Six months with Firefox, worth it?
About six months ago, I decided to ditch Chrome and Google and switched entirely to Firefox and DuckDuckGo. Yesterday I found this page trending on Hacker News and the article resonated with so much that I decided to write my own story.
Why do people use Firefox?
Even though the trend is downward, Firefox still has a few hundred millions of monthly active users. Feature-wise it’s somewhat behind Chrome, but its primary selling point is extra privacy that you don’t get with Google products. Here’s a quote from mozilla.org:
Get the latest Firefox browser. And start getting the respect you deserve with our family of privacy-first products.
But hey, what is privacy?
I’ve switched to Firefox because of the privacy concerns. Does this mean I fear that Google will get hacked one day and all my nudes will be all over the Internet? (just kidding, I don’t have any nudes 😉)
Not really. In fact, I think my data is way more secure at Google’s cloud than anywhere else. The thing is, I don’t really care if it gets stolen… I don’t have anything expensive anyway. So, why did I switch then?
While my own data may have very little value, when multiplied by billions, it becomes a very serious asset. Access to the search history, browsing history, emails, photos, documents, chats, etc. gives Google unparalleled, global-scale insight. Google knows what’s on people’s minds and what do they actually do on the Internet. Combined with control over the information channels (search, news, videos) it becomes a super-power that I don’t think anyone in the world should have.
Today Google uses this data to sell more ads, but what if it gains geopolitical ambitions tomorrow? We’ve all seen the Cambridge Analytica example — how a small nudge of people’s opinions can influence big things. If Google wanted, it could easily make people hate or like anyone or anything. Scarry, right?
So, I switched because I think Google shouldn’t have access to all this data. Ideally, no one should, but a small non-profit organization would do. Additionally, I believe that no market (including the browser market) benefits from a monopoly, and there should be at least two equally powerful players.
So, how is it, living with Firefox and DuckDuckGo?
Well… I will lie if I call it a smooth ride, but let’s start with the things that I like.
- DuckDuckGo is actually not that bad. It predictably sucks at areas where personalization matters (e.g., queries about local businesses), but it solves the majority of my problems just fine.
- I like the built-in Pocket integration. I still don’t take things “out-of-pocket” too often, but at least I now save more.
- The built-in thing that shows you all the trackers on the page is also quite useful. Not that I’m worried about somebody tracking me, but sometimes it comes handy when researching competitor websites ;)
- Same for the built-in cookie cleaner.
- I like how pinned tabs behave in FF more.
- I’ve used the built-in screenshoter a few times to capture the whole page.
- There may be a few more small things, but it’s hard to recap.
Okay, done with the pretty stuff, now let’s move on to the ugly because oh, there is some.
First and foremost, it’s stability.
I don’t remember my browser crashing since… since I first time switched to Chrome I guess, which was a very long time ago. Firefox brought me a strong feeling of nostalgia. I remembered the times when Plasma was crashing, Nvidia driver wasn’t starting and FF (my browser at the time) was hanging multiple times a day. Jokes aside, I thought Firefox was way beyond the stage where it would die every other time I wake up my laptop, when there are too many tabs open or, crash just randomly. I don’t think people will consider FF seriously until it reaches the stability level of Chrome.
UPD: A lot of people say in the comments that FF works just fine for them on Windows. That’s definitely some great news to hear but, unfortunately, I’m not on Windows, so it’s not much helpful in my case :)
The next one is speed.
Some people say that DOM access operations are 25% slower than in Chrome, but I don’t notice that on my machine. Something way worse happens when I go into any kind of video-conferencing. It doesn’t matter if I call using Zoom, Slack, or something inside the browser. After a few minutes of screen sharing (or just talking) with the Firefox on, my 32Gb core i9 MacBook turns into my 2Gb AMD Athlon no-name PC from 2006. Everything turns into slow-mo, and eventually, the whole OS may freeze. I don’t have a 100% proof that FF is to blame, but this doesn’t seem to be happening when it’s off, plus I found some similar comments in the aforementioned HN thread.
UPD2: I’ve stumbled upon this article today. Basically, it says that Firefox has some performance issues specifically on Mac, and the team has recently made a breakthrough. I guess that explains most of the stuff that is happening to me as I’m a Mac user. It also explains why everybody keeps commenting that FF is fine — perhaps it’s actually fine on Windows.
The third major issue is app compatibility.
Because the Firefox market share is currently low and decreasing, a few companies spend enough time debugging their products in FF. As a result, I couldn’t file my taxes in Quick Books this season, without jumping into Chrome. Recently, I couldn’t create an email campaign in Intercom. I’ve had some problems with Grammarly browser extension. HubSpot extension for FF just doesn’t exist and, the list goes on. Even our small team at OneBar can be blamed for contributing bits to this issue. We have small bugs that only occur in Firefox and, we can’t fix them well… because we have larger bugs that occur in all browsers.
There are smaller things here and there that sometimes annoy me in Firefox, but not to the degree as the three above. Stability, Compatibility, and Speed are just show-stoppers. They are the main reason behind the Firefox market share decline, and, I don’t think anything will change until they are fixed.
Why do then people use it?
It’s religious. Caring about large-scale privacy issues as described above, is not something that a rational person would do. Most people don’t. In fact, it may not even be the right or good thing to do at all, who knows. Firefox user base has many attributes of a cult, and that, I think, is what Mozilla should leverage more to turn things around.
What makes Chrome a success is a multi-billion Google with unlimited engineering resources behind it. Behind Firefox there’s a rather small Mozilla which obviously, doesn’t have enough resources to compete with the giant. But it has a cult, and cults are good for one thing — making money. Half a billion people could contribute enough money to develop a kick-ass browser. Mozilla just needs to give them a way and a reason to do so. Donations don’t work, donations are selfless, you can’t brag about them, and people are selfish.
Mozilla needs to define a clear, exciting mission, show people the spacecraft, and sell premium seats. People would pay for nothing — a badge, that says they’re contributing to a brighter future of the Internet. Some wouldn’t, but I would. All that badge has to do is to make them feel good about belonging to something so significant.
(10%*0.5Bn people*$5)/mo = $250M/mo — more than enough to build a browser.
What am I going to do?
Not sure yet. Perhaps I’ll stick with Firefox for some more time because of the inertia. Then if things don’t improve, I’ll probably go back to Chrome, because, in its current form, Firefox degrades the quality of my work. I’ll most likely keep the DuckDuckGo though.
I really hope, however, that Mozilla will figure things out, and a second, equal, independent browser will exist.
Good luck, Mozilla!
