Firefox

"Most people" probably can't name the browser they use. They just open "the internet" on whatever device they're on.

I've never experienced any slowness with Firefox, so I don't know what people are talking about. But Chrome is still the default browser on Android and I guess it's the major reason why people are installing Chrome on their computer.

Because not only do you (the end user) have to go out of your way to get it, but you get spammed by Microsoft/Edge and Google/Chrome to install a "faster" and "more secure" browser. Additionally, on the mobile side, Apple is preventing all iPhone/iPad users from picking a real alternative browser that isn't just webkit re-skinned, putting half the population at a disadvantage and to their own corporate interests.

I think you think too much, most people just want a browser that works and they have one preinstalled on their phone / computer. So when you arrive and recommend Firefox they just hear "Hey ! You have a browser that works, why won't you spend time installing this one that works just as fine, I swear".

Extensions and privacy might look like killer features but they are a bit too abstract to be adoption arguments (why would you even need extensions if your browser is so good).

Spent twenty years burning out every committed advocate with broken extensions, UI whack-a-mole, random half-baked corporate decisions, and finally just giving up and being "like Chrome but."

Meanwhile Google engages in blatant anti-competitive behavior to claw ever more market-share away from everything and everyone, and American politics are too much of a dumpster fire to stop them.

Literally the only other browsers that are other browsers are Firefox and Safari, and people only use Safari because iOS is a prison. iPhone users will insist their reskinned Safari webview is-too Firefox or Chrome or whatever, and then wonder why anyone makes a big deal about browsers when everything they've tried works exactly the same.

I used to use Firefox before Chrome came out, because it was better than IE. When Chrome came out it was a breath of fresh air. A real third option! (konqueror didn't really count). And it was faster, cleaner, lighter than Firefox. Just better at everything. So I installed it on all of my family's computers, which they allowed me to do because IE by then was so bad it was an obvious improvement even for the layman.

Then in the intervening years Firefox dwindled to basically no market share and IE died, so now Chrome isn't a third option, it's the only option. And so I switched back to Firefox basically as a political sacrifice, but there's no way I'm going to be able to convince any of my family to switch because Firefox isn't better for them in any perceivable way. It's just different and they don't care. If Firefox had 30% market share I'd almost definitely be using Chromium still myself.

So probably that, but a million times. There was a period where every nerd moved all their associated people to Chrome because it was new, great, and non-dominant. It was hip and indie. And now they're still there and there's no reason for them to move that they care about.

Firefox being slow has almost nothing to do with Mozilla's incompetence or the browser's inability to handle websites.

When devs build websites, they usually build them for the most popular browser, aka Chrome. They couldn't be bothered to help the minority of people who use Firefox. Also, cost. Building a website to work with 2 different engines is more expensive than building it for just one engine that'll work for 99% of users. That's why a lot of banking websites never support FF.

Another primary reason is Google's Monopoly. Almost everyone uses some Google service or another. Google's websites are tailored to perfectly fit Chromium, not FF. This is why you'll sometimes see websites break or even crash. YouTube's recent ambient mode made the site choke quite a lot on FF. An average Joe ain't got the knowledge to know or even troubleshoot the issue and they'll just shift to Chromium, where everything just works.

Because there are 378 different variations of Chromium preinstalled on the OS with the largest market share and then another 63 Chromium browsers advertised as a "safer more secure" alternative that people don't know is just Chrome again.

Firefox is not a worse browser, it's just the lack of visibility. You have to want to install Firefox to try it, the only exception I know it's in Linux where most of the time it's the default browser. Google Chrome, on the other hand, is promoted each time you search anything in Google without Google Chrome.

Declining market share and dying are not at all the same thing. Remember that FOSS can survive without resources tha M$ and ABC have.

Anyway, what do you mean you're conservative? I don't understand at all. What values pushed you to what browsers? Laziness and defaults, maybe, but that's a different position.

I was using Firefox before Chrome when it took significant market share from Internet Explorer.

In my view a large reason was corporations made the (IMO) big mistake of using Chrome for applications and as a browser.

It’s the classic Microsoft effect of people get comfortable using it at work and then don’t change.

It also doesn’t hurt that Chrome is tied to the majority of smart phones.

Firefox does not have a way to force them into it.

• ChromeOS - Chrome only. Default. Google.com beggs you to get an account and try Chrome. Android, comes with Android preinstalled.
• Windows - Annoying Try Edge popup force them during boot. Bing Chat is Edge Only.

I use Firefox everywhere, but there are a few main issues that stop me from converting people...

• The lack of tab groups. This seems silly, but most people I know, especially on mobile, keep a lot of tabs open. If they're researching something, or shopping for something they'll leave 20 tabs open. Having that in one tab group in Chrome is a better way to organize than just tons of tabs.
• Sites that don't work well on Firefox. Again, specifically on mobile I run into sites that work on Chrome but not on Firefox.
• General stability issues. I need to force close Firefox once or twice a day because it will just fail to load pages.

Firefox was long the No 2 browser, then Chrome came along at the time that Google was cool and they actually marketed it with TV ads. It looked cooler and more modern, it had some innovative features... Firefox never recovered

I work in IT and had to abandon Firefox because of compatibility issues that came up on a regular basis. it appears companies are simply not using it as part of their QA anymore. Also, in general the GUI theming has issues for me with the font and distinguishing highlights with my crappy vision. I tried every theme out there and for some reason apparently people writing themes just don't care to make it so you can see what is highlighted and what is not. Even The default theme sucks in my opinion. There were a number of other nits that I just kept having issues with - getting prompted on eBay to verify my identity for no reason, repeatedly, which doesn't happen on chromium and stuff like that.

I wish Apple would adopt the Firefox rendering engine and take Safari cross platform. It would give Firefox a fighting chance at the overall market.

Old timer here.

In the old days Microsoft essentially conquered the web by creating specialized features only available for their web browser.

This is the reason why we still suffer with IE compatibility mode in Edge. A lot of corporations still have systems that rely on clients being IE compatible.

Google essentially does the same with their services and Chrome.

I do not see any killer feature of Firefox right now. Even the Mozilla's official browser comparison site indicates Microsoft Edge being on par with Firefox, based on Mozilla's own criteria!
This will change in the future. Firefox will be the only major web browser on Android with full-fledged addon support.
I am already using some extensions on Vivaldi (like Consent-o-Matic, some transliteration addons), but this could make me switch to Firefox.

Number 3 is by far the most important, because most people just don't think about what web browser they're using. A lot of people don't even think about web browsers at all. They just think of the web browser app as "the internet", and that's it.

Firefox is honestly just kinda always lagging behind on supporting features. If you want to use the latest tech, Chrome is always first to have it.

One that irks me a lot of the lack of any proper PWA support. On both mobile and desktop, you can install websites as apps, and they behave like apps. Slack, Discord, Spotify, YouTube Music, and a whole bunch of others you can install as a PWA and they look just like their desktop counterparts but much lighter, they're sandboxed and safer to use, and generally perform well. You click an external link on Slack as a PWA? It opens in a new regular browser window. Push notifications get routed to the correct window when you click/tap on it.

Firefox can do that with extremely hacky extensions on desktop, and just can't on mobile. Best it can do is make a shortcut. But if you receive a notification it opens it in a new tab in the browser, it's just not nearly as good of an experience.

I rely a lot on PWAs like The Lounge to use IRC as my primary messaging app. I could wrap it in a dummy Cordova app or something but then it's still running Chrome under the hood anyway, because Firefox also doesn't support being Android's WebView plugin.

That's changing but Firefox on mobile currently only supports like a dozen extensions and that's it, you can't even force install them unless you run nightly builds.

Firefox's engine was also extremely laggy on mobile but that fortunately has also improved a fair bit recently.

Then there's all the useless features literally nobody asked for like Pocket, sponsored links in the new tab page, Mozilla VPN, and other addons they bought over time with questionable privacy policies. Just make the browser good before you venture into other bloatware.

Firefox just hasn't had any reason to be used in recent years other than not being related to Google/Chromium. And even then, we've had ungoogled Chromium forks since the beginning. It's the political party you picked for the sake of being against the other worse one.

I have been using FF for at least 10 years. Tried many of the others. Always come back.

I have told others about it but people rarely make the change even if they see it is better....

Internet Explorer / Edge is not complete garbage anymore, that's not helping for sure. Also, there was a period where Firefox was actually kinda lacking. That's in the past since the "Quantum" update I'd say.

Firefox is kinda like Linux in my opinion. Yes, some games might not run on linux and some games don't run as good as on windows, but most run just fine. But since I don't use windows I don't know the difference and so I don't care about it either. Same thing with firefox, chrome might do x better, but then I have not used it in years so I just don't care about it. Blissful ignorance I suppose? Either way I am happy with linux and firefox since both have not only downsides, but plenty advantages too in my opinion.

It's fast enough on any remotely modern hardware.

Personally I love the ability to still pimp it out with style sheets.

And yeah, Mozilla has so many, many problems. In many ways they have become Google's pet, IMO. But most importantly they are not Google.

I think when Chrome came out Google was still a cool, hip company and Chrome fixed a lot of issues Firefox had. I used it for years. So they managed to become the normie cultural default. These people are hard to change habit-wise.

I could be wrong though. Just sort of thinking out loud.

I'd guess that:

• Google is a bigger brand that attracts many people as a lot of them are already using some of the company's products
• These other products are well integrated with the browser: browser history is shared across devices along with passwords and extensions
• Google advertises Chrome in the Google Search, it's a default search engine even in Firefox

Most people are not tech savvy and/or privacy-oriented.