You might not know it, but Firefox was once widely considered to be an innovative browser. It wasn’t just an alternative to Internet Explorer (and now Chrome). Firefox introduced honest-to-goodness new features that people loved and rely on to this day.
The only reason I ever switch from Firefox to Chrome back in the day, was because Firefox was noticably slower and, at the time, had some other ongoing issues that forced me to switch.
It’s actually faster now and almost all the issues I once had are gone. The only one that remains is being able to use certain types of option selections on mobile (like drop down boxes, multi-selection, radial, etc).
The problem isn’t that Firefox loses when it tries to copy Chrome. The problem is that, due to popularity and massively larger userbase, it is Chrome which sets habits used in browsers - and so with something like ‘reopen last tab’ function being different in Firefox is a problem for 1000 Chrome users but only 1 Firefox user.
The actual bug here is #1 Nearly Everyone Learned to use Chrome. They learn new, they learn bad, and in their ignorance, they blame the (sometimes original and better) Firefox for being wrong.
That's an interesting interpretation! I definitely agree that that is the underlying bug, but it also seems to rob people -- Firefox users, developers, managers, contributors of agency - we are all in thrall to the almighty Google.
I think we can do more to even in the face of that stiff competition (and ignorance) - which is why I wrote.
Note: This draft is a rought and long and I have a lot of things to say about this matter, also I haven’t sleep yet, so pardon if it is a bit confusing
How Chrome won over the web is a combination of marketing tactics, change of user interests and timing.
Marketing tactics since there was a time where Google use to bundle Chrome as optional checkbox on several freeware application installers. This may be shady but it helped immensly in the Google Chrome adoption, as most users did not hear about Google Chrome (or did not notice). Helps alot also that their website also helped advertised their new Chrome browser which is touted to be better and faster.
Change of user interests because Firefox started to get slower and slower pre quantum update. It was really so bad that the user experience became clunky and laggy as Firefox runs longer overtime. I mean sure e10s helped speed up things but it wasn’t enough to be atleast close to on par with Chrome and users actually notice this.
It does not helped too that Chrome bundles flash player by default which also helped change the interests of the masses. For a casual, why would they bother installing Firefox and Adobe flash player seperately when they can install Chrome which is faster and has flash player integrated by default?
Finally the timing, because as the web has continuously evolved, Google being always on top of the adoption of standards (well to be honest, Google has been pushing the standards for years now that it is safe to assume Google is now the standard, lmao) helped the widespread adoption during the times that:
The web was moving away from flash player
There was a boom in web app chat apps as standalone chat apps began to die out
The rise of PWA
Support for DRM of multimedia webapps (well now they’re pushing for DRM on the web pages), and you know how normie users use to think if their site works on Chrome and not on Firefox
Competitions where focused on adopting to the standards and Google took note of this as they sway everyone to their side until it was too late for the rest.
Mind you during the 2011-2013, there was a massive flock of Chrome users and this is because Firefox may have been super customizable from the getgo, Chrome originally lacked extensions support but as soon as the Chrome extension store came out, it was already an uphill battle for Mozilla as they where focused on adopting to the evolving standard, it took them time to catch up with the user experience causing the bleeding of userbase.
It does not even helped that they had a hard time adopting to the ever evolving standards because their manpowered was shifted all over the place due to Mozilla’s other focus of trying to be not dependent on Google’s income. I am referring to projects such as Firefox OS.
Honestly during the massive growth of Chrome era between 2011-2018, the only one that had a chance to stop it was Microsoft but well Internet Explorer and Edge was always behind on updates mainly because they tied their updates to Windows updates which was known to be slow and clunky. So even if we consider Mozilla having a bleeding userbase problem, Microsoft actually had it worse, lol.
Great post. I think a lot of us remember a time before Chrome and take for granted there will be a time without it. I switched back to Firefox last year and happy for it. Still need Chrome for work though…
My biggest problem is how they’ve become seemingly hostile toward people who remember how customizable Firefox was, and just want to revert the most annoying UI changes. Not only removing options from the menus, but then after workarounds surface actually going in later and stripping useful stuff out of about:config. Don’t understand.
Interesting article, that’s exactly what I’ve been thinking about Firefox for many many years now. I hate anything that makes Firefox look and behave like Chrome. And I do everything just to revert these looks and changes.
Will there be an extension that restores the old Firefox reopen tab feature?
Why not make the “feature” a settings switch instead of directly making it the new default?
It might be more work to implement but the benefit would be no disgrunteld existing users and happy chrome migraters, that can just flip a switch to “feel at home”.
I was there when Chrome launched. From the start it was a memory hog, but otherwise looked like a decent alternative. Firefox was stable, and lightweight, and overall better tho.
I was also there when FF adopted Chrome’s rapid prototyping model of development with radically rising build numbers. It’s not about the numbers, but over time FF’s entire philosophy has changed mostly to just copycat Chrome.
Especially crappy is the mobile browser imo, which has really turned to meh in the past few years.
And I also blame Mozilla for abandoning the Firefox OS. Something really cool could’ve become out of that. In fact, something has, as KaiOS has the basis in FF OS, and it looks like a pretty sweet OS honestly.
Actually, the mobile browser had a major overhaul a few years ago. I had switched to mobile Firefox just a few months before the new version and performance has vastly improved. Usability is okay (sometimes I wonder if these folks use their own software). But otherwise not much has changed since then.
That overhaul a few years ago was exactly terrible. IIRC they removed important features like exporting bookmarks and viewing the page source, made searching with alternative search engines much worse, removed nice features like ability to rearrange tabs…
Also I don’t remember when it was exactly when they disabled all but a handful of add-ons unless you use a beta/fork and use their stupid Mozilla account or something to create an add-on list.
And while you may have good experience with performance, since then I only see FF as slow, buggy and crashy, and let’s not forget all the shitty telemetry Mozilla keeps stuffing into the thing.
The cherry on the cake are some Mozilla higher-ups who not only never listen to the users, but also give middle finger to the “haters”, i.e. the few people who use their browser and have constructive feedback.
I honestly don’t know why I bother using it (or rather, a less shitty fork). Lots of Chrome forks have almost everything FF has with addons and more, and work more reliably. Google is dominating everything anyway, and Mozilla only wants to dig its own grave.
Reading the article, I believe this take isn’t the best view or one that fits what the average user thinks.
The problem with Firefox for normal users is Mozilla changing things way too often, changing UI or forcing features/ads/marketing onto users.
I used Firefox for the longest time as my primary browser but remember needing to do the following for family members:
Disable Pocket
Disable Firefox Hello
Change Yahoo Search to Google
XUL Add-ons removal and finding alternatives.
Firefox sponsored content (new tab page, suggestions)
Mr. Robot Scandal
Another thing is Firefox is where it is now because of the late introduction to a Firefox version for iOS:
Even if it’s just a skin over Safari, it allowed Chrome users on iOS to sync their browser data, everywhere they went. Firefox didn’t have a version until 2015 iirc on iOS.
Mozilla’s issue is that they do not listen to users, and they don’t listen to their contributions. Mozilla (not the non-profit) as a company has no idea what to do, and when users suggest ways to improve the experience for avid users or normal people, they have an opinionated take that deflects what their users want.
To add to the point above, this is why Thunderbird has gotten big updates recently, and even will get an iOS version soon. Between the UI updates, news and general contribution + the community and even the Thundercast podcast about said email client, they don’t have to deal with bull shit that Firefox does with Mozilla corp.
(I say this as someone who even though I use Vivaldi and Edge now, Firefox and even Opera (presto version) will always have a place in my heart which makes both current versions of the browsers states sad.)
They remotely installed a Mr Robot addon (US only), because they thought their user base also liked the show. It was a puzzle/game or something, an unpaid promotion.
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