this post was submitted on 05 Jan 2024
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Technology

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191
The fall of Firefox: Mozilla's once-popular web browser slides into irrelevance (www.zdnet.com)
submitted 10 months ago by ConstableJelly@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org
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Article seems pretty flawed. Relevance is a vague metric, and the author relies pretty heavily on data related to government site visitation, which seems subject to bias toward certain types of users.

Market share is likely still incredibly low, but Firefox's relevance should be spiking right now due to Google's shenanigans with Chromium. The fact that like 90% of revenue for its for-profit wing is from Google is still troubling.

Any alternative views out there?

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[–] mwalimu@baraza.africa 15 points 10 months ago* (last edited 10 months ago) (2 children)

Cold plain metrics can easily hide social complexity.

Assume 10 investigative journalists use modded privacy-friendly Firefox for year long investigation. Then their report is read by 10 million average news reader on stock browsers like Chrome. Network logics tell us that Firefox browser has asymmetrical value in the ecosystem than plain usage metrics can ever reveal.

The obsession with numbers (the more the better) is a major blinding effect in societies driven by hierarchical cultures.

[–] admin@beehaw.org 4 points 10 months ago

The obsession with numbers (the more the better) is a major blinding effect in societies driven by hierarchical cultures.

So true!

[–] falsem@kbin.social 3 points 10 months ago (1 children)

Usage numbers are part of how they pay for ongoing support and development though.

[–] mwalimu@baraza.africa 1 points 10 months ago

Sadly, yes. One would hope the more core sectors use it, the more the general population would use such tools. But alas!