Image: Mozilla Firefox.
The market share of Mozilla Firefox, the open source web browser once a major competitor to Google Chrome, has reached an all-time low.
A market share which falls to 2.2%
According to data from the Digital Analytics Program, the US government program that analyzes visits to its websites over a 90-day period, Firefox has a market share of 2.2% among affected Internet users. Of course, this data does not track global browser usage data. Nevertheless, they provide a good indication of usage in the United States.
According to the American program, of the 5.27 billion visits made over the last 90 days, Google Chrome topped the ranking, being used in 47.9% of cases. It is followed by Safari (36.2%), notably thanks to the iPhone, then Microsoft Edge (8.3%).
In 2015, Firefox still had a market share of 11%. A share which fell to 8.2% in 2016, before rising slightly to 9% in 2019. Since then, its fall has been constant: it was 2.7% in 2021 and 2.6% in 2022.
Google Chrome in the lead
Also according to StatCounter, Google Chrome once again tops the ranking of the most used browsers. As of December last year, Google’s browser held 64.73% market share, followed by Apple’s browser, Safari, with 18.56% market share, then Microsoft Edge with 4.97%. of market share. According to its data, the Firefox market share is also very low: 3.36%.
The use of Firefox is today almost comparable to that of mobile browsers from Samsung or Android, or even other more confidential mobile browsers, even though these browsers only record mobile usage.
A project born from the ashes of Netscape
The Mozilla project was born from the ashes of Netscape, whose source code was released after the battle against Microsoft and its flagship browser of the time, Internet Explorer (IE). At the time, IE held more than 90% of the browser market.
When Firefox launched, it initially attracted Netscape users and the open source camp, particularly those with Linux. The open source browser reached its peak in 2010, where it accounted for 34.1% of the market.
But after 2010, Firefox entered a downward spiral. And the main culprit for its fall is none other than Google’s browser, Chrome. The latter, having become dominant on the market, has even eclipsed IE. Since its launch in 2008, Chrome has transformed the browser market thanks to its performance, speed and functionality including its own extensions and applications. Chrome has become a new cloud-based operating system for the open web.
Competition from Google
To work on Chrome, Google poached some of the best browser developers from Firefox. Among them are Ian Hixon, Darin Fisher, Pam Green and Brian Reiner.
To respond, Mozilla improved the performance of its browser, surpassing that of Chrome. But that will not have been enough. In 2017, Chris Beard, CEO of Mozilla, admitted defeat: “Firefox has not been able to align with the market and what users really want.” Before adding that many die-hard Firefox fans had become happy Chrome users.
While competition from Chrome was massive, Firefox failed to address its users’ complaints, including issues with constant feature removal, poor coding, poor memory management, and hidden telemetry.
Mozilla in trouble
Firefox is still the default browser for many Linux distributions. However, the low number of users of the open source operating system, both on desktop and mobile, means that its impact remains limited.
Mozilla, which manages the development of Firefox, has a dual relationship with Google. Mozilla receives hundreds of millions of dollars each year to integrate Google’s search engine into its browser. In 2022, 510 of Mozilla’s $593 million in revenue came from Google. Despite Mozilla’s emphasis on voluntary contributions, Google’s share of revenue is too large. And it deeply undermines the image of Mozilla and Firefox as sworn enemies of commercial browsers and protectors of open web standards.
Mozilla is currently in trouble. The company laid off 25% of its employees following the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020, and abandoned or outsourced many of its open source projects to other foundations. Meanwhile, Mozilla CEO Michael Baker pocketed a $6.9 million salary in 2022 – $1.3 million more than the previous year. According to Comparably, the average executive compensation at Mozilla is $213,745 per year.
The end of the phoenix
Firefox is under siege. The open source version of Chrome, Chromium, powers many browsers around the world, including browsers like Vivaldi and Brave. If Firefox disappears, the internet ecosystem will be completely reorganized into a Google universe.
“I would like to see Firefox rise from the ashes as its first name, Phoenix, suggested,” writes Steven Vaughan-Nichols on ZDNet.com. “But I fear that this time, Firefox is doomed to disappear. »
Sources: ZDNet Korea and ZDNet.com