After a long slow fall, Firefox's market-share decline recently got steeper.
Posted on 07/10/2014 4:47:51 AM PDT by ShadowAce
When you take a look at Net Applications' web desktop browser market share reports over the long run two things stand out. One, there's the rise of Google's Chrome to second place, and two, Mozilla's Firefox's steep decline.
How bad is Firefox's fall? In June 2014, Firefox hit a new five-year low of 15.6 percent market share.
Back in October 2009, Firefox was on the rise and had reached 23.75 percent. Life was good. Since July 2012, the browser started trending downward. Indeed, since May 2013, with Firefox at 20.6%, the once popular browser hasn't risen above 20%.
As for the other desktop web browsers, Internet Explorer (IE) retains first place with a new two-year high of 58.4 percent in June 2014. Chrome, which jumped from 17.7 to 19.3 percent between May and June 2014, gained the most from Firefox's decline. Apple's Safari has also not been doing well. At 5.3 percent, Safari hasn't been this unpopular since March 2013.
Why is that happening? That's a good question.
Certainly the improvements and publicity for Chrome and IE hasn't hurt any. Firefox's reputation, on the other hand, has been tarnished by adding ads to the web browser and by Mozilla's continuing CEO problems.
Adding to the problems is the fact that Mozilla's ad deal with Google is coming to its renewal date. This is significant because over 90 percent of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google but Google now has its own browser. It's hard to see Google renewing the deal.
While Mozilla has hopes to become a mobile operating power with Firefox OS, it's made little progress against the two mobile operating system giants: Google with Android and Apple with iOS. Even if Mozilla were to do better than its management's wildest dreams, it's hard to see Firefox OS licensing fees making up for its potential Google revenue losses.
Speaking of mobile, the Firefox browser is a total non-player in this market. As of June 2014, Safari had a 46.1 percent share of the market; this is followed by the native Android browser with 22.8 percent; Chrome with 16.7 percent; Opera Mini at 7.6 percent, Internet Explorer at 2 percent; and, finally, almost lost in the noisem is Firefox at 0.7 percent.
For Firefox to remain a web browser power, it needs to make big improvements and it needs to make them now. Otherwise, Firefox may yet follow its predecessor Netscape into the web's past.
I use Pale Moon too but being a Firefox based browser, do they still have to pay money to Firefox? Whenever I have to get an add-on it takes me to Firefox.
I use Pale Moon now, which is like Firefox, as it seems the latest versions of FF broke some extensions from working well, and extensions (as TabMixPlus, Colorful Tabs, Session Manager, is what makes Firefox superior to Chrome (which hype is the main cause for the loss of FF), Opera, and esp. IE.
With Tab Mix Plus i can, among other things, reduce tab width and choose multiple rows, so i can get about 25 tabs across, and with Session Manager i can save multiple sessions, and choose which one to load. And Colorful Tabs is very helpful. Below are more.
Also BBCodeXtra enables you to add scripts which make posting in html here as easy as copy and pasting. Ask for details.
However, the forced ouster of Mozilla co-founder and CEO Brendan Eich this last week was a cowardly yielding to pro-sodomite intimidation by those who are utterly intolerant of any expression that opposes their demand for special rights for their immoral wrongs. Bad code.
Tab Mix Plus 0.3.8.6 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tab-mix-plus
Session Manager 0.7.5 https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/session-manager/
savewithurl - 0.2.11 version for Firefox 2.0 - 5 https://nic-nac-project.org/~kaosmos/savewithurl-FF5-0.2.11.xpi
Menu Editor http://menueditor.mozdev.org/
Googlebarlite https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/downloads/latest/492/addon-492-latest.xpi?src=search
FindBar Tweak https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/findbar-tweak/
ColorfulTabs https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/colorfultabs/?src=search/
Send Tab URLs https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/send-tab-urls/?src=ss
Copy as HTML Link https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/copy-as-html-link/?src=search
Google/Yandex search link fix https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/google-search-link-fix/
Xmarks Sync https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-sync/?src=search
BBCodeXtra is an extension, which adds to the context menu new commands to insert BBCode/Html/XHtml codes in an easy and fast way... https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/bbcodextra/
Converter https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/converter/
FlashGot https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/flashgot/?src=search
Open In Chrome https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-in-chrome/
Open in IE https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/open-in-ie/
Is ItCompatible https://bitbucket.org/eternicode/isitcompatible/src
Count Word Professional https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/count-word-professional/contribute/roadblock/?src=dp-btn-primary&version=v1.4.rev342
Stay-Open Menu https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/stay-open-menu/
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/134 Copy Plain Text 0.3.3
Same here, switched to Pale Moon, which is an offshoot of Firefox.
Chromium is the open-source version of Chrome, and has no ties to Google. It doesn’t spy on you.
It’s not just you.
Meanwhile, the mobile browser increase is remarkable: 
© StatCounter, All rights reserved
A great part of its unpopularity is the Rapid Release insanity. Whoever came up with that should have been fired by version 17.
I have been using Pale Moon (32-bit) on my laptop. The 32-bit seems to accept most of my Firefox extensions/add-ons. The 64-bit version has compatibility problems with some extensions.
My Firefox is still at version 15 because that was the last version that seemed to work with Adobe PDF, Adobe Flash, many extensions/add-ons, etc.
Firefox was so busy with their rapid release that they forgot the needs of their client base.
Firefox at least allows you to click back and resume typing text. IE typing pages go blank.
Firefox isn’t just falling behind in market share; it’s also trailing technologically. In Chrome(ium), every tab you have open is essentially stuck in its own little container, so if it crashes, the rest of your tabs aren’t affected. Firefox doesn’t do this. Firefox doesn’t do a lot of things that a modern browser needs to do.
And yes, Mozilla is another hypocritical leftist organization for firing Brendan Eich - although, to be fair, Brendan didn’t stand up for himself when he was targeted. If you keep silent when the left accuses you, it’s as if you’re accepting what they say.
It’s still good to use a Firefox-based browser because Firefox extensions are much, much better for privacy than anything you’ll find on Chrome(ium). NoScript, Adblock Edge, and Self-Destructing Cookies: those three can make a world of difference in your browsing experience.
But for those of you who think that Firefox and its derivatives have no ties to Google, think again. Open the cookie management section of your browser and look for a cookie from Google called “PREF.” Delete it, close Firefox, immediately re-check your cookie list, and you’ll see that it’s there again.
You know those “Safe Browsing” features that Firefox has? They’re tied to Google. In exchange for Google providing you access to a list of “bad” sites, Firefox installs a Google tracking cookie that cannot be removed unless you literally scrub every trace of Safe Browsing from Firefox in about:config.
Besides being yet another Google-centric invasion of privacy, Google’s PREF cookie is known to be used by the NSA in tracking its targets.
Still, once you scrub PREF and install some of those privacy addons I mentioned, you’ve got a very secure browser.
“do they still have to pay money to Firefox?”
Don’t think so.
tx! [searching download...]
Thanks - I didn’t know the difference. Actually, the one I am using is Chromium, not Chrome.
Good Hunting... from Varmint Al
We are in a mess for browsers as well as many other things.
Firefox... quit that for good after the CEO fiasco and before that it was so unstable and unfriendly it was almost useless.
Chrome... Google, yech, and it insists on accessing your password keychain
Safari... well, it now also insists on accessing the password keychain and in spite of claims you can turn this off I have not been able to. Safari is poorly featured and crashes quite a lot but by process of elimination it is all I have left.
For Mac... what else is there?
Yes...I feel your pain!
Same here. I really hate Safari.
You could try QupZilla. It’s a completely independent browser that works on a variety of platforms.
It doesn’t have the same feature set as the “big boys,” but if you can overlook that, it’s tops among independent alternatives.
I remember the early days of Firefox - it was lean, fast, and customizable with plugins.
Over time, it became bloated and clumsy, and lost the speed.
I don’t quite believe IE should even belong on browser usage statistics regarding desirability, because most people that use it simply do so because their computer came with it. If Windows didn’t come installed with IE, I wonder what its usage would be. The fact that it’s as low as it is should get their entire dev team fired immediately.
Having said that, IE is a MUCH better browser than it used to be, which isn’t saying much.
I still run Firefox, just because it still does what I need it to do, and there has been nothing to compel me to make any changes.(aside from the recent political bullshit - but if my bar were set that low, I probably wouldn’t use ANY software LOL)
Would Pale Moon be counted as “other” or would it be counted as Firefox which it was forked from?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.