The death of Firefox

[ParamouR]

It doesn’t look good for Firefox: Almost every month for the last three years, Firefox has lost ground to Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Safari. For most of 2009 the trend was fairly straight as it fended off Chrome and nibbled away at IE, but between 2010 and today Firefox has lost a third of its market share, from a worldwide peak of around 30% down to 20%.

You can look at this two ways. First, the total number of people on the internet is growing, so while Firefox’s share has decreased, the total number of people using Firefox is increasing. The other point of view is that Firefox, whether you like it or not, is declining in popularity.

I love the Fox as much as the next bearded geek, but the numbers just don’t lie: Chrome is breathlessly decimating Firefox’s userbase at a breakneck rate. It took Firefox more than four years to prise 20% of the market from Internet Explorer; Chrome did it in almost half that, and is fast approaching 30% in just over three years. Internet Explorer’s graph is a little harder to interpret, but it looks like it might have finally turned the corner and stopped hemorrhaging market share.

Compounding Firefox’s losses is the stark reality that it’s unlikely to make any gains. Google has obviously spent a lot of money advertising Chrome, but there’s no way that ads brought it nearly 30% of the web’s two billion surfers. People are migrating to Chrome because of word of mouth: Geeks and power users picked it up first, and they’ve been installing it on the computers of friends and family ever since. Microsoft, too, is using a dollar bill tourniquet, and when Windows 8 tablets roll around with IE10 as the default browser, you can be sure that its market share will climb. Mozilla is adding some exciting new features to Firefox, and Firefox for Android is an interesting enterprise, but I don’t foresee anything that will turn the tide.

But is that really a problem? The entire reason that Firefox was such a success is that it appealed to the geeks and power users who weren’t happy with Internet Explorer 6′s 95% share of the market. Microsoft effectively put the dampers on web innovation for five years. Firefox was conceived with one purpose in mind: To revitalize the web.

In that regard, it has succeeded. The web, with three browsers vying for supremacy, has never been more exciting. Within a few short years of launching, Firefox had shown the world what CSS and a gutsy JavaScript engine were capable of. Firefox triggered the HTML5 revolution. It is because of Firefox that Metro-style Windows 8 apps can be written in JavaScript. And ironically enough, it is because of Firefox that Chrome was created.

If you used Chrome in 2008 and 9, you will remember that almost all of its early adopters were disaffected Firefox users who had grown tired of an ever-increasing memory footprint and sluggish interface. Chrome had almost zero features when it first arrived, but it didn’t matter: When the only two choices were a slow Internet Explorer or a bloated Firefox, Chrome was exactly what the people (and the internet!) needed. Mozilla has spent the last year trying to trim the fat, but it hasn’t caused an upswell of users to return to the motherland. Much in the same way that Firefox cannibalized Internet Explorer, Chrome capitalized on just a single feature — speed — and has been riding the wave ever since.

Despite its ridiculous rate of growth, though, Chrome will eventually reach a zenith. The Big Three all have enough gravitas to ensure that no one browser has the power to monopolizingly choke the web. Even if a browser does get a little too big for its britches, Mozilla will always be there to knock some sense into the community — and, if need be, do the grassroots thing all over again.

What will happen now, assuming Microsoft and Google continue to barrage each other with their full arsenal of cannon, is that Firefox will gradually fade into a position of feared, revered veterancy — kind of like an aging grandfather who sits on a rocking chair in the middle of the World Wide Web with a loaded shotgun. It might even get to the stage where Firefox has to occasionally loose some crazy feature onto the web, just to remind everyone that it’s still alive. Eventually, if Microsoft really is serious about open web technologies and Google does no evil, Firefox might even die.

But, having completed everything you set out to do in life, is death really that awful?

[bjs]

As a user of Firefox for so many years, it is sad to see this happening. I believe they have made a big mistake on the decision of fast releases after v3.6. Also, it is disappointing that they have never been serious about the memory leak issue.

[piratemeister]

I love Firefox and I never had problems. I use it since version 2

[yoco]

I honestly never liked FF after v2

[leechmodder]

Still a fan of FF. Always will be. Don't ask me why, but I hate chrome.

[SBfreak]

I am one who migrated back and forth between chrome and firefox. Chrome was really neat because it was lightweight now it uses as much resources as firefox,sometimes even more.
They'll just replace firefox if they are down this road.

[ParamouR]

I love Firefox and I never had problems. I use it since version 2

That's not possible at all haven't you heard of their Memory Outflow.

Still a fan of FF. Always will be. Don't ask me why, but I hate chrome.

Me too I just don't like chrome for so many process it creates (I know it’s because of plugins) but then again FF takes the same thing much better way.

[SealLion]

There is a trend here as you can see if you read the article, which in my view is an opinion that seems to favor the demise of firefox. The article states, and it may be true, that firefox grew at breakneck speeds to very high popularity and then it seemed to level out. So now chrome is growing at breakneck speeds to higher popularity as well. Eventually, and this is my own opinion, is that it also will level out.
Is it any wonder that IE is a more popular browser then opera, chrome, firefox, or safari?? It shouldn't be. It's the default browser for the world's most popular OS. That and of course the extreme high memory usage that firefox had, still has, and will probably always have. Is it any wonder that people switch??

By the way. The title of the article is misleading b/c it is not the death of Firefox. It is probably more like the stabilization of firefox with amongst other competing browsers.

[anon]

The title is a bit dramatic. Firefox still has a large following and isn't going to "die" anytime soon. If less people use it, who cares? Opera was never popular, but it's still awesome.

[piratemeister]

FireFox is the best browser and have all what I need. Fast and secure and all add-ons I need (AdBlock and AdBlock for PopUp). Memory usage is not a problem for me, I use this notebook with 2 Gb of RAM only for P2P (eMule) and surfing
I hate chrome, ie, and opera. Didn't tried other browsers.

FireFox use 130 Mb of RAM here with a lot of schedules open.

[SealLion]

Firefox is a great browser; however, (and as an example only) if you have Opera installed along with Firefox have a look at your memory usage for both browsers. The memory usage for firefox sucks so much, it doesn't even need to moan during the actual 'sucking of memory'. IE itself doesn't even use that much memory. And I hardly even use IE other than to install a better browser at the initial clean install of a MS OS. IE is still pretty limited for sure when compared to firefox with the great number of extensions available for that browser. For sure, firefox is great with respect to the extensibility of it. Also, as with browsers, we all know it's 'each to his own.' So what fits one person, doesn't necessarily fit another person. As we all see, each browser has it's positives and negatives. Even when making comparisons to alternate browsers. And as for Opera, it has extensions and for sure the extension list needs to grow to make it compatible with the huge number of extensions available for Firefox. And I suppose the same could be said for Chrome.

[yoco]

I would use Chrome all the time if it wasn't so greedy for my CPU!

[Instab]

Firefox is a great browser; however, (and as an example only) if you have Opera installed along with Firefox have a look at your memory usage for both browsers. The memory usage for firefox sucks so much

and who cares? you can't even buy systems with less than 2GB ram anymore
also the configuration possibilities and addons are way beyond any other browser. no other browser can even touch the mozilla products there.

there is one point tho that could be better: it could be slimmed down. back in the day when they introduced Phönix (the name firefox came later) the main reason was to have something slimmer than the full mozilla suite. however not so long after that firefox got fatter and fatter, quickly making its very reason for existence obsolete.

[SealLion]

Well ya. Definitely you can't buy systems with less than 2 GB ram (well, actually I have come across a few though...but never mind about them) since many softwares require a certain amount of RAM. And then there are the games too of course. And for sure about the configuration aspect of Firefox. Firefox is the most configurable amongst most if not all browsers.

Leaving IE out for a moment in this. Opera, Chrome, and Firefox are for sure in a race to the top. In my opinion, at some point in the future the browsers will probably each level out in what you could consider their own spot amongst overall browser usage.The other thing is, this news about Firefox losing some of it's customer loyalty base has been going on for a few years now. It really isn't all that new. It's probably just a rehash or restatement of browser usage facts.

Every time I hear of something like this where Firefox is losing some of it's loyalty base b/c of what-ever reasons are stated, I tend to now see it as news that supports my own personal idea to where Firefox gradually settles down to what is becoming it's own set point for usage amongst users. The same is for Chrome and other browsers too. I don't think this race to the top is going to last forever. Eventually there is a point where each browser levels out at it's own level of usage.

[anon]

and who cares? you can't even buy systems with less than 2GB ram anymore

Most netbooks I've seen will usually have half that amount (although it can be expanded).