08/07/2021 19:30
Clarín.com
Technology
Updated 08/08/2021 3:35 PM
The latest Firefox Public Data Report revealed that the number of people using the browser that was once the best, most stable and efficient in the world, fell 20% in three years: 50 million people stopped using it.
The data was discovered by a Reddit user from the published report.
According to official statistics, Firefox went from
244 million
active
users
per month at the end of 2018 to 198 million at the end of the second quarter of 2021.
The 50 million users
who left were switched to
Google Chrome, Edge and Brave
, among others. .
The problem with this data not only affects those who currently use it, but it reaffirms the monopoly of Chromium, the open source project maintained by Google, which is adopted by other web browsers.
Firefox is the evolution of
Netscape Navigator
, the web browser that dominated during the first half of the 1990s until Bill Gates crushed it with Internet Explorer, in a move that earned the founder of Microsoft the most memorable monopoly trial in the world. history of the Big Tech.
Currently, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and many other browsers are based on Chromium.
The fact that Google Chrome comes pre-installed on many Android phones and Microsoft Edge is the default browser for Windows
started to play against the company.
Reasons for the crash: Chrome
The new Firefox logo.
Photo Mozilla
Although already in 2017, Andreas Gal, the former CTO of Mozilla, anticipated it, there are reasons that explain the decline: "It is clear that Firefox is not going anywhere, Chrome won," he had said.
The truth is that the competition brought Firefox to this place: Google.com (the largest search engine) recommends users to install Google Chrome (which is potentially anti-competitive behavior) Some web services are exclusive to browsers based In Chrome.
And, to say it all, Firefox has been doing a few things wrong: in the last few years it has cracked many versions of its own browser with updates and
made no improvements that warrant using it.
Mozilla tried, however, to win back users with increasingly frequent and important updates to the browser, even at the interface level, without much success.
Why it's bad for the industry Mozilla's Firefox is the only viable competitor to Chromium-based browsers.
If Firefox disappears, users will not have the option to select a different browser engine.
Googlee Chrome is one of the main culprits for the downfall of Firefox.
Photo Shutterstock
In fact, a significant number of websites optimize the user experience with Chrome-based browsers in mind.
The problem when these things happen is that users may be forced to switch to other browsers by
adapting to new workflows.
Even if we ignore the dominant control of Google's Chrome engine on the web arguing that it is technically better,
Firefox is still a valuable thing.
Because it provides many more customizations and constantly improves its privacy practices like no other.
In other words, we will be missing out on a lot of good things just because the entire competition prefers to use Chromium as a base or engage in anti-competitive activities.
Look also
The day Bill Gates discovered the web, how he crushed the competition and why 25 years later no one uses Internet Explorer
Windows 365: Microsoft presented its operating system in the cloud
