Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×
Chrome Firefox Opera Safari

Chrome and Edge Rise In Popularity. Firefox, Opera, and Safari Drop. (softpedia.com) 177

July's statistics from web analytics firm Net Applications showed continuing changes in the most frequently-used web browsers. Softpedia reports: Last month, Google Chrome increased its market share from 70.19% to 71.00%, while Microsoft Edge jumped from 8.07% to 8.46%... The migration to the Chromium engine allowed Microsoft to turn Edge into a cross-platform browser, and this is one of the reasons that contributed to the growth of the new app. Edge is now available not only on Windows 10, but also on Windows 7, Windows 8, Windows 8.1, and even macOS. At the same time, Microsoft is also working on a Linux version of the browser, and a preview build is expected by the end of the year.

But what made Microsoft Edge the second most-used desktop browser out there so fast after the switch to Chromium is definitely Microsoft offering it as the default browser in Windows 10.

But what about Firefox? And Opera, and Apple's Safari? Computerworld reports: A decade ago, Mozilla's browser may have dreamed of upsetting the then-order of things, taking its April 2010 share of 25.1% and parlaying it into victory over IE — down to 61.2% by then... But that was Firefox's peak.

At the end of July, Firefox stood at 7.3%, down three-tenths of a percentage point from the previous month... Firefox let its second-place spot (far, far behind Chrome) slip away in March, when Edge snatched it. That did not change in July. The gap between the two more than doubled, in fact, to 1.2 points. On almost every browser share metric, Firefox is in trouble... Since the end of January, Firefox has been stuck in the 7s; for the eight months before that, it was mired in the 8s; and between May 2018 and March 2019, Firefox floundered in the 9s. The trend is crystal clear...

Elsewhere in Net Applications' numbers, Apple's Safari plunged to 3%, a loss of six-tenths of a point, its lowest mark since late 2008. Opera software's Opera also took a dive, ending July at 0.8%, a decline of three-tenths of a point. Those numbers have to be frightening to both those browsers' makers.

This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Chrome and Edge Rise In Popularity. Firefox, Opera, and Safari Drop.

Comments Filter:
  • by Cylix ( 55374 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @02:35AM (#60359591) Homepage Journal

    Let the hate consume you!

    • Let the hate consume you!

      It's 2020, and people are still finding value in a fucking browser war.

      Seems we'll always find something to "hate", even for idiotic reasons.

      • by simlox ( 6576120 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @03:02AM (#60359639)
        Unfortunately, browser monopolies are a very real problem for the internet - and therefore society in general.
        • by geekmux ( 1040042 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @03:33AM (#60359671)

          Unfortunately, browser monopolies are a very real problem for the internet - and therefore society in general.

          Lazy humans who never bother to change default settings, don't give a shit about privacy, and are so cheap they refuse to pay for internet services are a very real problem for the internet - and society in general.

          Website hosting, email, video sharing, video conferencing, picture sharing, data storage...all of it, is free now. There's only one way you do that for a few billion humans. By turning them into the product, and monetizing privacy. And society, embraced it.

          Unfortunately, browser monopolies are the end result.

          • Bullshit. First of ally it isn't even remotely "free". The amount of pointless overpriced crap we are mind-hacked into buying by professional psycho manipulators ("advertisers") is precisely as much higher than what we would pay if we owned Google, as thr combined profits and business expenses of Google, the adverisers and partially the advertising businesses combined. That is a lot of money out of our pockets!

            Pure hosting and administration would come down to under $200 per 1000 people, probably, roughly g

        • What about OS monopoly?? When will you stop using Windows?
      • Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @05:02AM (#60359821)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @06:37AM (#60359971)

          In Germany, there is a law that there must be a way to contsct a real human for any site. You can even be sued by random law firms for forgetting to include it.
          That is why we got a phone number (stupid call center) and an address to send physical mail to.
          I have it on good authority from a friend of my girlfriend, that if you send them a physical letter, preferably with the official header of some important business, like your town or city or the like, you *will* get a reply. She's a lawyer working at the town administration, and used their paper, plus a few lawyery phrases, and got Google to call HER! :)
          Not making this up. I know her.

          I suggest faking the "important business" and staying nice ans friendly but highly official and lawyery. I guess to those Google types, getting physical mail is like gettting an envoy of the queen of England on a white elephant at their doorstep, talking like a nobleman from the beforetime. They can't help but want to play along, be part, of this high class, and act just as noble. ;)

      • Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @05:05AM (#60359829)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • by Joce640k ( 829181 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @05:31AM (#60359849) Homepage

          I'm still using it because it's the only one that allows proper ad blocking and javascript filtering.

          I now have very few extensions because they all broke and a very minimal theme because the default theme sucks. I also hacked my userchrome to put the tabs at the top of the window since they removed the option to do that.

          It's a very broken browser now, yes.

          • Tabs at the top of the window literally doesn't make sense in any other shell than Windows, by the way.
            The title is usually part of the window manager or even a fully separate component, not part of the program. Which is why you can remove it, e.g. in a tiling WM.

            In any case, I think the tab bar belongs in a second row right above(/below) the task bar. As it is almost a duplication of features of the task bar, just one hierarchy level lower. But it should still be possible to take a (set of) tab(s) and make

          • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

            by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @12:04PM (#60361041)
            Comment removed based on user account deletion
        • Instead of making a better browser they worked on everything but the browser. A screenshot button? A social media sharing button? No multi threaded support until years after Chrome was doing it? A video chat client? Political donations? Copying the look of Chrome? Using Chrome's extensions? That's just off the top of my head.

        • While some may think your post sounds trollish, it's unfortunately totally correct. Mozilla have been self-harming for a while.
          They could have made a compelling case for being the "open yet secure" browser, and maybe integrated also multiple search engines like DuckDuckGo. But they blew it. I wonder how much Google's influence had to beat on this; after all, they've been paying Moz's bills for some time now.

        • Dramatic (Score:5, Informative)

          by DrYak ( 748999 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @08:32AM (#60360261) Homepage

          You make everything much more dramatic than what actually happened.

          then they repeatedly flipped off their users first by getting rid of the extension subsystem

          They didn't "get rid" of it, *they replaced* the extension subsystem. The old XUL subsystem got replaced by web extensions.
          It was necessary, because the whole XUL stack is eventually getting rid of, and it prevented some modern things like splitting into multiple indepedent process.
          XUL *was* part of the reasons why one tab crashing took the whole firefox down. It needed replacement, and the new replacement needed change in the way extensions interact with the browser.

          without having a clear and easy conversion path for the writers of the extensions,

          lol, what ? You haven't been following Giorgio Maone's blog? Mozilla even extended the WebExtensions API to enable stuff like NoScript.
          You can maybe blame Mozilla that they should have included even more writers and that to enough of them were part of the discussion.
          But you can't say they didn't had a conversation with writers when some of the decision were done with concertation with the writer to make sure that the extensions could worke again.

      • It's 2020, and people are still finding value in a fucking browser war.

        Seems we'll always find something to "hate", even for idiotic reasons.

        It's almost as if you haven't turned on a PC and seen the new "Get Edge!" window that covers the entire screen and has a hard to find "close" button".

        • by chrish ( 4714 )

          That was literally the final annoyance that got me to format my laptop and install Linux Mint. Death by 1000 cuts since Windows 8.

          I think OneNote is the only thing I miss, but I don't play twitchy FPS games. YMMV of course, but it was a surprisingly smooth transition.

        • It's almost as if you're still using^Wbeing used by Windows!

          (^W is "delete word", by the way.)

  • Google (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mars-nl ( 2777323 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @02:44AM (#60359613)

    We gave the web to Google. Not just the web actually, everything (mobile, car, home elctronics). I'm old enough to remember when we had web standards, and hence competition and choice. Now our digital lives are in the hands of a hand full of America tech giants. This can't end well.

    My message to the newer generation: it does not have to be this way. We don't need Google and Facebook for "innovation" or for running our lives. You can start by downloading Firefox and looking for other alternative for Google's and Facebook;s services. It's easier than you think.

    • Re:Google (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @02:51AM (#60359623)

      You message to the newer generation - or indeed the current or previous one - will fall on deaf ears. People only care about free, fast and shiny. They don't give a rat's ass about privacy, standards, competition or choice - until the lack of choice starts hurting free, fast or shiny.

      That's something the Google monopoly has understood perfectly: they don't let themselves become complacent and keep on cranking out good products, so people don't get tempted to ask the government to do a Sherman on Google, like they did Ma Bell when they overcharged for poor services because they could.

    • Just a small data point: The mobile version of Firefox can't even upload multiple files. You can only select one file, upload it, select another one, upload it, select another file, upload it, and so on. If you select multiple files at once and try to upload them, nothing gets uploaded, because instead of the actual selection, the browser reports one non-existing file to the web page. This bug has been known for two years. Before then, you couldn't even select multiple files. This is the flag ship product t
      • Just a small data point: The mobile version of Firefox can't even upload multiple files. You can only select one file, upload it, select another one, upload it, select another file, upload it, and so on. If you select multiple files at once and try to upload them, nothing gets uploaded, because instead of the actual selection, the browser reports one non-existing file to the web page. This bug has been known for two years. Before then, you couldn't even select multiple files. This is the flag ship product that is supposed to compete against Google's Chrome.

        Yeah, that's why we have wget

      • Re:Google (Score:5, Informative)

        by Ahnteis ( 746045 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @10:52AM (#60360695)
        Ah, BUT the mobile version of Firefox CAN run the ublock origin plugin. The amount of time I need to upload files is vastly smaller than the amount of ads I'd like to block for security (and sanity) reasons.
    • I'm old enough to remember when we had web standards

      We have web standards. You are more than happy to go out and write standards compliant websites which work in every modern browser. The fact that Google has a lot of push in the direction these standards go doesn't mean they aren't open standards as a result.

      We don't need Google and Facebook for "innovation"

      Need? No. But I do remember a time before Google was providing the innovation. The most amazing thing we did was blink text, and everything afterwards was Microsoft just trying to make the internet slower and embed ActiveX.

      We absolutely do need tech gia

      • Funny thing I'm old enough to remember when there were divergent standards (best viewed in....) OP sounds like someone pining for something that didn't exist. Far as not needing Google some of us also remember the infant search space where finding things was a yellow phone-book listing sites and there were engines like Ask Jeeves and Altavista. Social media? Yeah we called ours Newsgroups and they were just as painful back then with people being people as they are now.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      At least Google does everything through web standards. It all gets proposed to the W3C and meaningful changes are made based on feedback from that forum. Not like the Microsoft of old where they would just roll out proprietary Frontpage extensions that only IE supported.

      If you want to have control over the web then get involved in W3C. It's all there for the taking but you have to put in the work.

      • Not like the Microsoft of old where they would just roll out proprietary Frontpage extensions that only IE supported.

        Nor like the Netscape of old where they would just roll out new HTML tags.

        • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

          I had erased that pain from my memory... I think W3C used to maintain a chart of what stuff worked in each browser.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Right, and I was calling this out back in the 00s when Google was using WHATWG to subvert the web standards process with a propaganda campaign.

      The W3C was democratic and had representatives from every industry that did something with the web from browsers to embedded devices, from smaller web developers, to big business.

      Then along came a propaganda campaign about how awful it was (even though XHTML was a significant step forward in making the web more modular, furthering the need for separation of concerns,

    • Re:Google (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @04:19AM (#60359751)

      I'm old enough to remember when we had web standards, and hence competition and choice.

      The W3C (organization who sets the HTML standard) made themselves irrelevant when they refused to add multimedia capability to HTML for over a decade. A majority of people in the standards body had sticks up their asses and wanted to keep HTML true to its roots - supporting only static photos and text. That forced web developers, who were desperate for multimedia and scripting, to grasp for anything which could provide those features. Which is how we all ended up saddled with Flash as the de facto web standard.

      The web browser makers pretty much had to fill in for the W3C's negligence and began adding their own extensions to HTML. By the time the W3C finally approved HTML 5 (Oct 2014, nearly 15 years after HTML 4.01), they had reduced themselves to a reactionary body, no longer a driving force for adding new features to the standard.

      Being a standards body doesn't mean you can do whatever you want and everyone is forced to follow your lead. You gotta update the standard to do what the people who are using it want to do, or they'll abandon your standard in pursuit of something or someone else who will give them what they want.

      • by mr_jrt ( 676485 )

        You seem to have accidentally omitted all the work between 4.01 and 5 which went into XHTML, which was far better than HTML5, IMHO. Crappy FEDs whining that they'll have to close their tags and generally do things properly led to HTML5, not lethargy by the W3C. HTML had support for all that multimedia by using a generic object tag.

        • Of course, what's they're bitching about, in regards to multimedia, is the fact that the W3C, rightfully, refused to make DRM extensions part of the W3C standard. The copyright cartels were demanding that, not only that DRM extensions be added to the standards, but to have the standard call unpublished proprietary DRM binaries that no one would be allowed to audit. The W3C, thankfully, told them to take a long walk on a short pier.

    • I'm old enough to remember NCSA Mosaic, and actually used it.

      Did you conveniently forget Netscape Navigator Vs. Internet Explorer? Netscape lost, badly. And I still clung to Netscape for the longest time, because at least it wasn't IE - I didn't jump ship until Seamonkey.

      Point is, we actually have quite a few more options these days. Me, I mostly use Pale Moon.

    • Well said! Good email services exist for a few bucks a month, and you can have your own unique domain name instead of the Gmail address that instantly shows any fellow nerd that you...are not a real nerd.
      True story, I once got an interview for a consulting gig, first thing the guy said was "we selected you for interviewing partly because you're not using a gmail address...

  • by Rosco P. Coltrane ( 209368 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @02:45AM (#60359615)

    The more an application is hell-bent on stealing personal data and ship it off to their privacy-invading creators, the more people like them.

    Firefox might be clunky, and Mozilla kind of clueless, but it's still better than running those two hateful browsers by a country mile.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by wierd_w ( 1375923 )

      I really dont find firefox all that clunky...

      Chrome though, just seems like it has a secret love affair with malware. I dont know how many times I have had to remove a surreptitiously "Chromium browser" installation, planted by a malicious downloader. (especially tied to malicious bundleware)

      Google's willingness to do business with shady actors like that is more than enough reason to never touch their browser with a 100 meter pole.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

        Chromium is open source, Google can't do much to stop anyone packaging it any way they like.

        What on Earth are you installing that comes with this malware though, and why don't you have any security software blocking it? In fact you can block installation manually quite easily, just open up the Group Policy Editor and block the location it installs to. You can use pattern matching too.

        • by wierd_w ( 1375923 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @05:53AM (#60359879)

          You misunderstand.

          I am "the tech person" in the family.

          Do I really need to explain?

          Here's a scenario:

          Sister-in-law decides she just loves coupons. She goes online, and looks for them. Does not pay any attention to all the times I told her never to download applications or application bundles from coupon sites. She of course, installs said bundlware. It contains a surruptitious instance of chromium browser, that it uses to do nefarious shit with (because it has been customized to allow that shit), and hides it in an obscure part of the ./%userprofile%/AppData structure, behind an ACL. (because the authors fucking KNOW it is being used for surreptitious shit)

          "Help, help, my computer is acting all fucked up!"

          And there I am, cleaning that shit up, ONE. MORE. TIME.

          On my computers? Shit never touches my disk, ever. But again, I am "The tech guy." I do not get a free pass from being the digital janitor, cleaning up internet excrement in aisle 5.

          • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

            Right, but you can both block that with the GPE and get security software that blocks the installation. For example Microsoft's built in anti-malware system (Windows Defender) recently started deleting downloads of CCleaner that bundled software.

            You said Chromium. Did you mean Chrome? CCleaner and some other apps to bundle it but they have to very clearly show that they intend to install it, e.g. https://imgur.com/rgMBsS9 [imgur.com]

            If you found an app that slyly installs it then you should report it to Google and your

            • No, I mean chromium.

              https://www.pandasecurity.com/... [pandasecurity.com]

              This is very well known about. Nobody seems interested in stopping it though. No PSA from google about it, and antivirus programs are already aware of it. The issue is in determining the difference between it and a legit installation of the open-built browser, so many antivirus programs dont autoremove it.

              it is most definitely used to track EVERY GODDAMN THING the afflicted user does online, because it slyly takes over for a legit install of chrome brow

              • The code is open source. How are you supposed to stop people from modifying and distributing it? Are you aware of signed binaries? I'm sure these custom builds have no verified signature, so block them. Again this is 100% the fault of the user installing something. We've told you how to enable policies to prevent this.

                • My solution was to tell them (my brother and his wife), that I am not interested in blowing my weekend over and over again to fix their computer.

                  Havent had that many calls since. Still happens on occasion though, thing is always loaded with shit.

                  The deal, is that locking down the user account is not really an option, because I am not conveniently available enough to manage updates and other maintenance for them. It's a catch-22.

              • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

                Oh, so it's just your basic malware that happens to be making use of open source code that Google wrote. Well since it's open source they can't really do anything about it. It's a mixture of BSD and GPL licencing, they have no control over it any more than Linus Torvalds can stop someone using Linux code to make malware.

                They could do the same thing with Firefox.

                For people like your family who have trouble with it my advice is switch to a Chromebook. If they need MS Office then direct them to the Office 365

          • So you just change her user account so she can't install any software anymore.
            Like in a business.
            You sell it as a new security feature by Windows. Not done by you. O:-)

            Or just fuckin install Linux Mint, and be done with it. SSHing in, and checking the logs, to actually see what's the problem, is far easier anyway.
            Avoid TeamViewer. I had someone hack her system via TeamViewer even though I enabled all security and password protection features I could find. Unless you can keep it from using any networking, i

          • Sounds like perfect Chromebook candidate.

      • by Rewind ( 138843 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @05:39AM (#60359857)
        Firefox isn't clunky. It did have a weird phase before Quantum where it was getting long in the tooth, but since then it has been as smooth as anything Chrome-ian. That period of stagnation before the big release and the fact that the release 'broke' so many old add-ons convinced a lot of people to move to Chrome. That was a fairly short period of time and it is unfortunate that it handed Google as much control as it did.
        • My problems with Firefox have never been performance-related. They've always been bullshit-related. For instance, they claim to be your privacy browser, but then they a) open a page on their site with every new version so that they can drive you to their site, and b) spent $20M of donated money on buying Pocket and integrating it into the browser when it should be an add-on and not built in at all, and its entire purpose is to send data home. They get information on what data you consider important enough t

    • The more an application is hell-bent on stealing personal data and ship it off to their privacy-invading creators, the more people like them.

      The more an application is set as the default, the more it is adopted by the lazy masses who never bother to change defaults. Modern-day internet users are the most catered to, which is exactly why they embrace so much of this "privacy-invading" technology, because they're also cheap. Incredibly cheap. Need a corporate website? Facebook. Email? Gmail. Video presence? YouTube. Video collaboration? Zoom. Picture sharing? Instagram. What do they all have in common? The price tag.

      People aren't "he

    • by xonen ( 774419 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @03:33AM (#60359667) Journal

      Firefox might be clunky, and Mozilla kind of clueless, but it's still better than running those two hateful browsers by a country mile.

      You worded that quite nicely. The browser is ok, give or take a few. However, the major reason to use it is that it's not made by Google or MS, not because it has such excellent features (well, actually it does but the UI around them s*s b*ls).

      Reason Mozilla is loosing the game is because they are not focusing on marketing the browser, and keeping both heavy users, developers and the average Joe or Jane happy, but instead focus on political goals, often trying to push their opinion about random subject to it's users (like the push message recently) or invest energy in redundant services that don't really add anything or, or more: and, don't work properly. Like their big file sharing service.

      Mozilla could do great if they took their marketing serious. And would guide development with some vision, instead of adjusting to whoever is screaming loudest today about <fill in random feature>, upsetting others who don't scream but don't like changes to <fill in feature mentioned before>. Over the years, this inconsistent behaviour lost them customers. The average nerd will install Chrome on his grandparent's computer because that will cause him or her less support questions and thus less trouble.

      Did i mention an ecosystem with addons that's actually up-to-date and working as intended? Most extensions mentioned on the net or linked to no longer work because of too frequent changes to the browser. People writing a small but useful extension don't want to be bothered updating it every month and rewriting it every year. That's a thing where Google wins too, and MS was smart enough to hitchhike and ride along that ecosystem.

      I could go on for hours. But i'm afraid that unless Mozilla changes their act, their road will continue downhill. Still hoping for a miracle though.

      • If an extension is small, it could probably be implemented as a user script.

        It's the bigger more complex extensions that suffer when they change Firefox, because they're not easy to fix.

    • by AmiMoJo ( 196126 )

      I like Firefox and would switch to it if they could sort the mobile version out. Too many sites just don't render properly on Firefox for Android and you can't easily sync things like logins between Firefox desktop and Chrome mobile.

      • Uum, I have yet to see a site with broken rendering in Firefox mobile (which is the exact same renderer as regular Firefox, btw). I call bullshit. Do you have any real-world examples? I suspect a misconfigured ad blocker.

        Also, doesn't desktop Firefox automatically import stuff from Chrome, and put them in the Mozilla "cloud" for Firefox Mobile to use, during/after the installation?

    • by Solandri ( 704621 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @04:25AM (#60359767)
      It's got nothing to do with stealing personal data. Firefox lost its way when it started trying to turn itself into a Chrome look-alike. At that point, most people figured if Firefox is going to do everything in its power to imitate Chrome, I might as well just jump ship to Chrome.
      • I might as well just jump ship to Chrome.

        I recently returned to Firefox after almost a decade with Chrome. Back then Firefox was clunky, Chrome an attractive, lightweight browser, and Google wasn't the data sponge it has become today.

        So I switched back to Firefox so that Google only knows 80% of what I do on the Internet, instead of 100%.

    • The more an application is hell-bent on stealing personal data and ship it off to their privacy-invading creators, the more people like them.

      Or maybe (just hear me out), there's some other attraction to an application and users don't give a shit about privacy.

  • by oldgraybeard ( 2939809 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @03:35AM (#60359673)
    marketing campaigns that say their the best.

    Who knew
  • by xack ( 5304745 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @03:50AM (#60359695)
    And Mozilla is doing it to themselves. The propaganda that pocket recommends in new tab combined with the forced push notifications is the latest last straw in a line of last straws. Firefox had 30% market share 10 years ago and was ahead of Chrome. Now Firefox is dying.
    • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

      by OolimPhon ( 1120895 )

      What's pocket? Never used it. Don't get any requests to use it.

      Forced push notifications? Dunno what they are either. Never seen them.

      Are you sure you're running Firefox? Or perhaps you should stop going to dodgy websites?

      • Pocket is the new default landing site when you open a tab. I know you haven't updated anything since Mozilla 0.98 but come on...

        • And they spent $20M on that garbage! How many developer hours would that have paid for in pursuit of fixing long-standing bugs? I will never, ever donate, but I guess that doesn't matter if they have tens of millions of dollars lying around to waste on shit nobody asked for.

      • Pocket is what shows by default on the New Tab page. You get a mixture of ads and articles from various sources, curated by Mozilla. Obviously this doesn't belong as part of the web browser, but if you can (1) turn it off, and (2) someone clicks the ads to fund a browser that's not by Google, then I can live with having to turn it off on the rare occasion I need to reinstall the software. So far both of those conditions are being met.

        I actually haven't turned them off for the past year or so, various circum

    • The propaganda that pocket recommends in new tab

      Huh?

      the forced push notifications

      Wha?

      I think you're using a different Firefox than I am.

      Firefox had 30% market share 10 years ago and was ahead of Chrome. Now Firefox is dying.

      I'm sure that's 100% pocket's fault and has nothing to do with the market power of Google, the clusterfuck which was Firefox 5 years ago, or the fact that people don't give a crap about browsers as long as they just work.

  • by h33t l4x0r ( 4107715 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @04:21AM (#60359757)
    We need to accept that Opera is less of a browser alternative and more of a complete scam these days. A drop in Firefox and Safari (as well as similar devkit-based browsers) is perhaps alarming, but a drop in Opera is a very good thing, analogous to drop in chlamydia.
  • by Vandil X ( 636030 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @04:52AM (#60359809)
    ....As a Mac user, I have been using Safari as my primary since 2003 and Firefox since it was invented (and previously Mozilla and Netscape). I don't use Chrome for privacy reasons, and have no interest in using IE or Edge.

    I'm also the kind of person that has custom entries in his HOSTS file.

    On my iPhone I stick with Mobile Safari, since it gets the job done.
    • May I suggest a home server with your own bind instance, and DHCP that automatically suggests that name server? Plus OpenVPN for your phone and laptop that connects you to your home net/server wherever you are. That way you do not have to set up a hosts file on every box in your home network,can use public wifi without worry, can even mount the same network drive on your devices, etc.
      I suggest giving the server a dynamic DNS name on the Internet, so OpenVPN has an easy time connecting.
      And using a firewall a

  • When you click the current tab, it takes you back to the top of the page. I use that feature surprisingly often and miss it when I'm using other browsers.

  • by BAReFO0t ( 6240524 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @06:04AM (#60359899)

    While Firefox was king in most of Europe, the US was still strongly IE6 land.
    Now while Firefox is still king around here, IE 2, aka Chrome, is ruling the US.

    Just remember that these news always forgrt to mention that they imply "in the US".
    Sure, this is a US site. But it's easy to fall for it.

    Also, I suspect Google's Microsoft tactic, of pre-installing Chrome on all Android toys, might be the main cause. And people in Europe being more interested in their privacy since the GDPR got even grannies to talk about data protection and refusing to be recorded.
    Plus, there is this other game by Google, where they add pointless kitchen sinks at a rate that only Mozilla still can keep up with. Barely. For the sole purpose of gaining a monopoly.

    Sadly, there is no Opera left to sue Google's ass off with 7-9 figure fines, like they did with Microsoft.

  • Bought a 2020 MacBook Air. Knew it had a low power CPU. Still amazed that Safari regularly reports that streaming movie pages like Netflix or Amazon Video, may be using a lot of memory and slowing the computer down. If anything would make me switch to Chrome, that would be it. An intrusive message at the top of the screen, reminding me how under-specced the computer may be. Plus, why can my iPad/iPhone run video conference software without any cooling, while the Air has to spin up its fan? Seems a bit we
  • Support decisions (Score:5, Interesting)

    by kalpol ( 714519 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @07:34AM (#60360113)
    I imagine a lot of this is being driven by IT support decisions. Supporting both Firefox and Chrome is not something most people want to do, so they choose one, and they choose the one that is supported by Microsoft. It's a shame, I think Firefox is great as a browser for the most part and this is just putting us considerably further down the path of Google owning the web (see: Amp).
  • I have never delved much in to the technical merits or demerits of the different browsers, and I don't consider myself a 'power user'. I only found out about Seamonkey because it came on slackware. Now I use it on other linux distros. It has an old time feel to it that I like. But I've never seen anyone talk about it anywhere, and I'm curious about that. I can't be the only user. I just want to know, how many people use it and why? Are there gurus out there who can point out why they don't use it?

  • I've seen a few "firefox is on the way out" articles lately. Who gains from spreading the perception that firefox might be dropping in popularity? even if it was, what's the purpose in telling people? is someone concerned that firefox users might be left without a working browser should mozilla decide to drop it? that's very comforting. it's nice to know someone is so concerned about this that they have to tell us. it's touching.

    • If you're only seeing it now, you must be new here. We've been complaining for years about how Firefox keeps dicking around with non-central bullshit while bugs go unfixed for years.

  • by Trondheim ( 2012498 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @09:54AM (#60360521)
    I ditched Firefox for Chrome years ago after the reprisal against Mozilla CEO Brendon Eich for donating a very small amount of money in favor of traditional marriage. That ugly affair demonstrated how infected the Mozilla organization was with mindless SJWs and turned me off to any Mozilla products for years. Recently, I decided to give Firefox a try again, but was again disappointed when I started getting pro-BLM messages from Mozilla on Firefox's startup page telling me I needed to educate myself about my inherent racism. It saddened me that Mozilla is still infected with unthinking, bigoted SJWs. I also noticed that the politically-oriented news articles on that page were always anti-conservative and pro-progressive.

    So that's a no-go again for Firefox. It appears Mozilla will continue their slide into irrelevancy.
  • by RitchCraft ( 6454710 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @11:27AM (#60360817)
    ... you configure it with the following: - uBlock Origin addon (no ads thank goodness) - Ghostery addon (anti-tracking) - New Tab Override (set your own start page on new opened tabs) - Google Analytics Optout addon (https://tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout stop Google dead in its tracks) - Go into options and set your privacy and search engines to your liking. I've been using Firefox since version 1. Who gives a rat's a$$ about all the features added to it that people seem to hate on. You simply turn them off and customize the browser to your liking. Take a few minutes to take control people.
  • by kbahey ( 102895 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @11:31AM (#60360839) Homepage

    Firefox is still my main browser, on Xubuntu 18.04. It is fortified with all the usual addons (NoScript, uBlock Origin, Auto Tab Discard, CookieBro).

    I used to have Chromium as my secondary browser. When sites display no content and a couple of attempts to relax NoScript fails, I either abandon the site forever, or, if the content is important, I open it in Chromium.

    For almost a year now, I barely used Chromium. The reason is that I discovered Falkon: a fast, low resource browser that works surprisingly well. It user interface has some warts (e.g. how to select which folder to bookmark something), but for checking sites quickly, it does a great job.

    I also have Opera in case I need a third browser ...

  • by Socguy ( 933973 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @12:29PM (#60361191)
    Firefox is my main browser and I do what I can to keep it locked down. I try to use Edge as my secondary for those instances that what I've done has broken 'fox and I really want to access something. I can no longer support Google.
  • by Kryptonut ( 1006779 ) on Monday August 03, 2020 @04:41PM (#60362339)

    But what made Microsoft Edge the second most-used desktop browser out there so fast after the switch to Chromium is definitely Microsoft offering it as the default browser in Windows 10.

    Or you know, perhaps Edge (Chromium based) is actually a good browser? I've been using the Google ecosystem for years, but I have to say I'm finding Edge better to use than Chrome now and I'm looking forward to them releasing a Linux version. Hopefully they may build a Linux ARM version too, that'd be great for my SBC's.

"The vast majority of successful major crimes against property are perpetrated by individuals abusing positions of trust." -- Lawrence Dalzell

Working...