Firefox Is Flatlining: “Not Expected to Win Back Any Market Share At This Point”

Mozilla recently released its Firefox browser for Windows, MacOS and Linux. The release was met with criticism from users who said it doesn’t tackle the competition like Google Chrome does. Mozilla’s CEO says that they’ll have to do something different in order to regain relevance among web browsers.

Mozilla’s latest data shows a massive decline in Firefox’s market share. It is expected to win back any market share at this point.

Firefox-Is-Flatlining-Not-Expected-to-Win-Back-Any-Market Image credit: Mozilla

While the fact that Mozilla’s Firefox browser is battling to remain alive is no surprise to the many users who have long ago switched to alternatives like Google Chrome, a new analysis from Wired sheds light on how badly the once-famous program is doing.

Firefox is said to have plummeted to an unsightly 4% market share, according to figures from organizations like W3Counter, with mobile versions of the browser accounting for an even more pitiful half of a percent. According to Mozilla’s own public statistics release, Firefox has lost roughly 30 million monthly active users since the beginning of 2019.

Quotes from ex-Firefox workers have added to the panic, claiming that the browser has little chance of survival. “Chrome has won the desktop browser battle,” one person involved in Firefox’s development stated, while another claimed it was unrealistic to expect Mozilla to “recover even any browser share at this point.”

“They’ll simply have to embrace the fact that Firefox isn’t going to rise from the ashes,” one person stated.

Mozilla is currently relying on a variety of income sources, including Pocket (a read-it-later service with a paid premium membership service) and VPN products, to ensure Firefox’s future. According to some Firefox engineers, a higher degree of personalisation is essential for luring users back to their browser and making it relevant again.

Is it safe to use Firefox? (Wired)

Its lucrative search arrangement with Google, which accounts for the overwhelming bulk of its income, is slated to expire next year. A slew of privacy-focused browsers are now vying for market share, and new-feature missteps have threatened to alienate its user base. All of this has caused alarm among industry observers and former workers about Firefox’s future.
The connection between Mozilla and Google is tricky. They are not just rivals, but also business partners. For its search engine to be chosen as the default in Firefox, Google pays Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties each year—reports claim the sum is presently in the order of $400 million each year.
The Google-Mozilla partnership was last extended in 2020, and it is set to expire in 2023. According to statistics, Firefox’s market share has decreased by around 1% as a result of this arrangement. According to the company’s own statistics, the number of monthly active users has remained consistent at roughly 215 million. However, there’s no assurance that Google will continue to renew at the same pace.