There are plenty of engineers still working on Projects Snappy and MemShrink who are looking directly at the metrics related to the performance problems you describe.

The places database is known to have serious performance problems, as you discovered. It is difficult to reengineer but it is being worked on.

Finally, 64 bit windows builds are not being abandoned. They are being disabled for a time until the issues with marking bugs as 64 or 32 bit and other administrative details are ironed out.

These are my own perceptions and opinions about the situation.

EDIT: I'm responding to your edit here:

> A few weeks ago I tried to delete some of my history from Firefox, I opened the history window, hit Shift and selected about 6 months of history and hit delete, and it took Firefox about an hour to delete the history all the while the UI going from responding to not responding back and forth.

I would imagine the Firefox developers spend their time optimizing the parts of their browser that users would most likely use. I suspect that they are not terribly worried about an action that users would take (at most) once every six months.

EDIT2: I guess I'll respond to this one too:

> The web browser has become the most important app on the PC, with more and more web pages demanding more and more resources, I really wish Mozilla would refocus on making the best web browser available.

Making the best web browser is not Mozilla's goal. Their goal is to "promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web" [1]. Integrating social features into the browser is part of that, in the sense that users will be able to control their social presence from their browser, rather than being locked-in to a specific social provider's web site. Mozilla's actions are not inconsistent with their stated mission. (Whether you agree with that mission is another argument entirely).

[1]: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/mission/

edit: In response to your edit:

>Making the best web browser is not Mozilla's goal. Their goal is to "promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web"

If Mozilla's goal isn't to make the best web browser then no one will end up using their browser, and if no one uses their browser then they wont be able to "promote openness, innovation & opportunity on the Web", no market share = no voice. During the days of IE6's dominance Mozilla got its large user base because it was the best browser available. Mozilla is in danger of hemorrhaging users if it continues making these sort of decisions.

Us "hackers" got Mozilla its user base, we started using it first and convinced our family, friends, workmates/workplaces to switch. If the power users leave, the rest will be soon to follow.

[1]http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_os.asp

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_operating_syste...

I'm surprised only 84% of the traffic is Windows users.

You are also implying that developers using windows are all second rate.

When even the basics are wrong you're not getting refreshed much. Especially when adding three letters ('mdn') to the query at the end gives you a much better resource by all metrics.

If you subtract that quotient from the general pool of "Windows developers" it becomes much more of a fair comparison.

Yes, there's useful things on w3schools, but like picking through a trash heap full of rusted bicycles and used syringes, it's a dangerous expedition. You might pick up some awful bad habits along the way.

Actually, the implication is that second rate developers are Windows users. Which is a very different statement.

That's not referring to Windows users in particular.

I stopped using Firefox years ago. Reading an apology on a tech site explaining why, in 2012, it's acceptable that deleting 6 months of history can take one hour (!) gives me confidence that I'll never ever go back to Firefox.

I stopped using FF when I left my previous job, synced up my bookmarks before I left but then was unable to retrieve them because I had not written down the access guid. I'll just sync with my Google account and be done with it!

> I would imagine the Firefox developers spend their time optimizing the parts of their browser that users would most likely use. I suspect that they are not terribly worried about an action that users would take (at most) once every six months.

I wish I could use that excuse at work, but it doesn't work like that.

I stopped using FF when I left my previous job, synced up my bookmarks before I left but then was unable to retrieve them because I had not written down the access guid. I'll just sync with my Google account and be done with it!

Having been a user and developer for almost any time, I would never have relied on that! A simple bookmark export, spot check for some URLs, USB drive/email/FTP to somewhere. I've always done that when leaving jobs (along with other personal things or notes/application settings).

Maybe I'm too cautious, but I've always ended up with a good copy of my data.

I still use both for cross browser testing, and at the moment I still use FF & Firebug but I am weaning myself off it. My day to day browser for everything is Chrome, in much the same way we all ditched IE but still had to occasionally use it for those sites "optimized" for IE.

The google account is pretty much the opposite of "secure". Grants access to all the things. And 2 factor auth doesn't exactly help when you computer is compromised.

FF Sync is separate and secure - but - I bet they'll change it for something more Google-like, as usual.

You'd think they'd be focused on making a better browser, clawing more market share, and cementing their presence in the browser space.

I used to use Firefox almost exclusively, but lately Chrome and Safari have filled that need. Breaking compatibility with old plug-ins might have been necessary, but it made switching a no-brainer.

I just wish they would "stick to the knitting" and make the best browser they possibly can for multiple platforms.

Kind of sad. Mozilla is misguided.

Sounds like it would have been quicker to uninstall and reinstall the whole thing. Crazy!