edited the heading of the question. I think most of us here are reasoning why more people are not using firefox (because it was the initial question), but none of that explains why it’s actively losing marketshare.
I don’t agree ideologically with Firefox management and am somewhat of a semi-conservative (and my previous posts might testify to that), I think Firefox browser is absolutely amazing! It’s beautiful and it just feels good. It has awesome features like containers. It’s better for privacy than any mainstream browser out there (even counting Brave here) and it has great integration between PC and Phone. It’s open-source (unlike Chrome) and it supports a good chunk of extensions you would need.
This was about PC, but I believe even for Mobiles it looks great and it allows features like extensions (and I hear desktop extensions are coming to firefox android?), it’s just a great ecosystem and it’s available everywhere unlike most FOSS softwares.
So why is Firefox’s market share dying?
I mean, I have a few ideas why it might be, maybe correct me I guess?
- Most people don’t know how to use extensions well and how to use Firefox well. (Most of my friends in their 30’s still live without ad blockers, so I don’t think many are educated here)
- It’s just not as fast as Chrome or Brave. I can’t deny this, but despite of this, I find it’s worthy.
- It’s not the default.
- Many features which are Google specific aren’t supported.
- Many websites are just not supporting firefox anymore (looking at you snapchat), but you would be right in saying this is the effect of Firefox losing it’s market share not the cause (at least for now) and you would be right.
But what else?
I might take time (a lot of it) to get back at you, thanks for understanding.
occasionally I’ll find websites that don’t work 100% because they were coded primarily for chromium based browsers. FU Google
I install chrome on a computer and log in, I’m immediately connected to my calendar, email, cloud storage, remote desktop, documents, and my login info is synced floor all the other things I do and will auto login for me on a large number of those sites. In short it saves me a crazy amount of time.
You can do pretty much the same thing with Firefox: you sign in to Firefox to sync your passwords and browser settings, then (assuming you’re talking about Google calendar, Gmail, etc.) You can sign into your Google account with one click. That’s not really any less convenient.
Besides, I’ve hardly ever heard of anyone moving away from Firefox to Chrome, so I doubt the reason is any sort of convenience or design superiority. I’d attribute it to the fact that most people who already use the Internet (pretty much everyone) has already settled on a browser, with chrome-based browsers being the most common. So anyone new to the Internet will just choose the favorite as the default. This is especially true considering they most new Internet users are probably kids, so they’re not aware of concerns about privacy, monocultures, DRM, etc. that would drive someone to pick Firefox.
Basically, it’s not that Chrome is actually better than Firefox. I think it’s that the market is growing, and the most common browsers will grow more quickly than Firefox simply for the sake of familiarity.
Many would argue this is not a good thing. Plus, Google login permeates all Google services as a session and has nothing to do with the browser at that level.
Chrome is the only browser I actively avoid using on my PC or on mobile, simply due to Google tracking every website I visit