Interesting video - Firefox has lost 50 million users since Jan. 2019

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andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

Brodie Robinson is a GNU/Linux video creator from Australia, he's usually got some good information or how-to videos on using various distro utilities. Here, he's analyzing the horrible numbers for Mozilla over the last two years, dropping from over 240 million users to close to 190 million users: https://odysee.com/@BrodieRobertson:5/firefox-has-lost-another-50-million:d

Some notes from the video:
- He calls Firefox little more than a Google sub-project at this point. A lot of Mozilla's funding has come from the fact that Google is the default search engine in Firefox. At some point that won't be worthwhile to Google and it will cut Mozilla off - and he questions if Mozilla will survive.

- Every major country has dropped in Firefox users, except for China. Not sure why China is increasing in Firefox users. Maybe just more people getting online in China, and they are trying new things?

- Why is Firefox bleeding users? He reminds us that at one point in time, Internet Explorer was so bad that Firefox became the world's most used browser. But people moved to Chrome because more websites are optimized for it, and the more people that move to Chrome, the more websites will be optimized for it - it's a downward spiral for Firefox.

- Brodie says that mostly just "privacy focused" users are remaining on Firefox. The problem is, Firefox isn't the only privacy browser, and at the same time that Firefox has been bleeding users, Brave has been skyrocketing. From June 2019 to June 2021, Brave has gained 28 million users (from 5 million to 33 million) while Firefox has lost 50 million users. Brodie argues that a lot of the people dumping Firefox are the same people who moved to Brave.

- The problem for the future of Firefox is that Mozilla wasted too much time and money in the past on stupid projects which weren't focused on making the browser better. [Firefox phone comes to mind]. Points out that during this time that Mozilla has been bleeding tens of millions of users, the CEO's pay has increased from $1 million per year to $2.5 million per year (kind of an irrelevant argument, other than the fact that the Mozilla executives are probably more focused on their personal finances than they are on competing for users).

nadebula.1984
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Joined: 05/01/2018

Chrom* extension store is inaccessible from China, so there are very few Chinese Chrom* users. This also affects many Chromium-based browsers made by Chinese vendors.

The Chinese version Firefox uses Baidu search, and Firefox extensions are much easier to access, so users are almost not affected by Chinese fascist firewall.

Obviously, Google seriously underestimated Chinese fascist dictatorship, and this results in catastrophe.

andyprough
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Joined: 02/12/2015

Ahhh, I did not know that, so Firefox could actually end up seeing sustained growth in China.

lanun
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Joined: 04/01/2021

> during this time that Mozilla has been bleeding tens of millions of users, the CEO's pay has increased from $1 million per year to $2.5 million per year (kind of an irrelevant argument, other than the fact that the Mozilla executives are probably more focused on their personal finances than they are on competing for users).

The implication might be that Mozilla is not to be expected to change course any time soon: if I get rewarded for my mistakes, how am I expected to even acknowledge them? Also, that money is definitely not going to projects.