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I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. But I will keep using

I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. But I will keep using it until they pry it from my hands. And if they do, I'll use forks until those break down too. I can't stand Google, or what Chrome has become. No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information.

Asmod4n 16d ago
Firefox is still popular in Germany, at around 10%
- sunaookami 16d ago
  I remember when it was the last bastion of Firefox users with a majority marketshare there when everyone else already switched to Chrome...
bogzz 16d ago
Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android, Youtube need to be separate companies. It's not the only company that needs this treatment.
- cjarrett 16d ago
  Was saying this about Chrome and Android a decade ago.
- coldpie 16d ago
  We had a glimpse of that antitrust future on the horizon with the previous admin. This spooked all the big tech weirdos so much that they put their weight behind the other guy and, well, they won. Antitrust is dead for another generation. Yay.
  - bogzz 16d ago
    Lina Khan is lying in wait.
    - omnimus 16d ago
      Doing great work in New York actually.
    - tenuousemphasis 16d ago
      She'd have some teeth with President AOC.
      - avazhi 16d ago
        [flagged]
  - shevy-java 16d ago
    Well, the current cronies that run the USA may seem to have won for the time being, but sooner or later the population in the USA will realise how much fudged up the orange clown is. Only about 30% approval rating - that will continue to dwindle.
    - dhosek 16d ago
      There’s a partisan floor¹ that’s in the neighborhood of 25–30% where people will vote for their party no matter what. The 2004 Illinois Senate election was a good test case where when the Republican nominee went down in self-inflicted flames and was hurriedly replaced with Alan Keyes, who had no in-state constituency and, being Black (which, no doubt was the cynical reason for his recruitment), eliminated the racist choice. He gained a mere 27% of the vote which is likely the floor for a major party candidate in a contested broad-population election (smaller-level partisan elections, whether for single congressional seats or in small states, generally have demographically skewed populations which can result in wider margins). ⸻ 1. Although as I think about it, this may only be valid on the right side of the spectrum given the data points.
      - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 15d ago
        We're obviously long past the days when people's politics could be mapped on a nice normal distribution, with some outliers at either end and a big group of moderates in the middle who vote differently depending on the election. Today the distribution is not only bimodal: there's almost no overlap at all. Your politics are part of your identity now. It's part of how you define who you are, and according to the research, over 95% of people are completely entrenched and will never vote for any candidate from the "other" party. (This the highest since right before the Civil War.) That said, while nobody's changing sides any time soon, people _do_ stay home on election day, and we're going to see that next election. The races for the next couple decades will be won by the candidates and the parties who can drill up enough enthusiasm from their base. Preach to the choir so the choir sings, etc.
    - thrance 16d ago
      They'll immediately fall for the next such guy. Republican voters aren't actually reconsidering their views. Corporations and oligarchs have known no major blowbacks in decades and keep winning on every front, further eroding the Republic and its institutions little by little. And they won't stop until all that's left of America is an empty shell, a dead state like Russia, a sandbox for the Epstein class.
  - soulofmischief 16d ago
    If only the DNC was interested in promoting candidates that work for the people and aren't just interested in lip service while mostly maintaining the status quo. Things could have been different. Imagine what 8 years of Bernie and a functioning Congress might have accomplished.
    - coldpie 16d ago
      Agreed. But on the topic of antitrust specifically, Lina Khan was absolutely doing the work, and Biden 100% deserves credit for appointing her. He could've chosen some do-nothing loser like everyone before him did, but he chose Khan.
      - soulofmischief 16d ago
        I agree, it was a great move. However, it's generally hard for me to give Biden much credit for anything, however, given his own and his party's general complicity with decades of genocide and apartheid in Palestine. Same for Harris. That and oversight of many more atrocities also carried forth by his predecessors really puts a damper on any good deed and make it hard to buy into any narrative of authenticity when it comes to politics that benefit human beings. I also generally think Bernie would have played hardball on antitrust and given what we got with Biden, I'd prefer to have seen what Bernie could have done with the time.
    - SR2Z 16d ago
      Terrible narrative. Lina Khan under Biden was more than willing to go after big companies. She was forced out because the American people voted Trump into office. Eight years of Sanders would have left us with a far more gridlocked country. The man has virtually no political talent.
      - Computer0 16d ago
        >The man has virtually no political talent. More unique individual people donated to his primary efforts than any other candidate in history. Wouldn't this be indicative of some large amount of political talent?
  - noosphr 16d ago
    We wouldn't be in this mess is Obama wasn't sleep at the wheel. When it's been 20 years with a 10 to 10 split its not a democrat vs republican issue.
  - glenstein 16d ago
    I couldn't agree more with your point. But also, precisely because I agree with you, I'm flashing back to Proton CEO Andy Yen claiming that Trump would be great on tech anti trust and an improvement on what came before, which was ridiculous from the moment he said it but symptomatic of a certain kind of tech bro mindset.
- slg 16d ago
  This type of populist message seems like such an easy path to popularity for an aspiring politician. You don't have to be a leftist like Bernie Sanders to be a trust buster. Just acknowledge that almost every large corporation has seemingly made it their mission to make life worse for the citizenry in the name of profit and vow to fight it.
  - dylan604 16d ago
    Anyone running with that type of message will be squashed by said "every large corporation". They will finance their opponent(s). They will run deep fakes against them. Until "every large corporation" is prevented from spending unlimited money, things will not change. What would limiting corporations from contributing more than the total of max donation per employee? I've never seen numbers from that, but I've heard people discuss it.
    - godshatter 15d ago
      So next time around they point to every instance of this, post it all somewhere and link to it everywhere, and make a big point about how they are actually scaring them enough that maybe they can make a difference this time. I do agree that we need to limit spending, but I don't know how to get there without a candidate like this getting traction. Sort of a chicken and egg thing.
- Octoth0rpe 16d ago
  > Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android need to be separate companies. As well as youtube, and the combination of google drive/docs.
  - redorb 16d ago
    I'd like to nominate, Amazon marketplace, Amazon Ads and AWS to be separate as well please. ;)
  - Gigachad 16d ago
    YouTube really could hold up as its own company these days.
    - deleted 16d ago
      [deleted]
    - hirvi74 16d ago
      It was a better platform when it was its own company back in the day.
      - jolmg 16d ago
        Really? I don't remember it from back then, but right now must be better in terms of the content available, the player (not the shorts one; that's awful), automatically generated subtitles with transcripts that can be searched, automated translation, dubbing, etc.
        hirvi74 16d ago
        I would enjoy automatically generated subtitles more if they weren't wrong about 10% of the time. I constantly get something like "Today, we are going to discuss which model is better at programming. Is it an tropic's latest model, Cloud Fable? Or is it, Open AI's Chat G pity?" It's as though Google hired my dyslexic ass to write the subtitles. It trips me up even more because I can't tell if I misread something or the chat messed up sometimes. I cannot comment on translation or dubbing. English is the only language I can somewhat understand.
- brazukadev 16d ago
  This won't ever happen, the US and the US government can't afford to weaken its corporations and risk impact their data collection, social control, influence and profitability world-wide.
  - shevy-java 16d ago
    Sadly you are right, but the people can still learn. There is a reason more and more folks move towards De-Googling. This is also a world-wide movement - it is not just the US government. Tons of lobbyists in other countries support mega-corporations dictating terms to us. Just look at EU legislation recently in the news again - constant betrayal of EU citizens here. All paid for EU taxpayers. The EU commission works for these mega-corporations.
- whatsThisBtn4 16d ago
  I'm quite torn on this. The United States needs a strong economy to counter China and keep Europe safe. In the short term, this might be nice, but in the medium term these moves might cause significant disruption to what makes the United States the highest gdp in the world. I'm unsure what the polymarket on this post is will be flagged. It's kind of surprising for HN to be so educated but not know (academic) international relations Realism.
  - Firaxus 16d ago
    One could argue that it’s all the centralization and monopolistic behavior which hinders tech development in the usa. So a breakup might have short term stutters but long term gains.
    - skinfaxi 16d ago
      Tech development is hindered in the USA?
      - brigandish 16d ago
        By monopolies, yes. Know what an acquihire is? Heard of a buyout leading to a shut down? That hinders development.
        skinfaxi 15d ago
        The creator of a specific technology getting acquihired doesn't stop others from competing with the original. If anything, acquihire is a validating signal and probably leads to more entries into the market.
        brigandish 15d ago
        The reduction of competitors and no win for the investors is somehow a signal that entry to the market against an even stronger than before incumbent would be a good bet?
- Sir_Twist 16d ago
  Would Chrome, Android, and YouTube be viable companies without the money-printing engine that is Google’s ad business? I’m for less consolidation in the tech industry, but I wonder whether a good balance could be struck between great services like these versus how they actually make money.
  - stuartd 16d ago
    The latter two potentially yes, as they can sell a product. Chrome - not so much: sell the browser, embed ads… nothing palatable.
    - cyberax 16d ago
      A $1 a year payment (like in WhatsUp) from all the current Chrome users can easily cover all the reasonable browser development.
      - eclipticplane 16d ago
        Bonus: they might not be able to fund the anti-user behavior like sunsetting MV2, all of the "anonymous audience tracking" that prevents any other advertiser from identifying you (but Google's scale still can), aggressively pushing 'sign in with Google', retracting their stance on blocking third party cookies, continually removing settings that drive user control, and more.
  - bogwog 16d ago
    > Would Chrome, Android, and YouTube be viable companies without the money-printing engine that is Google’s ad business? Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Definitely. > I wonder whether a good balance could be struck between great services like these versus how they actually make money. I see you have an unconventional definition of the word "great". I'll take that to mean you're an outside-the-box thinker, so you're in a good position to understand that a break up of Google would radically change all the markets they're dominant in. If Android 'dies' post-breakup, that would leave a gaping hole in the economy. iOS might fill it, but regulators would need to break them up too. Say iOS 'dies' too, would we all collectively just stop using smartphones? Obviously not. Entrepreneurs who can see opportunity will raise money and hire the right people to build a new OS, foundations will apply for grants to maintain Android or iOS forks, industry standards will form to improve interop and reduce development costs, etc. The sky's the limit!
- abighamb 16d ago
  I look forward to a new era of trust busting. It's an old American Tradition in need of revival
- deleted 16d ago
  [deleted]
- dylan604 16d ago
  We've done this in the past. AT&T was broken up into the regional baby bells. Eventually, the baby bells started to get absorbed back into the monolith AT&T again. Nobody stopped it. I assume that the fact that few people use landlines and there are more than one provider of communication services where the AT&T voltron is no longer a monopoly. The point? Not really sure, but as much as I'm all for breaking up Alphabet, I'm not convinced it will work. I'm willing to give it a go though
  - kibwen 16d ago
    Trustbusting is like weeding your garden. It's just a chore that must be done periodically to counteract the natural tendency of markets to degenerate into monopolies. It's not something you do once and then never again, it's something that you have to do regularly, forever, if you want a functioning market.
    - dylan604 16d ago
      Your "do regularly" got me thinking. There's only been 2 companies in the US to have been busted up, Standard Oil (1911) and ATT (1984). Microsoft (2000) got close but cut a deal. So yeah, we haven't been tending garden very well
- glenstein 16d ago
  I think there's a remarkably clear precedent at least for browsers, which is having Android users pick from a list of browsers instead of having Chrome as the pre installed default. That's already been done previously with Microsoft and I believe with search on Apple, andI think it would reverse the Mozilla market share trend overnight. I don't think Chrome being spun off as a company leaves them with a realistic path to revenue unless, ironically, they do something like what Mozilla does, and strike a search licensing agreement albeit a much bigger one proportionate to their share of users. I also don't think it should just be Alphabet/Google because at full strength they are an important check against the power of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and arguably Facebook. Weakening Alphabet while leaving them unchecked could have the net effect of increasing monopoly power of the other giants. I think the order of operations would go something like (1) Amazon (online retail), (2) Google (search and web), (3) Facebook (social media). Microsoft and Apple are giants but I don't think they are strategically cornering any particular tech markets right now (though I could be wrong). And I think international competition is complicating the picture of how close to monopolies they really are, though Google at least is clearly abusing its position in the browser and web standards space.
- kylepomykala 16d ago
  I really wish we had an admin that would be willing to do this.
tempest_ 16d ago
They are in a tough place. They dont have the advantage of owning the OS (android/chrome and iOS / Safari) nor the advantage of advertising on the google home page like chrome. The "customers" they are courting are security/privacy zealots who constantly want them "just work on the browser" but never seem to have an answer on how to pay for that. I am hoping the advent of LLMs allows more entrants into the space at a faster speed. Time will tell. Maybe as FF dies ladybird will take over.
- gray_-_wolf 16d ago
  > how to pay for that I would not mind to pay for the browser, but they will not let me.
  - Night_Thastus 16d ago
    You say that, but out of the remaining users of FF, I severely doubt even 1% would pay. Any attempt to paywall would kill whatever they have left.
    - deleted 10d ago
      [deleted]
  - redwall_hp 16d ago
    This is a consequence of browser monopolies, established by Microsoft in the 90s: everyone should have to pay for a browser and make a deliberate choice in vendor. The fact that they're free and subsidized by large businesses in other markets, rather than being a product you choose to buy, is a concrete example of monopolistic market distortion.
- philipallstar 16d ago
  > They dont have the advantage of owning the OS (android/chrome and iOS / Safari) They don't need to. Chrome does extremely well on Windows without "owning the OS". > nor the advantage of advertising on the google home page like chrome Very few people go to that page anyway. > The "customers" they are courting are security/privacy zealots who constantly want them "just work on the browser" but never seem to have an answer on how to pay for that. They already get half a billion dollars a year from Google for very little in exchange. They just need to spend that money on the website browser and not nonsense.
nashashmi 16d ago
Try using ladybird as a fit alternative. It will be complete within your lifetime, and maybe even in firefox’s lifetime.
- drdexebtjl 16d ago
  I’ve stopped supporting it once Kling decided to stop accepting community contributions. The entire point was that it was a browser built by a warm and friendly community, and not corporate interests. I have no hope that they will keep their other values if they’ve already been so quick to let this one go.
Cidan 16d ago
Typing this from Zen browser as we speak, can't suggest it enough.
- outofpaper 16d ago
  Such a wonderful take on Firefox. The only thing it is really missing to make it perfect for everyone is proper sync not just on one computer but across systems.
- gib444 16d ago
  Without wanting to sound rude: you're talking about browsers – serious business. Most hackers – I feel – need a bit more than 'I strongly suggest it' to even consider switching to a nascent browser :D
  - radicaldreamer 16d ago
    The main issue is security. The browser is the most sensitive piece of of software you can run on a machine. It’s susceptible to both supply chain and JS attacks and a huge target for both of them.
  - nickthegreek 16d ago
    it’s a firefox fork. ‘most hackers’ would research it no matter what was typed on a msg board prior to installing. the first step is knowingg about it. personally, im a big fan and daily drive it on my personal systems. but I do find their tab groups implementations to be a bit subpar.
    - deleted 15d ago
      [deleted]
unethical_ban 16d ago
I use firefox on all devices, but there are two notches against it in my book: Firefox on Android lags during scrolling on multiple sites that do not lag on Chrome. The only extension I have is UBO, and I don't know if that is the cause of it or not - I haven't tested thoroughly. One way or another there is a performance issue there by default. Second, GrapheneOS has this to say about Firefox on mobile: >Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet. I'd love for both of these issues to be resolved at some point. But I stand by it because I like UBO and because I'm a bit contrarian.
- gib444 16d ago
  Vanadium is a good browser but I wish it had Firefox's Private Mode toggle, for permanent private mode * It's fiddly to even manually wipe history in Vanadium as it defaults to the '15 mins' option, and then it tries to suggest a subset of sites it thinks you want to retain data for ** * (Yes I know about the suboptimal workaround of the intent shortcut) ** (Yes I know this is upstream behaviour.)
- nwellnhof 16d ago
  > Firefox on Android lags during scrolling on multiple sites that do not lag on Chrome. It starts to lag after a while on some sites but force-stopping occasionally fixes it for me.
- TFNA 16d ago
  I have never had any scrolling lag issues on Firefox (in the form of Fennec from F-Droid) on GrapheneOS.
  - 16d ago
varispeed 16d ago
I stopped using Firefox when it had massive performance issues (CPU and memory) to the point it was unusable. Chrome in comparison was lightning fast and since then I somehow cannot get myself to use Firefox though I know they likely have fixed those issues long time ago. I have Firefox installed but never open it.
- calmworm 16d ago
  Well, open it…
- odo1242 16d ago
  I can definitely say the performance is good now, though
  - TylerE 16d ago
    On Mac it is very obviously quite a bit worse than both Chrome and Safari.
- qotgalaxy 16d ago
  [dead]
- wingworks 16d ago
  Same. I found Firefox was fast on Windows at the time, but on Mac it was so slow (compared to Chrome), and had weird non-native scrolling for the longest time. As a Mac user it felt like they developed for Windows, and occasionally do some work on the Mac app too.
- esalman 16d ago
  There was a period in time, few years ago, when I was going back and forth between Firefox and Chrome, driven by alternate paranoia about privacy vs performance. These days I don't really have to. Firefox on Android, at least for the phones I regularly used, like several OnePlus from 7T up and now razr ultra, has been very stable. Only blip was the one month I was on Pixel 10- turns out they have special hardware optimization for Chrome that cripples Firefox on Pixel 10 otherwise. All the more reason to (return the phone and) stick to Firefox.
codingisfreedom 16d ago
I really wish Firefox will catch up on the debug/devtools front. Nonetheless, I use FF as much as I can on both my mobile and desktop devices.
- gib444 16d ago
  > I really wish Firefox will catch up on the debug/devtools front. Genuine curiosity: what's it lacking?
  - whatsThisBtn4 16d ago
    Yeah I'm not sure what they are talking about... Joke: it doesn't have 80% market share. But also with AI, the most I'm doing is hitting inspect and sending problem elements. Maybe screen resizing for mobile.
  - rmccue 16d ago
    The CLI tools for automation are still a pain to use and missing functionality, which also means LLMs use it less; Claude gives up when it sees Chrome isn’t installed unless I specifically tell it to try and use Firefox. I created an automation tool recently for taking screenshots (for SOC2 reporting, hopefully tptacek is proud), and getting it working with FF on the CLI was very painful (but necessary since I needed my cookies!)
- realusername 16d ago
  I do prefer Firefox devtools to Chrome, that's one of the reasons I use it at work. I think both are kind of equivalent nowadays but I find that the Firefox one has a better design and looks more polished
porphyra 16d ago
I feel like with the advent of vibe coding, the bar to making your own browser is gradually lowering. People are already making all sorts of useful "houseplant programming" to serve their own pain points. Sooner or later, agentic coding will actually become really good and people will be able to just vibe code a whole browser in Rust or something that addresses the exact pain points that power users have.
- hgoel 16d ago
  The core will have to still be a solid battle tested thing. Imagine having to worry about if your vibed browser is quietly dropping some elements. Firefox and Chromium browsers are valuable because they are the targets, if a site doesn't render properly in them, it can be said that the site is wrong. If everyone runs a vibe coded browser engine that evaporates and you might as well just have sites serve a bunch of markdown for LLMs to render in whatever inconsistent way they choose.
  - porphyra 16d ago
    Vibe coding is obviously not quite there yet right now. But in the future it will be. The output of agents will be just as correct and rock solid as the software from the most experienced software developers. We'll also have the additional advantage of there being existing browsers to use as an oracle to test against to ensure that nothing regresses.
    - hgoel 16d ago
      It isn't even a matter of having rock solid AI. I wonder how massive of a test suite would be needed to catch regressions...
      - porphyra 15d ago
        With the same logic there can never be another browser engine ever again. Which I think is actually true as everyone is converging on Blink/Chromium but it is depressing to think about.
whatsThisBtn4 16d ago
I use it exclusively on Android for the ad block on naughty hot girl sites wink wink. I use chrome and those sites are miserable.
shevy-java 16d ago
I also was a Firefox user, but Mozilla killed Firefox many years ago. I noticed this when a mozilla dev said I must use systemd+pulseaudio in order to watch videos (well, hear audio) on youtube. Chrome worked fine. At that moment in time I knew mozilla no longer cared about the users. (I use thorium though, so actually I can still use ublock origin fine. But I am sad that I ended up with the evil Google empire. There is no real competition against it anymore, sadly enough.) > No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information. Indeed. Hopefully more and more people realise this. Google has underestimated The People here.
- whatsThisBtn4 16d ago
  Um.... If I learned anything from Apple, the best and brightest don't matter. Capitalism forces the best and brightest to make apps for the walled prison because the masses saw someone dancing with colorful backgrounds. I do know a few perpetually single people working in academia using some obscure Linux distro(btw my company is 90%+ Fedora). I am completely over thinking HN nerds can cause an uprising. Somehow the aristocrats have almost no power in democracy and capitalism. Power is held in 0.1%ers and the masses.
- deathanatos 16d ago
  > I noticed this when a mozilla dev said I must use systemd+pulseaudio I am 99% sure Firefox will run just fine without systemd, or OpenRC half of Gentoo would be with pitchforks and torches. It isn't correct, either, that it requires PulseAudio; I'm running FF with PipeWire, for example. But perhaps let's steelman that to "does not work with ALSA". I'm not sure what the objection to PA would be. It appears you can run FF under an adapter that will backport FF's PA output to ALSA — so it is possible to do —, I'm just not fathoming what the objection to Pulse is. (Or for that matter, its successor, PipeWire.)
allthetime 16d ago
I think a lot of us would pay them at this point, if they kept seriously working on the browser.
werdnapk 16d ago
I've been using Firefox since the beginning and will continue using it. I only use Chrome for occasional testing, but close to 100% of the time, everything works in Firefox unless an overzealous add-on breaks a page and then I simply disable it to get going again. I'm always so shocked to see so many ads when I see people using Chrome or I have to use it for something myself.
esikich 16d ago
I know it's more infrastructure, but just use pi-hole and then it doesn't really matter what browser you use, if we're just talking about pop ups and malicious ads.
- aembleton 16d ago
  Or just use these AdGuard DNS servers, no infrastructure setup needed Primary: 94.140.14.14 Secondary: 94.140.15.15 uBO does so much more though, with it ability to block particular elements and inject CSS. It can do more than remove ads, but also any annoying elements like autoplaying videos from news sites.
stillpointlab 16d ago
I've been using Firefox as my main browser since I switched from Windows to Linux. No real complaints so far, haven't really noticed any difference from Chrome to be honest which is about as good a recommendation as I could give. It does chew up memory but so did Chrome I guess, I haven't done a head-to-head comparison.
pocksuppet 16d ago
Firefox is a terrible browser. The engine is alright, and good just because it's not the monoculture. The browser is terrible. When you open it up in a fresh profile, it starts asking you to sign up for things and spend money.
codexon 16d ago
I used to use firefox a long time ago but got tired of all the memory leaks and lag before I switched to chrome. Now that mv2 is going away, I switch back to firefox, and it still has memory leak issues after all these years, it is really disappointing.
pier25 16d ago
I switched to Firefox like 6 months ago. I’m happy with it even though Chromium is a better engine imo. What Google is doing with Chrome is unacceptable.
weaksauce 16d ago
firefox has a setting on ios version that blocks ads so maybe they will get more market share that way?
senfiaj 16d ago
Yeah, consider the insane complexity of Web standards, and the fact that even Microsoft failed to create a browser with an independent engine: https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-... . This means that not only we are unlikely to see browsers with new engines but also that the existing browser engine diversity might even shrink if an existing browser becomes underfunded and / or loses a critical number of users / web developers.
Gustomaximus 16d ago
I feel the opposite, the more chrome abuse their dominance the closer they move to a tipping point where enough people become browser interested to return to browser wars. It's likely one of those things where it has to go to far, then change will happen fairly quickly.
tech234a 16d ago
It's still 200 million monthly active users according to https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
doginasuit 16d ago
> I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. Market share appears to be hovering around 4%, which sounds small but that is still a massive amount of people, over 200 million users. It is even more impressive considering it doesn't have an OS with a large market share feeding it users, people overwhelmingly just use what is already installed. That's a huge number of users earned rather than inherited.
- hedora 16d ago
  I use firefox and sometimes safari. I had to install chrome recently, and I don’t understand how people stand it. It’s a half-assed attempt to reimplement windows 95 era preload spam. (Or non-decrapified win11). I don’t understand how it has any market share. It’s like finding out that 80% of people voluntarily install browser toolbars that force penis pill ads down your throat, and then there are a bunch of HN fanboys saying that all other alternatives are worse.
  - stogot 16d ago
    My hope is the chrome fanboys get forced to experience the full visceral web and revolt. Will Google employees who used UBO now vomit over their own corp decisions and reverse?
- p0w3n3d 16d ago
  > it doesn't have an OS with a large market share feeding it users Remember when Microsoft was sued for having installed one browser in their OS and making it default? Now suddenly we're okay with another company installing another browser in their OS
zx8080 16d ago
> No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information. Cloudflare with their "checking if the site connection is secure" (while being MITM) is another example.
- forgotaccount3 16d ago
  To a degree, sure, but is it really 'MITM' if the site you are trying to visit has chosen to add cloudflare into the middle? You may as well say all load-balancers are MITM because you might connect to a different host on each attempt and there's a man in the middle influencing your connection. What makes it any different if the website executed the same logic cloudflare is on their own box?
  - dingaling 16d ago
    "What makes it any different if the website executed the same logic cloudflare is on their own box?" Without Cloudflare it's highly unlikely that 20% of websites _would_ implement the same logic.
- CloudflareSuccs 16d ago
  The second I see that awful Cloudflare countdown I blacklist the site and never return. I am convinced all their metrics saying they reduce bot traffic are mistaken for the fact that they reduce all traffic by annoying users away.
  - zx8080 16d ago
    Gatekeeping internet and reading every byte unencrypted. Nice business monopoly.
    - jjav 11d ago
      I wonder who might be willing to fund/pay access to every byte unencrypted.
firecall 16d ago
I'm more of an optimist! We've been here before with Windows and IE dominance! IE peaked at ~95% market share, and windows peaked at ~97%. Broadly it seems to me that Google is behaving much like MS did. But who knows, everything is the same and different this time around.
sidibe 16d ago
This move will help Firefox a lot. This is why they've been my browser on mobile for years, now there's a big incentive to switch on desktop
luckilydiscrete 16d ago
> I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. I've met so many people in the tech industry who use Zen Browser. Not even because of some ideological point, but just because it is cooler. So no, I don't believe it'll be gone. I believe firefox and ff-based browsers will actually make a comeback.
93po 16d ago
By the time FF isn't a thing we'll have AI distilling site content for us and removing all the bullshit and there won't be anything site operators can do about it. And it'll use sandboxed browser instances that are immediately deleted
tim333 16d ago
As someone with both Chrome and Firefox installed why should I click the Firefox button? I mean it's mostly the same but gives me out of memory errors. Last time I tried it a thing saying "Refresh Firefox" popped up which I clicked and it wiped the extensions which I got back following some online help but lost completely I think the crypto keys in metamask - like https://www.reddit.com/r/Metamask/comments/14rcg6k/firefox_refresh_nuked_my_wallets_can_they_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Metamask/comments/14rcg6k/firefox_r... Luckily I had backup elsewhere but it kind of freaked me out.
- Night_Thastus 15d ago
  I've never seen Firefox use more memory than Chrome on modern versions. They're pretty on par. It's far more likely that one of the many addons/extensions you had was the cause. As for 'Refresh Firefox', it does exactly what it says it does - wipe a lot of your configuration to bring it closer to stock. It's intended as a way to show people new defaults and help clear out old, bloated configs. It shouldn't be used unless you know what you're doing.
vmt-man 15d ago
I believe era of custom software is coming. AI is getting much powerful from month to month and that day will come when you can implement your own browser someday and no one like Google can stop you from it ;)

Asmod4n 16d ago

Firefox is still popular in Germany, at around 10%

sunaookami 16d ago
I remember when it was the last bastion of Firefox users with a majority marketshare there when everyone else already switched to Chrome...

bogzz 16d ago

Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android, Youtube need to be separate companies. It's not the only company that needs this treatment.

cjarrett 16d ago
Was saying this about Chrome and Android a decade ago.
coldpie 16d ago
We had a glimpse of that antitrust future on the horizon with the previous admin. This spooked all the big tech weirdos so much that they put their weight behind the other guy and, well, they won. Antitrust is dead for another generation. Yay.
- bogzz 16d ago
  Lina Khan is lying in wait.
  - omnimus 16d ago
    Doing great work in New York actually.
  - tenuousemphasis 16d ago
    She'd have some teeth with President AOC.
    - avazhi 16d ago
      [flagged]
- shevy-java 16d ago
  Well, the current cronies that run the USA may seem to have won for the time being, but sooner or later the population in the USA will realise how much fudged up the orange clown is. Only about 30% approval rating - that will continue to dwindle.
  - dhosek 16d ago
    There’s a partisan floor¹ that’s in the neighborhood of 25–30% where people will vote for their party no matter what. The 2004 Illinois Senate election was a good test case where when the Republican nominee went down in self-inflicted flames and was hurriedly replaced with Alan Keyes, who had no in-state constituency and, being Black (which, no doubt was the cynical reason for his recruitment), eliminated the racist choice. He gained a mere 27% of the vote which is likely the floor for a major party candidate in a contested broad-population election (smaller-level partisan elections, whether for single congressional seats or in small states, generally have demographically skewed populations which can result in wider margins). ⸻ 1. Although as I think about it, this may only be valid on the right side of the spectrum given the data points.
    - rrrrrrrrrrrryan 15d ago
      We're obviously long past the days when people's politics could be mapped on a nice normal distribution, with some outliers at either end and a big group of moderates in the middle who vote differently depending on the election. Today the distribution is not only bimodal: there's almost no overlap at all. Your politics are part of your identity now. It's part of how you define who you are, and according to the research, over 95% of people are completely entrenched and will never vote for any candidate from the "other" party. (This the highest since right before the Civil War.) That said, while nobody's changing sides any time soon, people _do_ stay home on election day, and we're going to see that next election. The races for the next couple decades will be won by the candidates and the parties who can drill up enough enthusiasm from their base. Preach to the choir so the choir sings, etc.
  - thrance 16d ago
    They'll immediately fall for the next such guy. Republican voters aren't actually reconsidering their views. Corporations and oligarchs have known no major blowbacks in decades and keep winning on every front, further eroding the Republic and its institutions little by little. And they won't stop until all that's left of America is an empty shell, a dead state like Russia, a sandbox for the Epstein class.
- soulofmischief 16d ago
  If only the DNC was interested in promoting candidates that work for the people and aren't just interested in lip service while mostly maintaining the status quo. Things could have been different. Imagine what 8 years of Bernie and a functioning Congress might have accomplished.
  - coldpie 16d ago
    Agreed. But on the topic of antitrust specifically, Lina Khan was absolutely doing the work, and Biden 100% deserves credit for appointing her. He could've chosen some do-nothing loser like everyone before him did, but he chose Khan.
    - soulofmischief 16d ago
      I agree, it was a great move. However, it's generally hard for me to give Biden much credit for anything, however, given his own and his party's general complicity with decades of genocide and apartheid in Palestine. Same for Harris. That and oversight of many more atrocities also carried forth by his predecessors really puts a damper on any good deed and make it hard to buy into any narrative of authenticity when it comes to politics that benefit human beings. I also generally think Bernie would have played hardball on antitrust and given what we got with Biden, I'd prefer to have seen what Bernie could have done with the time.
  - SR2Z 16d ago
    Terrible narrative. Lina Khan under Biden was more than willing to go after big companies. She was forced out because the American people voted Trump into office. Eight years of Sanders would have left us with a far more gridlocked country. The man has virtually no political talent.
    - Computer0 16d ago
      >The man has virtually no political talent. More unique individual people donated to his primary efforts than any other candidate in history. Wouldn't this be indicative of some large amount of political talent?
- noosphr 16d ago
  We wouldn't be in this mess is Obama wasn't sleep at the wheel. When it's been 20 years with a 10 to 10 split its not a democrat vs republican issue.
- glenstein 16d ago
  I couldn't agree more with your point. But also, precisely because I agree with you, I'm flashing back to Proton CEO Andy Yen claiming that Trump would be great on tech anti trust and an improvement on what came before, which was ridiculous from the moment he said it but symptomatic of a certain kind of tech bro mindset.
slg 16d ago
This type of populist message seems like such an easy path to popularity for an aspiring politician. You don't have to be a leftist like Bernie Sanders to be a trust buster. Just acknowledge that almost every large corporation has seemingly made it their mission to make life worse for the citizenry in the name of profit and vow to fight it.
- dylan604 16d ago
  Anyone running with that type of message will be squashed by said "every large corporation". They will finance their opponent(s). They will run deep fakes against them. Until "every large corporation" is prevented from spending unlimited money, things will not change. What would limiting corporations from contributing more than the total of max donation per employee? I've never seen numbers from that, but I've heard people discuss it.
  - godshatter 15d ago
    So next time around they point to every instance of this, post it all somewhere and link to it everywhere, and make a big point about how they are actually scaring them enough that maybe they can make a difference this time. I do agree that we need to limit spending, but I don't know how to get there without a candidate like this getting traction. Sort of a chicken and egg thing.
Octoth0rpe 16d ago
> Alphabet needs to be broken up. Chrome, Search, Android need to be separate companies. As well as youtube, and the combination of google drive/docs.
- redorb 16d ago
  I'd like to nominate, Amazon marketplace, Amazon Ads and AWS to be separate as well please. ;)
- Gigachad 16d ago
  YouTube really could hold up as its own company these days.
  - deleted 16d ago
    [deleted]
  - hirvi74 16d ago
    It was a better platform when it was its own company back in the day.
    - jolmg 16d ago
      Really? I don't remember it from back then, but right now must be better in terms of the content available, the player (not the shorts one; that's awful), automatically generated subtitles with transcripts that can be searched, automated translation, dubbing, etc.
      - hirvi74 16d ago
        I would enjoy automatically generated subtitles more if they weren't wrong about 10% of the time. I constantly get something like "Today, we are going to discuss which model is better at programming. Is it an tropic's latest model, Cloud Fable? Or is it, Open AI's Chat G pity?" It's as though Google hired my dyslexic ass to write the subtitles. It trips me up even more because I can't tell if I misread something or the chat messed up sometimes. I cannot comment on translation or dubbing. English is the only language I can somewhat understand.
brazukadev 16d ago
This won't ever happen, the US and the US government can't afford to weaken its corporations and risk impact their data collection, social control, influence and profitability world-wide.
- shevy-java 16d ago
  Sadly you are right, but the people can still learn. There is a reason more and more folks move towards De-Googling. This is also a world-wide movement - it is not just the US government. Tons of lobbyists in other countries support mega-corporations dictating terms to us. Just look at EU legislation recently in the news again - constant betrayal of EU citizens here. All paid for EU taxpayers. The EU commission works for these mega-corporations.
whatsThisBtn4 16d ago
I'm quite torn on this. The United States needs a strong economy to counter China and keep Europe safe. In the short term, this might be nice, but in the medium term these moves might cause significant disruption to what makes the United States the highest gdp in the world. I'm unsure what the polymarket on this post is will be flagged. It's kind of surprising for HN to be so educated but not know (academic) international relations Realism.
- Firaxus 16d ago
  One could argue that it’s all the centralization and monopolistic behavior which hinders tech development in the usa. So a breakup might have short term stutters but long term gains.
  - skinfaxi 16d ago
    Tech development is hindered in the USA?
    - brigandish 16d ago
      By monopolies, yes. Know what an acquihire is? Heard of a buyout leading to a shut down? That hinders development.
      - skinfaxi 15d ago
        The creator of a specific technology getting acquihired doesn't stop others from competing with the original. If anything, acquihire is a validating signal and probably leads to more entries into the market.
        brigandish 15d ago
        The reduction of competitors and no win for the investors is somehow a signal that entry to the market against an even stronger than before incumbent would be a good bet?
Sir_Twist 16d ago
Would Chrome, Android, and YouTube be viable companies without the money-printing engine that is Google’s ad business? I’m for less consolidation in the tech industry, but I wonder whether a good balance could be struck between great services like these versus how they actually make money.
- stuartd 16d ago
  The latter two potentially yes, as they can sell a product. Chrome - not so much: sell the browser, embed ads… nothing palatable.
  - cyberax 16d ago
    A $1 a year payment (like in WhatsUp) from all the current Chrome users can easily cover all the reasonable browser development.
    - eclipticplane 16d ago
      Bonus: they might not be able to fund the anti-user behavior like sunsetting MV2, all of the "anonymous audience tracking" that prevents any other advertiser from identifying you (but Google's scale still can), aggressively pushing 'sign in with Google', retracting their stance on blocking third party cookies, continually removing settings that drive user control, and more.
- bogwog 16d ago
  > Would Chrome, Android, and YouTube be viable companies without the money-printing engine that is Google’s ad business? Short answer? Yes. Long answer? Definitely. > I wonder whether a good balance could be struck between great services like these versus how they actually make money. I see you have an unconventional definition of the word "great". I'll take that to mean you're an outside-the-box thinker, so you're in a good position to understand that a break up of Google would radically change all the markets they're dominant in. If Android 'dies' post-breakup, that would leave a gaping hole in the economy. iOS might fill it, but regulators would need to break them up too. Say iOS 'dies' too, would we all collectively just stop using smartphones? Obviously not. Entrepreneurs who can see opportunity will raise money and hire the right people to build a new OS, foundations will apply for grants to maintain Android or iOS forks, industry standards will form to improve interop and reduce development costs, etc. The sky's the limit!
abighamb 16d ago
I look forward to a new era of trust busting. It's an old American Tradition in need of revival
deleted 16d ago
[deleted]
dylan604 16d ago
We've done this in the past. AT&T was broken up into the regional baby bells. Eventually, the baby bells started to get absorbed back into the monolith AT&T again. Nobody stopped it. I assume that the fact that few people use landlines and there are more than one provider of communication services where the AT&T voltron is no longer a monopoly. The point? Not really sure, but as much as I'm all for breaking up Alphabet, I'm not convinced it will work. I'm willing to give it a go though
- kibwen 16d ago
  Trustbusting is like weeding your garden. It's just a chore that must be done periodically to counteract the natural tendency of markets to degenerate into monopolies. It's not something you do once and then never again, it's something that you have to do regularly, forever, if you want a functioning market.
  - dylan604 16d ago
    Your "do regularly" got me thinking. There's only been 2 companies in the US to have been busted up, Standard Oil (1911) and ATT (1984). Microsoft (2000) got close but cut a deal. So yeah, we haven't been tending garden very well
glenstein 16d ago
I think there's a remarkably clear precedent at least for browsers, which is having Android users pick from a list of browsers instead of having Chrome as the pre installed default. That's already been done previously with Microsoft and I believe with search on Apple, andI think it would reverse the Mozilla market share trend overnight. I don't think Chrome being spun off as a company leaves them with a realistic path to revenue unless, ironically, they do something like what Mozilla does, and strike a search licensing agreement albeit a much bigger one proportionate to their share of users. I also don't think it should just be Alphabet/Google because at full strength they are an important check against the power of Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and arguably Facebook. Weakening Alphabet while leaving them unchecked could have the net effect of increasing monopoly power of the other giants. I think the order of operations would go something like (1) Amazon (online retail), (2) Google (search and web), (3) Facebook (social media). Microsoft and Apple are giants but I don't think they are strategically cornering any particular tech markets right now (though I could be wrong). And I think international competition is complicating the picture of how close to monopolies they really are, though Google at least is clearly abusing its position in the browser and web standards space.
kylepomykala 16d ago
I really wish we had an admin that would be willing to do this.

tempest_ 16d ago

They are in a tough place. They dont have the advantage of owning the OS (android/chrome and iOS / Safari) nor the advantage of advertising on the google home page like chrome. The "customers" they are courting are security/privacy zealots who constantly want them "just work on the browser" but never seem to have an answer on how to pay for that. I am hoping the advent of LLMs allows more entrants into the space at a faster speed. Time will tell. Maybe as FF dies ladybird will take over.

gray_-_wolf 16d ago
> how to pay for that I would not mind to pay for the browser, but they will not let me.
- Night_Thastus 16d ago
  You say that, but out of the remaining users of FF, I severely doubt even 1% would pay. Any attempt to paywall would kill whatever they have left.
  - deleted 10d ago
    [deleted]
- redwall_hp 16d ago
  This is a consequence of browser monopolies, established by Microsoft in the 90s: everyone should have to pay for a browser and make a deliberate choice in vendor. The fact that they're free and subsidized by large businesses in other markets, rather than being a product you choose to buy, is a concrete example of monopolistic market distortion.
philipallstar 16d ago
> They dont have the advantage of owning the OS (android/chrome and iOS / Safari) They don't need to. Chrome does extremely well on Windows without "owning the OS". > nor the advantage of advertising on the google home page like chrome Very few people go to that page anyway. > The "customers" they are courting are security/privacy zealots who constantly want them "just work on the browser" but never seem to have an answer on how to pay for that. They already get half a billion dollars a year from Google for very little in exchange. They just need to spend that money on the website browser and not nonsense.

nashashmi 16d ago

Try using ladybird as a fit alternative. It will be complete within your lifetime, and maybe even in firefox’s lifetime.

drdexebtjl 16d ago
I’ve stopped supporting it once Kling decided to stop accepting community contributions. The entire point was that it was a browser built by a warm and friendly community, and not corporate interests. I have no hope that they will keep their other values if they’ve already been so quick to let this one go.

Cidan 16d ago

Typing this from Zen browser as we speak, can't suggest it enough.

outofpaper 16d ago
Such a wonderful take on Firefox. The only thing it is really missing to make it perfect for everyone is proper sync not just on one computer but across systems.
gib444 16d ago
Without wanting to sound rude: you're talking about browsers – serious business. Most hackers – I feel – need a bit more than 'I strongly suggest it' to even consider switching to a nascent browser :D
- radicaldreamer 16d ago
  The main issue is security. The browser is the most sensitive piece of of software you can run on a machine. It’s susceptible to both supply chain and JS attacks and a huge target for both of them.
- nickthegreek 16d ago
  it’s a firefox fork. ‘most hackers’ would research it no matter what was typed on a msg board prior to installing. the first step is knowingg about it. personally, im a big fan and daily drive it on my personal systems. but I do find their tab groups implementations to be a bit subpar.
  - deleted 15d ago
    [deleted]

unethical_ban 16d ago

I use firefox on all devices, but there are two notches against it in my book: Firefox on Android lags during scrolling on multiple sites that do not lag on Chrome. The only extension I have is UBO, and I don't know if that is the cause of it or not - I haven't tested thoroughly. One way or another there is a performance issue there by default. Second, GrapheneOS has this to say about Firefox on mobile: >Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox's sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole. The sandbox has been gradually improving on the desktop but it isn't happening for their Android browser yet. I'd love for both of these issues to be resolved at some point. But I stand by it because I like UBO and because I'm a bit contrarian.

gib444 16d ago
Vanadium is a good browser but I wish it had Firefox's Private Mode toggle, for permanent private mode * It's fiddly to even manually wipe history in Vanadium as it defaults to the '15 mins' option, and then it tries to suggest a subset of sites it thinks you want to retain data for ** * (Yes I know about the suboptimal workaround of the intent shortcut) ** (Yes I know this is upstream behaviour.)
nwellnhof 16d ago
> Firefox on Android lags during scrolling on multiple sites that do not lag on Chrome. It starts to lag after a while on some sites but force-stopping occasionally fixes it for me.
TFNA 16d ago
I have never had any scrolling lag issues on Firefox (in the form of Fennec from F-Droid) on GrapheneOS.
- 16d ago

varispeed 16d ago

I stopped using Firefox when it had massive performance issues (CPU and memory) to the point it was unusable. Chrome in comparison was lightning fast and since then I somehow cannot get myself to use Firefox though I know they likely have fixed those issues long time ago. I have Firefox installed but never open it.

calmworm 16d ago
Well, open it…
odo1242 16d ago
I can definitely say the performance is good now, though
- TylerE 16d ago
  On Mac it is very obviously quite a bit worse than both Chrome and Safari.
qotgalaxy 16d ago
[dead]
wingworks 16d ago
Same. I found Firefox was fast on Windows at the time, but on Mac it was so slow (compared to Chrome), and had weird non-native scrolling for the longest time. As a Mac user it felt like they developed for Windows, and occasionally do some work on the Mac app too.
esalman 16d ago
There was a period in time, few years ago, when I was going back and forth between Firefox and Chrome, driven by alternate paranoia about privacy vs performance. These days I don't really have to. Firefox on Android, at least for the phones I regularly used, like several OnePlus from 7T up and now razr ultra, has been very stable. Only blip was the one month I was on Pixel 10- turns out they have special hardware optimization for Chrome that cripples Firefox on Pixel 10 otherwise. All the more reason to (return the phone and) stick to Firefox.

codingisfreedom 16d ago

I really wish Firefox will catch up on the debug/devtools front. Nonetheless, I use FF as much as I can on both my mobile and desktop devices.

gib444 16d ago
> I really wish Firefox will catch up on the debug/devtools front. Genuine curiosity: what's it lacking?
- whatsThisBtn4 16d ago
  Yeah I'm not sure what they are talking about... Joke: it doesn't have 80% market share. But also with AI, the most I'm doing is hitting inspect and sending problem elements. Maybe screen resizing for mobile.
- rmccue 16d ago
  The CLI tools for automation are still a pain to use and missing functionality, which also means LLMs use it less; Claude gives up when it sees Chrome isn’t installed unless I specifically tell it to try and use Firefox. I created an automation tool recently for taking screenshots (for SOC2 reporting, hopefully tptacek is proud), and getting it working with FF on the CLI was very painful (but necessary since I needed my cookies!)
realusername 16d ago
I do prefer Firefox devtools to Chrome, that's one of the reasons I use it at work. I think both are kind of equivalent nowadays but I find that the Firefox one has a better design and looks more polished

porphyra 16d ago

I feel like with the advent of vibe coding, the bar to making your own browser is gradually lowering. People are already making all sorts of useful "houseplant programming" to serve their own pain points. Sooner or later, agentic coding will actually become really good and people will be able to just vibe code a whole browser in Rust or something that addresses the exact pain points that power users have.

hgoel 16d ago
The core will have to still be a solid battle tested thing. Imagine having to worry about if your vibed browser is quietly dropping some elements. Firefox and Chromium browsers are valuable because they are the targets, if a site doesn't render properly in them, it can be said that the site is wrong. If everyone runs a vibe coded browser engine that evaporates and you might as well just have sites serve a bunch of markdown for LLMs to render in whatever inconsistent way they choose.
- porphyra 16d ago
  Vibe coding is obviously not quite there yet right now. But in the future it will be. The output of agents will be just as correct and rock solid as the software from the most experienced software developers. We'll also have the additional advantage of there being existing browsers to use as an oracle to test against to ensure that nothing regresses.
  - hgoel 16d ago
    It isn't even a matter of having rock solid AI. I wonder how massive of a test suite would be needed to catch regressions...
    - porphyra 15d ago
      With the same logic there can never be another browser engine ever again. Which I think is actually true as everyone is converging on Blink/Chromium but it is depressing to think about.

whatsThisBtn4 16d ago

I use it exclusively on Android for the ad block on naughty hot girl sites wink wink. I use chrome and those sites are miserable.

shevy-java 16d ago

I also was a Firefox user, but Mozilla killed Firefox many years ago. I noticed this when a mozilla dev said I must use systemd+pulseaudio in order to watch videos (well, hear audio) on youtube. Chrome worked fine. At that moment in time I knew mozilla no longer cared about the users. (I use thorium though, so actually I can still use ublock origin fine. But I am sad that I ended up with the evil Google empire. There is no real competition against it anymore, sadly enough.) > No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information. Indeed. Hopefully more and more people realise this. Google has underestimated The People here.

whatsThisBtn4 16d ago
Um.... If I learned anything from Apple, the best and brightest don't matter. Capitalism forces the best and brightest to make apps for the walled prison because the masses saw someone dancing with colorful backgrounds. I do know a few perpetually single people working in academia using some obscure Linux distro(btw my company is 90%+ Fedora). I am completely over thinking HN nerds can cause an uprising. Somehow the aristocrats have almost no power in democracy and capitalism. Power is held in 0.1%ers and the masses.
deathanatos 16d ago
> I noticed this when a mozilla dev said I must use systemd+pulseaudio I am 99% sure Firefox will run just fine without systemd, or OpenRC half of Gentoo would be with pitchforks and torches. It isn't correct, either, that it requires PulseAudio; I'm running FF with PipeWire, for example. But perhaps let's steelman that to "does not work with ALSA". I'm not sure what the objection to PA would be. It appears you can run FF under an adapter that will backport FF's PA output to ALSA — so it is possible to do —, I'm just not fathoming what the objection to Pulse is. (Or for that matter, its successor, PipeWire.)

allthetime 16d ago

I think a lot of us would pay them at this point, if they kept seriously working on the browser.

werdnapk 16d ago

I've been using Firefox since the beginning and will continue using it. I only use Chrome for occasional testing, but close to 100% of the time, everything works in Firefox unless an overzealous add-on breaks a page and then I simply disable it to get going again. I'm always so shocked to see so many ads when I see people using Chrome or I have to use it for something myself.

esikich 16d ago

I know it's more infrastructure, but just use pi-hole and then it doesn't really matter what browser you use, if we're just talking about pop ups and malicious ads.

aembleton 16d ago
Or just use these AdGuard DNS servers, no infrastructure setup needed Primary: 94.140.14.14 Secondary: 94.140.15.15 uBO does so much more though, with it ability to block particular elements and inject CSS. It can do more than remove ads, but also any annoying elements like autoplaying videos from news sites.

stillpointlab 16d ago

I've been using Firefox as my main browser since I switched from Windows to Linux. No real complaints so far, haven't really noticed any difference from Chrome to be honest which is about as good a recommendation as I could give. It does chew up memory but so did Chrome I guess, I haven't done a head-to-head comparison.

pocksuppet 16d ago

Firefox is a terrible browser. The engine is alright, and good just because it's not the monoculture. The browser is terrible. When you open it up in a fresh profile, it starts asking you to sign up for things and spend money.

codexon 16d ago

I used to use firefox a long time ago but got tired of all the memory leaks and lag before I switched to chrome. Now that mv2 is going away, I switch back to firefox, and it still has memory leak issues after all these years, it is really disappointing.

pier25 16d ago

I switched to Firefox like 6 months ago. I’m happy with it even though Chromium is a better engine imo. What Google is doing with Chrome is unacceptable.

weaksauce 16d ago

firefox has a setting on ios version that blocks ads so maybe they will get more market share that way?

senfiaj 16d ago

Yeah, consider the insane complexity of Web standards, and the fact that even Microsoft failed to create a browser with an independent engine: https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-browser-with-a-completely-new-engine https://waspdev.com/articles/2025-04-07/will-there-be-a-new-... . This means that not only we are unlikely to see browsers with new engines but also that the existing browser engine diversity might even shrink if an existing browser becomes underfunded and / or loses a critical number of users / web developers.

Gustomaximus 16d ago

I feel the opposite, the more chrome abuse their dominance the closer they move to a tipping point where enough people become browser interested to return to browser wars. It's likely one of those things where it has to go to far, then change will happen fairly quickly.

tech234a 16d ago

It's still 200 million monthly active users according to https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

doginasuit 16d ago

> I know Firefox's share of browser share has dwindled to almost nothing. I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. Market share appears to be hovering around 4%, which sounds small but that is still a massive amount of people, over 200 million users. It is even more impressive considering it doesn't have an OS with a large market share feeding it users, people overwhelmingly just use what is already installed. That's a huge number of users earned rather than inherited.

hedora 16d ago
I use firefox and sometimes safari. I had to install chrome recently, and I don’t understand how people stand it. It’s a half-assed attempt to reimplement windows 95 era preload spam. (Or non-decrapified win11). I don’t understand how it has any market share. It’s like finding out that 80% of people voluntarily install browser toolbars that force penis pill ads down your throat, and then there are a bunch of HN fanboys saying that all other alternatives are worse.
- stogot 16d ago
  My hope is the chrome fanboys get forced to experience the full visceral web and revolt. Will Google employees who used UBO now vomit over their own corp decisions and reverse?
p0w3n3d 16d ago
> it doesn't have an OS with a large market share feeding it users Remember when Microsoft was sued for having installed one browser in their OS and making it default? Now suddenly we're okay with another company installing another browser in their OS

zx8080 16d ago

> No single company should have such unilateral control over the internet and its information. Cloudflare with their "checking if the site connection is secure" (while being MITM) is another example.

forgotaccount3 16d ago
To a degree, sure, but is it really 'MITM' if the site you are trying to visit has chosen to add cloudflare into the middle? You may as well say all load-balancers are MITM because you might connect to a different host on each attempt and there's a man in the middle influencing your connection. What makes it any different if the website executed the same logic cloudflare is on their own box?
- dingaling 16d ago
  "What makes it any different if the website executed the same logic cloudflare is on their own box?" Without Cloudflare it's highly unlikely that 20% of websites _would_ implement the same logic.
CloudflareSuccs 16d ago
The second I see that awful Cloudflare countdown I blacklist the site and never return. I am convinced all their metrics saying they reduce bot traffic are mistaken for the fact that they reduce all traffic by annoying users away.
- zx8080 16d ago
  Gatekeeping internet and reading every byte unencrypted. Nice business monopoly.
  - jjav 11d ago
    I wonder who might be willing to fund/pay access to every byte unencrypted.

firecall 16d ago

I'm more of an optimist! We've been here before with Windows and IE dominance! IE peaked at ~95% market share, and windows peaked at ~97%. Broadly it seems to me that Google is behaving much like MS did. But who knows, everything is the same and different this time around.

sidibe 16d ago

This move will help Firefox a lot. This is why they've been my browser on mobile for years, now there's a big incentive to switch on desktop

luckilydiscrete 16d ago

> I know sooner or later, well within my lifetime, it will be gone. I've met so many people in the tech industry who use Zen Browser. Not even because of some ideological point, but just because it is cooler. So no, I don't believe it'll be gone. I believe firefox and ff-based browsers will actually make a comeback.

93po 16d ago

By the time FF isn't a thing we'll have AI distilling site content for us and removing all the bullshit and there won't be anything site operators can do about it. And it'll use sandboxed browser instances that are immediately deleted

tim333 16d ago

As someone with both Chrome and Firefox installed why should I click the Firefox button? I mean it's mostly the same but gives me out of memory errors. Last time I tried it a thing saying "Refresh Firefox" popped up which I clicked and it wiped the extensions which I got back following some online help but lost completely I think the crypto keys in metamask - like https://www.reddit.com/r/Metamask/comments/14rcg6k/firefox_refresh_nuked_my_wallets_can_they_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Metamask/comments/14rcg6k/firefox_r... Luckily I had backup elsewhere but it kind of freaked me out.

Night_Thastus 15d ago
I've never seen Firefox use more memory than Chrome on modern versions. They're pretty on par. It's far more likely that one of the many addons/extensions you had was the cause. As for 'Refresh Firefox', it does exactly what it says it does - wipe a lot of your configuration to bring it closer to stock. It's intended as a way to show people new defaults and help clear out old, bloated configs. It shouldn't be used unless you know what you're doing.

vmt-man 15d ago

I believe era of custom software is coming. AI is getting much powerful from month to month and that day will come when you can implement your own browser someday and no one like Google can stop you from it ;)