Firefox an Endangered Species

[G.i.b.b.s]

I use several browsers, Safari, Firefox & Chrome on my Macs and Firefox, Chrome, IE on my PCs.  Firefox, imo, is the easiest and most convenient browser by far.  It's plugins are just as good if not better than Chromes and on my low-end netbooks its INFINTELY faster than Chrome and even IE.  Why is it losing market share and withering away? With Spartan just around the corner in Win10 does Firefox even have a chance at surviving?

 

In the last 12 months, Firefox's user share -- an estimate of the portion of all those who reach the Internet via a desktop browser -- has plummeted by 34%. Since Firefox crested at 25.1% in April 2010, Firefox has lost 13.5 percentage points, or 54% of its peak share.

 

At Firefox's 12-month average rate of decline, Mozilla's desktop browser will slip under the 10% bar in June, joining other third-tier applications like Apple's Safari (with just a 4.8% user share in February) and Opera Software's Opera (1.1%). If the trend continues, Firefox on the desktop could drop below 8% as soon as October.

 

 

http://www.computerworld.com/article/2893514/an-incredibly-shrinking-firefox-faces-endangered-species-status.html

[tuckeratlarge]

The best browser is the one you don't notice.

[link6155]

People used Firefox back then because the stock browsers were terrible. Safari and IE were both pretty bad, the only other option was Firefox and Opera. Firefox had a lot to offer like customization and the vast amount of add-ons over the years. However, once Chrome was released, people moved over simply because it was a quick browser. Right now Firefox doesn't offer the average user too much benefits over Chrome.

 

 

I'm thinking that Chrome will become the new "Internet Explorer" as it's starting to disregard web standards and not very friendly on some of the older computers. Once Project Spartan is released, Chrome will lose a fairly good chunk of its users. As for Firefox, I'm not sure how long they'll last seeing that they are relaying on partnership with Yahoo, sponsors in the new tab page, and asking for donation here and there.

[Argi]

I gave Firefox a try last week.  Unfortunately I kept running into hangs that would last around 5 seconds.  Very frustrating because I do want to move to a more privacy-oriented browser but they have to get the quality bar up.

[+Random Stranger Subscriber¹]

 With Spartan just around the corner in Win10 does Firefox even have a chance at surviving?

 

even if it is a niche market,  it will be fine.  I have used it from version 1

even though i tried every other major browser available since,

i am not planning to switch.  i am sure many feel the same.

 

[farmeunit]

I still use and like Firefox the best. 

 

I've had many different issues with Chrome over the years.  Last year it kept constantly crashing when using Flash (Maybe more Adobe issue than Chrome), sometimes Flash videos don't act right, but they did fix the Tab behavior, finally, so it's not quite as bad. 

 

IE takes longer to start.  Not so much actually open, but the initial page load takes a while.  IE11 has been better than 9 or 10, though.  Lack of plugins is the killer for me, though.  Waiting to see what Spartan has, but haven't tried Win10, yet.

 

I think mostly, Chrome was the "cool" new thing for a while.  We're a GAFE school, so it makes sense to use Chrome and it has a little extra functionality for Google Apps, also.  IE is on every Windows machine, so a lot of people use it only for that reason.

[james.faction]

The best browser is the one you don't notice.

...yep that's why I've been an Opera user for years. They went over quite a speed-bump moving to the Chromium engine but I still appreciate Opera and use it as my main browser because it offers a different, commonsense approach. I moved from Firefox sometime around 2007.

 

Firefox recent updates have made it look more like Chrome, and this was a bad decision in my view. Chrome didn't become more popular because of its looks, it was because it was quick, and linked into existing services people use, and it's being pushed at people by a 300 million ton gorilla known as Google.

 

Firefox already had a rather nice minimal interface. They aren't going to gain market share by looking more like the competition that has overtaken them.

 

The security focus is a good thing, though. As long as it doesn't get in the way.

[Mockingbird]

Where Firefox went wrong is that it has been reduced to copying Chrome.

 

When is the last time that Firefox introduce innovative features that make people want to say, "Woo! I want to try that" ?

 

The annoying updates that keep breaking extensions doesn't help either.

[Dot Matrix]

Mozilla just moves too slow. Firefox carries a lot of baggage that needs shed. It's not 2004 anymore.

[+Red King Subscriber²]

Mozilla just moves too slow. Firefox carries a lot of baggage that needs shed. It's not 2004 anymore.

They added more bloat with a chat client that no one wanted and reduced their search engine to Yahoo.

Bad decisions all around.

[Darrian]

I'm writing this post in Firefox.

[Lizardslap]

I tried switching to crome and IE but I have been using firefox so long its hard to switch

 

all my buttons are in the right spot and it does exactly what I want without forcing extra stuff on me that I dont care about

[tsupersonic]

At home, I pretty much stopped using Firefox when Chrome came out. Chrome is still a lot faster in my experience, and works all around better. At work, I tend to use Firefox since I can use the IETab extension. I typically leave Chrome and Firefox installed on all my machines, just so I have a backup browser. These browsers have all become bloated though, except for IE, which is relatively very quick (especially IE11 on W8.1) 

[Argi]

They added more bloat with a chat client that no one wanted and reduced their search engine to Yahoo.

Bad decisions all around.

 

I would have to agree with the chat client part.  I mean, what the heck?  Why?  What other clients is it compatible with?

[timster]

I would have to agree with the chat client part.  I mean, what the heck?  Why?  What other clients is it compatible with?

 

https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/which-browsers-will-work-firefox-hello-video-chat

http://www.tomshardware.com/news/mozilla-launches-hello-chat-program,28391.html

[Ironman273]

I posted in another Firefox thread that I recently wanted to switch from Chrome but hit too many speedbumps that I couldn't solve.  I really wanted to give it a try...   My next switch will be to Spartan, so we'll see how that goes...

[wahoospa]

If Firefox did like Google does with Chrome and had it installed by naive users then Firefox would be much bigger then Chrome. Really I don't like Chrome at all or the newer Opera (Chrome by another name). I'm always taking Chrome off peoples machines that I work on. I first ask them "did you put Chrome on this machine"? About everyone says, "I don't know what it is and don't know where it came from".

[Max Norris]

Meh don't care about marketshare, not a sheep, will continue to use Firefox till they stop making it.  Or Chrome starts to suck a whole lot less.. some of the new changes are just absurd, that new bookmarks.. thing.. for example, and the old one was fairly weak to begin with.  The speed difference that used to be noticeable with the older versions is pretty much nonexistant nowadays, addons are much more flexible, uses a lot less resources in the process, and I can set it up how I want it, not the authors.. Chrome's severely limited in what you can change with it.  Will reserve judgement on Spartan till I actually get to use it, but sounds promising.. first time I'm anxious to try MS' browser in years.

[Ironman273]

If Firefox did like Google does with Chrome and had it installed by naive users then Firefox would be much bigger then Chrome. Really I don't like Chrome at all or the newer Opera (Chrome by another name). I'm always taking Chrome off peoples machines that I work on. I first ask them "did you put Chrome on this machine"? About everyone says, "I don't know what it is and don't know where it came from".

Aren't most web browser usage numbers gathered from web pages that poll the browsers that reach it?  If that's the case then "accidentally" installed browsers wouldn't really count because they are probably not being used.

[+Warwagon MVC]

If Firefox did like Google does with Chrome and had it installed by naive users then Firefox would be much bigger then Chrome. Really I don't like Chrome at all or the newer Opera (Chrome by another name). I'm always taking Chrome off peoples machines that I work on. I first ask them "did you put Chrome on this machine"? About everyone says, "I don't know what it is and don't know where it came from".

 

EXACTLY! The only reason most people have chrome is because it was bundled with something else.

[(Account no longer active)]

Disabling/removing Flash makes a big difference. Flash is now a thing of the past.

[Anibal P]

I'm glad I ditched FF, was just a bloated and slow mess, using Chrome till something better shows up

[Krome]

I gave Firefox a try last week.  Unfortunately I kept running into hangs that would last around 5 seconds.  Very frustrating because I do want to move to a more privacy-oriented browser but they have to get the quality bar up.

Firefox/Waterfox never crash on my computer.  I think it has to do with Flash.  Remove/Uninstall Flash from your computer.  You'll notice your computer will never crash.  That is if you don't have a lot of other crapware/malware.

[Romero]

Mozilla just moves too slow.

 

Strangely enough many would argue just the opposite, that Firefox started becoming crappier when Mozilla started chasing Chrome's version numbering with its own rapid release model that resulted in half-baked 'features' being pushed out every so often (along with add-ons being broken).

 

Firefox/Waterfox never crash on my computer.  I think it has to do with Flash.  Remove/Uninstall Flash from your computer.  You'll notice your computer will never crash.  That is if you don't have a lot of other crapware/malware.

 

Flash is still used by many sites that haven't moved on to HTML5 yet, or else I'd definitely leave it off. Can't wait for the day I can get rid of Flash just like I did with Java (undoubtedly the two biggest malware vectors thanks to how sloppily they're coded).

[oldtimefighter]

They added more bloat with a chat client that no one wanted and reduced their search engine to Yahoo.

Bad decisions all around.

Please cite your source that the chat client has any effect on the speed of Firefox? Mozilla reduced the available search engines on Firefox? Nope! It has the same search engines as always but Yahoo is the default now which can be changed with a couple of "clicks". Why would you post a 100% wrong comment?