Comment by 2Gkashmiri
3 years ago
Network effect I'd say.
If tomorrow opera, brave, edge switched to Firefox, people won't notice but Firefox share would rise dramatically.
Extensions is another issue.
Today, any tom dick and harry who want to create a browser extension only build for chrome "why not". Firefox comes from complaining users who don't want to switch otherwise they don't bother.
Its the same chicken or egg thing. Low market share of Firefox means less users means less customers of extensions means devs will spend less time to build for Firefox and so on.
Firefox extensions often feel like someone actually spent some time and thought into building it, there isn't much crap but chrome store is the dirt bag free for all
> If tomorrow opera, brave, edge switched to Firefox, people won't notice but Firefox share would rise dramatically.
Once of the problems Firefox has that it's actually quite hard to do this. You can't "just" take WebKit or Blink and make your own UI for it. But you can build a Blink-based browser in literally a minute or two with basic C++ or Python skills.
I don't know what technical issues are preventing this, but IMHO this has been a major hurdle, and a huge strategic mistake.
You don't need to build for Firefox these days, extension APIs are to a large extent identical.
But then, unlike with Chrome forks, you still have to support a separate version and deal with another "app store", so I can see why people don't do that.
Automation exists so that is hardly a problem.
You are right, they are somewhat similar but the "why bother" attitude, same as with every startup doing support and documentation on discord.
Brave literally started on Gecko and ended up switching because Gecko was a PITA to work with.