Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox? [LWN.net]

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 2:57 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627)
In reply to: Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox? by coriordan
Parent article: Mozilla Foundation Welcomes Nabiha Syed as Executive Director

"Gain market share" has always been a priority.

> But if Firefox was widely used then excluding it would be an absurd move.

Unfortunately the browser market doesn't really work that way. It's easy to tell users on platforms other than iOS "just use Chrome" and would be even if Firefox had (e.g.) 20% market share. Mozilla has always struggled with the problem that unlike their competitors they have no leverage to force their browser on anybody.

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Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 9:55 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (6 responses)

> "Gain market share" has always been a priority.

I don't see it. Market share has fallen every year for 15 years, from 31% to 2%, and I haven't noticed a reaction. What am I missing?

> (...) unlike their competitors they have no leverage to force their browser on anybody

I don't understand this defeatism. Firefox's situation also gives it advantages. When something is difficult and important, you try lots of things, do analysis, make strategies, adjust strategies based on success rates. I'm not at all convinced that failure will just have to be accepted.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 11:09 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link] (3 responses)

> I don't see it. Market share has fallen every year for 15 years, from 31% to 2%, and I haven't noticed a reaction. What am I missing?

You may not have noticed it but Mozilla has done an incredible amount of work to keep up with the table stakes (performance, security, Web features, extension ecosystem, platform integration, devtools, etc) and also try to carve out some sustainable differentiation from Chrome (privacy, tracking protection, etc). Mistakes were made along the way, but disinterest in market share was never one of them.

You make it sound like gaining market share is just a matter of willpower. That's not how it works.

> Firefox's situation also gives it advantages. When something is difficult and important, you try lots of things, do analysis, make strategies, adjust strategies based on success rates.

Indeed! And none of that is any guarantee of success.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 23:07 UTC (Fri) by coriordan (guest, #7544) [Link] (2 responses)

> You make it sound like gaining market share is just a
> matter of willpower. That's not how it works.

No, I've worked on very difficult projects. Legislation etc. where the other side had money, market positions, political friends. I know what it looks like when people are working on an important, difficult problem. No one shrugs their shoulders and says, "the other side has leverage to force their browser on [everyone]".

I don't see work happening that's anywhere near the level deserved by the issue of Firefox's disappearing market share. This is something multiple entities could be working on.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 18, 2024 14:05 UTC (Sat) by pizza (subscriber, #46) [Link] (1 responses)

> I don't see work happening that's anywhere near the level deserved by the issue of Firefox's disappearing market share. This is something multiple entities could be working on.

The fundamental problems are that, (1) there as not been a meaningful "market" for web browsers for 25 years due to platform bundling, making all browsers loss-leaders that have to be sustained by other revenue sources, and (2) not controlling any end-user computing platform or hyper-popular web destinations, Mozilla does not have any "stickiness" to meaningfully change that, much less actually push for new functionality.

The final blow was when Microsoft ditched their in-house browser engine in favor of a Chrome reskin, replacing its many "Google tendrils" with even more "Microsoft tendrils".

Tendrils that are *overwhelmingly popular*, I might add -- After all, who doesn't want all their history and bookmarks and notifications synchronized between multiple systems? Who doesn't want to be able to watch Netflix or Disney+ content? Or have harmful/malicious content automatically blocked? And now a new wave of mothership-tied AI-driven features is landing in the commercial browsers, and it's yet another front that Mozilla has to fight uphill battles on... just to maintain (not even gain!) their paltry market share.

The fact of the matter is that users overwhelmingly want these large integrated platforms. The ones that don't, ie the supposed "faithful", were never more than a rounding error on top of a rounding error [1], continually decrying all of Mozilla's attempts to frantically keep up with their competitors (and occasionally try to get ahead with hail marys)

[1] Windows remains the overwhelmingly primary platform, and even on Linux, far more use Chrome[-ish] than Firefox[-ish], and of those, even fewer have ad/tracker blockers set up, and even fewer aren't perpetually signed into $mothership that is actively pushing $other_browser.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 18, 2024 15:02 UTC (Sat) by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523) [Link]

Another thing that Firefox did poorly is alienating its existing user (e.g. me) by constantly changing the UI. And making some irrational decisions, like not making its full plugin store available on mobile FF (why???).

In contrast, Chrome's UI has barely changed during its almost 15 years of existence.

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 11:16 UTC (Fri) by roc (subscriber, #30627) [Link]

Also I don't want to sound defeatist. I am a die-hard Firefox user and Mozilla-forever supporter. I think Firefox is still a great product. I actively encourage people to use it. I don't contribute directly to Firefox anymore but I do a lot of work on rr, a debugging tool Mozilla's developers use a lot. I hope and pray Mozilla will find a good strategy and exploit whatever opportunities appear in the market.

One thing that won't help Mozilla is people telling them "hey, have you tried NOT losing market share?"

Where are the sites that don't work in Firefox?

Posted May 17, 2024 16:37 UTC (Fri) by Wol (subscriber, #4433) [Link]

> What am I missing?

If you're using Windows, it's bloody hard to avoid Edge / Bing.

If you're using Android / ChromeOS, it's bloody hard to avoid Chrome.

If you're sufficiently pissed off with those two, it's still a faff to go to the trouble of downloading and installing FireFox. That's assuming you aren't (like I currently am) on a locked-down corporate laptop, where permission to install is strictly on a "I need it to do my job" - which in my case will be met with "you're having a giraffe, mate", because the primary purpose of the browser is to interact with the Google Cloud (gmail, BQ, Google Office et al).

Cheers,
Wol