one point the search results page would peg one processor core briefly every 30 seconds as long as you stayed on that page - and used Firefox)

Edit: and as you mention, the situation with Chrome on mobile is basically a 1-1 of IE on Windows.

Not OP, but I have. I'm currently typing this answer on Firefox, have been using google Docs, Calendar and Youtube for years, never had major problems.

(Of course this is all anecdotal.)

I never have any problems with YouTube; it works well for me. What problems are there? I use Google Docs only sporadically (mostly to read .doc(x) files sent to me), and it's kinda slow, but that's not necessarily Google's fault. Slack is (was? Haven't used it in year) unusably slow on Firefox too, and don't get me started on the "new" Reddit that couldn't even scroll right last time I tried it.

Google sheets used to be broken `BASED ON USER AGENT`.

https://support.google.com/docs/thread/18235069/google-sheet...

After i found that spoof browser agent fixed it. They locked the thread coincidentally and the bug is also fixed coincidentally a few days after.

I don't know if it is really a coincident, but I definitely have 0 trust of them after it.

It's common to work around browser bugs like this.

I wouldn't blame some possible hack a tired dev implemented on a busy Thursday on a grand scheme to strip you of your freedom - in the end it's just people working there. Especially seeing that the bug was fixed after someone complained/made them aware.

If you are Google, a multi billion company, pushing your own browser with a marketing budget in the hundreds of millions range (seriously, this was important to them, the only ad important enough to reach the front page of Google AFAIK)

- then you better make sure you make it work everwhere instead of this constant "ooops"-thing that shows that Google doesn't even do the smallest amount of testing in Firefox, or they do it deliberately.

If you can save a million or two in salaries for testers for all Docs products, for software that in most cases just works as well as in Chrome, why waste the money? Google is a company.

Automated tests can help with this, but you also need to maintain and write those in the first place.

Just trying to follow the thought process as an economist. It's likely hard to justify, especially with admins being quick at noticing these things and employees on docs products usually being receptive on bug trackers since it is a business offering.

Youtube on iOS is deliberately changed in a way that it breaks playing video/audio in the background. iOS is capable of that by default with HTML5, but Youtube sells background play as a paid feature.

Even if just mobile I'm still not sure how they get away with it. They have 71% of the global mobile marketshare, my phone came preinstalled with chrome, I cannot remove it, only disable it.

How is that any different at all to what Microsoft was doing with IE in the 90's?

> How they have pushed Chrome as a "better browser" on the front page of Google (were no one else have been allowed to advertise) to Firefox users since way before Chrome was anywere nearly as good as Firefox, making it both a lie and - more importantly - a massive abuse of dominance in one market to gain monopoly in another just like Microsoft did with IE.

Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle. Windows was the product everyone wanted, and Microsoft abused its dominance in operating systems to increase its share of the browser market by refusing to sell you Windows unless you also took Internet Explorer.

By contrast, Google does not condition the use of Search on the use of Chrome. There’s nothing wrong with promoting a product to customers who use one of your other products (or we’d have to break up pretty much every multi-product company).

No, Microsoft's primary offense was making non-Microsoft tools awkward. Windows without IE was awkward. Windows wasn't done until it gave odd error messages on DR DOS. Borland always seemed to have incomplete documentation, late. Etc.

Google works poorly enough on non-Chrome browsers that it's the same thing.

You are welcome to read the complaint. I've pulled out some choice paragraphs:

5. To protect its valuable Windows monopoly against such potential competitive threats, and to extend its operating system monopoly into other software markets, Microsoft has engaged in a series of anticompetitive activities. Microsoft's conduct includes agreements tying other Microsoft software products to Microsoft's Windows operating system; exclusionary agreements precluding companies from distributing, promoting, buying, or using products of Microsoft's software competitors or potential competitors; and exclusionary agreements restricting the right of companies to provide services or resources to Microsoft's software competitors or potential competitors.

17. But Mr. Gates did not stop at free distribution. Rather, Microsoft purposefully set out to do whatever it took to make sure significant market participants distributed and used Internet Explorer instead of Netscape's browser -- including paying some customers to take IE and using its unique control over Windows to induce others to do so. For example, in seeking the support of Intuit, a significant application software developer, Mr. Gates was blunt, as he reported in a July 1996 internal e-mail:

18. Second, Microsoft unlawfully required PC manufacturers, as a condition of obtaining licenses for the Windows 95 operating system, to agree to license, preinstall, and distribute Internet Explorer on every Windows PC such manufacturers shipped. By virtue of the monopoly position Windows enjoys, it was a commercial necessity for OEMs to preinstall Windows 95 -- and, as a result of Microsoft's illegal tie-in, Internet Explorer -- on virtually all of the PCs they sold. Microsoft thereby unlawfully tied its Internet Explorer software to the Windows 95 version of its monopoly operating system and unlawfully leveraged its operating system monopoly to require PC manufacturers to license and distribute Internet Explorer on every PC those OEMs shipped with Windows.

https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp

Gosh, these sound just like Android, now that you're quoting it. My Android phone came with Chrome, gmail, Google Maps, uploads my photos to Google, and requires a Google account.

But I think that's beside the point. Microsoft did a lot of anti-competitive things in a lot of markets. Limiting scope to one particular litigation isn't really helpful here. The phrasing, "THE compliant," makes it sound like there wasn't a mountain of complaints. There was.

> Gosh, these sound just like Android, now that you're quoting it.

Android is getting in trouble for it in the EU!

>But I think that's beside the point. Microsoft did a lot of anti-competitive things in a lot of markets. Limiting scope to one particular litigation isn't really helpful here. The phrasing, "THE compliant," makes it sound like there wasn't a mountain of complaints. There was.

This thread was about their legal issues with IE. People complain about a lot of things, but that doesn't make them illegal.

> This thread was about their legal issues with IE.

Perhaps. I view threads more like human conversations.

> People complain about a lot of things, but that doesn't make them illegal.

Microsoft did a lot of illegal things in the nineties, which many people complained about. Some were litigated, most were not. Lack of litigation doesn't make it legal.

Google seems to be doing a few illegal things right now, although not nearly as many as nineties-era Microsoft.

Microsoft's crime was doing it in the 90s. What Apple has done with iOS and OSX takes Microsoft's bundling, third-party lockout and lack of consumer choice to an exponential level, and it's celebrated as a feature now. iOS literally disallows any other browser technology from running, requiring them all to use less-featured versions of the first party tool. Microsoft must be jealous seeing them get away with that.

The difference is that Apple is selling hardware with software as a single product and has done so consistently, while Microsoft attempted to exclude a new competitor by colluding with OEMs and imposing exclusionary agreements on partners as a condition of buying Windows, a product that had a dominant share in its market. If Microsoft had always included Internet Explorer in Windows and hadn't tried to later tie them together in order to crush Netscape then the outcome may have been different. Instead, Microsoft basically said "distribute our new product or we won't let you distribute Windows" and you just can't do that when Windows is dominant.

The Justice Department's complaint is an eye-opening view into what Microsoft's misconduct was: https://www.justice.gov/atr/complaint-us-v-microsoft-corp

Not trying to defend Microsoft’s behavior here by any means but the justice department clearly lost the case. The original favorable ruling splitting up Microsoft was conclusively rejected by the court of appeals on almost all points. The general consensus of the academic commentary on the case I have seen( not universal by any means) is that asserting that Windows is itself a monopoly is problematic; mainly due to the lack of evidence that demand for windows is not influenced by pricing.

Microsoft's crime was doing this in the 90s when they had nearly complete control of the desktop market and there were few alternatives for getting on the internet. This was a monopoly.

Apple has about half the mobile market share in the US, and about a quarter globally. There are plenty of alternative ways to get on the internet. This is not a monopoly.

You can't just look at bundling the browser with the OS in isolation. The circumstances are significantly different.

And that's why I regard anti-trust laws as inconsistently applied cudgels and not as legal gospel. If tying (assuming there's a consistent definition of the word) is such a bad idea to begin with why does it matter whether it's done by a company at 90% or 10% of market? Equality under the law should be the measure.

> If tying (assuming there's a consistent definition the word) is such a bad idea to begin with why does it matter whether it's done by a company at 90% or 10% of market? Equality under the law should be the measure.

There is nothing inherently wrong with tying, which you might also call "bundling." Quoting from the FTC's website:

Offering products together as part of a package can benefit consumers who like the convenience of buying several items at the same time. Offering products together can also reduce the manufacturer's costs for packaging, shipping, and promoting the products. Of course, some consumers might prefer to buy products separately, and when they are offered only as part of a package, it can be more difficult for consumers to buy only what they want.

For competitive purposes, a monopolist may use forced buying, or "tie-in" sales, to gain sales in other markets where it is not dominant and to make it more difficult for rivals in those markets to obtain sales. This may limit consumer choice for buyers wanting to purchase one ("tying") product by forcing them to also buy a second ("tied") product as well. Typically, the "tied" product may be a less desirable one that the buyer might not purchase unless required to do so, or may prefer to get from a different seller. If the seller offering the tied products has sufficient market power in the "tying" product, these arrangements can violate the antitrust laws.

https://www.ftc.gov/tips-advice/competition-guidance/guide-a...

Like how Apple bundled iTunes and forced streaming competitors onto uneven playing fields with the 30% tax to dominate online music sales, bundled the App Store and banned competing stores to ensure no competition, bundled Safari and banned competing tech, bundled Podcasts to help outcompete others in an area they want more growth, etc

It's only anti-trust when companies people don't like do it.

>Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle.

Nope. That's what some people complained about, but it wasn't their legal issue (which is why today every OS vendor still does it).

The actual complaint, which is pasted below, shows it in much greater nuance, as it wasn't that they "required OEMs to buy the bundle" (in fact, there wasn't any buying, IE was free part of Windows).

> > Microsoft’s primary offense was illegally tying Internet Explorer and Windows. They refused to sell the two products separately, and instead required OEMs to buy the bundle.

> Nope.

Yes, it was.

> That's what some people complained about, but it wasn't their legal issue (which is why today every OS vendor still does it).

No, every OS vendor doesn't do illegal tying of a browser to the OS, which involves both the fact of a preexisting monopoly OS to which the tying occurs (that's essential to the illegality, since its an illegal method of leveraging one monopoly to another market), and the kind of business methods used to enforce the tying.

My child's school uses Google Classroom. The Google experience is unusable in Firefox. Meet doesn't work (e.g. he sees nothing when the teacher screenshares). This seems really quite anti-competitive.

My child cares about privacy and switches browsers. Chrome for Meet, Firefox for most non-Google things.

Unless Meet and other Google apps are really tailored to subperform under firefox I don't think it's a solid case.

If google devs code doesn't run as fast in firefox why should google take the blame ?

or maybe google is using non html5 apis to tap into chrome for faster perf in which case things are muddy.. since whatwg kinda allows unofficial apis

Obviously, a private company can do what they want and they shouldn't be forced to make their code run on other platforms.

No, IMHO they should be forced to comply with web standard and at least try to work with browsers they don't support first class. (Microsoft simply doesn't allow you to open any of their web apps, weather it's for teams or some of their other apps.)

Especially if it involves quasi monopolies.

I.e. the it's a quasi Monopoly of chrome like browsers spear headed by Google and Microsoft.

I agree, I should've made clearer I was being sarcastic. The quasi-monopoly thing is often ignored when it comes to Big Tech silencing voices.

> No, IMHO they should be forced to comply with web standard

The problem is that they ram whatever internal Chrome APIs they want through standards bodies and call it a standard.

Others just can't keep up: https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence

Maybe I should have called it "industry web standards" to explicitly exclude "google forced web standard"?

Microsoft got in trouble for less than this in the EU and had to start offering firefox as an option on standard installs.

E: Just saw the /s in parent's grandchild.

Some of the problems come from codec licensing issues (which have a major competition hindering effect since over a decade? by now).

But things come also from Google (and Microsoft, they seem to use the same logic) implementing some logic but based on "how the web standard" works but by "how it happens to work on chrome", this leads to frequent issues with selected input devices and screen sharing.

And fixing it is easy, probably way less then 10h of work one single time. (As far as I know.)

Similar the codec issues only matter if certain slow devices are involved, e.g. non high end phones, high end phones in energy saving mode, old tablets. If no such device is involved it's not rare that the conference will anyway use different codecs. So they could support FF for many conference calls, but instead they decide to reflect to even try to work on FF (which is a web no-go btw.).

So there are "reasons", but it's clear that's they intend to not support FF at all.

Btw. Microsoft is the worst here as they reject to work with FF even for things which do not have any reason to have problems on FF.

> If google devs code doesn't run as fast in firefox why should google take the blame ?

And yet, I get flak if my code isn't performing well on 5 different browsers, including IE6.

Something is wrong with their system then. I use Meet in Firefox and it works. Sometimes it's buggy but I can always get it to work.

I frequently have to refresh Meet to get it working on Firefox. Not in Chrome.

i have frequently needed to do this on Chrome Pixelbook, so it might just be that Meet is generally buggy.

I had to switch to Chrome because my employer is a Google shop. Meet screenshare never worked in Firefox and would always get stuck on the first frame.

> Sometimes it's buggy

For a work tool, this is a problem. I get reports of fuzzy microphones, audio that slowly descends into robotic noise and screenshares that don't in Firefox. So I switch to Chrome for Meet in work, it just looks bad if my meetings don't work like 10% or more of the time.

I'm sure this is a problem with Google more than Firefox, given I have none of the same issues with discord in firefox on my personal devices

I was having crazy issues in GDrive and GDocs where I could download nothing using FF - no PDFs, no .docx files, none of my other backed-up files, you'd click download and nothing would happen. Do the same in Chrome, Edge, Safari, Opera, even changing my user-agent to Chrome, and it works flawlessly.

My solution to this problem was move everything off GDrive and into self-hosted options. If Google is going to intentionally hinder usage on non-Google software when no real technical roadblocks exist, I'll gladly use literally anything else.

What self-hosted option did you pick just out of curiosity? Looking to do the same thing.

FreeNAS is solid.

As another commenter mentioned, TrueNAS is my go-to for general storage and phone/PC/Mac backups; it's dead simple to setup and is extremely capable, not to mention it'll run on just about anything (barring the ZFS cache RAM requirements...). Personally, I keep a 'master' home folder on there that gets auto-mounted in whatever OS I boot into; this way I never have to go hunting around the NAS for files, for instance I just have a single "Documents" folder that effectively 'syncs' across my Mac, *nix, and Windows. I use CX File Explorer on Android to access the NAS, add a WireGuard VPN (which there's a great plugin for on TrueNAS) and you've got access to your files anywhere.

GDrive I was able to replace more or less with LibreOffice and Collabora, I rarely need to share documents outside PDF or print, which makes compatibility a non-issue for me (and even when I need to, saving as a .doc usually maintains layouts, fonts, etc.).

Nextcloud is pretty great. I use it for file storage/sharing, contacts, calendar, and notes. There is a way to run a GDocs clone on it as well but I have no need for an office suite.

I experience the same. Can't really use YouTube, can't download files from gdrive. Google was the best thing that could happen to search engines. Chrome was a godsend. Now they are what Microsoft was two decades ago (Microsoft is still full of shit, but now they are not alone).

Do you block third-party cookies? It prevents Drive downloads in any browser with that setting, Chrom{e,ium} included. Recently I saw Drive give a suggestion about this, but a year ago when I was testing third-party cookie blocking in Chromium it took me a day or two before I figured out the connection.

"even changing my user-agent to Chrome, and it works flawlessly." implies that blocking third-party cookies is not the culprit.

You can improve the situation somewhat by using bromite/ungoogled-chromium instead of chrome, for the purposes when Firefox doesn't work.

They just check against identifier. It even claim google chrome is a better solution on the new Edge browser (which is basically a ms'styled google chrome).

Doing that is so absurd in my opinion.

Huh, just an anecdote, but Meet runs perfectly fine on FF for me at work. Only issue is I can't blur my background unless I'm on Chrome.

Meet absolutely works in Firefox, there's nothing anti-competitive going on. As do Google products generally (though there are occasionally performance issues where Firefox simply doesn't provide an API that Chrome does and the polyfill is slower, but then Firefox catches up).

But try disabling browser extensions and see if that fixes it -- a majority of the time that's the culprit. With videoconferencing specifically, it's often an extension or setting to block videos from autoplaying.

> But try disabling browser extensions and see if that fixes it

Isn’t this the problem? Why do I have to disable something in Firefox to make it work for a google product.

Huh? Because you installed third-party software that interferes with Google's code.

It's not a Firefox problem, it's extensions you chose to install that neither Firefox nor Google have anything to do with.

We know from multiple accounts from multiple Firefox engineers that Google engineers repeatedly expressed good faith in working together with the Firefox team to get performance parity on major sites like YouTube. We also know that they repeatedly violated this good faith agreement and when confronted could only exclaim, "Oops! Our bad." [1]

This isn't new territory for Google. They did the same thing to Windows Phone, simply excluding any of their products from working on Windows Phone, even when other developers tried to step in and fill the gap. [2]

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...

[2] https://www.google.com/amp/s/techcrunch.com/2013/01/02/micro...

It stopped working about two weeks ago or so. No video or screen share, only audio works

Tried it literally just now to check, it works fine on my Mac.

And there are no widespread reports of it not working on Firefox, so it's something specific to your machine. Not a general case.

Here is one long standing issue with many related compat links attached: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=975444

and two other webcompat examples: https://webcompat.com/issues/56933 https://webcompat.com/issues/68844

Just to give an idea. That said, Meet works fine for me, besides some features, like background, which they have only implemented for Chromium based browsers (maybe Safari!?) - that is a bit annoying, as I doubt that it would break the devs leg to implement something for Firefox as well.

I believe Chrome also has better support for new technologies/APIs thus the reason firefox doesn't work that well. But as others said that's not always the case.

How can you 'lie' about an opinion like 'better'?

How do you know this is because of Chrome in the first place? Another explanation is that it could be Edge or even users moving to use mobile (browsers) more?

Genuinely curious where the market share and total number of users in the market (broken down) has shifted.

It may also not exclusively be anticompetitive behavior from Chrome, but just Mozilla's stewardship of Firefox. They constantly manage to generate shitstorms around updates (how does this never happen with Chrome?) and then the plain disregard/making fun of user feedback [1] is just a kick in the teeth. For me at least, that's in large part why I moved to Chrome.

[1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20200731211652/https://twitter.c...

It does happen with Chrome. See the whole ublock origin debacle. I guess it doesn't impact end users as greatly or maybe Firefox users are more vocal about changes?

Also: yikes on that link. I would feel disillusioned if my feedback was responded to in that manner. Sometimes empathy can get you so much further.

Whats that debacle about? I'm using latest Chrome and am still using uBlock origin.

https://www.techradar.com/news/popular-chrome-ad-blockers-co...

If I recall correctly they backtracked, but it was a big deal for awhile.

Ever seen this response? https://www.emilykager.com/writing/2021/02/10/mozilla.html#m...

Thanks for linking.

For a "light hearted joke", that is a lot of effort, extremely unprofessional and very poorly worded. I still don't blame people for taking issue with it. The harrassment though is another story, that sucks and shouldn't have happened.

> The harrassment though is another story, that sucks and shouldn't have happened.

100%

> extremely unprofessional and very poorly worded. I still don't blame people for taking issue with it.

Look, I like the Android browser and I think Geckoview is awesome. Back then, as soon as it hit the shelves enough people were complaining on a level where one can "light heartily" put them into the "haters" category IMHO, next to a much higher percentage of constructive feedback.

>If two - three other Norwegians do the same that should start to look like an earthquake ;-)

That 5 people wrote to them?

Yes. It is my sincere belief that very few people notice && care enough to figure out who to contact, how to contact them and actually do it.

Yeah, most people seem to waste their time contacting the BBB, instead of their State AG with complaints against businesses.

You can get a lot more done complaining to the right places.

I agree about that.

The fact that "but if 5 (or 10 or 50) people wrote them it would have an impact" I'm sceptical about.

99.9999% it would just be ignored. Campaigns with 100s of thousands of people are ignored all the time...

Thanks for explaining!

As I mentioned avove I think now is a particularly good time!

We use Google Meet at work, and I use Firefox.

The "Change background" feature was not "supported" in Firefox, then suddenly I could use it so I thought they finally implemented it for Firefox as it was working perfectly.

Two days later the feature disappeared, and I keep getting that "your browser doesn't support this feature" popup since.

That sucks, but take the time to imagine what might be going on on the other side.

There's a dev running an experiment to whitelist more combinations of the huge space of (Device, CPU, GPU, OS, OSVersion, Browser, BrowserVersion) to use that feature. What would you do after seeing that the metrics show that most of the users on your experiment had a bad experience? In that case you'd want to rollback your experiment right away and figure out what's wrong. You really expected all, if not most of the combinations you selected to actually work well, but it's apparently not the case.

yeah I'm over fetching indeed :') A/B testing sucks, they should've let me know it was an experiment, I had high hopes

Yeah, there's definitely room for improvement there, but I feel that it'd only target more advanced users.

I'd like that you could opt-in into being aware of the experiments you are running, and be allowed to opt-out early of experiments when they don't work, or sign-up to run them permanently (as long as they are actually running) if they work great.

Although, letting users know about the experiments might also ruins some experiments as users could start assuming that the experiment really changes things. I imagine you can easily run a dummy experiment and have people talk about how much faster/slower their browser runs with it.

thanks for the info. Will also report this issue to the authorities.

I love keyboard driven browsers and had also some issues with nyxt and qutebrowser. I want to avoid installing chromium on my linux box and I just can't.

Recommending others also to report it.

If some googlers are reading this, please push the chrome team to be more interoperable. "Don't be evil!" :-)

> If some googlers are reading this, please push the chrome team to be more interoperable. "Don't be evil!" :-)

Second this.

I want to like Google and did for the longest time.

You do so much great stuff but some stuff like this is so damaging for both the ecosystem and for you, because as long as this is going on my best hope is a giant fine.

To be fair Google's products are not great as they were. GDrive sometimes does not work at Chromium. You can't disable 3rd party to download cookies. Console is a pile of errors. UX is not consistent. And new services don't integrate properly even with Google services.

First world problems

Are problems of the first world a priori invalid because they are of the first world? What makes you think that non-first world people also don’t care about these things. Even the concept of first world seems a little data anymore. Between urbanization and the internet a lot of those categories have blurred in the last few decades.

Mozilla is killing firefox by introducing hostile behaviour, breaking user expectations, not delivering on promises and ignoring voices of MANY users.

I used to be firefox user since Phoenix, but I gave up on it after 89 when context menus were broken, megabar was still as shitty as when introduced first tie, and new stupid mobile look on my 4k screen? It's almost like they are killing firefox on purpose, but I realised that loyalty to a software product is stupid and moved to Brave.

Why do you care about Firefox and not Safari or Samsung browser?

I've been using Firefox daily for over 15 years now.

My experience with Firefox over the last 2-3 years in particular leaves me very disappointed and frustrated.

The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness.

I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for professionals, by professionals. I want a consistent UI that remains stable over time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a browser.

Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any suggestions for what to try next?

Are you perhaps not using an adblocker and thereby being trapped into wrongly believing that the slowness induced by ad+tracking Javascripts is the fault of Firefox?

I am using an adblocker.

Let me give you another datapoint.

My old uni laptop, an Intel T4400 with 4gb RAM.

Both chrome and Firefox have adblock.

Never ran in to a problem with Chrome, despite the wider internet calling it a memory hog.

Firefox struggled after 4/5 tabs, couldn't even playback video on YouTube or Vimeo reliably..

Don't run into these issues on desktop, and the Android version seems somewhat competent. But I've lost a lot of trust in Mozilla the last few years thanks to middle management.

Atleast with Google I know their motives and I'm not locked in to their platform relying on any particular proprietary thing they have.

For what it’s worth and based on a non-trivial sample set this is highly atypical.

Yep. I rarely see Firefox lagging/unresponsive (~15 pinned + 3-4 normal tabs open). In the rare chances that it does, I get an option "This web page is slowing down Firefox" which lets me kill the tab and all is well again.

Poor video playback in one browser might mean that it's not configured to use the hardware decoder. I think performance there should be basically the same for video playback if they're configured the same way.

My understanding of the current browser landscape is that you've got Firefox; browsers that build upon Google's browser engine (Chrome/Chromium/Edge/Brave/Vivaldi/Opera/etc); and Safari.

There are a number of good options, but very few that don't further cement Google's control over the world's browser-engine code.

(Yes, I know there are some other very minor players that lag behind on features and standards support. I don't think that's what the parent commenter is looking for.)

In terms of "browsers that actually matter", there's just Chrome/chromium at a combined 70% and Safari at a little over 18%. Everything else is a side mention at best and as a browser at least, is basically irrelevant on the world stage. Even if the companies behind them aren't (e.g. Mozilla or Samsung). [1]

They are of course highly relevant for their user bases, but in terms of "browsers that might break the Chrome hegemony through normal competition", there are none. You'd need to pull a Microsoft IE-on-Windows on Google and enact laws that forbid them from loading Chrome as default and only browser on all first and third devices associated with their brand. A few administrations ago, that might have still been a possibility, but it's not going to happen unless the EU does it first, and even then, the US might pull one of those idiotic "how dare the EU punish a US company for outcompeting everyone else" and instead enact reactionary laws that loosen the rules for them instead.

[1] https://gs.statcounter.com/

> You'd need to pull a Microsoft IE-on-Windows on Google

How about actually just making a good, competitive browser instead? Firefox is not failing because of Google's monopoly; it is failing because as a product it is unable to compete and beat Chrome where it matters. If not Mozilla, I am pretty sure somebody else will make such browser (and search engine, and email... ) eventually.

Currently you can't really compete with Google's/Alphabet's market and marketing power. If you get too close, product-wise, they can just throw more money at their own product in your field. It needs political market intervention to make a dent that would count enough for others even getting a theoretical chance of getting one step ahead again. While that might be true in little web standard pieces here and there for Firefox compared to Chrome (and it certainly is vice-versa), the much smaller teams will always play catch up.

Sorry, have you looked at what you need to implement in order to even be a browser that's shit, but at least supports the modern web? Because everyone's answer is "that would be Chromium" right now. There are so many web APIs, no one person, and not even a small team, could "just" make a good, competitive browser.

There is no "just". There is so very much no "just" anywhere near this topic.

Yes, I actually have ;) I am a founder of a browser company. Our team is building a browser from scracth, minus the rendering engine for which we have chosen WebKit. Many of our beta testers have already indicated that our browser (Orion) is same or better than Safari, Chrome or Firefox. Hence, I believe it can be done and we'd welcome more formidable competition from Firefox in order to take on Chrom(e/ium ) clones that took over the web.

I also want a browser that when you start it doesn't let you wait for an update. Got too impatient too often with that.

Firefox 90.0 [1] can now update in the background on Windows.

[1] https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/90.0/releasenotes/

I used Firefox from launch until about two years ago. I stopped for reasons similar to what you listed.

I’ve really enjoyed Brave as it is just a simple browser that works (and has lots of privacy features).

Firefox has its own funding issues but I don’t trust a browser that exists to support a cryptocurrency.

I trust it because it’s an open source project and I can see what goes in and comes out.

Of course, maybe it won’t work forever, but it works for now.

I’m not a crypto person and don’t use Brave’s crypto features, but I think it’s a more sustainable future than relying on Google’s largess.

Relying on google’s rendering engine is worse IMHO. And I think they are going to end having to pivot on funding.

> I trust it because it’s an open source project and I can see what goes in and comes out.

That is just the browser part. The code on their servers that actually processes the data the browser collected is closed-source. In general, browser being open or closed source has no correlation with how privacy respecting it is. Chrom{e|ium} and Edge are another examples.

Pragmatically speaking there is only one thing that guarantees privacy and that is browser being zero-telemetry, regardless of if it is open source or not.

What server-side components are you referring to here? From my memory there was very little interesting private code, and I can't think of anything that would process user data that would be private.

To my understanding there is no data sent from my Brave client to any Brave servers. So my data are not stored or used by Brave servers, so I don’t care too much about their source.

Of course, there’s nothing magical about open source that makes it more privacy respecting. It’s just that open source let’s me know what my browser is doing. For example, Chrome is reporting everything I do to Google. It’s possible to know that by looking at the code for Chrome. Brave doesn’t do this and it’s possible to know that by looking at the code for Brave.

> To my understanding there is no data sent from my Brave client to any Brave servers.

That would be wrong. By Brave's own confession, there are 70 requests it sends "home" on startup [1]. Regardless of request payload, each of them contains your PII (IP address at the very least). There is plenty of opportunity for your data to be stored and used (not saying that it is).

If and how is that data actually used, we do not know, because this part is closed-source. When companies that are running advertising-based business models like Brave and Google are in question, this is the most important part users should be concerned with. Only way to settle this would be if the browser actually sent no requests anywhere, like you initially believed to be true. Indeed, a web browser has no business making requests anywhere without my explicit approval!

> It’s possible to know that by looking at the code for Chrome. Brave doesn’t do this and it’s possible to know that by looking at the code for Brave.

Do not want to be harsh but I assume you didn't actually look into the Brave's source code. You could have, but in reality very few actually do. Open-source "tag" on software can give this false sense of security because you rely on someone else to do the hard work and actually look through millions of lines of code.

The only way to actually trust a browser from a privacy standpoint is to check if it is indeed not transmitting any data. Instead of relying on source code, a much easier and foolproof way to check this is to use a network proxy, many are commonly available for all platforms. Then you can believe your own eyes vs marketing.

Disclaimer: I am in the business of creating a privacy respecting, zero-telemetry, browser. This topic is near and dear to my heart. More on this here [2] and here [3]

[1] https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/

[2] https://browser.kagi.com/faq.html#ossprivacy

[3] https://browser.kagi.com/faq.html#privacy

> Do not want to be harsh but I assume you didn't actually look into the Brave's source code.

This is a weird assumption to make on HN. I have. I also didn’t say that viewing source code is the only part of understanding a browser’s security. It’s a useful portion. Network monitors are also good.

I’m not talking about startup telemetry, I mean browsing history and activity. Chrome reports this, Brave doesn’t.

I don’t think Brave is perfect, I just think it’s better than Chrome and Firefox.

Point taken. Since someone from Brave jumped in, I gave my (long) opinion on the topic as a reply to their comment.

> By Brave's own confession, there are 70 requests it sends "home" on startup…

"Confession" is a curious choice of words. You're correct that Brave issues requests on startup; this is necessary for a secure application. If your browser isn't updating its internal list of suspected-malicious domains and more, it isn't doing "security" properly.

> There is plenty of opportunity for your data to be stored and used (not saying that it is).

To what "data" are you referring? You cited my review of our (Brave) network activity, and that of many other browsers; which data/requests do you find to be worrisome?

A similar review was conducted in 2020 by Trinity College Dublin, which also found Brave to be the "most private" browser tested (even with these startup requests): https://www.scss.tcd.ie/Doug.Leith/pubs/browser_privacy.pdf.

> …each of them [network requests] contains your PII (IP address at the very least).

An IP address is rather unavoidable. But whether or not an IP address constitutes PII is debatable—many users can (and do) share common IP addresses.

That said, we drop the IP address when and where possible. For example, usage requests are routed through a CDN which replaces the user's IP address with their inferred country.

Brave has no interest in trying to remotely monitor anybody's browsing habits; if we did, you (and/or those who actively monitor our project, looking for faults) would see clear signals in our network activity.

Instead, everything we do is designed from the outset to preclude this type of abuse. That's the case with our Privacy-Preserving Product Analytics (https://brave.com/p3a), our Private CDN (https://brave.com/brave-private-cdn/), and more. Brave isn't interested in your personal information; we have built a business model that doesn't rely on the harvesting of user data.

> The only way to actually trust a browser from a privacy standpoint is to check if it is indeed not transmitting any data.

This is a great point. Please review our network requests, and let me know which items give you concern. We're genuinely interested in your feedback.

> Disclaimer: I am in the business of creating a privacy respecting, zero-telemetry, browser. This topic is near and dear to my heart.

I'm curious how your product handles security; do you not maintain a client-side list of suspected-malicious domains (so that you can warn a user who might be stumbling into something harmful), or check for updates to patch zero-day vulnerabilities in the wild, etc.? Both of these (and more) require routine network requests if they are to offer any effective defense for the user.

It looks like we are coming from two different sides of the table. So let's try to agree with this statement:

"A privacy respecting browser has no business sending data on its own anywhere without the user being OK with it first."

This is true by the very definition of what privacy is.

If you want to check for updates - let the user initiate/opt-into automatic updates. If you want to update your malicious domain list (is that useful at all?) - let the user initiate/opt-into it. And so forth.

If you want to make these choices on the behalf of the user, and enable this and other things you do in those 70 requests you do on startup - that is of course fine. But you lose the right to call yourself a privacy-respecting product because Brave client just sent data to Brave servers without user knowing/consenting to it.

> which also found Brave to be the "most private" browser tested

A statement like "Brave is most private of the tested browsers" implies that privacy is somehow an analogue measure between 0 and 1, where Brave is for example 0.6 and Chrome is 0.4 or something.

But privacy is a binary measure, you (company/product) are either respecting privacy of the user or you are not. You can not respect it 'a little'. You look at your friends the same way - one has propensity to leak information and the other one doesn't. There is no category for friends who leak 'a little' information. Either they do or they don't. And frankly being called 'most private' in the company of those browsers is like saying a dog is 'most likely to fly' in the company of an elephant, dinosaur and a rhino. Be cool and be a bird to begin with.

> An IP address is rather unavoidable. But whether or not an IP address constitutes PII is debatable.

Kahm. IP address is rather avoidable - just do not send data without user's consent. It is that simple. We are doing it, so I know.

It is also not that much of a debate whether IP address is PII. It is.

Multiple court rulings such as State vs Reid [1], and Breyer vs Germany [2] as well as California CCPA act of 2018 [3] define IP address to be PII (w/ or w/o caveats) or at least a part of PII.

> That said, we drop the IP address when and where possible.

I never implied otherwise. What I did was to state the fact that Brave client sends data to Brave servers and that we can not tell for sure what is being done with this data because Brave's server code is closed-source.

Is this potentially a concern for the users? Yes. Can it be avoided? Yes - just become zero-telemetry by default. No need for discussion then.

A good relevant example is that Google advertises Chrome as a privacy respecting browser. Do you believe that based on what they say? Why not? Are there ways you could believe this? Yes, if no data ever left Chrome to Google servers without user explicitly allowing it first (by 'allowing it' I do not count accepting Terms&Conditions as those are never read by anyone and do not count as explicit/informed consent in this context).

> do you not maintain a client-side list of suspected-malicious domains

No we do not (could change in the future, in which case it will be opt-in of course). These lists in the current form are arbitrary, this hardly counts as security feature and there is very little chance the user will end up on a malicious website intentionally. Plus browsing the web is the responsibility of the user. The job of the browser is to stay out of your way, not make arbitrary decisions for you.

> check for updates to patch zero-day vulnerabilities in the wild

In Orion, user can check for updates manually or opt-in into automatic updates. So the feature is there. The key is however in "opting-in" because we want to have the right to call Orion a privacy respecting browser.

Orion does not even set a default search engine - otherwise the moment you start typing into address bar you would be leaking information (including IP address) to the search engine provider for suggestions.

To recap, Orion sends zero data to our servers or anywhere else for that matter (unless user first opts-in into it), on the first run, on any run or ever really. We call this "zero-telemetry by default" and we invite Brave to adopt this. Privacy is a serious matter, so let's treat it seriously.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/State_v._Reid

[2] http://curia.europa.eu/juris/document/document.jsf?text=&doc...

[3] https://oag.ca.gov/privacy/ccpa

We are indeed seeing these topics from two very different perspectives. I applaud your efforts; it sounds like you're building a nice project for [power users]. Brave is built for all users, however. As such, asking users to opt-in to security is, IMHO, a bad idea.

> "…you lose the right to call yourself a privacy-respecting product…"

I obviously disagree here. The problem is not _requests_, but rather the nature of the requests. You can certainly choose to not make any requests, but I feel doing so puts your users at considerably higher risk. I'd be curious how consistent you can be with this too; does your operating system and router also issue no requests on their own? Are users supposed to be capable of tracking security threats on those fronts too, as well as locate and install updates?

> "It is also not that much of a debate whether IP address is PII. It is."

It can be. I don't think this is a legal question, but rather an engineering one. You and I both know that this space is complicated by networks, NAT routers, and more.

> "Brave client sends data to Brave servers and that we can not tell for sure what is being done with this data"

What data? I understand that you have limited visibility into the server-side of things, but you can see clearly what data is being sent to Brave's services to begin with. What sorts of concerns do you have with what is being transmitted today?

> [Re: security lists] "Plus browsing the web is the responsibility of the user."

This is where we diverge even more. It sounds as though you're targeting super users who are very technical, and comfortable with monitoring threats, applying patches, etc. That expectation works for niche software, but not for software intended for _all users_. Brave absolutely should protect users from known threats. As we saw this past week, malicious ads on Google's search engine results were sending users to malware sites. Fortunately, we were able to get those URLs added to the SafeBrowsing service, and protect users of Brave, Chrome, Edge, and more.

> "Orion does not even set a default search engine - otherwise the moment you start typing into address bar you would be leaking information (including IP address) to the search engine provider for suggestions."

You don't have to perform live lookups. Brave doesn't send keystrokes for this very reason; users have to opt-in to that. Firefox defers sending keystrokes until 2 characters have been input. Most others just send the keystrokes (or pasted content) behind the scenes—not cool.

> "Privacy is a serious matter, so let's treat it seriously."

Expecting your users to opt-in to basic privacy features suggests privacy takes a backseat, IMHO. But then again, we may be targeting very different demographics with our software. It sounds like you're targeting power users who are okay with elevated risk. We're building Brave for everybody.

> I applaud your efforts; it sounds like you're building a nice project for [power users].

Thank you! If by power users you mean users who want to have their privacy on the web respected, then yes, we are building Orion for them.

> I obviously disagree here. The problem is not _requests_, but rather the nature of the requests.

But the problem _is_ requests, because each request at the very least carries IP, and IP is PII as ruled in multiple court rulings. I respect your decision to disagree with that, but that is the state of things.

> I don't think this is a legal question, but rather an engineering one.

There is no debate with court rulings.

It is also reasonable to assume that each court ruling involving this question involved dozens of engineers on both sides, probably more knowleadagable than you or me in this matter. And each ruling was made after careful consideration of evidence and with a lot at stake.

> It sounds like you're targeting power users who are okay with elevated risk.

I do not think you made a case that there is an elevated risk assigned with choosing to respect user's privacy in a browser. And if there is, and Brave has chosen not to respect user's privacy to include what it perceives as security features, I think you owe your users at least an explanation on your home page about that choice that you made for them.

Brave is a formidable competitor with devoted following and relevant and increasing market share. I enjoy the opportunity to discuss these important issues with you in a public forum.

I was going to download your browser (from https://browser.kagi.com/), but I realized 1) There is no Windows option, and 2) It requires me to submit a great deal of information via a Google Form before I can download.

Honestly, this is not what I expected from the "privacy respecting, zero-telemetry, browser" that you've been heralding here.

The Google Form alone is far more alarming than Brave's P3A (which is not connected to any Google Account, doesn't feed the data to a third-party, restricts user answers to category/range values, breaks up and temporally offsets delivery of feedback to prevent fingerprinting, etc.).

1) We are not developing for Windows yet, just Mac. Small startup, we have to focus our strengths. And we are slightly more bullish on macOS than Windows.

2) Perhaps you missed that we are in beta. You are opting-in your email in exchange for being invited to become a beta tester. You do not need to do that. And if you do, we are going to use your email only to send you the invite.

And the reason why there are so many questions in the form is that we want to deter as many people as we can, and get only the most determined beta testers. If somebody finds a 10 question form intimidating, their value to us as an active, contributing beta tester is likely to be small.

When we are out of beta you will be able to download the browser without submitting anything, and enjoy a zero-telemetry browser out of the box. Makes sense?

Bullish on macOS? Windows isn't going away anytime soon. My apologies if I am misunderstanding what was meant by "bullish" in this context. It does strike me as odd (given your tone here) that you would be requiring users to submit their email address, and answer [a Google-hosted] questionnaire, in order to use your application. "…we want to deter as many people as we can [from using the browser at this time]" (brackets contain my own words) doesn't seem like a great pitch; why not let everybody test the software, and invite (from within the app) users to share their feedback after a day/week of use?

It is a product management decision. We are in the early beta stage and the product is not polished enough for the broader market.

However we are OK to share it with die-hard fans who actually took the time to complete a non-trivial form, hence invite-only private beta. When we move to public beta, there will be no signup requirement.

> Bullish on macOS?

Yes we believe it is an OS and a platform with a bright future. Personally I enjoy it using a lot as a consumer, and I think it makes for a wonderful host platform for a new browser. Note that we also opted to use the WebKit rendering engine (fastest and most power efficient, at least on macOS) and built the rest of the browser from scratch.

This is so reductive I don't know where to begin, but having worked on Brave I can say that there's a lot more top of mind over there than building a browser to support BAT.

> The slowness and slugishness.

Mozilla has a nice tool to help identify sources of "slowness and slugishness"[1], you may want to give it a try -- oftentimes it's found that the issue is not Firefox itself, but some extensions, external processes, or undesirable modifications in `about:config`.

---

[1] https://profiler.firefox.com/

That is indeed a powerful tool that gives you the god view of everything what could happened.(Which normal web devtools definitely can't) However, it is also sometimes really hard to interpret the results. There are so many data there, some of them comes from Firefox internal, some of them comes from 3rd extension. Something in different thread actually chains together, but the ui does not show. I think it need some improvements to help the user reading the results.

If you suspect the issue is with Firefox, you can open an issue with the profiling data attached, Firefox devs know how to interpret the data.

This is also way it is powerful. It used to be impossible for Mozilla to inspect the bug if they can't reproduce it themselves and consistently. But with the new profiler, you can screenshot the moments it bugs out either on reporter's computer or dev's. Makes the bug you used to be impossible to debug possible to debug.

If you want to customize your browser (as far as using your own CSS) you can try Vivaldi. I've been using it for years and after the 3.7 update it feels fast and snappy (at least on my computer). It has tons of custom settings around tabs, commands, windows, toolbars, etc.

At least on Linux it gets out of my way quite nicely. Things like easily accessible Profiles help me quite a lot with my workflow.

If you're really strict about privacy there are browsers like ungoogled-chromium, Bromite (Android) and Orion Browser (only on Mac, iOS) which promise 0 telemetry, connections against their services, etc. Brave is nice but has connections against their services (internal addon updates, safe browsing, updates).

If there were someway to sync Vivaldi with an iOS browser, I'd have already switched. I've really been quite impressed with it, and it seems better every time I check, but I get a lot of use about the cross-device features of Firefox/Chrome, and while that's possible on Android, Vivaldi still don't have an iOS version.

I have around 1000 bookmarks and sync does really help. Since Brave has an iOS version I just use that but I hope someday they will release it.

Vivaldi is Chrome underneath.

Just to give a contrasting data point: I always see people complaining about resource consumption in Firefox in these threads, but I have honestly almost never had trouble like this and I use it for hours every day with lots of tabs and lots of rich media websites open. It happened more in the past (maybe 5+ years ago), but I am sure some of the blame in those cases would have been down to Flash. Now that I think more about it, that whole time I've also blocked ads, which surely helps too.

A friend of mine has over 4,000 tabs open in Firefox at the moment - they just never close a tab, ever. Their Firefox' memory usage is only a little higher compared to mine with 3 open tabs.

I wonder how many of those are actually “open” - disconnect the internet and try looking at them. I suspect many just are the URL and nothing more and on view it reloads.

Yes, Firefox unloads old unused tabs.

So bookmarks but less organized and more risk of losing them all at any given moment. Suddenly I don't feel so bad about discovering the ":D" easter egg in mobile chrome.

I used to have 1200 tabs open but I noticed more lag around above 800. That said my computer are far from last gen and I wouldn't blame mozilla for not supporting 1000+ tab hoarders anyway. But yeah firefox is not bloated even when abused.

that said I despised the UI redesigns and the recent FTP kill.. I want a broswer, not a fashion magazine

The most disappointing part of the redesign to me was that they actually REMOVED icons from menu items. It is harder to find what I'm looking for.

can you explain what the value is of having that many tabs open? i hear people do this but never understood it. what's the point?

There's no point. It's just a blend of laziness / hoarding / fomo

There is no value to it, this is what happens when you don't know what bookmarks are for.

Honestly I simply need an autotagger. I tried doing one a few time but never finished.

This is just a blatant lie. Come on, man!

I can believe it. I have over 2,000 tabs open over the last year. Before the last "clean up", I had 4,000 tabs open. As GP noted, most of them are unloaded (I would say around 3/4). I have 32GB RAM, so firefox issues are a distant memory. (pun intended)

Nope, it's possible, as long as most of the tabs stay around inactive. (Sadly it doesn't handle too many tabs becoming loaded very well, so if you hit the limit it usually ends with something crashing...)

2650 tabs open right now. I'm sure I had more open in the past. No major performance impact. If I click on the "List all tabs" button it takes a second to render the list. The PC is 5 years old, not even close being state of the art.

In my experience, Firefox uses a lot more memory on Windows than on Linux. It feels faster on Linux, too. The reasons might rather complex, though.

This might not be the fault of Firefox. The problem is that Chrome is the most used browser even amongst web-devs, so you tend to profile/benchmark your site in that browser and optimize for it.

Try using Firefox on the world's most popular streaming site Twitch.Tv and report back, let it sit there for a while and try for example use multiple streams to check different perspectives. It slows down to a halt.

Also I can't for example leave Firefox alive while playong some games or it starts to create stutter in the games.

I tried profiling but the Firefox profiler just hangs all the time or uses so many resources it becomes unstable ironically

Sounds like Twitch is allocating resources and not releasing them.

I have a theory why people have dissenting views on the performance of Firefox. I have a laptop dedicated to doing business online. Firefox has no addons on that machine. Some websites are painfully slow and my laptop fans kick on. I have debugged these issues and in every case it was javascript bogging down the CPU's, all 8 cores! gaming laptop I am not a web developer, so it is perhaps unfair for me to pick on the quality of the javascript.

Disable javascript and well... the site isn't usable any more for business transactions, but the slowness and CPU load vanishes. The website becomes snappy, highly responsive and easy to browse. The fans spin down and memory usage goes way down.

I've never used Chrome. Does chrome not ever get bogged down by javascript? Do they have a different javascript library/engine? I assume they must. Can you change the javascript libraries used by Firefox and Chrome? Apologies in advance if this is a dumb question.

Chrome uses V8, which is the same JS engine that Node is built on top of. As the name implies, it’s sort of wicked fast.

IIRC Firefox uses their own engine called Spider Monkey. I don’t know of anything outside of Mozilla which uses it. I have a hard time imagining it being faster than V8, but I actually have no idea — will need to go look at some benchmarks.

There used to be a big difference (in JS engine speed) but it's small recently. Where there is still a difference is in the UI code. Not necessarily operations being slower in Ff, but ordered in such a way to appear slower.

For example, when you press ctrl+n, chrome instantly creates a new window, then spends the next second or so (depending how old your computer is) painting the UI. On Firefox though it seems like nothing is happening for an entire second, and then the window emerges fully painted. So even tho the total time is about the same, FF feels much less responsive due to this design choice.

I also noticed Firefox spent a much longer time (a fraction of a second, but perceptible, and multiply that by thousands of clicks a day) before it would even (apparently, again -- not sure whats going on inside) begin loading a page, which was frustrating.

I verified this was the case in the web inspector's network performance tab (there was an mysterious delay before the first network request).

I've been experiencing delays too but only on the first request. This was due to uBlock Origin initializing. On mobile, this load time adds up really fast as it takes around 5 to 10 seconds for uBlock to load. In the mean time, requests are configured to be delayed. The aggressive Android memory cleaner doesn't help as anytime you close your browser, it reloads again.

All this to say, you might have an add-on delaying network requests to match them against a blacklist, save metadata or whatever the add-on is supposed to be doing.

> Firefox uses their own engine called Spider Monkey. I don’t know of anything outside of Mozilla which uses it.

Some non-Mozilla projects do embed SpiderMonkey, including Bloomberg (since 2001!), MongoDB, CouchDB, and 0 A.D.

https://discourse.mozilla.org/t/survey-where-are-you-embeddi...

> Does chrome not ever get bogged down by javascript?

Yes. This is pretty subjective as a user, but I'd classify Chrome as slightly better here. They're close enough that it doesn't usually matter unless you're playing JS based games or have a potato for a computer.

> Do they have a different javascript library/engine?

Yes, Chrome uses V8, Firefox uses SpiderMonkey

> Can you change the javascript libraries used by Firefox and Chrome?

No, not easily. It's all open source so technically you could with enough effort. But for example Chrome relies on some shared GC code between Blink and V8 [1]; I expect various feature needs like this would make swapping for SpiderMonkey infeasible.

[1] https://v8.dev/blog/high-performance-cpp-gc

At least we can override UI redesign changes with userChrome.css and userContent.css. I'm sticking with Firefox as long as its problems have workarounds, because the only options left are Chromium and Safari (or forks like Librewolf), and I find its pros still outweigh its cons.

> At least we can override UI redesign changes with userChrome.css and userContent.css

Not entirely, unfortunately.

You can override things with userChrome.css and userContent.css for now. Mozilla has made it clear that this will be removed in the future by already putting it behind an additional about:config flag - it is only a matter of time till they are axed once their privacy-disrespecting analytics tell them that "noone uses those features".

I'm the complete opposite. I don't have any problem with firefox. Everything works perfectly.

Same for me with Chrome on Android. This forced tab grouping is totally killing my workflow.

You can still disable this via some chrome://flags tweaking

2 column tabs sadly no more...

Why they think this is better UX is beyond me

Yep, it's still possible but they are disabling these flags one by one.

I don't get it, why they force the grouping instead of making it optional. Without tweaking it's impossible to just open a link in another tab.

I'm starting to see the benefit in it, in that I will use it less and get life time back

I switched from chrome to firefox on Android for this reason.

It is behaviour that has earned many recent one star reviews.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.android.ch...

> The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness.

Is that firefox or Google pulling a Shadow Dom v0 where they use an API only Chrome implements and fall back to software emulation on everything else?

Slowness could come from several different sources. One quick improvement is to use AdBlocker, or even block Javascript if your workflow allows it. This makes browsing extremely fast. Another one is missing support for upcoming and non-standard web technologies, that usually are implemented in Chrome (Blink) first, that leaves Firefox (and other browsers) using slower performing polyfills. As much as I hate the direction Firefox UI is going, there are no decent browser alternatives, especially those who support adblockers at such low lever as Firefox.

The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update.

Ive been using Firefox since it was called Phoenix, and this is my biggest complaint. Stop hiding menu options, my monitor is bigger and you're suddenly trying to save real estate.

The only reason Firefox got as popular as it did is because technical people liked it, and they encouraged their non technical friends to use it. If you're going to dumb it down then technically inclined users will not feel as pationately about it.

I was personally responsible for hundreds, maybe thousands of people switching from ie to Firefox when I worked at the help desk of a small ISP. I don't think I would do the same now. It's still my main browser, but it feels like an abusive relationship.

When things don't work in Firefox I try Edge (Canary) and then Safari. Right now, Edge is about 10% of my web usage but it's growing.

I've been a Firefox user for at least 15 years as well, and the recent UI updates in v89 is the first instance of me refusing to update Firefox.

I updated my user prefs file to permanently disable updates, so I'm remaining on pre-ProtonUI v88. Of course, I don't know how much longer I could sustain that because I'd also not receive security patches, but in the short term it's what I'm doing.

The new Firefox UI is incredibly frustrating, and feels like it walks back sensible UI principles. Removing icons in the main menu was celebrated as "de-cluttering" [0], when in reality icons improve ease of use. The "floating" tabs feel more distracting [1], when they claim the opposite. Heck, even user prompts no longer colorize the "primary action" button [2].

Also, what's with modern UIs becoming increasingly childish and watered down? The word I'd use to describe the new proton UI is "blurry".

[0] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-... [1] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-... [2] https://www.mozilla.org/media/img/firefox/releasenotes/note-...

https://github.com/black7375/Firefox-UI-Fix fixes most of the frustrating bits of Proton you describe.

It's arguably not the same as a sensible out-of-the box design, but far better than sticking to old versions just because of the UI.

I didn't care much for these entire UI revamps as I felt they were far too complex, so I wrote a much simpler one: https://github.com/arp242/MartinFox

2174 lines of CSS vs. 53 lines :-)

I don't overly care how every pixel looks or what the icon is and such; I just want my tabs to have some contrast.

Some people prefer less clutter. You can’t satisfy everyone.

Not updating a web browser is a fantastic way to make your computer very insecure. I understand the desire to keep things the same but personally I would value security above that.

Funny, I’ve used it on and off for 12 years, switching to other browsers when they started doing rapid release since it was noticeably slower than the competition. But since 2017 when the Quantum update came out I’ve completely switched to it because it’s speed became comparable to the competition. I like it even more when they added container tabs so I can switch between accounts easily. Reading this thread is really strange based on my experience. I do agree that Google makes it hard to use their products like Meet or Drive outside of Gmail and Calendar (the only Google products I use).

I used Firefox since it released. I changed to chrome after they broke all my extensions for the 2 time in five years. Austrailis change is where I dropped. I use edge now and it’s fine, just fine.

Same boat. Used to be a big Firefox fan back in the day but even if it's not bad for me these days it doesn't do anything special. Edge works just as well and feels slightly less cumbersome.

>The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness.

>I want a browser that works, respects my privacy, stays out of my way and lets me get shit done. A browser built for professionals, by professionals. I want a consistent UI that remains stable over time. I'm easily willing to pay for such a browser.

>Firefox used to be it, but I no longer feel like it is. Any suggestions for what to try next?

That's my experience as well. I was using FF from v 1.0 back in 2004. Upgrade to Quantum almost gave me a heart attack because it ruined majority of addons and disabled custom themes. Upgrade to "megabar" was a final straw for me. I've spent ~ 3 hours, but finally migrated to Pale Moon ... and it's like I'm back in 2004. Even Noia theme is working again.

FF, in my opinion, went full circle: from being the most functional and the most customizable browser to being the new IE6. There are no redeeming qualities left really.

Between Firefox and Chrome, the performance is almost identical. What is different is the smooth scrolling behaviour: it is far smoother in chrome than in Firefox, and that has a dramatic impact on how performant the browser “feels.” If Firefox tinkered with that a bit, it would be game changing.

(The few times I’ve had perf issues in Firefox were all either addons or sites designed to work only in chrome)

> The constant nonsense UI redesigns that come about with every new update. The instability, and ridiculous resources consumption. The slowness and slugishness.

I think this drives many people off Firefox. I am willing tinker with Firefox's internal CSS to tame some of the UI nonsense, but the rest of people just want a browser to get their work done; not to spend a couple hours every month to get rid of Firefox's new UI overhaul.

I was in the same boat until a year or so ago. The resource consumption kept getting worse and worse, I’d have to restart Firefox every day.

I really miss Firefox but the memory leaks were just a deal breaker.

> Any suggestions for what to try next?

I'm in the same boat as you -- a Firefox user (and evangelist) from the beforetimes. But Firefox stopped meeting my needs when the revamp occurred.

I haven't really found a modern browser that is acceptable, though, but it's not for lack of looking. In the meantime, I stick with an older release of Waterfox.

It's honestly a pity. Firefox is it perfect but the Internet is becoming worse because of chrome. Google is able to fast track any non standard Web tech and the hordes follow. Soon after, that become the standard. I don't want to cheer for a broken browser, but only Safari is able to stop this madness now.

Also, Firefox on the Desktop is really good and still let's you do so much more than chrome clones. But it suffers specially when using Google websites.

Chrome is already the standard. Firefox usually works, but more and more often nowadays I encounter a glitchy or poorly performing page, which I switch to Chrome to use properly.

I use Firefox to not be part of the Chrome monopoly, not because it's actually a fundamentally better browser.

> I encounter a glitchy or poorly performing page

When you have the time, you should note it here: https://webcompat.com/

Chrome is not better because you witness some pages to render better in Chrome. It is actually the opposite: pages are more and more built for and with Chrome in mind.

And that omnipresence of Chrome allows Google to force their own moves as de facto standards, which is dangerous overall.

Firefox is better because it follows standards and it is open-source and it is not tied to a behemoth like Google.

The authors of pages you see perform better in Chrome are indeed not building for the web but rather building for Chrome.

Especially with the prevalence of sites that "work" in browser but really expect you to download yet-another-Electron-app (i.e. Slack)

Develop for Chrome first, all other browsers second. Why worry if other browsers don't work when the solution is "download our desktop Electron application :)"

I have used Firefox for about a decade now and I can't think of a single page that did not work. I'm not saying it's impossible, but incredibly rare. I'd be more inclined to just give up on the site than install Chrome.

Stuff doesn't always completely break -- e.g. Google forcing new Chrome-only web standards on certain sites and making other browsers like Firefox resort to alternatives which can end up being 5x slower [0], or serving a more dated design of google search on FF mobile vs Chrome. I suspect this sort of thing might be enough to make some people switch.

And I have had a few experiences with sites not loading properly in the last few months. Try windy.com for example: on FF 90 with no extensions enabled and tracking protection on 'balanced' I get blue and yellow banding on the map, and the wind gusts graphics fail to load properly. I have reported a few of these instances in the past, but a lot of the time I'd rather just switch to chromium temporarily and continue with what I'm doing.

[0] https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozilla-exec...

Just out of interest I looked at Windy.com on Firefox/Linux and it looks fine? No blue/yellow banding. Wind gusts seem to show up fine. I've also had a look at the other stuff (e.g. waves, clouds, etc) which all seem to work as expected. This is with Firefox 78 LTS. Unless things have regressed in between version 78 to 90, I wonder if there is something else causing your issues?

So it seems like it was caused by FF blocking HTML5 canvas fingerprinting. Enabling that allowed it all to load correctly. I guess I must've hit disallow without thinking when I first visited, and that response was saved even after clearing cache, so that example at least is probably my fault.

I do wonder if every user would be aware that the 'Allow site to extract canvas data?' popup can break site functionality though -- its not as though there's a warning to that effect in browser.

Apple business manager requires safari or chrome and will not work on Firefox at all.

Sony PlayStation’s support pages did not work on Firefox. Texas’s franchise tax payment pages did not work on Firefox. Boy Scout certification pages did not work on Firefox. My kids’ baseball registration pages did not work on Firefox. As a front end dev, it seemed really hard to get things to NOT work on Firefox and still work on Chrome.

I haven’t noticed any issues, though I thought there were some that forced me to switch to chrome.

But it turns out the difference was the I was running ublock-origin in Firefox and sometimes that was causing issues for some sites..

Recently YouTube has started just displaying a blank page for me after going through selecting the tracking options.

The version of Unit 4 installed at work doesn't work in Firefox unless I open developer console first and disable caching requests.

A hassle but well worth it to avoid touching Chrome ;-)

That's my experience too. Unfortunately I don't think it's possible for complex standards to be well specified in human language instead of in code so a reference implementation is what will always win in the end.

At least chromium is open source. The best we can hope is maybe that organizations adopting chromium other than Google can wield more influence over it.

As I point out here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27222818 human language is not precise enough to write good specifications. Natural language words are polysemic and contextual. See the meaning of "break" for example: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/break

Kolmogrov showed that fully specified information distills down to computer programs: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kolmogorov_complexity, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minimum_description_length

The ideal language for a specification might be a mix of natural language and code with a test suit, something like Literate Programming (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Literate_programming) or its descendants along with modern pull request based discussions that are tied to version controlled code.

I wish Mozilla or a similar organization adopted the chromium core. We really need a well funded non-profit managed release of the reference browser.

> complex standards to be well specified in human language instead of in code so a reference implementation is what will always win in the end.

> At least chromium is open source.

That source code is 12-15 million lines of code. They implement literally thousands of specs. Chrome adds 40-70 new web APIs [1] with each release which happen roughly once every 40 days and contain god knows how many code changes.

Good luck deducing "precise specs" from that.

> I wish Mozilla or a similar organization adopted the chromium core

That would mean cementing Google's monopoly of the web.

[1] https://web-confluence.appspot.com/#!/confluence

>That source code is 12-15 million lines of code.

Exactly, it's impossible to describe that in human language which doesn't have precise enough semantics. That's why the spec has to be in code, in the form of a reference implementation and/or test suit.

The goal should be to move chromium away from being controlled too much by Google.

> Exactly, it's impossible to describe that in human language which doesn't have precise enough semantics.

On the contrary, this implements specs that are defined in a human language. For example, the full semantics of rendering HTML were standardised with HTML5, and now all browsers render HTML the same way.

The problem isn't the human language. The problem is the sheer number of these specs. Hundreds, if not thousands.

However, good luck understanding these specs by reading code or unit tests (and yes, there's a multitude of tests [1]). How do you know what a piece of code encodes? Or a test tests? You really propose to reverse engineer behaviour from code?

Example: here's a test: https://github.com/web-platform-tests/wpt/blob/master/html/s...

What exactly does it test? Why? Is this a correct test for this behaviour? Care to pinpoint the exact precise location of this spec in Google Chrome's code? [2] It's only 12 or so million lines of code, should be easy to find.

> The goal should be to move chromium away from being controlled too much by Google.

By doing what exactly?

[1] https://web-platform-tests.org

[2] https://github.com/chromium/chromium

>now all browsers render HTML the same way.

Is this sarcasm? Writing web apps that work the same across browsers is still the most painful part of web development. The underspecified natural language specs lead to subtly different behaviors in different browsers.

Full specs of a complex systems are very complex.

> Is this sarcasm?

It's not. How HTML is rendered was literally not defined between browsers until mid-00s. Hence the difference in the boxing model, for example.

Bt yes, besides HTML there are hundreds of other specs, and those may or may not be implemented across browsers.

> The underspecified natural language specs lead to subtly different behaviors in different browsers.

You keep saying this, and I don't think you even understand what you're saying.

> Full specs of a complex systems are very complex.

Yes, they are. What you keep proposing though, is to reverse engineer behaviour from millions of lines of code. I'm still waiting for an answer to my question about datalistoptions test.

No, not to reverse engineer behavior, to _define_ behavior in a well commented codebase with a well commented test suite.

The technical blueprints are as important than the natural language notes in the blueprints. In software, code is blueprint.

> I use Firefox to not be part of the Chrome monopoly, not because it's actually a fundamentally better browser.

For me there is - in addition to not wanting to support Chrome - still a few things that Firefox does better.

As for websites that only support Chrome I consider them broken which means I don't use them or if I have to I try to notify the operator.

>only Safari is able to stop this madness now

Safari is usable on less than 20% of machines, it absolutely will not be stopping anything. It's also the bane of my existence as a web developer.

I’m guessing a huge percentage of the lost users switched to Brave since it had 25 million as of February and is affiliated with Brendan Eich.

https://brave.com/25m-mau/

I’m guessing a huge percentage now spends more time browsing on their iPads instead of Desktop/Laptop…

Can confirm. Writing this from Brave on my iPhone.

Does Apple still require using Safari as the engine for all browsers on iPhone or has that changed?

Apple requires WebKit to be web rendering engine for all browsers. Safari is one of 100+ browsers on iPhone.

Tomato, tomato

Not really.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_browser

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_engine

34.4M this past month, now.

I'm curious. I'm not "frontend", but I do write code that runs in the browser, and write parts of the visualization UI for our products. I do get to determine how we build our products. I've gone with vue/typescript, and that hasn't caused any problem so far. A part of our software has to be able to run everywhere, and that unfortunately still includes IE11, so there I do take care of using a minimal feature set, but I can't remember the last time Safari caused me a problem. What problems does Safari cause?

Once Safari is gone you're not a web developer you're a ChromeOS developer

That's the already the unfortunate state of frontend development, a Chrome world from development to end-users.

Safari doesn't exist for 80% of the world.

This may change if Apple continues producing great hardware like M1 laptops.

That 20% is still a big enough (and more importantly, rich enough) chunk that developers have to support it.

> Safari is usable on less than 20% of machines, it absolutely will not be stopping anything

You forgot mobile, iOS users are big chunk of it and websites want to work on iOS browsers.

The US is not the world.

It’s a big chunk of the world as far as web/software revenue is concerned.

iOS users are still a big chunk of it in Europe and Asia. 20% is a big chunk, and we do indeed often want websites want to work on iOS browsers.

It's not going to stop people from using Chrome on machines where it's not available though, obviously.

> It's also the bane of my existence as a web developer.

I would say as a Chrome developer then.

Thanks for making this personal. I wouldn't have any issue with Safari at all if I was just a chrome developer would I?

The problem was people pretending to be web developers but only testing in IE.

Being IE only made life a lot easier.

Same today. Some people think it is OK to test only in Chrome. That lets one get away with a lot of bad habits.

Dealing with different browsers is part of what makes one a competent web developer.

The problem with their comment is that they're too busy dunking on people.

I do deal with different browsers, hence why I get headaches from Safari. If I didn't, I wouldn't complain about it.

I've been a web developer for a long long time. I know what a pain IE was, and I'm just experiencing it all over again with Safari, although they've gotten better lately.

My comment was maybe a bit provocative but you didn't just say Safari had a few quirks (like the slow release cycle for bugs like the recent ones with LocalStorage and IndexedDB that is a pain), you said it was your bane. That usually mean using Chrome as the main development browser and waiting years for new experimental API to be (sometimes) implemented in other browsers, particularly Safari. In that case like the parent said the pain is more similar to the one a IE dev would have experienced back in the day (early 00's, not late) when some IE specific advanced features would not have been widely available on other browsers.

No, it's the bane of my existence because of bugs, on stuff that people actually use, like flexbox. I use firefox for the record. IE devs didn't give a shit about any other browser, and never had a problem with using the IE specific features because of that.

The past few years I've been saying "Safari is the new IE" in terms of web development. I can't tell you how many bugs I've had to fix because Safari was doing something weird with JS/CSS.

IE11 is going EOL "soon" and at that point Safari is really going to be the odd one out. Chromium and Firefox are at least _mostly_ consistent with each other, save for when Chromium adds some crazy new feature that's nonstandard (but at that point only niche websites are usually using the new feature).

> only Safari is able to stop this madness now

Safari is a hard sell when one can't install an ad-blocker on it (work on the street is you can but not easily)

You’ve been able to use ad blockers in Safari for years.

The ad-blocking API Safari offers isn’t as powerful as Firefox’s.

Okay… in practice they work fine though. Saying you can’t use ad blockers in safari is straight up wrong.

I never said "you can't". Please read carefully before replying

I don't think you've read your own comment...

Ya I know I "can". Via app store, I know. Hence my comment: "hard" to install ad-blockers

maybe you should go back and read your own comment. Also, it's not terribly hard to install extensions through the App Store — what makes it more difficult than going through the Firefox/Chrome extension store?

You can install plenty of ad-blockers directly from the Mac App Store

Yes I know. But via app store, not from Safari directly (like every other browser) and for $$$.

I keep using Firefox on the desktop as a kind of resistance factor,. however the truth is that the war is lost, the Web has turned into ChromeOS for all practical purposes.

Specially since Microsoft has always been on the same boat as Google, remember that such kind of features go back to Active Desktop.

Additionally, everyone pushing Electron apps is basically contributing to Chrome market share.

I dont worry. I have seen these cycles with IBM and Microsoft. And they all blow up eventually because the unintended consequences keep increasing.

So Google has got itself locked into that same trajectory for a long time now. "Features" are total bullshit. Its all about making sure every small thing is in the cloud or eventually gets pushed into it.

That vision is as dumb as moving the DNA in every cell in your body into a nearby lake and visiting the lake everytime you want to read 1 bit. With a Google toll booth at the lake entrance. Its doomed to fail.

Just look at the consequences. If you have a webpage on your local hard drive and want to use the browsers javascript to access it to make it look better, the Google Chrome team will come running like well programmed alert robots to call it a security violation and disable api access to your own disk.

This is how empires fall.

IE was essentially a one-trick pony (the browser)

Chrome is being used on the browser (with a mobile footprint Microsoft never had), the desktop (VS Code, Slack, etc), and v8 is driving a substantial part of the web's backend (Node). Even the smaller use case of web scraping is moving towards Puppeteer.

Yeah chrome features stopped being features a long time ago. Why else would they force upgrades to be so persistent yet secretive? Because that's what you have to do when people value the existing feature set over security updates, if they're attached to new features like cookieless tracking.

Exactly. They just shipped a UUID implementation to stable chrome before it was even finalized. They barely discussed and now it’s live. But hey they wrote a proposal so it’s all good.

> Safari is able to stop this madness now

Apple stopped developing Safari for Windows nine years ago.

> it suffers specially when using Google websites

I keep seeing this rhetoric, but I've never experienced this myself. I use Firefox as my main driver and use Google Search, Docs, Mail, Sheets, Slides, YouTube, and whatever other Google products literally every day and everything works just fine. I've tried them out in Chrome/Edge/whatever and they all work exactly the same.

The only thing that doesn't work 100% is search on Firefox on Android, but there's no reason for it and changing the user agent fixes all the problems (Google intentionally makes it bad to try and drive you to Chrome).

> Firefox on the Desktop is really good

I strongly disagree with this statement. My opinion is that it's the opposite.

I always get sad when I think about modern Firefox. I loved Firefox dearly before the transition, and I tried really hard to love it after the transition, too. But it failed me and lost much of what I loved about it. Then every subsequent release was just a little worse, excising more of what made Firefox great.

Eventually, I just had to give up on it.

And that is the price they pay for trying to be Chrome clone UI wise and not listening to to the "power users". I hate to use the words "power user" but it is the small group of very active and enthusiastic users that you need to give the appears to every one else that they are missing out on something cool.

I still use Firefox because it works reasonably for my usage but I stopped promoting it to other people around me. For the average user Chrome is good, very good even. And Firefox lost its uniqueness and UI differences that made it stand out. And if nobody talks anymore about your product then you are done.

We shouldn’t just look at power users. Google and Microsoft, for example, constantly advertise to use their browser when you visit their properties. I imagine this has an impact.

Google, yes. But Microsoft? I haven't noticed, and I'm on Office 365 all day (my client uses that) while running Firefox / Linux.

Microsoft does keep asking me to use Edge on my Windows gaming machine, although it's the only browser I have installed...

But I guess the point is... where is Mozilla going to ask people to use Firefox?

But Microsoft? I haven't noticed > Try installing firefox (or even chrome) on a clean install of an updated windows 10.

But that's a Windows thing, as opposed to "on the web", right? And as I've said, Windows bugs me about edge even though I've never installed anything else — the "use the recommended edge something or other".

Whereas Google bugs me on all my machines (Mac / Linux / Windows, all without Chrome).

My point was that using Firefox on Linux, I've never seen anything related to edge on MS sites (but I only use Office 365, Azure and, sometimes, the docs site).

Yes, I guess they mean Edge since the new Microsoft Edge uses chromium as their base browser. MS must have gotten tired of paying a huge team of devs to constantly fix and implement new web stuff in EdgeHTML/Chakra.

It's actually the new, Chromium-based Edge. I've actually updated it when it asked, and the current Windows install came with it (installed it fresh around November 2020). But with every Windows 10 version change, it asks me to use the "recommended browser settings", whatever those are.

This is a computer on which my most used browser is the Steam thing. I really don't care either way what it is, so I don't bother installing a specific one.

But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word of mouth; whether it’s power users recommending it or people having it on their work computers (because their IT mandates it) and wanting the same great browser at home.

The problem is that Firefox is basically a Chrome clone at this point, all the way down to the privacy-invading features such as telemetry, so using it nowadays is more down to ideology than actual technical merit.

How could Mozilla ever compete in technical merit nowadays?

Google is siphoning nearly all talent by paying them insanely huge amounts of money. Web is part of Google's core business and they will pour every little penny into it if it means they can be one step ahead and force others to follow them. How can Mozilla, a non-profit, compete with that? Even freaking Microsoft gave up!

I'm insanely impressed with Mozilla that they can still keep up that well.

Be useful to end users. Differentiate on that.

Useful to people can be understood and is a selling point. What is technical merit? Some CS insider form of bragging rights?

> Be useful to end users. Differentiate on that.

What does it mean today? Most people want a browser that is invisible. They use sites, not browser.

That companies like Vivaldi and Brave can build successful for-profit businesses on top of a browser seems to indicate that it's a bit more complex than that.

It's like the old quote about Microsoft Word, which was something along the lines of: "it's true that Word is bloated and that most people only use 10%, but everyone uses a different 10%".

Brave and Vivaldi outsourced the browser engine of the browser part to Google, though. That's the most expensive and work intensive part.

They are also not part of any standardisation committee, as far as I know.

Sure, but I don't see how this relates here? My point was that people do want a browser that works well for them, and that the previous comment that "people want a browser that is invisible. They use sites, not browser." doesn't really fit with Brave and Vivaldi's success (also: Opera, and probably a few other browsers).

Vivaldi isn't profitable, as far as I know. Brave possibly is. But Brave growing points to proper privacy being a workable selling point. To the end user the browser itself is basically stock Chromium + shields (some people get a BAT boner). But they don't do basically any UX side innovation per se, the way Microsoft or Vivaldi try do.

Security and privacy. I mean real privacy, not Firefox’s current illusion of privacy.

Advertising is a common vector for malware, telemetry can inadvertently expose PII or corporate intel and so can their bullshit features such as Pocket that are foisted upon unsuspecting users.

Make a browser that addresses these problems out of the box. The enterprise will be all over it and will be paying actual money for it so they no longer have to beg Google every year.

At the moment Firefox is probably the most user-hostile piece of open-source software that I’m using. After installing it I have to disconnect from the network (as it loads Google Analytics-infested pages on first run and has telemetry enabled out of the box) and spend 10 minutes configuring it (including using about:config to disable Pocket) to defang it.

If Firefox becomes truly private out of the box, most of their funding goes away.

But their funding will go away over time anyway as their marketshare plummets to zero. Furthermore, competitors such as Brave have successfully built businesses based on privacy & out-of-the-box ad blocking.

It's delusional to think that building a browser that will appeal to a tiny tiny niche of users will win by word of mouth over billions of dollars in marketing.

And let's go with your theory and assume enterprise will be all over this. Do you remember nothing of the IE6 era? Enterprise is the worst customer to have as a browser.

It sounds like you're just pitching for a browser you wish people would build for you. I mean, just use the Tor browser, it fits your description just fine.

> Do you remember nothing of the IE6 era? Enterprise is the worst customer to have as a browser.

Can you elaborate?

> It sounds like you're just pitching for a browser you wish people would build for you. I mean, just use the Tor browser, it fits your description just fine.

I've already built said browser - Firefox can be configured this way. I'm just offering options & opinions on how they could turn the ship around, because clearly appealing to the mainstream by copying Chrome doesn't work, so maybe appealing to the power-user crowd (which was the reason Firefox and Mozilla became popular) would fare better, especially when it just requires minor config changes and bundling uBlock Origin out of the box.

UX. Mozilla is being outpaced by all competitors here, especially on mobile.

I generally am not a fan of mobile browsers, but for me Firefox is the only passable mobile browser because it supports uBlock Origin.

I agree with you, since I use it for the same reasons. But it will be easier for the general user to switch if it has a superior UX. Clearly ad-blocking is not enough for everyone else.

Brave and Vivaldi have built-in adblockers.

Get back the extension API (not the exact same but a modern equivalent).

Keep bugging competition authorities to punish Google harshly over the abusive behavior we've seen lately.

I'm using Firefox for now but I admit the moment someone forks it and have a good security foundation I'll start using it and donating to it.

I'm fed up with Mozilla thinking everything else they donis more important than their main income source and main contribution to Internet.

(Yes, I keep posting like this against both Mozilla and Google in the hope that they will one day improve or more realistically to increase the chance that someone else steps up. As WhatsApp proved before they were gutted by Facebook there is a large market that wants privacy and is willing to accept smaller problems and also pay for it.)

> Get back the extension API (not the exact same but a modern equivalent).

Another extension API will solve absolutely nothing.

just extend (heh) the current extension API with the most important missing ones like e.g. a hideBuiltinTabBar().

It is actually slightly more complicated since some stuff depends on the main tab bar being visible (or so they say, my Firefox works nicely even if I disable the main tab bar using a CSS hack.)

A fully functional and useful one would go a long way to getting me to give Firefox another chance, because it would make it possible to fix the things about Firefox that drove me away.

What is chrome technically better at in a way that’s impactful to end users?

The idea that the best thing wins just because it’s the best and people will share that is flawed. It basically negates marketing and influence which is what Google’s money making model is based around. And they have been successful at that.

Speed?

Lack of in-browser ads? (Google websites have ads but as far as I’m aware Chrome itself doesn’t have any, unlike Firefox which has sponsored sites and “snippets” on the new tab page - enabled by default obviously).

Lack of constant nagging? Firefox in its default configuration has always something to nag you about. Whether it’s Pocket, Firefox Sync or that it’s just updated and there are potentially new features.

To be fair the push to connect a Google account and use Google services in Chrome is the ad, they don't need more.

But I definitely agree about the Firefox nags, I suppose it can be off-putting to new users and project a low-quality adware image (usually synonymous with more privacy violations, which is ironic).

Google is the dominant ad provider on the websites themselves. Embedding yet more ads (beyond their sign-in push) may be counterproductive. And they don't provide a simple way to turn those off, unlike Mozilla's sponsored sites.

Chrome is fast, the UI is nice, it doesn't nag you, it doesn't break the UI all the time, etc

Chrome doesn't have much UI to speak of, despite the irony in its name. Firefox has a much older lineage and a symbiotic relationship with add-ons. Before Quantum add-ons could radically rearrange its UI.

In my experience, Firefox UI changes since then have been largely cosmetic and rearranging of settings.

They have tab groups. Tab groups are huge, and their implementation on mobile is excellent.

>telemetry

Maybe they're more likely to cater to users who don't turn off the method they use to decide what to cater to.

They don’t need in-browser telemetry to see that uBlock Origin is one of the most downloaded add-ons, and it’s yet to be built-in to the browser despite its license allowing it.

They also don’t need telemetry to read threads like this one and there’s been plenty of those on HN (and I’m sure elsewhere) and the general consensus is always that Mozilla is letting power users down in favour of trying to copy Chrome.

Given these facts, I don’t think telemetry or lack thereof is the problem.

Building in such a powerful ad blocker could negatively impact how sites and services are funded.

"Better security practices could negatively impact how malware authors and cybercrime are funded."

So advertisements are malware and cybercrime?

If the presence of bad actors poisons the well then I don't see a stronger case for non-Firefox browsers.

Advertisements are absolutely malware, they’re unwanted software that acts against the user’s wishes by wasting their time and computing resources, and sometimes is a vector for more malware or scams.

Reading threads is a poor metric. People are bad at reporting their usage and only the most vocal people post on tech fora.

People are better at reporting their usage than devs are at reading telemetry.

>But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word of mouth

You reach one person every 5 days with your word of mouth. Google has a billion searches all advertising "a better browser" right in your face if you dare use anything else but Chrome.

>people having it on their work computers (because their IT mandates it) and wanting the same great browser at home.

When have you ever said "damn, IT actually installed great software, I sure want the same at home"? In real life, IT installs Internet Explorer 6 because that one ISO standard they paid a lot for to have mandates using it for their super special test website, and have an 11 year old pirated version of Acrobat Reader.

> But if Firefox was genuinely better it could win via word of mouth; whether it’s power users recommending it or people having it on their work computers (because their IT mandates it) and wanting the same great browser at home.

That's how it used to be.

These days it is still better at what I need it for (learning, research), but it isn't orders of magnitude anymore and certain people tending bugzilla for Mozilla are borderline hostile, see for example here https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1332447#c171

true. their api is now a dumbed down version of chrome.

I still remember the days of vimperator and treetabs in xul.

firefox did this to themselves. they dont deserve support.

Tree Style Tabs exists: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...

Vimperator replacements exist: https://github.com/tridactyl/tridactyl

Additionally, XUL was a steaming pile of shit, and there was no saving it. Multithreading was only possible by ripping out XUL.

> Additionally, XUL was a steaming pile of shit, and there was no saving it. Multithreading was only possible by ripping out XUL.

Being hostile to people who ask nicely about getting some necessary features into the new API however, that is optional.

Same goes for extracting all the money from Firefox and sacking important dev teams while continuing less important charity work.

I use and forked SurfingKeys on Chrome https://github.com/hbt/Surfingkeys

Calling tridactyl a replacement for vimperator ignores all the features and extensive customization available through the old Firefox API. I've used vimperator and pentadactyl and tridactyl doesn't even come close (because of the awful API limitations).

My point is: Firefox API is now a cheap version of Chrome API. Why would you develop extensions for Firefox instead of Chrome? As a power user, it makes no sense to support Firefox. It offers less than chrome.

They had firebug back when Chrome dev tools was crap, an amazing API for extensions and customization; they threw it all away for this mediocre crap chasing average users and are now playing the privacy / save the web card and guilt tripping people for not choosing them.

They can offer better APIs, they are not entitled to power users.

Power users write extensions, write tools for web developers, developers are the most importance resource. Who even bothers to test on Firefox now? For what, 7% market share?

All that money and support; just all gone. Complete waste.

Anyway, I sunk a lot of time into Firefox over the years and it was my browser of choice for years; I'm definitely still bitter about it. They literally abandoned power users. Fuck them.

> Additionally, XUL was a steaming pile of shit, and there was no saving it. Multithreading was only possible by ripping out XUL.

Nah, multi threading has always been there (because it's doing networking and IO at least) and multi process support landed shortly before Quantum release.

> Multithreading was only possible by ripping out XUL.

Firefox still uses XUL, it's just not an exposed API

Yeah, I've got zero interest in using their software after they broke TreeStyleTabs, what replaced it was crap.

I'm quite happy with Vivaldi, which, while based on Chrome, at least seems to understand what users need.

the irony is that just when I voluntarily stop using chrome to help mozilla, they then get into the fads which really dont align with my usage :D

Oh come on. "Power users" are both negligible in market share _and_ do not contribute to spreading the software around. Nobody in your family is going to use Firefox because you tell them "Look, I can customise my UI to arrange my windows in the form of a poop emoji when my custom sideloaded extension detects I'm on a Google owned website". "Power users" however are very good at yelling loudly when their never-used-by-anyone-except-them feature is removed, because they're such power users they opt out of usage tracking and never contribute to anything except maybe a bug report sometimes.

Fun fact: Under current conditions (200M users) it looks like Google is paying $2-2.25 per active user annually to be the default search engine in Firefox.

"Mozilla renewed its search deal with Google in 2020 for three years. The organization will receive an estimate of $400 to $450 million per year from the deal alone. "

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/12/10/mozillas-revenue-jumped-to...

That is a very good deal for google. As ads on the search results are looking more and more like normal results any user without adblocking will click multiple times on these ads in a year. And the cpc prices depending on the topic are really high.

It's also insurance against antitrust intervention.

I was thinking the same. It's a bargain and now I understand why Google pays them so much.

Given how they make a minimum $450M a year in revenue, how on Earth is Mozilla not swimming in cash?! How high can their expenses be?

Mozilla pays millions of dollars per year to their CEO, despite the decrease in usage and user base. Could be a symptom of a larger problem in the organization.

Mozilla also spends its cash on various other bullshit that nobody cares about.

Feels like a lifetime ago they were humble-bragging about their Paris office with gold leaf ceilings!

In general, I don't donate to non-profits where anyone earns more than I do.

I've worked for nonprofits for most of my career, and have seen the insides of several. The most effective ones tend to have a small team on shoestring salaries and really need money. The least effective ones have a CEO making $5M and an executive team above $400k.

I've seen a lot of people argue that good people cost money, but they don't. I know $5M CEOs, $1M CEOs and $100k CEOs. The $100k CEO was by far the most effective.

That said, the Mozilla 990 doesn't look crazy. Many big nonprofits are bad. It's not an organization I'd donate to myself, but it's not one I'd discourage others from donating to either. CEO makes $3M, which isn't really reasonable, but the next-highest salary is $286k. That said, the whole for-profit Mozilla Corporation bit sketches me out. It feels like it might be a way to dodge IRS reporting regulations. I'd want to do due diligence before donating to a non-profit that has a structure like that (it may be innocuous), but I don't have time for due diligence when there are transparent nonprofits too.

I use Firefox but I don’t donate anymore which is awful but I want to donate to Firefox not Mozilla.

If anyone knows a way to only support Firefox and not Mozilla at large do let me know!

One way to help Firefox would be to spend some time on Firefox bug reports or patches.

But aren't Firefox bug reports known mainly for being ignored (or if not ignored then viciously denied)?

They wouldn't be ignored if more people such as GP, you, me etc put work into fixing them.

They have paid products like Pocket, VPN etc. Those are sold by the for-profit corp that develops Firefox, not the non-profit foundation that owns the corp.

Fire the CEO, start paying open source developers for quality pull requests. Maybe in another dimension...

Reminds me of this comment :

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22058629

There is a year of lag, but you can read Mozilla's financial statements and Form 990. The latest ones are linked at https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/foundation/annualreport/2019/

How many developers do you think a browser engine needs? How much do they cost?

But also, the answer to your question is at https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-fdn-201... and https://assets.mozilla.net/annualreport/2019/mozilla-2019-fo... (the 2020 numbers are not up yet because the audit starts when the tax return is filed and lasts for several months, so isn't completed yet).

Just for comparison, last I checked Chrome's marketing budget was estimated to be in the ballpark of Mozilla's total budget.

Disclaimer: used to work for Mozilla.

> How many developers do you think a browser engine needs? How much do they cost?

Browser: ~20

Web rendering engine: ~100

Worldwide average senior C/C++ developer salary: $100k/year

So $12M/year should do it. Let's say $20M to allow for management and overhead.

Disclaimer: founder of a browser company

* They support many platforms (windows, Linux,macOS, android, iOS).

* There are server side components (bookmark sync for instance)

* They need infrastructure to run the tests, do the builds, handle the bug reports, etc...

I don't know where you got your 20% overhead, but from what I heard it's wayyyy off.

> how on Earth is Mozilla not swimming in cash?! How high can their expenses be?

Mozilla launches a new idiot side project like once a month. As a Firefox user, it's deeply frustrating to watch bug tickets go unfilled while a multimillion-dollar rebranding rolls out.

And yet this gigantic amount of money hasn't resulted in a marked increase of users/functionality etc.

It's almost like the Mozilla execs get paid the big bucks no matter how badly they do their jobs. Go figure.

Come 2023, pray that Google doesn't alter the deal further, with the remaining FF user base in the low single-digit figures. It's a matter of when, not if, Mozilla goes down given this trajectory. Or, Mozilla get's actually paid for working with Google on "web standards" and producing a browser as a fig leaf for the monopoly the WWW has become and counter measure against antitrust (with US antitrust a lame duck anyway), in a Mafia-esque way. It's not like we haven't been telling this all the time, with the HN crowd however cheering Mozilla's erratic ventures into Rust, WASM, and whatnot.

(For the record: I'm using FF and actually prefer it over Chrome, especially their DevTools for CSS which I find pretty meh on Chrome, and of course for ad blocking).

If Firefox goes down, Google has a problem because of browser engine monopoly an Windows.

Chromium - chrome, edge, brave, V8, V8 isolates, node.js, electron, etc.

Firefox - Firefox, Torbrowser, spidermonkey.

Chromium project became the cpython of JavaScript and web browsers, because you could package it's components and embed them in your own applications. Firefox does not have competitive equivalents or better features. Therefore it loses users.

This was a big topic years ago when FF started removing XUL and any ability to extend the browser. You need a reason for people to use your tech, not just your product.

> Chromium project became the cpython of JavaScript and web browsers, because you could package it's components and embed them in your own applications. Firefox does not have competitive equivalents or better features. Therefore it loses users.

XULRunner was Electron before it was cool. Though they werent prevalent there was a small but promising variety of applications based on XULRunner [0]

Then of course Mozilla administration axed it in their infinite wisdom.

[0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_that_uses_...

The big issue I see with Firefox is that they lost a lot of power user's when the removed XUL extensions and the underlying engine doesn't have good third party wrappers like QtWebEngine (that I know of) so creating reskined browser's is pain.

I don't pick a browser for the Firefox or Chromium engine (unless a site needs it), I pick a browser based on the UI and configuration management. So I use Qutebrowser that is keyboard based and a declarative configuration. It happens to use QtWebEngine but that is not why I picked that browser.

Since I don't use Firefox... I don't really recommend it to anyone. Firefox's early success was driven by educated user's telling other people to drop IE for the better product. It also means a lot fewer developer's are using the Firefox engine when developing websites... especially the developer's that would put in the effort to submit bug reports & patches.

(At least last I checked, recreating a Qutebrowser like experience in Firefox was at best just really annoying and would still lack features).

The end of XUL was necessary to make Firefox faster. Doenload an old XUL Firefox version and surf the web. If you don't notice a difference in page load speed, startup time, and overall responsiveness, you might have a very, very fast computer, which most people around the world don't have.

The 3 or 4 thousand power users that needed native interop were (and still are) of no interest compared to the then bad performance of Firefox in relation to Chrome. Even HN was full of people who complained about Firefox' performance. Now it's full of people who recommend to give Firefox another shot because it's fast again.

Firefox is also currently the only browser where uBlock Origin can use all of its features, Chrome is intentionally limiting APIs. Are people using Firefox because of it? No. So XUL add-ons would not have helped Firefox.

If you still want XUL, there are many forks out there that claim to support it.

My number one reason to use Firefox is uBlock Origin. It does an exceptional job and web is way more annoying without it.

uBlock Origin is available for Chrome and Chrome-based browsers.

but only as long as google leaves api "blocks" open for it. They are slowly removing those

No, there is only a subset of features available for Chrome. You don't get quite few important privacy features.

https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock/wiki/uBlock-Origin-works-b...

Anyone who’s been around /r/firefox this last year or so knows that Mozilla systematically ignores users feedback.

Even someone like me that uses Firefox since it’s inception just gave up. I feel like Mozilla is alienating its userbase to cater for new users. It’s a failing strategy as it will never be able to compete with the hand that feeds (google).

My hope is that Mozilla fully dies and Firefox is able to continue as a community project like arch or Debian. It will never be popular but the community will have some control.

Each to their own. I'm a happy Firefox user and will continue to be on all my devices (including my phone which I'm writing this now with)

Me too. Firefox on both my Windows and GNU/Linux laptops. Firefox Focus in my phone - I use a phone browser only for reading and Focus works perfectly for that use case.

switched full time and i'm a hppay camper myself. haven't used firefox since chrome 2 came out.

Same. The only device I don't use it on is the Chromebook - ChromeOS doesn't seem to be Firefox' target market.

If only. Google's monopoly will make Firefox harder and harder to use.

I have been trying to switch to Firefox since long but have never been able to completely switch. There have always been some problems that send me away.

On my phone (Android), Firefox is quite good except a few UX issues (that I don't mind too much) but the sync with my desktop has NEVER worked.

On the desktop, FF has always been slow - in booting, loading pages. The same with Edge and Chrome just work.

If I could get it to sync, and if the desktop version worked, I would never go back to Chromium.

I can imagine how frustrating it would feel as a Firefox dev reading reports like this and wondering wth is going wrong. Because I'm "just a user" and I've never seen FF being slow to start or loading pages.
Same with sync, I recently install Firefox on a new laptop. Clicked the sync button, logged in with my account and done. In 2-3 minutes all history and addons sync'd \o/ UX wise I really love that Firefox Android has the address bar on the bottom :D

Except some Google stuff like the GCP console.

EDIT: formatting

I can feel that too. But I have tried to sync so many times, tried reinstalling, used a different account but it never worked.

Same. I use it hours a day. I don't get it. There is something broken or misconfigured on these users machines, at least from FF's position. I use it on Linux, windows, mac, and mobile with no issues except when I've enabled so much adblock stuff that I have to start backing it off for that website :) (only if I really, really, really need the site)

I am too, but I have telemetry disabled since their stunt with the Mr Robot extension they installed remotely for everyone [1]. I also run uBlock on both desktop and mobile. I am one of the 50M users counted as lost?

[1]: https://www.cnet.com/tech/services-and-software/mozilla-back...

>Mr Robot extension they installed remotely for everyone

Absolute bullshit. The Looking Glass extensions was installed through their SHIELD experiments program, only for people who had enabled it, and to a very small proportion of those, too. Additionally, it did not capture any data, as creepy as it was.

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/products/firefox/retrospective-l...

It is a ridiculous breach of trust to abuse an engineering test platform to push advertising software directly onto a users computer without consent.

I got it and I absolutely never willingly signed up for it and I am (and was at that time too) a very competent user.

It's certainly enough to turn off those optional settings, don't you think? But fair enough, I didn't phrase this right.

I'm wondering how they count users, and whether installations with telemetry disabled are counted at all.

Happily returned to firefox a couple years ago when they jumped ahead in speed and have been happy to stick around. I experience absolutely no bugs nor compatibility problems on desktop and mobile is A-OK as well.

In other news:

https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

https://www.ghacks.net/2021/03/14/mozilla-plans-to-remove-th...

https://www.ghacks.net/2020/04/08/how-to-restore-the-old-fir...

These right there, and all the other issues in the same vein are the probably the reason.

Sure, make a simplified browser interface by default. But don't forget to give power users an escape hatch to get more control over the browser, and make it do what they want. They are the ones that recommend the browser to other users.

Here's what one of Firefox's Android developers thought of users after they raised concerns over the abolition of extensions and the rushed, buggy and inferior release:

https://web.archive.org/web/20200731235001/https://twitter.c...

Meanwhile Mozilla's CEO continues to fleece increasing millions of dollars while being responsible for a massive collapse in market share (she increased her pay 400%, while destroying the company).

https://news.slashdot.org/story/20/09/23/1528219/firefox-usa...

That about sums up why I switched from Firefox to brave.

Firefox: Lets remove tab groups, no one uses it

Chrome: Lets add tab groups, seems like a good idea

Firefox: why are users leaving?..

The constant addons breakage and UI changes, feature removal. I could bare the speed difference, but these inconsistencies are just too much

Still Firefox continues to be the best browser in theory

Let's be honest - since the removal of XUL addons, all my add-ons have been working just fine. Let's stop repeating this ... thing - it's long lost its relevance and nowadays it's just a falsehood.

Until version 89 reaches ESR I will continue to use Waterfox classic with XUL addons archive. Not only is faster but I have more addons

All your addons are not everyone's addons. Some people have different, or more, or more specific addons

There are addons that disappeared and are not possible to do today. And maybe you can do something similar, even if clunkier or slower. But a lot of developers have moved anyway, which created holes in the ecosystem

And just having to go and find replacements was difficult since it took a lot of time for addons to reach parity. And people have a day job to get on with

TreeStyleTab still breaks today, sometimes the side bar disappears or is empty

I had an addon that would highlight all bookmark link in all pages, including google results, and on mouse over would show the tags and description. Can you find a similar now?

In what way is it a falsehood? There is an entire class of addons that are simply impossible to create under the new paradigm. These used to work, now that don't. Firefox broke them intentionally.

Do you have an example? I didn't have anything break long term, so didn't get affected (luckily)

the only thing that really broke for me was my favorite downloader. Everthing else had an add on for the new non-XUL api fairly quickly. I think some people just hold a grudge. I think programmers are well known for that.

Yup. Firefox experience:

Like compact mode: Scheduled for deprecation.

Find Chromium tab groups and get addicted: Oh, FF used to have tab groups and killed them.

Search keyword sync via bookmarks: Scheduled to be deprecated, not functional on mobile.

PWAs: Development aborted.

Meanwhile Vivaldi's like "we're adding a third interface style for tab stacks" and Brave's building truly standalone revenue sources to be able to sell tinfoil.

Which is not even getting into the "we need more than deplatforming" spiel - do they hear themselves?

I still use Firefox - primarily for the container extension which is exactly the awesome type of privacy and internet control we need. I simply don't want google that into my ecosystem. When they have to be there, I want them in a penalty box.

Firefox lost their way technically, and their focus on users when Brenden Eich was forced out. Mozilla's focus seems to be far more on the social to the detriment of their technical efforts.

Their fragmentation trying to chase other goals then browser has really cost them.

Want mozilla to take a stand on a policy issue? Great. Responsive. Respond to user requests? Not so much.

To be clear, I defend anyone's right to have a position and make the world a better place. But please improve the product that you are actually working on. The number of users you claim to speak for is shrinking.

I switched from Firefox to Brave for two reasons:

1. Brave is building new tech like IPFS, BAT, and Brave Search that are really compelling reasons to use it. Firefox's main selling point is that it simply exists as an alternative to Chrome. Firefox feels like it's digging its heels in to resist Google, while Brave feels like it's going on the offensive.

2. I disagree with Firefox's politics. They cancelled their CEO because he donated to the Wrong Side(TM). They want more deplatforming, they want more fact checks [1]. That is radical compared to mainstream thought in America just a few years ago. This new direction the left is taking is not good for the Internet, IMO. After January 8, I took a hint and left Firefox for Brave.

[1] https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

It’s close to losing me too. I stuck with it in a major part to prevent a monoculture, but It’s much slower than Chrome, causes major memory issues on my machine (M1 Mac) and with Mozilla on a kamikaze mission I don’t think it’s going to get better any time soon.

Literally the only thing keeping me there are Tree Style Tabs/Sidebery. Give me a Chrome based browser with that and I’ll switch (Edge’s vertical tabs don’t really count, it’s still not a tree).

I see many reasons for Firefox’s demise, but TL;DR I’m just done.

Orion (WebKit based) has native tree style tabs, plus runs Chrome/Firefox extensions. Currently in beta (disclaimer: founder)

Thanks for the hint, I signed up!

Why doesn't it have a status bar? All the software I use has a status bar, but for years it has become fashionable not to have one in browsers.

It does have a status bar. Or we are talking about different things?

They probably mean a bar at the bottom that shows what's going on. All browsers used to have it. Then it dropped to just showing which URL was currently loading. I don't think they even show that now. Most of what it had is accessible in greater detail with developer tools, but it was nice to have a little summary down there.

Status bar nowadays usually refers to the information usually showing the URL you are hovering.

Do you have any references to the old-school status bars and what they used to contain?

It depended on the browser, but I remember IE6 showed how long a page took to load, zone/where it came from (local, internet, "Trusted Sites," etc). All I can find when Googling are old posts on how to fix it when some plugin broke it. I think Firefox's version used to be something you could add, remove, and edit with Firefox's toolbar customizer thing.

Thanks for taking time to research it. It also had page zoom and other useful options. It seems as if the need for more viewing surface killed the status bar.

> Status bar nowadays usually refers to the information usually showing the URL you are hovering.

Oh yeah? Which particular Gods Of Modern Language decreed this, and who elected them to that position?

Meanwhile: Brave Passes 25 Million Monthly Active Users

https://brave.com/25m-mau/

This seems relevant as it was started by the former co-founder of Mozilla and creator of JavaScript. Maybe Brendan Eich is good at finding out what people want in a browser.

now if it just had multi-account containers.

Still running the monoculture problem....

I can assure you that after 20 years using it, I still don't want JavaScript in my browsers.

That boat sailed a long time ago.

At the rate they “improve” the UI it’d be a miracle if even most staunch users won’t jump the ship.

That clown act they pulled in the recent release with tabs and decimated context menus was the last drop that forced me, the loyal user of 15+ years, to disable Firefox updates on all machines under my control. FFS, do they put any thought into these pointless disruptive changes that do nothing else but mess up existing users experience?

They should stop making changes in a hope of attracting new users and give a long and hard thought to how to retain what they already got. Because they will end up with neither.

Hmm, I really love the recent UI redesign. I've also been using Firefox for at least 15 years and every time they change it, it's been enjoyable for me.

The recent changes to the address bar and the terrible new "Photon" UI are really annoying. Don't annoy your loyal users.

Its funny that you mention the not really annoying shit and forget about the push for pocket, the constant push for some of their free services like firefox sync, send, vpn, etc that, the reappearing ebay bookmark i deleted like 12 times by now, the removal of live bookmarks, etc... and those are just the things they can control.

> firefox sync, [...] the reappearing ebay bookmark i deleted like 12 times by now

Maybe you need to delete it, just the once, from whatever device it keeps getting synced from?

They've been chasing Google's tail for a while now. They keep making decisions that make little sense. Given the drop in user count I'd say those decisions aren't even paying off. Every time I update FF, I actively dread to see what they ruined this time.

Sadly, creating a new browser is impossible these days, unless you're sitting on a very considerably sized pile of cash. There's over a thousand W3C specs, and you'll need to implement most of them in order to have a functional browser.

It's maddening that the steward of the best browser codebase is doing such a shitty job. They fired a whole bunch of people last year, even though they seem to sitting on plenty of cash, they don't seem to give a crap about what their users actually want. But, sadly, there is no alternative, and there won't be.

I'm sort of used to it by now, but I also don't see it as a real reason to stop using Firefox. Chrome also changes. So how big of a factor would UI changes be in this user loss? I'm suspecting there are more trivial and indirect causes too, such as people changing machines: Firefox isn't pre-installed, and then they just pick whatever that also works.

Possibly quite big. It basically drives down the cost of switching. If someone has to learn a new interface anyway, why not switch to the best supported browser at the same time?

And if you add up enough annoyances that don't matter, eventually it becomes something. Mozilla still hasn't reclaimed the lofty peak when something like ChatZilla was feasible. A minor annoyance. One among many.

Firefox is basically in head-to-head competition with Chrome and has a very similar vision of what a web browser should be - just with less dev hours doing maintenance. That plus this user data suggests there isn't any reason to use Firefox.

The best example of failing to understand your users was releasing all these updates on Firefox for Android and actually thinking it was a good idea to regress and disable access to 'about:config'.

Being able to have that level of control and configurability is exactly why I and many users put up with all the other downsides of Firefox.

Who ever is in charge of Mozilla the corporation has lost their way. They should trim everything back to having Mozilla the foundation only.

I'm ashamed to admit that I'm an avid Facebook user, it helps me keep in touch with friends and family living abroad, despite it's obvious negatives quitting it would mean losing out. I'm saying this because to me one of the benchmarks of a browser is how well it runs Facebook's awfully-optimized front-end code.

In that regard Safari used to be a disaster and now it works alright but Firefox seems to be consistently worse. It's a shame because FF is very important to the future of the internet, in my opinion, and on macOS their performance is not that great. My backup browser for this sole reason is Brave. I wish that wasn't the case because the browser is stuffed with... things.. that I don't need or want in it so I always have to go and hunt down how to turn all of them off when I install it on a new machine.

To me a browser needs a UI that's small, unobtrusive but clean, no BS on the "new tab" page (I don't need random wallpapers loaded from who knows where or news) - just a list of bookmarks, speed and support for the few extensions I use (adguard, sponsorblock, bitwarden).

Please fix FF, I wanna use it as my main browser!

I see no evidence of poor performance on macOS. Have you used a recent Firefox? Could you be blaming the browser for the behavior of a particular extension or web site?

what specifically is happening? I use Facebook a lot in a "container" in firefox without any issues. The only one I have noticed is when I scroll way way way way down the feed it kind of starts chugging in a way that chrome doesn't. That's the only fail that I've seen.

Exactly

I use Firefox since it was Phoenix and I will keep using and recommending it. Chrome was great when it came out, now is Google's trojan horse that everyone is happily embracing. It's one of the clearest Embrace, Extend, Extinguish strategies ever pulled off.

I'd say ~30M, rather than 50M.

They explicitly call out the summer holidays effect above the first graph: "Generally, MAU fluctuates over the course of a year, dropping in the summer months and during holidays." So comparing the peak of Jan 2019 to the low of Jul 2021 isn't giving a good idea of the total loss.

  Jan 28 2019: 253.9M
  Jan 27 2020: 229.5M
  Feb 01 2021: 219.7M

  Jul 22 2019: 224.2M
  Jul 20 2020: 214.1M
  Jul 19 2021: 200.4M

Still, definitely not good; we've seen what happens when web developers believe only a single browser (engine) matters, and we _need_ an organization like Mozilla, which puts user interests above commercial interests, to have a seat at the table.

> They explicitly call out the summer [and winter] holidays effect above the first graph

Given that this is a measure of "Desktop clients active in the past 28 days", that means that there are people tech-savy enough to be regular users of Firefox on a desktop – but who go an entire month without using Firefox because it's Christmas. And enough of those people to show up on this graph.

That blows my mind a bit. I don't doubt it, but wow.

Remember FF has been bundled in installers and OEMs have preinstalled it. Out of 200,000,000 users there are probably more users that simply aren't tech-savvy enough to have changed to a different browser than are still on it because they are tech-savvy.

With Google's relentless Chrome dickbars for anyone daring to use one of their services without it, I don't see how any other browser stands a chance.

They even push Chrome when you dare to use their services with another Chrome based browser that isn't theirs like Edge Chrome.

My personal favorite, it complains when it can't update itself on my Debian workstation and tries to get me to re-install it from the web, on every launch. Yes, I know google, it is intentional. That is why I installed it from the repos.

I am a Firefox user on all my devices and will be so until the Mozilla Foundation stands, but my gut feeling tells me that Firefox won't bounce back from its downfall.

I still wish for it to become the browser with most users.

Here comes another sad ex-FF-user.

I've been using Firefox since early days and the latest UI bumbling forced me to look elsewhere.

Surely I tried alternatives over the years but my main browser has always stayed FF. Now, times has come to actually change the main browser, which turned out to be Edge. UI is slick and functional out of the box.

I moved back to FF after Quantum but haven't been happy with the latest round of UI changes (which also seems to have turned the buttery performance of quantum into a stuttery mess on my machine)

Guess firing those people that brought you those improvement really paid up for Mozilla execs.

Would you recommend they simply stop paying their engineers instead?

No. Stop paying the execs. They obviously are steering the ship into the rocks.

Okay you've paid for ten additional engineers. What would you like to do with the remaining 240[1]?

[1] https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2020/08/firef...

Let's say they fire all existing execs. Poach some talented ones from other tech companies who are capable of righting the ship. How much do you suggest to pay them? If less than what they currently make, how many do you think will be willing to jump?

Eich was competent and happy being paid peanuts. Maybe they shouldn't have burnt that bridge ;-)

Mozilla(Firefox's parent) has supported pro-social justice and progressive causes that ticked off a lot of users. There were a lot of discussions about it in 4chan from 2017-2019. Many people vowed to never use Firefox ever again and instead switched to alternatives like Waterfox and PaleMoon.

Mozilla is far better at delivering social positions then good software.

Somehow I doubt many of the tens of millions of people who switched have any idea about this minor tech feud. Blaming this for Firefox's fall would be just as silly as me assuming the tens of millions of people who use Brave know what kind of person is CEO and support his views. Most people don't look that deep into the tools they use.

4chan and it's black sheep twin 8chan aren't really very important in the grand scheme of browser wars I would warrant.

I also doubt that it's a large segment of users but count me as one among the millions who dumped Firefox in 2020. I knew it was going downhill when they started purging words from the project. When your inclusion efforts start alienating moderate users it might be time to rethink them.

* Removing "meritocracy" from the governance docs - https://blog.mozilla.org/careers/words-matter-moving-beyond-...

* Changing "master password" to "primary password" - https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/primary-password-replac...

* Removing "crazy" from the codebase - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675987

* Removing words deemed as reference to mental illness - https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1675986

The difference in the project from 15 years ago is stark.

The Mozilla mission 2005:

"Established in July, 2003, with start-up support from America Online's Netscape division, the Mozilla Foundation exists to provide organizational, legal, and financial support for the Mozilla open-source software project."

The Mozilla mission 2021:

"Our mission is to ensure the Internet is a global public resource, open and accessible to all. An Internet that truly puts people first, where individuals can shape their own experience and are empowered, safe and independent."

Where they once were just supporting a software project they're now a political movement. They spout "equity", "justice", and "advocacy" all over mozilla.org. No thanks, I just want a decent software.

FF has not done anything to push me away yet. I am open to change and not always happy with their decisions, but their product remains usable and favorable to me.

Former Firefix advocate, after the plugins breakage and senseless ui changes I had to check out.

Kiwi on mobile from an HN recommendation

Same. I was 100% FF until they broke my AD blocker on iOS. The internet is unusable without it, so I switched to Brave.

I do align philosophically with OSS, and community organization, though, so I may switch back at some point.

I do think Mozilla’s executive team needs a real shakeup, though.

Edit: haven’t heard of Kiwi. Looks interesting. Why’d you land on that vs Brave or whatever else?

I was under the impression that Apple doesn't allow ad blockers but only request filters that are maintained by the OS and have an upper limit. How can one browser be better than another if that's true?

I don’t know, but Brave on iOS works very well. I can watch YouTube with no ads (and even a one-click button to download for offline viewing/ listening). Websites load quickly, with no ads that I can see, except in the rare cases where the ads are selfhosted.

They both use Safari's engine. There shouldn't be any difference in performance or support for features.

I am on Android, and Kiwi Android accepts desktop Chrome’s plugins.

> senseless ui changes

This is what annoys me most. And most of all, UI changes that they've made to promote features I don't want; Pocket, Sync. I shouldn't have to dive into about:config to make a useless UI component disappear (after googling to find out what setting I need to fix). Sync should not default to storing my data on Mozilla servers. The sync icon shouldn't appear unless I've configured Sync. There should be a single option in Preferences to disable ALL suggestions.

DoH is a rotten idea. Or at least, it's not ready for prime-time; it's less secure than plain old DNS (through a local recursor).

Dropping support for ALSA output also got my back up; I won't have Poetteringware on my system.

I'd pay money for a browser that only connects to the internet when I tell it to; doesn't care what I'm interested in; and whose devs are responsive to (paying) user demand.

I'll go on using FF until I can no longer crowbar it to meet my requirements. Then it will disappear in my rearview mirror.

It's very sad; Mozilla made maybe two good products, FF and Thunderbird. They dropped Tbird (which I love), and they're trying to wreck FF. I wish I knew what cock-eyed incentives are making Mozilla behave this way.

It's almost as if focusing on ugly UX (which hinder power users and do not engage casual users) and useless paid-for services, being sponsored by your main competitor, focusing on anything but making the browser work, and a plethora of well known annoyances was not the best strategy to retain users.

(FF user since Netscape-era)

Well, even if you ignore that Firefox is inferior compared to Chromium, Mozilla is not a respectable company anymore in my opinion. So i see 0 reasons to use Firefox. https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/we-need-more-than-deplat...

All thanks to the Chromium ecosystem that have made it 'desirable' for web devs to build on, companies like Microsoft, Brave, Opera and Vivaldi all have their browsers depending on Chromium and for users to be running almost everything in either a browser or an electron desktop app.

This is a two horse race. Chrome vs Safari and Chrome is still winning.

Not only that, Chrome is 'the standard' and we happily helped them become that after pushing out IE. The control of the web standards has just switched hands from one tech giant to another.

Firefox has no chance of catching up. They are already on life support by Google.

Allow me to mention that we are adding another horse to the race, a WebKit based browser no less, Orion [1]. There are many things we believe Safari could do better and we are set to do them.

[1] https://browser.kagi.com

My take: Firefox on Android is one reason for their problem.

I tried the new version a year ago and restored my TB backup bcs it was so bad. I thought I'd try it again yesterday but man it sucks so bad! No search in history, no bookmark tag support as far as I see, somehow the synced data from desktop doesn't get searched when typing in the address bar, multiple times my entry in the addres bar wouldn't load, the amount of supported add-ons is abysmal. Thats not all but I stop.

My point: If mobile doesn't work it might be one reason people start switching on desktop, too.

I won't. I like to be tortured.

Look at their CEO and leadership team. Why would you expect anything but failure when a company is run by the HR and D&I departments?

Many major video conference applications don't even try to support Firefox, so I'm not surprised that during this time frame a lot of users where forced/coerced to switch.

Offenders include:

- Teams

- Slack

- Zoom

Sure there are codec license issues, but all(most) of them do use different codecs depending on the context, so they could totally support Firefox as long as no one in the conference is on a of Android device or similar.

Each of those has a native app. Why would anyone be forced to switch browsers? Just install the app.

Most people don't want to install apps on their computer for a single or a small number of meetings.

Furthermore at least the Teams app in Linux it's really bad.

personally, i knew things were headed in the wrong direction when they added that big orange button in the top left corner. i guess that was version 4. i felt like it was the beginning of the end.

Around that time, they also added that Keyhole shaped back and forward buttons that looks off on all platforms. That's one of the first instance where I felt they prioritized what they want - a brand identity, over what the users want - a consistent user interface.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120725235602/https://blog.mozi...

Does anyone know what the browser usage stats are for HN?

Edge is the biggest threat to Chrome and Firefox is still great. uBlock Origin does not even work as well in Chrome as it does in FF which will always create demand for alt browsers. I can't deal with with Chrome but if everything else goes away, Edge is fine. Ms is doing exactly what Google did with webkit, what can you do?

One of the problems with Edge is that it sends 350+ requests "home" to Microsoft on startup (in good-old fashioned way Windows does). A big no-no from a privacy standpoint.

Surely this would show up in dns? The only thing my DNS shows me from edge usage is smartscreen.

My bad for not linking to the source of information:

https://brave.com/popular-browsers-first-run/

>uBlock Origin does not even work as well in Chrome as it does in FF

AFAIK Firefox is the only mobile browser that supports uBlock Origin.

Kiwi Browser on Android has support for desktop Chrome extensions, and it's open-source.

Given Edge is based on Chromium, I don't see how it's Chrome's biggest threat, there's all sorts of tricks Google can pull to cripple Chromium so Edge is also punished.

Look at what they've done with Android and the massive "Google Play Services" bolt on. If you try and take away any of its permissions you get a warning that "this may cause basic functionality to stop working"

It's a shame. I'm dreading seeing the demise of Firefox. I really like it. It's a little slower than chrome, but I swear I don't notice it 99% of the time. It works for all the sites I use, but I extricated myself from the google ecosystem a while back. I hope the trend reverse but I wouldn't bet on it.

One small thing: Firefox developer edition can’t edit files like chrome or their old firebug plugin. Therefore, apps get developed on chrome; therefore, they work better on chrome.

That's not even close to the main reason. Chrome has a much much higher share of the market. So much so that web developers can basically ignore firefox users without much uproar. They can justify their lack of testing in firefox as a budgetary trade off.

Hmm, conversely, I switched to Firefox (from Chrome) as my main web browser this year!

Yeah, me two (coming from Edge).

I would argue that Chrome is better in some aspects, but using Firefox is the least thing one can do to stop Googles dominance.

I also quite like the UI changes and would say that Firefox now has the best looking chrome after Safari (highly subjective).

Switched from Chrome to Firefox around 2017 then to closed-source Chromium-based Vivaldi and haven't looked back since.

Whatever architectural changes Firefox made around '17-19 broke the browser for me. Tabs would randomly go dead, accepting no input. Mobile Firefox was worse.

The old Firefox was perfectly fine, save for being noticeably but, for me, acceptably slower than Chrome. Then Firefox Aurora or whatever happened and things went from stable went to crap. I'd try and go back to see if things got better occasionally, but then gave up and uninstalled it.

Most aggravating is when you have negative feedback about Firefox in forums, including on HN, you immediately get "have to tried" suggestions from avid fans. The intent is good, no doubt. I get that it works for you. But I'm beyond trying already.

closed-source == not secure

FF CPU usage is terrible compared to Safari on OSX, they need to put more effort to make it as efficient as Safari. May be increased sales of ARM based Macbooks will help them.

Just watch a twitch stream on Firefox vs Safari, there is at least 10c CPU temp difference between 2 browsers

I still use Firefox on my iPhone and computer. It generally works great.

I would use it if they implemented the content blocking API on iOS.

I can use Firefox Focus as ad blocker with Safari, but not with Firefox!

I adblock with this in combination with iOS Firefox: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weblock-adblock-proxy/id558818...

if you turn on strict mode it blocks just about everything as well as brave does.

Arbitrarily removing access to about:config (in Android) must account for a loss or two. I personally perceive it as a flagrant expression of contempt for their users. I keep Nightly around, but fully reciprocate perceived contempt and hope such losses grow.

That includes me. Hard to be a huge advocate for Firefox when they continually don't deliver. Brave is my browser for the time being.

Firefox kinda pissed me off. They silently removed the network.trr.bootstrapAddress option, which allowed your browser to not get it's DNS queries hijacked and always use DoH. The workaround now is to... add an entry in your hosts file for the DNS server. I know it's a small thing, but why did they remove such a useful feature? I literally couldn't find any info on it other than this one reddit post.

https://old.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/nqqhsl/trr_mode_3_...

Firefox lost me as a user shortly after the megabar change and the massive reworking of the mobile app UI. I still keep up to date on what's been going on since then, and I can't say I regret my decision in the slightest.

Well, it won me back in the past year, for work related things because, working in the identity space I can be signed in with an unlimited number of different accounts in the same site using Firefox containers.

I currently use Fennec on mobile, but it's just sad how they're adding stupid bulls*t (pocket, collections) and removing useful features. The bloody thing can't save a webpage as PDF anymore

Anyone else install ESR to avoid the new interface?

In general people really need to stop using Chrome. It's a tracking browser for an ad-company. The incentive structure is to send data to the mothership, and show you ads.

You can see this, because uBlock Origin works a lot better on Firefox.

But worse is also: Chrome just plain isn't fast or memory efficient anymore. It gets big speed ups on one or two things, but for the life of me it seems to consume a huge amount of memory and CPU compared to modern Firefox. That advantage was short lived.

If chrome had a container engine for enhanced privacy I would leave FF in a heart beat. The only thing keeping me to FF is the privacy aspect.

Pity FF keep eroding that advantage also

The main thing driving me away from Firefox is the speed. Chrome is notably faster for me.

How did you come to the conclusion that chrome was faster?

Personally, I’ve found all the browsers to be fast enough.I did some analysis leg work to come to that conclusion. I look at other characteristics such as privacy.

I agree that both browsers are fast enough, and still, Chrome is faster.

The new Firefox 89 is equally faster

No idea why. Firefox is an amazing browser.

Firefox has also been shooting its own feet. Their insistence on automatic updates, especially ones that require a "restart" is infuriating. Especially when the restart fails and loses all your tabs. They are also destroyed tons of useful plugins several years ago. They starting defaulting the home page to Pocket. I'd rather use firefox, but they don't seem to want me as a user.

I often hear on this website that "Firefox isn't slow".

Firefox does feel slower than Chromium based browsers. I don't know the technicalities but this is the reason why I moved to Chromium (Opera).

However, I like the fact that Firefox does allow me to mute audio and stop video playback by default, which Chrome does not (Opera does though).

Finally I'm not sure I like the all idpol noise coming from the Mozilla Foundation...

Are you guys aware of Brave? It's the best browser I have ever used

I would posit that vivaldi is better if you must use a chrome-a-like browser. Brave is fine but vivaldi has a lot more power user features.

I find Brave's business model unethical. Blocking ads... well, fine, everybody does that anyways. But monetizing on it by replacing website ads with your own, pocketing the revenue, and pretending that it's fine because you give everyone your custom made-up currency? Genius move by taking advantage of modern trends (ad-blocking, cryptocurrency, micropayments, ...), but it's not the "web revolution" they pretend it to be.

If you want to stick to Chromium, both Edge and Vivaldi are better options.

Wouldn't recommend Edge. They do great work, but their sync features aren't all zero knowledge. Firefox's, Brave's and Vivalid's are by default, and as far as I know stock Chrome's can be made to be, but on Edge there's no way to have all sync categories be end to end encrypted.

We have never replaced website ads with "[our] own". Check your source for this claim. I'm happy to follow up on where you found this false information.

I have no problems with Firefox (with hunderds of tabs open and best set of extensions), and it didn't lost me.. yet.

The problem is with modern web, sites excepting JavaScript and things like canvas fingerprinting etc. for working.

I have JavaScript disabled, for regular browsing I'm stuck with Firefox version<57 - so, for me, there is no future.

> for regular browsing I'm stuck with Firefox version<57

What? Why? That’s not covered by ESR support anymore; are you just running without security patches?

- but 'hardened' by custom configuration, extensions, some caution and no JavaScript. Without those extensions my productivity is 0 and I loose track of everything I do in newer versions.

Is there something specific that I shall be aware of ?

Those annoying Pocket ads maybe?

And how do you quickly disable JavaScript for the page you’re on? I can never find that in Firefox.

You can't with Firefox, but with uBlock Origin you can turn JS off globally and whitelist specific pages that require JS (Most pages work fine with JS disabled)

Why is this article on the second page and not on the first? Continued anti-competitive behavior from some chrome fanboys?

As much as I don't like Mozilla's company direction (pocket, VPN etc.) Firefox is a symbol for the free web for me. I recommend it over any other big browser (edge, chrome, safari).

> Firefox is a symbol for the free web for me.

Can it really be when/while it is entirely dependent on Google for revenue?

Just for me, Firefox feels like that.

It seems Mozilla tries to break free, yet has trouble. Wondering how to help them.

If a non-tech friend asks me about a browser recommendation, I will always point them to Firefox.

It's the browser that I trust most. Do you have an alternative?

I trust Brave, Opera etc. way less. Not talking about Safari and Edge ...

As I mention, I love to use nyxt and qutebrowser currently. Yet, they are really for a niche market (keyboard first browsers).

> Do you have an alternative?

Yes, building one ;)

had no idea people have that much trouble with the new UI. Looks quite alright to me, although I did lose compatibility for 2 plugins so that was a pain in the butt.

When you can't tell which tab is the current tab, that means you haven't done any basic hallway usability testing.

Firefox somehow managed to have a prophetic moment and plan their recent reskin to look and feel exactly like Windows 11.

So now when you use the newly released Windows 11, the several month old Firefox reskin matches the taskbar and controls perfectly. That was clever. I wonder if they had any inside help.

But by the time Windows 11 becomes popular, Firefox will already have reskinned itself again. Mozilla just can't seem to help it. :(

I stopped using it for a simple reason: it bogs down my laptop. I don’t care why, so save your long winded explanations, it just does. And it’s a shame, because hey Mozilla, I like Firefox better than any other browser when it’s not slowing down my machine.

I find many of the behaviors of google anti-competitive too, and slowly moved away from most of the things related to it.

Using a different email provider, storage service, firefox, search engine etc. However I still have to keep chromium/chrome around since some features I noticed just don't work properly with firefox.

On reading about recent http/2 and http/3 development (https://ripe76.ripe.net/presentations/10-2018-05-15-bbr.pdf) and google's approach to it, one megacorp deciding what is best for the rest of us feels too much power in someone's hands.

In the last decade, the proliferation of smartphones led to billions of newly "connected" people using the default browser, not knowing or caring about what a "browser" is. Firefox doesn't ship its own hardware so...

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I switched to Firefox on Android, because I can use uBlock Origin (adblocker) extension with it and stop watching nonsense ads. It's also good for battery life and protect against some malware. Chrome on Mobile, on the other hand, doesn't allow extensions.

Yeah, that's what HN readers do. Most people don't even understand what a web browser is, or even use one at that. A staggering amount of modern web traffic is driven by a Google search widget on people's phones.

There's a completely depressing number of people who go to even familiar sites by googling them.

In World War 2 the Allies didn't win because they had the best tanks and airplanes. They won because they - the US, really - could build them much faster than Axis. It's a numbers game.

Edit: One could argue this isn't what the news article is about but what's losing 50M in a market of billions? A device, specially a smartphone, is a delivery mechanism for services and in this day and age when internet access (apps) has become massified, having "choice" is irrelevant as far as browser marketshare goes. I do hope Firefox continues because I quite enjoy using it but if they do fold someday I won't be surprised.

I would imagine it's partially because of increased adoption of Brave and Safari.

Been on firefox since it was firebird.

It feels like a no-brainer for me. I'm never going to use chrome unless I have to.

I use a lot of google products, but I see no reason to give them even more data on my browsing habits by using their browser.

Do any other browsers support containers? That has been the killer feature for me.

Brave does. They call it profiles, I think.

Assuming we are talking about the same thing, it's absolutely not the same as containers. It'd be the same as Chrome profiles, or Firefox profiles for that matter. Containers allow you to have separate sandboxes within the same instance of the browser.

Ah. You are right. Well that’s a very cool feature that I wasn’t aware of.

Multicontainer add on is invaluable if you like siloing off google/facebook/etc into their own little cookie and context world. Also extremely handy for logging into sites where you have multiple accounts and in general web testing. It's definitely a poweruser must have. Most people can get away without it though or wonder why it would be useful :)

I switched to Opera because Firefox forces invasive updates that require a forced restart. For someone who likes to keep a web browser running for a long time and put their laptop to sleep rather than shutdown, that is not acceptable.

I use Linux so I could get around that by excluding the package from updates but I don't want to run an outdated web browser that might have security vulnerabilities.

I raised this a few times on their Reddit page, but it became so disturbing to my workflow that I just had to stop using it. Chrome is not a sane alternative, so I resorted to Opera. Good old Opera.

Opera is based on Chromium now, FYI.

Good old closed-source, Chinese-controlled, chromium-based Opera.

Just use the official version instead of your distro's version if you don't want your distro to control the update timing - seems like a self created problem. Official Firefox has a setting for "Check for updates but let you choose to install them" which will alert you but let you choose when instead of forcing it.

I'm not on desktop ow and can check later. But I'm pretty sure you can disable auto updates on the about:config page.

Opera is closed source which means it is not secure.

So Apple iOS, Microsoft Windows, Amazon FireOS, Cisco IOS, Netapp ONTAP... they are all "not secure" because they are not OSS?

Yes.

Potentially not secure and definitely not private, for most of them.

Potentially not secure is not the same as definitely not secure. OSS is also potentially not secure. I don't understand these comments. They seem like they were written by semi-literate adolescents.

I agree that being open source is not a guarantee of security or privacy. But there's a social contract which comes with it and the transparency that together make the projects more likely to at least be motivated towards those goals.

> They seem like they were written by semi-literate adolescents.

That's unnecessary.

Does Google browsers not also require a restart to update? So are you not just running an outdated version with security vulnerabilities until you restart it?

Librewolf has been a lifesaver, I highly suggest people check it out. https://librewolf-community.gitlab.io/

Browsers are like "commons" in the Internet space. It is super critical to have a neutral provider that adheres to open standards to have a substantial market share. We need to legislate every device sold (smart phone, PC, mac, iPad etc) to be shipped with a Firefox and/or other neutral open source browser.

I've been a loyal Firefox user since Day 1. Every time I open an Chrome/Edge I get a pop up or notification to change my default away from Firefox. This is pure anti-competitive behavior by the tech giants and needs to stop.

Looking at the version history, support for version 52 ESR ended in September 2018.

Since that version was the last supported version with XUL, the lack of XUL after that might be one of the reasons.

I try to use it as my daily driver, but it really sucks.

Audio issues, logged out of everything issues, auto fill issues, it just doesn’t work in Firefox issues.

Containers made me want to like it, but cmon.

If you want to help, report the sites you have issues with here: https://webcompat.com/

Why bother the current version hangs constantly forcing a re-launch to get it moving again, has been a known issue since the new updated version which is quite old now. They removed about:config and most addons.

May they burn on the pyre they have built. This is what happens when MBAs fire the engineers and chase the bottom line.

Obviously us users are using it wrong.

I used Firefox until old extension format abandoned and I switch to Palemoon + Vivaldi. Vivaldi for daily use and Palemoon for tabs opened all the times (with lazy loading).

Tab grouping is never done good enough on Chromium based browsers (even Vivaldi). Also those browsers all have memory usage issue and I don't keep them opened for too long.

Suprised by some of the comments here. Happy firefox user here for the last 5 years and don't see it changing.

I moved to firefox aftet Chrome became like swimming in treacle, and good to get away from the Google ad bullsh!t. Suprised they haven't sunsetted Chrome yet.

Pssst, Google, you've ruined Youtube too. Sunset that too.

went downhill after JavaScript creator left and created brave.

I see no real differences between browsers nowadays feature wise. They are all good enough.

However, chrome has better integration with the rest of what google offers. And safari with what apple offers. Synchronization of profiles, open tabs on other machines, etc.

Firefox is a good product, the others are commoditized services.

Wondering why this is on the second page? Why would smb flag the story?

Using alternative browsers is important. I have the same issues as others described in the chat. Meet-up does not work well in Firefox (video hangs, screenshare not working well ). In chromium no problem.

Zoom and others work like a charm.

I have the same frustrating problem. Only time I use Chrome is when I need to jump onto a Meet call. Anyone has a solution to use Meet reliably on Firefox?

yes ... it's super annoying. Zoom does not implement some features on the web and I'm ok with it. Their client works perfectly from the any web browser I use.

Right now I have a chromium install just for meetup (as it does not work well in any other browser ... )

Firefox is a breeze to use with great dev tools. Don’t even have Chrome installed atm, but may have to soon because of lighthouse.

Definitely pushing for Firefox to be part of default installation at workplace, we need to fight monopolies.

And Firefox gained me.

I was a Chrome user since I left Opera in 2017, until short ago, mainly for performance and ease of use.

I just love container tabs, and to be able to send URLs from one computer to the other.

And Pocket integration, great when you have a Kobo reader.

Considering that there is no point in using Firefox on iOS due to Apple restricting Add-Ons (and thus the crucial uBlock Origin), I'd say that Apple is having a similar impact to Google on Firefox's user count.

I dont use Chrome except on some websites that dont work well with Firefox (some bank and government websites).

I am ok with the speed, I dont have too many plugins. I see no reason to every go back to Chrome as my main browser.

And it will become worse as Chrome will be (even more) key to Google Business after the death of 3rd party cookies, as FLoC will be running out of it so they will need you to use it to be able to segment you.

Not a popular opinion but I’ll say it - Firefox was my daily driver until the CEO made comments about censoring conservatives that went beyond just deplatforming them. I now use ungoogled chromium or Edge.

Firefox no longer has XP support. There are a lot of XP users with older Firefoxes that cannot upgrade. Plus Microsoft Edge isn't as bad as Internet Explorer was.

According to Microsoft there's about 1.5 billion Windows users, about half a percent are still on XP. So that'd be about 7-8 million XP users. Say a third are potential Firefox users, that'd be a drop in the bucket in this statistic. And for the sake of the market share on other platforms it's probably a good idea that they're not investing resources in XP.

None of the other current browsers support XP either. Chrome stopped supporting XP a few years back. Edge isn't available at all on XP. Even IE wasn't backported so XP users are stuck with the last version of IE with XP support. If anyone is still on XP they should upgrade to an OS (either Windows 10 or even Linux) that can run a modern browser.

JFYI, there are forks of Firefox adapted to work on XP, that are not at all bad.

I am reluctant to provide a link because they are highly experimental, but if you wish to try them, knowing that YMMGV, here it is what I personally find the best one (serpent/basilisk):

http://o.rthost.win/basilisk/

I don’t understand myself, why I choose chrome over firefox. Mayba as a web dev, I want to make sure most people will get my website right

You should be testing in the top 3 browsers.

So Chrome, Safari and Baidu?

Baidu used to have their own browser, but almost nobody used it, so they discontinued it eventually.

The third most popular browser globally is Edge: https://gs.statcounter.com/browser-market-share

Chrome and Edge (and Opera and Brave) use the same engine. I should have said the top three engines.

Firefox has been breaking down on me the past few months. This inspired me to go back to Chrome.

Guys, what do you think about switching Firefox to WebKit or Blink engine? This will greatly cut the development costs and will make Firefox almost 100% compatible to Chrome. FF is the only major browser with an engine different from Webkit/Blink.

Having a different engine from Chrome itself is a selling point for Firefox. I don't like a world in which every web browser is a re-skin of Google's monopolized product.

I may be the odd one but I dropped FF after the drama over brendin eich and his support of prop 8. I just did not feel the same after seeing how he was attacked for his personal contributions.

There was just some hateful stuff that came from both sides that really uncovered some toxic personalities in the FF legion.

When you're a CEO, you're also the face of the company. His "personal contributions" were to support banning of same sex marriage, and it was just 5 years earlier. That's just unacceptable, even in 2014. It really showed how politics work inside companies like Mozilla.

But you're not alone. That year lots of users dropped Firefox.

Proposition 8 passed in California 52-47. [1] Slightly more than seven million people voted for it. That's a lot of people who did something unacceptable.

I wish all disagreements didn't have to be framed in such stark terms.

I don't live in or care much for California, so I had no dog in the fight, but I also did not like the gang-up on Eich and I don't understand the argument that he had to be kicked out because of how people might feel - it seems like it's the default position to work for someone who thinks you shouldn't have some right or another, or some other person should have more rights than you. It did not affect my usage of Firefox.

I did eventually download Brave and I use it for maybe a quarter of my web browsing, but that happened because a site I like stopped working in Firefox. I use Edge for a lot of other stuff - known safe sites, basically. I use Firefox simply out of inertia and because I like NoScript and the exact way NoScript works. A lot of the stuff I like about it is gone now, as they keep removing features I use. I don't have any affection for Mozilla or Firefox anymore. Metrics-based development is always a fool's errand - removing feature after feature that 1% of your install base uses is a great way to lose half your users when you remove > 50 features.

In the end, I don't think Mozilla understood where their strength came from. They weren't installed by default. They didn't have massive marketing campaigns like Google/Chrome. They weren't bundled in installers. They had one thing: power users, and power users evangelizing to their friends and family. They've alienated power users, and now all that's left is people running on inertia and people really worried about open source. Not a winning combination.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_California_Proposition_8

Eich didn't just vote for Proposition 8. He publicly materially supported it.

Refusing to follow someone isn't ganging up on them. Curtailing their civil rights is.

Eich chose to resign.

Voting directly affects the outcome. Donating money indirectly supports the outcome. In the end, only votes decide the outcome - many times the side with more money loses. The side with more votes always wins, unless you count the Electoral College. A vote is a much more material support than a 1k donation.

> He publicly materially supported it.

Nobody knew about Eich's 2008 donation until 2014, years later. Many people who worked with him and knew him for years, like Baker, expressed surprise and said they had no idea he held these views.

> Eich chose to resign.

Eich was allowed to resign rather than be fired. When you have the board and Executive Chairwoman saying that it's impossible for you to work there with your views, and you resign, that's not exactly a free choice.

> Curtailing their civil rights is.

I don't think we can put things beyond debate simply by declaring them a civil right. The entire debate was over whether it was/should be a right or not. I don't think this is a productive way to frame it. It just leads to argument rather than discussion, and persecution rather than post-victory rapprochement. I also don't think it's uncommon. I find it hard to think of someone I've worked for or even know that would not like to curtail what I regard as my civil rights in one area or another.

Votes are private. Donations are public.

The LA Times reported Eich's donation in 2012. Mozilla leadership including Baker knew about it before 2014. Eich knowing not to broadcast his support for discrimination is the minimum expected of most employees.

Eich himself said he resigned because the controversy was hurting Mozilla. He also said it would have been illegal to fire him.

Baker publicly supported Eich's promotion.[1] At least before he botched a predictable and winnable PR crisis. Other people did say his actions and standing by them meant he couldn't credibly promote Mozilla's claimed values. And his belief his discrimination wasn't discriminatory called into question how he could do the CEO's job of preventing discrimination. But basically no one said he couldn't work there with his views. He remained CTO after his views and actions were widely known. And board members asked him to stay in another role after he resigned.

The US Supreme Court recognized marriage as a civil right in 1967. It's the law of the land. And same sex marriage was legal in California before Proposition 8. Believing reducing some people's rights is justified doesn't make it not reducing their rights. And calling it what it is isn't persecution.

I've never worked for someone who publicly said I should be a 2nd class citizen. I feel sorry for you if you have. It sounds like you might have your own definition of civil rights though.

[1] https://blog.lizardwrangler.com/2014/03/26/

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/22/business/brave-brendan-ei...

I don't feel bad for this guy - He says and does things regularly that are hurtful to society with no signs of becoming a better person.

> In recent months, Mr. Eich’s Twitter feed has largely alternated between promotion of the privacy-focused Brave browser and questions about the policy and science related to the coronavirus.

> His posts on Twitter have expressed skepticism about many prevailing assumptions around the pandemic, including the effectiveness of masks and the honesty of Anthony Fauci.

Oh no! What a bigot for having questions and skepticism about many prevailing assumptions around the pandemic!!

Imagine how much better everything would be if everybody would just agree all the time without any skepticism?

And what does 'becoming a better person' entails in the US exactly? enlighten us, foreigners who aren't 'informed' about American identity politics..

Eich is a visionary and a talented engineer, that's all I ask of him when it comes to webtechs.

Right now the current "better persons" team at Mozilla is certainly running Firefox into the ground...

Skepticism is a reasonable default position for most things, as is distrust of powerful political entities, as is an assumption that incentive-caused bias is at play when big pharma is involved.

He may be wrong about all of this, but I don’t think we’ll be able to speak confidently about societal harm until this has all played out and can be viewed with the benefit of hindsight.

Yeah, that and the other political commentary + dropping most of their projects (rust, ffsend) really isn't helping.

Really wish they'd focus on one mission (making the web free) and not address anything else.

Instead of reworking the UI they should have just added an ad blocker out of the box (preinstall uBlock Origin for example).

The main reason Brave is used and recommended is because a lot of people don't want to bother installing plugins. At least 90% of recommendations for that browser I've seen mention this as reason. Meanwhile most people either don't like the new Firefox UI or just don't care.

And I agree, FF Send was great. It was really convenient to transfer a big file in a pinch without having to setup some cloud sync app with registration etc.

> they should have just added an ad blocker out of the box (preinstall uBlock Origin for example).

Yeah, that’s not gonna happen. They would antagonize their biggest “donor” google.

And god knows they really need that huge yearly money influx to whatever the heck they do with that money.

Is there anything you could imagine he could be doing with personal contributions that you would consider worth "attacking" him over (at which point I guess we could reverse engineer that you consider that activity notably "worse" than what Brandon Eich actually did) or do you feel like there is nothing that someone could be doing in their "personal" lives that should cause them to not be a good public face of a project like Firefox?

The world is a big place - we don't all share a monolith of values. There can be some claims made to natural law or objective truths. However; Your truth is not mine, Plato's cave, etc.

Ask yourself why there is no outrage at every company that posts rainbow flags on US brand pages but refuses to do the same on their UAE brand pages.

In a nutshell: I am glad that the Christian monks kept the work of all those 'evil pagans' through the dark ages. The candle of Western Civilization could have gone dark if they had religiously burned the works of those they disagreed with... I worry this is a direction we are headed as a cyber culture.

I want discourse because that is how we learn and bring others to enlightenment. I (correctly) saw that move with firefox as a broad move in the general us political ecosystem to "unperson" those on the right/left who don't feel the same as you. I.e. "Trump is Hitler", "Obama is a Terrorist" the schoolyard branding in concerning because it does not help any of us get better or connect on a human level.

I guess I feel like what happened with Brandon is a good example of that fear manifest.

What if, for example, my support of Edward Snowden makes me the next Emmanuel Goldstein, target of two minutes hate for the altar of some agenda? That scares the shit out of me- I don't like it.

[flagged]

> I am not asking the world: I am asking you, an individual human who assuredly stands for something (and hell: we know you at least stand for this, as you decided to stop using Firefox over it ;P).

How about standing for leaving politics at the door of the work environment and freedom of expression?

> FWIW, I would presume the answer is "because most people don't realize that companies might be doing that"; however, I also take issue with the example: not going out of your way to display support for something is, in fact, different than actively taking action to undermine it... someone who doesn't show a flag might still support something, but someone who actively donates against something clearly doesn't.

Once you've gone out of the way to show it on one account, going out of the way to not do it on another is essentially the same thing and hasn't drawn ire.

> You do realize that no one has suggested deleting all the copies of Firefox,

You're feigning ignorance and creating a strawman. The movement that forced Eich out advocates for censorship and destruction of ideas and information. You were the one who made up the story about deleting all copies of Firefox.

> Remember both that CTO is a a very public position for an organization like that

Now that is an argument. If the organisation has made efforts to climb into bed with a modern religion and the CTO commits a sin then yes, removal makes sense but it should never have got to this point.

> By saying that you have decided to stop using Firefox because the employees of Firefox should not have revolted against Brandon Eich, you are thereby not only cancelling the work of a number of people you disagree with

No "cancelling" as you put it and most likely as the person you are replying to understands it involves mob justice forcing people out of careers and forcing the removal of ideas from platforms. Deciding not to use something is a personal choice.

> Truly: all of your fretting over people destroying the work of the "evil pagans" is off topic, whether it makes you feel better to frame it like that or not.

When you make a three paragraph strawman argument it can seem that way but while "your truth" may be that it is unrelated, the reality is different.

> Ummm... are you missing that Brandon Eich made the first move here, taking action against gay people by fiscally

He expressed his political opinion through excepted channels. He didn't incite a mob. Again there's an argument he couldn't be at the head of an organisation with the religious connections it has but again it should never have got to that stage.

Eich wasn't removed as CTO. He remained CTO after his material support for discrimination became public knowledge. He resigned as CEO after it became clear he couldn't lead the company effectively.

The Mozilla corporation has to contend with a substantial portion of their community that thinks a $1,000 donation (an unrelated donation, no less) weighs similarly on the scales as something like 20 years in service vigorously supporting the open internet and a long history of technical success.

They're going to struggle to focus on their mission with friends like that.

That's their right as consumers. Just as it's Eich's right to be a bigot.

That said, I agree that Moz have failed to find a stable business model,which is a pity.

Which is why they have no choice but to continue to take in Google's money which accounts to 80% of their entire revenue.

Not only they failed to find a sustainable business model, they completely failed in their mission of promoting a privacy-focused browser. The users couldn't care less on this message or 'advantage' and are dumping them for Chrome.

The only message Mozilla has stuck to for years is 'if you can't beat them, join them.' (and get paid by them).

So let's say you work for Mozilla and you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay, or hell: you just are willing to care about people who aren't that close to you and you know that some people somewhere are assuredly gay; and so now, you have to come in to the office every day to work under a guy who, sure, has made an invaluable contribution to the web... but also actively dislikes gay people and wants to make their lives harder, donating to a political cause that deeply affects gay people. Remember: that's what is at stake here... Mozilla is a tech company, and Brandon Eich was their CTO, acting as the public face of the company and as a leader internally; asking them to continue to support him is not some academic question of whether to leave his name on a plaque somewhere... it is a very practical daily question of them having to read e-mails and take direction from someone who actively--and fairly directly... prop 8 wasn't some extremely indirect mechanism or one with a ton of tradeoffs--works to undermine the lives of either themselves or someone they care about.

I'd work for someone who voted to raise my taxes. That is years of my life's work redirected to causes I don't agree with. Worse than someone being against me getting married. If I could swap marriage rights for lower taxes, I wouldn't be married. It is more symbolic these days than practical.

I think the gays can cop it.

> you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay

At least one of those is true.

I'm alright jack?

Possibly this is a case of poor phrase choice. I mean "can cop it" in the Australian informal sense of "Accept or tolerate a disagreeable situation without complaint." as opposed to the surprisingly wide [0] range of other interpretations.

[0] https://www.lexico.com/definition/cop

Some in the world are capable of working without being emotionally incapacitated by the thought that those they work with don't agree with all that they believe in.

Mozilla is there to build browsers. Politics should have been left at the door. Instead it wasn't and so Firefox happened and then Brave happened.

> Mozilla is there to build browsers. Politics should have been left at the door.

I think you misunderstand Mozilla. Just have a look at their mission statement[0], and their manifesto[1]. Mozilla's goal is not "build the best browser and get the most market share". Their goals are inherently political, and building a browser is just part of how they try to achieve their goals. To expect that the people working for such a political organization with such a strong ideology is pretty bizarre to me.

0. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/

1. https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/about/manifesto/

Perhaps it would be better for me to say ostensibly there to build browsers (and other software).

In response to the manifesto I'll ask how recent that manifesto and mission statement is? Surely they weren't always a politics first, software second organisation? They must have started out as free software and then morphed into what they are now at some point.

Or was it that case that the politics was there but it was that that changed?

The manifesto exists since 2007, but they describe principles that Mozilla has held since it was founded in 1998[0]. I wouldn't personally describe them as a "politics first, software second" organization, but that's mostly because I think the distinction between "politics first, software second" and "software first, politics second" is pretty vague and useless. Perhaps you would describe them as such, and if so, they've probably been like that since the start, or at least since before the start of their market-share decline.

0. https://www.protocol.com/mozilla-plan-fix-internet-privacy

It's not "politics" when the leader of a company is fundamentally against your existence.

It's only politics when it's "other people's problems I don't care about", it seems.

Would you say the same about iFixit backing right to repair, or the FSF/EFF etc fighting for privacy and software freedoms while also developing their core products? I feel like "politics" has a very selective definition in this forum.

This is where things get complicated.

What’s the difference between dislike and disagree with? Ginsberg and Scalia were Supreme Court justice’s know for this. Disagreeing with something, even fundamental, doesn’t mean people need to dislike each other.

Imagine, for a moment, this idea was placed on religious belief. Should people working for someone with a different religious affiliation assume their boss dislikes them?

I appreciate this is a hot topic. I just don’t like where we are going as people when we treat disagree as if it’s dislike and act on that.

Actions are even more important than disagreements or dislikes.

You can disagree with someone who believes in slavery, and you are free to still like them if you want, sure.

But if it was me in your place, even if I liked that person, I still would not want to work for them based on their actions. And I think this is a fair position for anyone to take.

Or if you are saying it is conceivably possible that Brendan* likes gay people, also I’d say sure. Actually it’s likely he likes at least one certain closeted repressed gay person in particular, I’d guess. Still, it’s reasonable to not want to work for such a person who takes such actions.

Let’s flip this around. Around the world there are many people who have belief systems disagree with homosexuality. Right or wrong, this is presently the case. If some have money in support of the other direction on prop 8 should they have tried to get the person fired or left themselves?

A core thing at issue here is right and wrong and lifestyles. No matter what I think, there are people who disagree on this. I’ve been hard pressed to get folks to share a logical reasoned case for their take. It’s very much about belief and assumptions.

Is it time we divide up based on some issues like this or try to destroy “the other side”? It should like that’s what’s being said.

Please note, my take on this here is how we as a society deal with these disagreements.

Pretty sure Brendan donating to a cause trying to influence law was already a case of society dealing with disagreements with action. So if your beef is with taking actions based on disagreements, you should start with being bothered about Brendan’s actions.

As to flipping it around, I get that but didn’t really follow how that helps. Bigots would be perfectly free to not want to work for a non bigot if they want… and they can try to get others onboard with joining them to ask the leader to step down.. good luck with that though. There’s a certain evil to being a bigot that goes beyond just disagreement and dislike.

So just because you are gay, or your sibling is gay, or your best friend is gay... then totally unrelated people are not allowed to have their opinions, because you don't approve them?

20 years in service vigorously supporting the open internet and a long history of technical success are CTO qualifications. Basically no one opposed Eich remaining CTO.

Now you're using Lynx or what? Because something tells me you will find people with stupid opinions in every corporation of a reasonable size. Moving to Google is a really counter-productive move if you value minorities.

Will Firefox go extinct like Netscape did?

Firefox was born from the ashes of Netscape. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla#History

I fear it will. I use it daily because it is the best at protecting my privacy, no other browser has containers, but it seems too few people care. At least as long as mobile Safari exist, Chrome isn't able to swallow everything and resistance is not yet futile.

> no other browser has containers

THIS. The first damn thing I do on a new PC/VM. I work with multiple clients, they each have their corporate SSO stuff and its so damn convenient to keep them all in their own containers. Same with Google stuff, containers are so much more consistent to switch between Google accounts than their own switching thingy (just try switching between accounts in AdWords).

> no other browser has containers

I’m pretty sure Brave profiles are the equivalent or at least an analogue.

I suggest Firefox implements a premium paid variant without taking away any features from the free version. This is to increase revenue for development.

Chrome is free to download. I click a link and get Chrome, done.

Why should I go through the hassle to register, give out my CC info, and pay?

They make $450 million a year. A premium Firefox would barely move the needle. Revenue is not the issue, but how it's allocated.

I have to confess I am the culprit. In 2019 I started to move from yahoo to protonmail and from chrome to firefox. I brought the bad juju it seems

I think a part of it could be explained by the way things have been in recent times.

As of July 2021 (according to the linked metrics), ~25% of the displays used are 1366x768px while ~40% of them are 1080p. Yet when the "Proton" refresh aimed to promote usability and while certain level of cross-platform was reached, the increase of padding simply made the experiences of people using displays with "less than optimal" resolutions worse. While the proton's hidden and "unsupported" compact mode had a decent height for a 14" FHD display, the same did not look as good on my 15.6" display with the same resolution. When I complained on reddit like many others about the increase in whitespace, I don't think it was given what I believe to be a proper consideration. Why would the main menu be bigger despite having fewer items? And where are the icons? It was a concern back when it was in nightly and many of the concerns remain now even though it has had a stable release.

Another thing that is problematic is the colour-scheme. The newer style incorporates less contrasted colours and does away with what made the preceding Photon design better in certain ways: look at how the tabs on FF used to have a markedly different colour than their backdrop and how there used to be separators between tabs. The fact that the newer design is a bad one somehow eluded those in charge of it and the fact that the contrast between the active tab and its surrounding elements being low being an important issue is an afterthought is telling.

Moreover, the dropdown for the megabar suggestions used to have full-window width but now it is limited to the megabar width for no apparent reason other than looking "cool" (which it does not btw; especially when you compare it to Chromium's counterpart). They introduced the megabar-expansion-on-focus behaviour, kept a config to disable it for a major release or two and then dumped the old one. Also, when you selected multiple tabs, upon a right-click, it used to tell you the count of selected tabs - which no longer seems to be the case. Needless to say, looking at userChrome.css to be _the_ solution for undesirable changes would not work well for anyone in the long run.

Firefox, unlike Chromium-based browsers, does not support XDG base dir spec. It does not bother me very much and neither does FF flickering every once in a while on my main system. What bothers me is that with each new release I feel like FF is losing bits of its magic. Back when FF Quantum was released and was stripped of what many considered the level of flexibility which appealed to them, I was concerned but ultimately accepted it. But this time around the changes feel like marketing speak. Mozilla already has a discourse instance but post-Proton-release they also have a crowdicity instance...

The way things have been going is genuinely upsetting and many users are just reacting to that.

I stopped using Firefox because all my apps did not work on it. My Salesforce app, for example, didn't work on it. Part of my VOIP, which I depend on, does not work on it. And when I called support, all they say is to use Chrome. I'm not an assembly language programmer so I can't go to the bare metal to figure it out. That's what Firefox is supposed to do. I don't have time to figure any of it out, I have a job to do. Maybe it is my fault that some toggle is switched wrong, and I gave a cursory DuckDuckGo search to try to figure it out, but after an hour of looking, fruck it, I got other shlit to do, man.

Plus, Firefox is slow as molasses over the last year, so much so that I have to reboot several times a day. Starts out ok, but gets up to 100% disk and 100% memory usage. Using Chrome, it works fine without maxing out disk and memory.

I've used Firefox forever, and would prefer to keep using it, but it's just reached the tipping point for me this year. It kills me to go to chrome (Brave, actually) and I kept using Firefox a long time after it started giving me issues. But at some point, just gotta let go.

I know that the incompatibility is caused by Google on purpose, it pisses me off, but I still have to get work done. What can one do?

Hrm, so many people dunking on FF, and I’ve recently swapped back as it feels like it’s improved a lot. This is within the last month. This is on both Mac and Windows. It’s snappy, doesn’t feel heavy, and generally feels faster than Chrome. And on Mac, better than Safari.

Firefox threads are ways the same: self proclaimed power users complain about minor changes to colours and shadows. That's been going on since v4, which was what, a decade ago?

So, my takeaway is that Firefox has become a punching bag for people to vent on. Sad state of affairs. Especially because it would be really hard, if not impossible, for Mozilla to shed this image

The mobile version had quite a deep change and lost a number of features, including bookmark keywords, the tab queue, reordering tabs, and about:config.

...And the great add-on purge!

What the hell was that about? Who in their right mind thought that was a good idea or acceptable?

That is the thing that made me jump ship. The UI changes and Pocket and promoted favorites were a nuisance, but minor. But add-in’s? The web is just broken without ad blocking.

The mobile version should have uBlock Origin?

Personally, I don't mind the UI changes.

I hate how Firefox _forces_ me to restart my browser when it arbitrarily decides to update. Makes webdev a headache.

> I hate how Firefox _forces_ me to restart my browser when it arbitrarily decides to update.

Then why are you letting it decide when to update?

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