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Firefox Browser Use Drops As Mozilla's Worst Microsoft Edge Fears Come True
Back in April, we reported that the Edge browser is quickly gaining market share now that Microsoft has transitioned from the EdgeHTML engine to the more widely used Chromium engine (which also underpins Google's Chrome browser). At the time, Edge slipped into the second-place slot for desktop web browsers, with a 7.59 percent share of the market. This dropped Mozilla's Firefox – which has long been the second-place browser behind Chrome – into third place.
Now, at the start of August, we're getting some fresh numbers in for the desktop browser market, and things aren't looking good for Mozilla. Microsoft increased its share of the browser market from 8.07 percent in June to 8.46 percent in July. Likewise, Firefox fell from 7.58 percent to 7.27 percent according to NetMarketShare.
[...] As for Mozilla, the company wasn't too happy when Microsoft first announced that it was going to use Chromium for Edge way back in December 2018. Mozilla's Chris Beard at the time accused Microsoft of "giving up" by abandoning EdgeHTML in favor of Chromium. "Microsoft's decision gives Google more ability to single-handedly decide what possibilities are available to each one of us," said Beard at the time. "We compete with Google because the health of the internet and online life depend on competition and choice."
[...] Microsoft developer Kenneth Auchenberg fought back the following January, writing, "Thought: It's time for Mozilla to get down from their philosophical ivory tower. The web is dominated by Chromium, if they really *cared* about the web they would be contributing instead of building a parallel universe that's used by less than 5 percent."
Is the browser monoculture inevitable or will Firefox hang in there?
Previously:
Mozilla Teases Chromium-Based Firefox, Then Pulls Back
Firefox Tops Microsoft Browser Market Share for First Time
Netmarketshare Claims Mozilla Firefox Usage Drops Below Ten Percent
Microsoft Intercepting Firefox, Chrome Installation on Windows 10 Insider Build
Microsoft Reportedly Building a Chromium-Based Web Browser to Replace Edge, and "Windows Lite" OS
Mozilla CEO Warns Microsoft's Switch to Chromium Will Give More Control of the Web to Google
Microsoft Employee Sparks Outrage by Suggesting Firefox Switch Browser Engine to Chromium
Mozilla Was "Outfoxed" by Google
Microsoft Edge Shares Privacy-Busting Telemetry, Research Alleges
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:04AM (13 children)
Now, why would I start tearing stuff out of my system, to make room for a browser? Hmmm - what does it want to remove?
blueman
bluetooth
bluez
cryptsetup
cryptsetup-initramfs
eudev
gnome-bluetooth
gvfs
gvfs-daemons
initramfs-tools
initramfs-tools-core
libeudev-dev
libeudev1
libsane
That's far enough. Some of the stuff it wants to remove, I don't even use. Other stuff - well - if it borks my xserver by removing ~20 sxerver.org packages, the browser isn't going to do me much good.
I'll just stick with Firefox, which has NEVER prompted me to gut my operating system for it.
(Score: 2) by coolgopher on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:22AM (8 children)
Why the fuck would a web browser conflict with cryptsetup?! That is just utterly broken.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:30AM
If you have to ask, you are already on the list. Noted.
(Score: 4, Informative) by petecox on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:36AM (6 children)
It wouldn't.
It sounds like a dependency version problem. A package might specify whatever versions it was built against. The package manager is trying to resolve the conflict by brute force, i.e. dumbly removing anything that prevents installation.
e.g. A vendor might support the latest Ubuntu LTS release. But if you're running the development release or plain debian, expect the versions not to match.
Which is why they offer a Snap.
(Score: 4, Informative) by PartTimeZombie on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:45AM (5 children)
Oh? Another reason to not bother then.
(Score: 1) by petecox on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:56AM (4 children)
I just looked at their download page. It assumed I wanted the amd64 .deb but listed rpm & snap as options.
If either of us could be bothered we'd complain to Opera! :) They need to explicitly say what OS release they support or loosen up their versioning requirements. e.g. libABC 25.3 or higher instead of libABC 25.3.1
(Score: 4, Touché) by Arik on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:47AM (3 children)
Nah, that'd be craaaaazy.
If laughter is the best medicine, who are the best doctors?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:48PM
The problem is the bugs. They test it with certain version of a library and don't want to have people saying "oh it doesn't work on linux" because some package maintainer understandably got busy in his life.
I mean, browser is not easy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @09:56PM (1 child)
The problem of releasing the source is that people could see those backdoors and build-in tracking... you do not want to know about those, right!
(Score: 1) by MIRV888 on Thursday August 13 2020, @09:32AM
There's no free lunch. Open source keeps it honest. Better code is better code. Would you rather be lied to about your software's vulnerability?
We are chasing the perfect mousetrap.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday August 04 2020, @05:42AM (3 children)
At least under Windows, it comes in a portable version [portableapps.com] that doesn't have to interfere with other installs. If you don't like it (or the version you downloaded), close it and delete the whole directory. No registry settings, no add/remove programs, no files randomly strewn about.
If you want to try a new version, save off the 'Data' directory (containing all the app settings) from the previous version, drop it over the 'Data' directory in the new version, and start it up. This also allows you to keep a few different versions at a time in different directories on your Windows box.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:44AM (2 children)
Sane applications do the same on *nixes. Download a .tar.gz file, unpack it, and everything is self contained, within that directory. I was an early adopter of Firefox, when it was still in milestone versions. (0.51 I think was my first version) You could download the nightly build, and test it - if it didn't do what you wanted, you just delete it, and use whichever previous version did work.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Common Joe on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:25PM (1 child)
I don't think it's very popular, but I've gotten to like AppImage files when they are available and if I'm looking for portability. That way, you can skip the unzipping altogether. Interestingly, it's a lot smaller than snap installations. A good example to look at is LibreOffice. It's available with Snap, Flatpak, and AppImage.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 06 2020, @01:43PM
+1 for AppImage. The format is so simple. Include libraries, set RPATH to $ORIGIN, insert a stub that extract to tmp (preferably in memory). Fire up a firejail shell (or other sandboxing) and you have it sandboxed.
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:24AM (7 children)
Only thing wrong with what said above is that there's no "philosophical ivory tower" arguments to be made since Mozilla could just fork Chromium and apply MPL where they'd like.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Freeman on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:34PM (6 children)
Wow, Microsoft has drunk their own Koolaid or maybe the Google Koolaid, I'm not sure which. Maybe they made a suicide and drank both.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:07PM (5 children)
95% market share hardly makes for a suicide pack excuse in my book.
Regardless, the argument stands: It's all free, open source code implementing open standards so unless you have specific technical goals that can't be met with Chromium, what's the point of expanding resources on Firefox?
compiling...
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Freeman on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:33PM (1 child)
The problem is you have Google at the helm. The only difference between Google Chrome and Chromium is semantics.
While it was interesting to see Microsoft's near complete dominance go to almost nothing, seeing another single browser take it's place, wasn't very heartening.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday August 04 2020, @08:55PM
Again, they can just fork it. They're not some moms & pops bakery. They're Mozilla. They already maintain a huge browser code base that takes hours just to compile. They can maintain their patch sets. They can fork. They can re-license.
A few years ago when their extensions API was different and more full featured it would have been a different case... But now that they're just monkeying Google's APIs, what's the point?
compiling...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:31PM (1 child)
in case it's not your phone auto correct and just fyi: it's "pact", not "pack"
(Score: 2) by RamiK on Tuesday August 04 2020, @08:50PM
Nah the original paragraph was something along "95% market share hardly makes for a suicide pact. Putting aside kettles and pots, the argument stands:..." but some clumsy mouse editing and desktop* spell checking resulted in the above. Oddly enough, testing it out now shows my phones' spell check includes an idiomatic usage vocab and would have auto-corrected "suicide pack" into "suicide pact".
* Firefox ironically enough.
compiling...
(Score: 2) by Teckla on Wednesday August 05 2020, @04:53PM
In purely pragmatic terms, Mozilla should probably switch to the Chromium engine.
However, a web browser engine monoculture is probably not a good thing.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @09:00AM (4 children)
Mozilla did wrong not with newer versions, problems started even in 4.0.
Since version 4, it looks like Mozilla changed their target - while in previous versions it was mostly for mid-range and power users who know that changing settings usually leads to some effects, in next ones they decided to be another AOL or Chrome - a non-configurable tool for everyone. While there were browsers for everyone, there was IE, Opera and emerging Chrome.
So, this is OK for marketing purposes - customer must not know too much and the ad must be accepted right now, not after reading documentation. The problem is that it's just not Mozilla's way.
I remember that it started when they donated their Apple buildfarm, then there was some financing scandal, and then the thing fell apart. In earlier versions most addons just worked from the download, even if made for previous version. Now every release addons must be updated. So it's not just "for users, by users" who needed a fix for some problem so solved it, but by companies who have money to invest in constant programmer's work. And companies have business plans to fulfill by any cost, also user's trust - company will just emerge as another one, while Mozilla will not.
Next, removal of options. Usually phasing out should be made by moving something to "as an option". Not moving it then to about:config, then as addon, and then abandoning this addon. So instead of things which could be customized, expanded and adapted, they made another Chromium clone. Integration of spyware add-ons which stores user's content with shady conditions was another step towards being Chrome and make power users jump on forks.
Mozilla discouraged their biggest target users group and there were better options for other groups...
So... what they expected?
I think it's another open source initiative ran by clerks from some foundation. Someone did a thing 5 years ago in totally different goal and conditions, it must then work for us.
(Score: 2) by PiMuNu on Tuesday August 04 2020, @01:55PM
It's hard to get it right - that sweet spot where you attract fanbois with all the geeky features, while still being accessible to noobs. In the heady 0s there was google, linux, mozilla, but I can't think of any outfit that gets it right nowadays, except maybe GNU/Linux (and that is going the way of systemd). Maybe some of the open social media protocols we occasionally hear about will hit threshold and make it big?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:20PM (2 children)
You can still customize firefox. You put your most of your non-ui customization settings into the user.js file:
~/.mozilla/firefox/default.profile$ wc -l user.js
878 user.js
And, you can make the UI look just about any way you like too:
~/.mozilla/firefox/default.profile$ wc -l chrome/userChrome.css
325 chrome/userChrome.css
So, for "power users" the knobs, and switches are still available. Both of these files have been around forever, and continue to be supported.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:45PM
Oh really. Can you make the tabs vertical? And don't tell me about hiding horizontal tab bar and installing an extension that replicates it in the vertical format.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday August 05 2020, @07:03AM
userChrome.css has to be enabled as "legacy" in about:config
so get your butt cheeks nice and lubed for when they ram a giant fist deep in there and rip it out after the next upgrade
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @03:49PM
Seems like noone bothered to investigate _why_ Edge's usage % has gone up.
Noone in their right mind would be using it voluntarily, right? No worry, microsoft is here to HELP YOU.
So, judging from my network (roughly 60 laptops running win10), it seems that "default" browser is reset to Edge every proper reboot, no matter what i change it to...
The win10 images are custom, enterprise license, WSUS, on a domain, finance sector, the whole nine yards.
What a marvellous coincidence, that these absent-minded coders at MS have made such an innocent mistake!
And even more hilarious that idiots at the firefox are actually acting on it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @06:37PM (1 child)
Since we are being forced into a single browser controlled by Google we need to have GDPR to limit them. Taking up the GDPR will also hinder the tech companies that just testified before Congress. There is too much power concentrated in too few entities.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:33PM
so you want the government scum to further entrench these incumbent tech firms?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday August 04 2020, @07:49PM
People here often vilify Google, rightfully so.
But, on a large scale, programmers push Google's browser, Google's engine, Google's DNS, Google's web APIs.
Health care products, that should promote privacy, include links to Google. Voter registration/absentee voter sites use Google's reCAPTCHA. DNA testing sites use Google maps.
I've seen many sites that have some obligation to respect vistors' privacy use some kind of Google product.
Seems to me, programmers are creating the Google one-world-order.
(Score: 2) by eravnrekaree on Tuesday August 04 2020, @09:02PM
From a web developer perspective I am glad that Microsoft no longer has its own browser engine. It was another engine to support and that often means loads of incompatibilities to deal with and your code ends up a mess having to support so many different engines. The bad old days of so many incompatible browsers and then flash on top of it all are gone and good riddance. It was a closed source engine as well so the less closed source stuff the better.
Consider, that chromium is a completely open source code base.The fear of it really does not hold water because anyone can use the code base or make improvements to it, its all open source. So, its not like we are being locked into a proprietary platform. People can make their own browsers on the code base with the UI features they need.
I think the right decision for Mozilla would be to move to the chromium codebase. They are apparently have problems maintaining the legacy codebase from a security perspective. The situation with the ongoing CVE avalanche. I can't believe spending so much time on it is a good use of developer resources. It is full of security problems. They could reduce duplication of effort and help make chromium better.
(Score: 2) by ChrisMaple on Wednesday August 05 2020, @02:11AM
If you want a system free of spies, help keep firefox alive.