The loss of marketshare has accelerated since Quantum

[PadaV4]

http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-marke ... 705-201802

I wonder why.

[mightyglydd]

Most sane folks aren't masochists

[therube]

I don't put much into stats.
I don't put much into telemetry.
But if Mozilla's telemetry tells us anything its that "most" users don't care one way or the other whether its "Australis" or "Quantum".
And if that's the case, then to me, it's simply that Mozilla is being out marketed (which is quite obvious since they have always been terrible marketers).

And now with Quantum, with "community" dead, with enthusiasm dead, with the way Mozilla has treated extension developers, with the death of extensions, there is rightly no reason for anyone to want to push the brand, to enhance the brand, & no reason for an end user to actively choose Mozilla over anything else.

masochists

That is a good word. An accurate word. Another word that has long been in my head is "apologist".

[Frank Lion]

Here's one surprising statistic - http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-marke ... 705-201802

Germany has always had high Firefox use, mainly because the Germans rate privacy very highly.

That's not surprising, as ever since the end of WWII, the whole of East Germany was under constant surveillance by the Stasi (secret police controlled by the USSR) and the situation was made far worse by their use of unofficial informants (inoffizielle Mitarbeiter) which ended up with brother informing on brother, etc. Think of a world like George Orwell's 1984 and you get the picture.

So, that explains their privacy concerns and Firefox use, in the past. Looking at those stats though, it doesn't quite explain why now many have clearly dropped Firefox since Quantum (Firefox 57) and gone to the most intrusive, un-private browser in the entire world! i.e. Google Chrome.

Puzzling.

[Tomatoshadow2]

Do you guys think the extension losses, pushed a lot of people to leave? I wonder if Mozilla has marketed their privacy stance enough? @Frank Lion Wasn't there a big controversy over something called Cliqz or am I mistaken?

[gorhill]

Do you guys think the extension losses, pushed a lot of people to leave?

Firefox's marketshare has been in decline since 2010Q1, and during that long decline in has sometimes shed marketshare similar to what you see since FF57: https://imgur.com/a/d0wsK. A serious investigation to explain the recent decline would need to take into account the long term trend.

Here's one surprising statistic - http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-marke ... 705-201802

Possible explanation: "Mozilla ships Cliqz experiment in Germany for ~1% of new installs, collects surf data, including URLs". The timing matches.

[Snake4]

Here's one surprising statistic - http://gs.statcounter.com/browser-marke ... 705-201802

Germany has always had high Firefox use, mainly because the Germans rate privacy very highly.

That's not surprising, as ever since the end of WWII, the whole of East Germany was under constant surveillance by the Stasi (secret police controlled by the USSR) and the situation was made far worse by their use of unofficial informants (inoffizielle Mitarbeiter) which ended up with brother informing on brother, etc. Think of a world like George Orwell's 1984 and you get the picture.

So, that explains their privacy concerns and Firefox use, in the past. Looking at those stats though, it doesn't quite explain why now many have clearly dropped Firefox since Quantum (Firefox 57) and gone to the most intrusive, un-private browser in the entire world! i.e. Google Chrome.

Puzzling.

it wouldnt be just Google Chrome? would also be Vivaldi an other Blink based browsers would it not?

[Frank Lion]

@Frank Lion Wasn't there a big controversy over something called Cliqz or am I mistaken?

Possible explanation: "Mozilla ships Cliqz experiment in Germany for ~1% of new installs, collects surf data, including URLs". The timing matches.

Yeah, that makes much more sense. Somehow I missed that Cliqz business at the time.

I thought that German jump was a bit dramatic just due to Quantum release, even with its added telemetry burden.

[frg]

> And now with Quantum, with "community" dead, with enthusiasm dead, with the way Mozilla has treated
> extension developers, with the death of extensions, there is rightly no reason for anyone to want to push
> the brand, to enhance the brand, & no reason for an end user to actively choose Mozilla over anything else.

+1 Same happens with the Thinkpad brand now I think. there are still some people enthusiastic about it but mostly its a me too laptop and in the case of Firefox a me too browser.

wrt to Germany. There was and is still a large open source tinkering community active here. But most users just don't care what browser they use and with the niche Firefox carved out vanishing so goes the market share. Still high compared to other countries.

Personally I think this will continue. They now remove overlays which will probably break most of the few still working add-ons in local builds and with the removal of many xml bindings for toolbars and status bars and tightened security some user css scripts will also no longer work. So when 60 hits ESR it will probably go down another few points.

Doesn't concern me much. Will try to patch SeaMonkey UI up for 60 and if this one dies switch to Chromium.

[Tomatoshadow2]

@Frank Lion I just remember hearing about the huge controversy it caused German users. @frg Yes, the marketing hasn't been up to pair imo, is Seamonkey actively still being developed or is it becoming harder to release new builds? Was just wondering.

[therube]

Still being developed. Very limited developers.
Mozilla has been pulling the guts out of FF, guts in many cases that SeaMonkey relies on, making things that much more difficult.
Mozilla seemingly making ongoing build infrastructure changes that also adversely affect SeaMonkey, again making things that much more difficult (even to get a release out).

[Omega X]

According to the honchos at Mozilla, trackers like Statcouter can't see Firefox well anymore due to Tracking Protection. Their internal numbers are higher.

[Frank Lion]

According to the honchos at Mozilla, trackers like Statcouter can't see Firefox well anymore due to Tracking Protection. Their internal numbers are higher.

I recall a time when those same honchos were claiming 350 million users for Firefox but, inadvertently, let the cat out of the bag and revealed that it was actually 100 million at the time -
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic ... 5#p8428425

I have little patience with those who indulge in such deception.

[Brummelchen]

the term "Stasi" died with the reunion. apart from that our consciousness about privacy started much earlier - in time when Adolf H was present and gained traitors against the folks (in special jewish people). for the east germany people privacy may have higher priority because of this double impact and the west germany folks only had one. anyhow the germany law ever respects privacy, same as color, gender aso. (first 10 laws). it may be a reason why our consciousness about personal data to unknown peopel but telling the next neighbour about this and that it has grown but politics are going to undermine this "holy" target.

[Frank Lion]

the term "Stasi" died with the reunion

Not in the UK it didn't. We still use it to describe parking wardens and the like.