Firefox is about more than market share. A state of the art free non for profit browser makes the market much more competitive and better for the consumer. They are there to keep chrome/ other browsers honest. If chrome / google does something too corporate you don't like, there's an alternative.

That is all so very true. But it is also utterly irrelevant if market share drops too much. That will unavoidably lead to incompatibilities which will without doubt ensure that only die hard enthusiasts will use it.

Which means it won't be an alternative anymore and it will die.

Very fair point. This is why Firefox 57 is so great IMO, i started using firefox again and now I don't think I'll leave it again soon. I think i'm not alone.

As a dedicated FF user since Phoenix, I fully agree, but if few people actually use the alternative, it probably gets harder to get any kind of revenue deals :|

That seems a dangerous line of thinking, like arguing that startups are about more than growth.

Firefox is looking like Apple circa 1997. They can still recover, but they have to focus on what people want.

I think most users don't care how fast the browser is at the level they're boasting about. They've been fast enough for many years for most use cases. They should do a commercial showing they can run uBlock Origin on Android, how fast sites load compared to without it, and jump on the "annoying ad" train Apple and Google seem to be bragging about fixing latley by "solving" a few problems uO had solved, the right way, for years.

I completely disagree. I care a lot about privacy, but I've been unable to use Firefox for a long time now because of speed. Up until now, Chrome has just been significantly faster, to the point where I couldn't justify Firefox for everyday usage. I think a lot of people feel the same, especially those who know less about privacy. I hope the situation changes. If they were in the same ballpark in terms of speed, then my choice would be clear, but they haven't been.

It would be like using Tor all the time. You know it's better, but the difference in speed is so great, that you have to make a conscious choice. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say that I want the benefits _without_ compromising speed.

I agree. Browser speed does not affect consumer choice directly. Very few people chose Chrome over Firefox because it was slightly faster or slightly more stable. The vast majority of users chose Chrome because it felt better.

Also, Google's pushing it helped. Otherwise consider how Chrome has occupied an IE like market share despite the quality Delta between Chrome and IE/Edge, Firefox or Safari is significantly lesser than the Delta between Firefox and IE was a decade ago, yet Firefox peaked at a much lower marketshare than Chrome's today.

Your Apple analogy might be quite apt. Mac has a market-share of something like 14%, but that's not Apple failing, that's Apple succeeding in targeting the expensive end of the market.

Firefox has a chance at doing the same thing with privacy-aware users and/or power users.

To that end, they need to stop dumbing-down the browser and endlessly playing catch-up with Chrome.

Spot on. Chrome is not the standard by which all others are judged. Like some others here, I've used Firefox since it existed, even when it was Phoenix and Firebird. The only other browser I will use besides FF-based browsers is Uzbl. Firefox allows me to lock down and customise my browser in ways Chrome does not. Let's not even go into the privacy nightmare that is Chrome.

They are not like apple because their goal is not the same as a for profit company. While you could still argue they're failing, i was just saying market share isn't the only indicator for a corporation in their position.

They're doing well now, especially since Electrolysis. But they can't beat Chrome being bundled in literally everywhere. Most average Joes will never switch from the bundled browser. Firefox needs to cut some deals to get bundled in as well. Sadly I doubt they have resources for this...

Mozilla is NOT a non-profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Corporation

The Mozilla Foundation IS a non-profit, with Mozilla Corporation as a wholly-owned subsidiary.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation

Mozilla Corporation is, as you can see on the first sentence of that page, a subsidiary of Mozilla Foundation[0], which is itself a non-profit.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mozilla_Foundation

Percentage of total users is deceptive in some ways. The absolute number of FF users can stay the same, or even rise, and their % share can decline. It is absolute number of users that impacts the deals they can make. That's not to say a larger % wouldn't be good for FF.

Firefox needs a serious presence in mobile. If the browser is competitive with Chrome, and also supports webextensions, it stands a fairly good chance, at least boosting up a few percentage points.

Firefox Focus/Klar is a pretty compelling app. :-)

Depends a bit: if devs switch back I'd say definitely.

If devs are ready to repeat the IE 6 story, this time with Chrome.

Getting companies to do cross browser testing seems hard even if it it should be simpler than ever before.. :-/

I switched to Quantum as my daily driver a few weeks ago, I love it as a user. It has made me hate the Chrome dev tools with white hot passion. Firebug might be gone, but the new dev tools are a masterpiece of usability. I emphatically recommend developer edition as a development browser.

Yeah, the new devtools are pretty nice! The revamp is missing some bits (e.g. the pretty printer is missing for files without a sourcemap) but I suspect that will trickle through slowly.

I've noticed that a lot of folks don't realize there are a bunch more devtools tabs that you can enable hidden in the settings (including a shader editor, a canvas debugger, and a DOM inspector). They're less useful than the main four (inspector/console/debugger/network) but are pretty neat and help a lot.

Indeed, I didn't think it could surpass Chrome's dev tools quality so quickly.

Until they figure out a way to address their irrelevance on Mobile, devs will never fully switch since they have to do testing on mobile devices.

It is really sad that Gecko is becoming so good, but is mainly used to power a product in what is becoming a niche market (yes, desktop is becoming a niche in terms of users relative to mobile).

I posting from Firefox monile now. It's my main browser.

If I use Chrome only it is for my sockpuppet accounts.

I far prefer FF even on mobile.

Sure, I'm not saying that no one uses Firefox on Android.

But their mobile marketshare is totally irrelevant compared to Chrome, UCBrowser or the Samsung browser (even this one alone has about as many users as Fx Desktop).

I found it ate all my memory and crashed frequent. Nexus 5X.

One of the things I found was that I had to use their Beta. Their main build wouldn't even start for me.

The amount of desktop usage hasn't gone down with mobile usage going up. Desktop isn't niche.

That said, more market share for Fennec would be nice.

(This comment written in Fennec.)

Desktop is less and less relevant compared to Mobile so it will get less and less attention from content producers.

I don't mind that some people want to keep focusing on desktop products, they have their use. But I think it's not what Mozilla should focus on if they want to "promote internet for everyone".

I don't think it's too late, always room for a better browser, I've swapped to Quantum and I think it's better than chrome, especially as a dev. I swapped to chrome when it came out, and it's been the better browser for a long time, but I think that's changed. I'm certainly recommending it. Even Edge feels better than chrome at the moment.

The other thing I'm trialing is using duckduckgo as a search engine which is quite good, but google is still mostly better, but since you can google from ddg, I'm sticking with it for the moment.

FWIW, Firefox is still number one in Germany (desktop only) which is not an to be underrated economy.

It may even be worse than that. They have effectively thrown out all that made Firefox distinct in any user facing sense to achieve this.

This is sadly true. I switched off Chrome 5+ years ago due to the "vim-like" plugins being much better on FF than Chrome (specifically, my keybindings not working on built-in pages) and since FF56, vimperator and pentadactly no longer function. There have been months of back-and-forth between some developers and the FF team, but the functionality required for these plugins has never been prioritized and I had to disable automatic updating and download FF54 so that everything would function. Today I just gave up caring and installed cVim on Vivaldi (https://vivaldi.com/) which is Good Enough for now.

Give it some time. I was expecting not to switch because of lack of Tree Style Tabs until around end of year. But I switched some weeks ago. Some addon authors use this opportunity to make a better addon. A few days ago GreaseMonkey has been released with a new API. And of course there will be new addons made by other people to replace lost functionality. It's happening, just not overnight.

That's the issue - there's no real path to making these legacy plugins work. There are open issues for a keyboard api for FF that has had very little movement over months, so while I'm sure it'll eventually get to a point where I can use FF as I used to, that not being the case now has given me little reason to stay with FF and so back to Chrome I went.

It's too soon to judge, I think. I would be happy using the old FF if the new one didn't have already the things I need. In the mean time I would try to collaborate. Once FF 57 is out of beta officially, there will eventually be enough people with itches to scratch. It was in my plans to implement Tree Style Tabs properly if no alternative appeared before end of the year.

It's not too soon to judge - plugins I used no longer work unless I turn off auto-update or move to the LTS version. The team knew these were breaking changes for months or years, but the APIs to un-break things don't exist and aren't prioritized. It's discouraging to collaboration when you look at 2+ year old issues (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061) that still haven't been properly addressed.

You make it sound like there's no movement, but I see enough movement to have both short-term alternatives, and medium term fixes. Read comment 46 and the next ones. They were super busy with what they can actually release with FF 57. Until today the issue wasn't really pressing. In a few days we'll see if they're serious about that issue.

You don't break something and then prioritize fixing it. That's backwards. If they knew it was going to break the proper thing to do it prioritize the fixes before it effects end users, not after. If I were to push up a breaking change this morning and just wait for bug reports, I'd be looking for a new job by this afternoon.

I would agree with you normally. But in this case there's a much bigger "bug" they must handle: The vast majority of users have migrated to Chrome or some other browser that don't respect their privacy.

We power users are like 1-2% of all FF users. I think it's acceptable to break some things for a while to bring back much more users than that.

In the mean time, they've lost one of those power users (likely more, going by some of the discussion in issues for various vim-like plugins) and will, in the future, need to do something to entice me back. This experience has left a bad taste in my mouth and I'm not going to be rushing to go back to a browser that breaks functionality on me without prompt.

They lost me once for terrible, terrible performance. For a year or two until I really needed tree style tabs back. They need to prioritize. Deal with it.

Also, since you're a power user, why don't you use that proposed API already? It seems you don't even need to compile the browser or anything, just enabling a flag and installing the API as an addon.

> They lost me once for terrible, terrible performance. For a year or two until I really needed tree style tabs back. They need to prioritize. Deal with it.

I am dealing with it. I moved to a different browser.

> Also, since you're a power user, why don't you use that proposed API already? It seems you don't even need to compile the browser or anything, just enabling a flag and installing the API as an addon.

Simply not true.

Search for Tridactyl, which is aiming to reimplement the Vimperator/Pentadactyl feature set in WebExtensions Firefox. It's still in early stages of development but there is already an initial release on AMO with some basic features implemented and with a very familiar feel.

I've tried Tridactyl, but the plugin not working on Firefox pages is the same frustration I had with vim plugins for Chrome.

If you were heavily utilizing the nmemonics provided by those vim-like plugins (I was before the upgrade) you may be quite pleased by the fast minimal experience bought by qute-browser which is basically webkit wrapped in python/qt bringing a browser built centrally around vim interaction (as opposed to a plugin)

If the vim stuff was the only plugin I needed, I'd move over in a heartbeat.

Saka keys on Firefox has been a suitable replacement for me.

Not me personally, but there will always be a vocal minority who will complain about having their workflow broken. Any replacement will be missing some critical feature. For a person affected by this, it is a painful experience having their entire workflow broken so they resort to dire warnings on forums such as this one ('Firefox is finished without <my niche plugin>').

In this case, I think Firefox made a good choice in modernising the codebase and the extension APIs. In 2 years we'll find out if the vim people were right or they were indulging in hyperbole.

Less "dire warnings on forums" and more "slow development pace for required pieces to make my workflow even possible again".

Here's an issue opened June 9 that hasn't been addressed by the Mozilla team and hasn't had any updates in a month: https://github.com/cmcaine/keyboard-api/issues/1

Here's the request for a better keyboard API (referenced in the above) that's been open for over 2 years with no end in sight: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1215061

I'm sure the new FF is going to make some users happy, but as you said, having your workflow broken is quite painful, and the Mozilla team has known about this for years but still not made the upgrade path bearable.

> with no end in sight

Except an already developed patch and proposal that needs some time from the main devs to be reviewed. For a long time they were very busy making FF bearable for 90% of the users. Now that it's released we'll see if this issue is as stuck as you imply.

I guess we will, but with the slow pace that any of this was (not) done over the last number of years, I'm not holding my breath.

eh... I use it now, and it's OK. It's missing a ton of features that Vimperator had, and it will likely never get them.

>specifically, my keybindings not working on built-in pages

This is a restriction for chrome-store extensions. You can install one manually without with "feature"

Firefox does have some distinct features that are important to me. I want to open links from Gmail or Inbox without being logged in to my Google account. Firefox containers are perfect for that. I also like snoozing tabs and quick tab switching by typing % into the address bar.

Some of these things can be done in other browsers using third party extensions, but I am extremely reluctant when it comes to third party extensions for security reasons.

[Edit] Very important to me as well is built-in reader view.

I didn't know we can switch tabs by typing '%' in the address bar. Helpful indeed.

You can also just type something matching the tab name or URL and "switch to tab" will be in the results in the address bar, usually at the top. It's very nice especially for when you have lots of tabs and you want to do "Open the page matching this from my history unless that tab is already open, in which case switch to tab" because you can just type into the address bar and press enter and it will work.

I understand the concern about the extensions/addons changes, but FF is still a distinct browser.

Several things immediately come to mind:

* Mozilla is a more trustworthy company than Google, so all things being equal, I'll take their product.

* Container tabs (or multi-account tabs now) are a killer feature for privacy and greatly improve the "multi profile" use case

* Firefox Mobile allows extensions, where Chrome doesn't support it.

The only negative for me with FF is that in the enterprise, FF Kerberos/SSO function seems inferior to Chrome, which "just works".

But for it being closed source, I think Vivaldi is a better experience than Chrome. Sure it's "just" a reskin, but point is, Chrome is in 3rd place in my opinion.

Which means that they have to compete on marketing against Google.

Considering where Firefox started and the dominant browser at the time, it's in a much better position than the first time around.

Remember, Firefox was never the dominant browser, and where it is now is where it has almost always been.

I personally think so. I also think their latest work on replacing Firebug and PhantomJS are way way late as well. I commend them on improving their tools, but man, Google has just eaten their lunch the past 10 years.

> but man, Google has just eaten their lunch the past 10 years.

Maybe because Google actively pays people to install Chrome without the users knowledge, and force it as default. That’s pretty much the definition of malware already.

It’s hard to win against someone that does such hostile behaviour.

Also because Mozilla wasted a lot of effort on FirefoxOS. That's when the browser really stagnated.

You are totally wrong on the wasted effort. FirefoxOS actually pushed a lot of the performance improvements that are seen as wonderful in this release. I kind of LOLed when people re-discovered things like how sync layout was bad. So much knowledge was lost in Moz when they killed FxOS that it's a showcase of bad leadership.

The desktop browser was stagnating because the browser owners had no idea where to drive it, and some people with the castle keys were change adverse (some finally "left"). They took as an excuse that they could not get support from the platform team, so the platform team killed FxOS support and ended up being absorbed by the Firefox organization to become just the fx backend team (great strategy!). I guess the platform VP was so frightened by the Tofino experiment and Fx Desktop moving away from Gecko that he didn't understand that was betting on the wrong horse long term.

Well, in general, I don't see Quantum as elevating the concerns of desktop over mobile. Moving to parallel implementations of functionality can help even more on mobile than on desktop, since Android phones have tended to embrace multicore faster than desktop has. (Apple phones are a different story, but Gecko obviously can't be relevant there, and even Apple is finally moving to high core counts in the past year.)

Patrick, you know that the MoCo has focused 110% on desktop the last 1.5 year. Or if you don't, you should ask the Android platform team (eg. snorp).

They had to try. Mobile devices are way more restrictive than the PC ever was. The companies that dominate the OS have unprecedented power and leverage.

If Mozilla's goal is to strengthen the interests of a wide range of users against the narrow interests of two or three oligopolists they have to consider entering the OS game in spite of the immense difficulties.