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Firefox 42 Arrives With Tracking Protection, Tab Audio Indicators
An anonymous reader writes: Mozilla today launched Firefox 42 for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android. Notable additions to the browser include tracking protection, tab audio indicators, and background link opening on Android. The new private browsing mode goes further than just not saving your browsing history (read: porn sites) — the added tracking protection means Firefox also blocks website elements (ads, analytics trackers, and social share buttons) that could track you while you're surfing the web, and it works on all four platforms. The feature is almost like a built-in ad blocker, though it's really closer to browser add-ons like Ghostery and Privacy Badger because ads that don't track you are allowed through.
Seriously, this is becoming a major problem. It's not even funny. If I go to cnn.com, it doesn't mean I want to WATCH cnn. If I wanted that, I'd turn on the fucking TV.
Who cares? It's still the best choice if you value privacy and don't like ads.
I find these stats to be more in line with what I'm seeing with many of my websites. The 12% you mention is high for Firefox. It's most likely closer to only 8%.
But you are correct, Firefox's market share does continue to decline month after month, with no end in sight.
My question is, when the fuck will Mozilla realize that everything they've done since Firefox 4 has been universally disliked?
I mean, how much further does Firefox's market share have to decline? Does it need to hit 5%? Or 1%? Or are they just going to drive head-on into 0%?
Mozilla totally missed the boat on mobile. Firefox for Android is universally disliked, and has at most 0.1% (yes, that's a fraction of 1%!) of the browser market. Chrome for Android has over 15%, and iOS Safari has over 5%.
Mozilla has repeatedly ignored what users have wanted for Firefox on the desktop. Despite a huge outcry from the community, all we've gotten is one unwanted change after another. Mozilla trashed Firefox's UI. They trashed Firefox's usability. They put ads into Firefox. They forced in totally unwanted and unnecessary social media integration. They still haven't done much to improve Firefox's remarkably slow performance or its excessively high resource usage.
Desktop Firefox is the only product that Mozilla offers that even has a small number of users. Since they abandoned Thunderbird, we've seen that gradually become avoided by users. None of Mozilla's other efforts have seen much success. Persona is a failure. Servo is perpetually going nowhere. Rust took forever to get to 1.0, and now that C++14 is out and is better there is no need for Rust. Let's Encrypt has been taking forever. Firefox OS has gotten some of the most scathing software reviews ever seen, and is seeing no uptake.
With its continually dropping share of the market, at some point soon Firefox is going to become completely irrelevant. It's close enough, as it is. Once that finally happens, Mozilla's influence will evaporate. The small number of remaining Firefox users are the only thing keeping Mozilla even remotely relevant. When Firefox's market share percentage is measured on one finger, nobody will care what Mozilla and its handful of users will think about the direction that the web is taking.
The saddest thing about all of this is that it's something that Mozilla has done to itself! It wasn't Microsoft, or Google, or Apple, or Opera, or anyone else who destroyed Firefox. It was Mozilla, and Mozilla alone! Even Firefox's users can't be blamed, because they did what they could and protested each and every awful change that Mozilla has forced. It's all so goddamn unnecessary!
No kidding it continues to decline. There's two main reasons:
1. Go to google.com and you det an advert for chrome. So, the world's largest advertiser it heavily avertising on one of the highest traffic sites in the world.
2. Chrome is installed on the majority of mobile devices, and that's now a HUGE segment, and hardly anyone seems to install a better browser on their phone.
I'm inclined to say the latter is more important. If you look at the stats on wikipedia, the decline of firefox mirrors the rise in mobile devices, not the rise in chrome.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
So, massive advertising campaign and aggressive bundling from one of the largest companies in the world? What chance do they stand?
SJW n. One who posts facts.