One reason is that the people who would be promoting Firefox aren't.
Personally I feel mostly ashamed to admit I'm using Firefox. In theory Firefox is great. In practice they coming up with new ways to treat their core user base badly.
That is because Mozilla has consistently moved Firefox in the direction of a Chrome clone.
When Firefox started is was not a copy of existing browsers. There is no reason it would have to be now. But they have rejected their core users. So now the only option left is a Chrome clone because that is what people are used to.
People used to have a dozen different instances of IE6 open. It was a pain to switch between them and it made your computer run slow. Firefox had tabs. And it had AdBlock. Those were things people wanted.
But these days, Chrome is plenty good enough for most people. Even if Firefox had a perfect privacy story and focused on their core users’ every whim, I don’t think their market share would grow.
Well then they need to close up shop or think of something else, because adding more ad tracking isn't a feature to anyone but predatory advertisers, and they will only keep paying you if users keep showing up.
For what it’s worth, I agree. Adding more tracking definitely isn’t going to help. But I don’t think there are any easy solutions. I definitely don’t envy the people in charge of Firefox’s product strategy.
Even if it was a credible idea, how exactly do you think that Firefox - the browser that the minute anything changes, the internet blows up over - would significantly alter their product in a way to differentiate themselves from Chrome?
This isn’t even getting into base level stuff like available engineering resources, or the scenarios where the other vendors often control or have deals to give them favorable distribution on platforms.
This isn’t the IE6 era. It’s a significantly different and harder problem.
> Even if it was a credible idea, how exactly do you think that Firefox - the browser that the minute anything changes, the internet blows up over - would significantly alter their product in a way to differentiate themselves from Chrome?
You're presenting it as though any change would be met with hostility, but the alternative is that they're only met with hostility because they keep making changes that hurt the users. A little while ago they announced that they were working on properly supporting vertical tabs and tab groups; that wasn't met with any hostility. Of course, in the same announcement they said they were planning to dumb down the rest of the interface even more, which was. But the point stands; they can get a positive reaction by making changes their users actually like, they just don't do that as often as they do the other thing.
For one, not throwing out their only differentiated advantage versus Chrome. For two, not taking the option that removes user control and customization whenever there is an option to do so. They could have been the privacy-focused browser, but it is still full of crap like this and various bits of undisclosed telemetry.
There would be value in being the only browser to actually stop when users tell them no. But they seem incapable of listening.
> They could have been the privacy-focused browser
I don't see how trying to find a privacy-preserving way of dealing with the ad conundrum makes them not a privacy-focused browser/company.
You'd need to otherwise cite something re: undisclosed telemetry, considering the project is open source... so I'm not sure how exactly it'd be undisclosed.
> When Firefox started is was not a copy of existing browsers.
IIRC, when Firefox started, it was very similar to the full Mozilla Suite with some features removed (which is not surprising, since it started as a Mozilla Suite derivative and they shared a lot of code). It has a long lineage going back to the old-school Netscape Navigator.
One reason is that the people who would be promoting Firefox aren't.
Personally I feel mostly ashamed to admit I'm using Firefox. In theory Firefox is great. In practice they coming up with new ways to treat their core user base badly.