How the best browser lost its appeal to users?

Firefox is the best, but people just don't care and use pre-installed behemoths

07.Aug.21 6:52 AM
By Shawn Highstraw
Photo Firefox

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How the best browser lost its appeal to users?

The Firefox browser has lost around 46 million users worldwide in the last three years, according to figures from developer Mozilla.

By the end of 2018, Firefox had about 244 million active users. By the end of July 2021, there are just under 198 million left.

Firefox is one of the most serious competitors for the Safari browsers of Apple and Google Chrome. The web browser was released by Mozilla in 2002 as a user-friendly alternative to competing browsers, with privacy paramount.

Six years later, 30 percent of all internet usage was via Firefox, according to figures from July 2018, from W3Counter. Internet Explorer was the most popular at the time with a share of 62 percent, followed by Safari (2.5 percent).

Now the distribution is very different. In July this year, Chrome's market share was 65.7 percent, followed by Safari (16.6 percent) and Internet Explorer and Edge (4.7 percent). Only then follows Firefox with 2.9 percent.

What exactly Firefox has caused its popularity loss is not known. Many people seem to use pre-installed browsers, such as Safari on Mac and iPhones and Chrome on Android devices. Also, websites are often optimized for Chrome. Furthermore, Firefox users have been complaining for some time about the lack of updates and some of the users found a recent modification of the browser design too confusing.

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