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Firefox 89: Can this redesign stem browser's decline?:
Mozilla has released Firefox 89, proclaiming it a "fresh new Firefox," though it comes amid a relentless decline in market share.
Firefox matters more than most web browsers, because it uses its own browser engine, called Quantum, and its own JavaScript engine, called SpiderMonkey. By contrast, most other browsers, including Chrome and Chromium, Edge, Brave, Opera, and Vivaldi use the Google-sponsored Blink engine, while Apple's Safari uses WebKit (from which Blink was forked). The existence of multiple independent implementations is important for web standards, helping to prevent a single vendor from pushing through changes without consensus, and ensuring that the standards are coherent.
A glance at a statistics site like W3Counter is telling. In April 2008, Microsoft enjoyed a 63 per cent market share with Internet Explorer, and with Firefox performing strongly behind it at 29.3 per cent. By April 2010, IE was down to 48.6 per cent, Firefox up to 32.7 per cent, and Google's newer Chrome was starting to make an impact, at 8.3 per cent.
In April 2012, the three were almost on a par, though Chrome (26.8 per cent) had overtaken Firefox (25 per cent). Today, Chrome is at 65.3 per cent, Safari second at 16.7 per cent, IE and Edge has 5.7 per cent, and Firefox has just 4.1 per cent share. Despite numerous updates, Mozilla's browser has declined from 6.1 per cent share a year ago. Statcounter tells a similar story, reporting a 3.59 per cent share for Firefox, down from 4.21 per cent a year ago.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tangomargarine on Monday June 07 2021, @07:08AM
Well if that's the case somebody has clearly been failing at their job...
Indeed.
"People are still using our browser; what else can we do to make them leave?!"
But to be serious for a moment, it really is mind-boggling the direction they've been pursuing lately. It's like they're purposely trying to get rid of every feature that people are actually using the browser for...all sacrificed on the altar of security or who-knows-what.
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You know you're getting old when Pale Moon, the fork you switched to years ago to avoid this exact circumstance, decides to get rid of the main feature you switched to it for (classic extensions). And in classic Firefox fashion, I learned about this decision when I casually clicked the "update" button and it promptly ruined all of my installed extensions, lol.
From the little I've seen of the Pale Moon forums, the guy running it is king of the "#WONTFIX and lock the thread" philosophy of dealing with dissent, too. Guess that's what inevitably happens when you're czar.
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"