UPDATE 07 May 2023: Fixing some typos and grammar errors.
First, I want to let you guys and gals know that I moved from Chrome to Firefox yester...
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Those are your reasons and as such that are valid.
At the same time, they are probably like the top 42th, 69th and 83th reasons why the average internet choose chrome over Firefox.
Mostly the question itself is wrong, the average user doesn't choose.
Chrome comes installed on their Android and Chromebook, or it's what the IT department installed for everyone, or it's the top browser on everyone's mind from a marketing point of view, or it's what that little website called google.com recommend him to use.
I guarantee, with these issues that I wrote about in the article going on, even if the users went out of their way and tried Firefox, they wouldn't be able to endure it.
What do you think will happen when they change the browser and can't cast, can't understand some foreign pages, Facebook is broken, Google Search can't highlight search queries, and have no way to create nice icons for their favorite websites on their desktop?
Chrome or Google isn't the reason users don't use Firefox. I changed to Firefox myself and I don't plan to stay here for long.
Problem here is that you are assuming that you know the audience, that you know what users will do and say instead of going out of the building and ask them.
Try it out as an experiment: go out of the building, and ask people what are the reasons they chose A over B.
No, I didn't assume, but the numbers do the talking here.
Both Firefox's market share and the users that would affect by these issues in the billions, I can't say otherwise.
We all know the numbers but you assume you know the reasons without asking the users. That's what people often do and the Lean Startup movement was started because precisely that approach works surprisingly not well.
IDK, you might as well assuming that a load of users on Mozilla Connect page that I linked in my article are not... the users... And you might as well assuming that people would want to browse on a broken website, instead of a working one. People might as well don't want to understand any content on any page they're browsing.
However, I believe those are not the cases...
Subjectively, these are all great reasons for me to keep using Firefox.
All of these are symbolic of Google. They display either lack of respect for privacy or Googles monopolistic control. This also Ignores the huge advantages Firefox delivers in this regard.
LOL funny you are - so in essence you say that LACKING certain features is a great thing, because you happen not to like or use those features? Billions of people use Facebook and Google Search on a daily basis ... the numbers do the talking here.
Yep, I've been using Firefox since it was the full Mozilla suite and they definitely seem to lose their way every so often. Hopeful they get another boost to bring it back again like they have in the past, but we'll see..
I don't think Firefox can be improved any further. The browser seems like it's developed without internet users in mind. I won't hold my breath 😂
The "URL Fragment Text Directives" concept from #4, whilst undeniably useful and indeed sorely missing from Firefox, isn't actually an official web standard or even in the process of becoming one. Also explained in the document you linked:
And, yes, Mozilla has been making quite a few exceptionally confusing and estranging moves in some rather questionable directions.
Firefox won't survive the market with its current direction. However, I don't care very much for Mozilla, but Firefox is the default browser on Linux, average users who try Linux could have a misunderstanding about Linux just because Firefox is doing worse, not Linux.
If Chromium did anything, it proved that the Gecko engine doesn't carry the same weight it did in the past. Browsers are competing on external features that make browsing more productive. Mozilla completely missed the turn in that regard.
Firefox doesn't offer anything that I can't get from even the most obscure Chromium-based alternatives. All the while Mozilla insists that common features in competing browsers are not worth it's time.
Mozilla has made their bed and it's ridiculous that diehards can't see it.
the fact that firefox is way behind in adopting web standards speaks more that a few missing functionalities. firefox has become the new IE as far as web devs see it. Spent some time on caniuse.com and most browsers keep up with the standards, not firefox. So it's death is iminent
Was this written by AI? Why are there pictures of airplanes all over the place?
Agreed. I tend to think that it may simply be that English is not the primary language of the author ( in which case kudos for writing in that language) but the grammar in certain parts certainly looks like it was passed through a bad translator or AI. Do a quick run through on Grammarly or another tool to clean it up and the article would read 100% better.
Please take this in the spirit in which it is intended. Constructive criticism on the grammar - not the content.
Thanks for your suggestion ❤️
English is not my main language. I will try my best to improve on this in the future.
EDIT: I didn't use AI to write any of my articles 😂
The arguments stated in this article seem to be highly subjective, and affect only a certain group of target users, though valid. There are lots of people—like myself—who don't care about any of the above features. For example, PWAs feel weird and crappy to me, as opposed to native desktop applications.
Chromium-based web browsers sometimes may be lacking in terms of features as well. On-page search is one of their weaknesses compared to Firefox.
It all just comes to personal preference, I think. One cannot satisfy everyone's desires for features.
I am not talking about an individual here. All the issues are linked with their respective Mozilla Connect pages, which representing the real users.
Moreover, I talk about some millions-billions of potential users who could switch to Firefox if the browser didn't do as bad as it did.
EDIT: I am not sure when Facebook or Google Search doesn't work correctly in the browser, it will affect only a certain group of target users... (some billions of people).
And about PWA:
Good luck for any browser vendor that's not investing on PWA.
Well, there must be reasons to not implement some features, or to remove others. Who knows what goals Mozilla tries to achieve.
Also, I don't think that one can get significantly more users by just implementing a few features already present in another piece of software.
On top of that, each new feature introduces a couple or a dozen of new bugs and takes precious development resources, requires to modify things that are already polished.
Modern software already suffers from feature creep, so why to continue this trend.
In this situation, I don't think Mozilla can hope to maintain their users, let alone getting more. However, I am not talking about some features or some themes that I don't like either, but I am talking about some very basic feature set, i.e., the most viewed website in the world should work without any issue. Does this one worth investing? Or should the most used social network in the world break only in Firefox?
So true, this is the concept of GNOME Circle which is a collection of high quality small apps from indie developers. But come on, we're talking about Mozilla here. They generated $585 million from their search partnerships, subscriptions, and ad revenue in 2021 alone! I don't think resources is one of their issues, especially when Firefox usage is down 85% (in 2020) despite Mozilla's top exec pay going up 400%!
There's a recent Reddit thread about why we should stop supporting Firefox, see here. I don't know, since I didn't read it yet. But I am sure it will be a good read.