Author | Ding Guanghui
Editor-in-Chief | Zhang Hongyue
Listing | CSDN (ID: CSDNnews)
Mozilla Firefox, commonly referred to as Firefox, is a free and open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation and its subsidiary Mozilla Corporation. In 2004, when Firefox was first released, it received more than 60 million downloads within nine months, and it has continued to grow by leaps and bounds in the following years. At the end of 2008, 20% of the world's 1.5 billion online people were using the Firefox browser to browse the web, especially in Indonesia, Macedonia, Slovenia and other countries, more than half of the Internet users were using the Firefox browser. On a global scale, Firefox's market share once soared and became the second most popular web browser in the world. In 2014, Firefox accounted for 35%-40% of the global browser market share. But since then, the situation facing Firefox has become less optimistic.
Today's Firefox is not as good as it used to be, and its market share in all devices has fallen to less than 4%, and its market share in mobile devices is only a pitiful 0.5%. Selena Deckelmann, senior vice president of Firefox, said: "Looking back five years, and looking at the numbers Firefox has released, you can see that Firefox's share is falling like crazy. A Mozilla statistic shows that from the beginning of 2019 to 2022, At the beginning of the year, monthly active users decreased by about 30 million."
Image source W3Counter
Firefox monthly active user data from early 2019 to early 2022 (2019 data in the upper right corner)
Firefox monthly active user data from early 2019 to early 2022 (2022 data in the upper right corner)
In the 20 years since the Firefox browser emerged from Netscape's shadow, it has shaped a role in the web to maintain online privacy and security, fueled by the efforts of its staff to push for a more open and higher standard network of. But its decline in market share has been accompanied by two rounds of layoffs at Mozilla during 2020. Next year it will also expire its search agreement with Google, its most important source of revenue. On top of that, there's a slew of similarly privacy-focused browsers competing with Firefox. If Firefox's competitiveness is enhanced by introducing new features, it may cause Firefox to deviate from the basic principles of protecting privacy for some reason. All of this has industry analysts and former employees worried about the future of Firefox.
Browser Wars, Has Firefox Lost?
The fate of Firefox has big implications for the entire web. For several years, it was the best contender to curb Google's Chrome browser, offering a privacy-preserving option for one of the world's most dominant ways to surf the web. Since its release in 2008, the Chroem browser has rapidly grown to become synonymous with the web. About 65% of people use the Chrome browser to surf the Internet, and it has had a huge impact on the way people experience the Internet. When Google rolled out its AMP publishing standard, sites jumped out in response. Similar is Google's plan to replace third-party cookies in the Chrome browser, a move that will affect millions of marketers and publishers. These are the influences of Google Chrome.
Has Firefox defeated the aggressive Chrome browser? A former Firefox staffer who asked not to be named feels that Chrome has won the war on desktop browsers and doesn't expect much of a Firefox revival. Another former Mozilla employee also said: "It is very difficult for Firefox to win back any browser market share. We can only accept the reality that Firefox is difficult to resurrect."
May be about to lose high income source
The relationship between Mozilla and Google is complicated, as they are competitors but also business partners. Google pays Mozilla hundreds of millions of dollars in royalties every year to make its own search engine the default version of the Firefox browser, a figure that reports say is currently around $400 million a year. In Mozilla's financial performance in 2020, its total revenue is 496 million, of which royalties from search transactions are about 441 million US dollars. In addition to Google's, part of this revenue is from other partners, such as Russia's Yandex search. It is worth mentioning that Google also pays Apple a huge annual fee to ensure that it becomes the default search engine of the Safari browser.
The agreement between Google and Mozilla was last renewed in 2020, and the contract is expected to expire in 2023. Statistics show that in the process of signing this contract, Firefox's market share dropped by about 1%. Now that the contract is about to expire, although its monthly active users are relatively stable, its market share has been declining, so it is difficult to guarantee that Google will renew the contract at the current price. In response to this issue, Deckelmann said that Mozilla will not disclose details of cooperation with partners, let alone whether negotiations with Google are possible or ongoing. So we can only guess whether Firefox will lose this high revenue stream.
Pressure to find new sources of income
Mozilla said in its 2020 financial filing: "Despite our layoffs, the company's financial operations remain healthy and the 2021 financial results are expected to show revenue growth." However, Mozilla and Firefox eventually acknowledged that for the company's sake In the future, they do look for more ways to make money.
Mozilla has stepped up on this front since 2019: The company owns evening reading service Pocket, which includes a premium subscription service; it has two similar VPN-style offerings for people to subscribe to; Mozilla also browses in Firefox Ads will be placed on the new tab page opened in the browser, and the advertising fee will be charged.
Mozilla's combined subscription and ad revenue rose to $24 million in 2020 from $14 million in 2019, and the company said it expects 2021 financial results to show new products contributing 14% of its total revenue. This independence from Google is key to creating a "healthier" business model. However, some of these new ideas didn't work out and seemed to conflict with Firefox's fundamental tenet of "privacy," such as an encrypted file-sharing service that was used to spread malware.
Tougher browser competition
Under pressure to find new revenue streams, Firefox is also facing tougher browser competition than ever. Many browsers today include privacy in their branding, says Lourdes Turrecha, founder of Rise of Privacy Tech, an organization that tracks privacy-focused businesses: "Many of Chrome's competitors want to make it easier for them by not collecting users' data. Browser history or not tracking their behavior online to differentiate themselves." Tor is considered the best way to protect privacy, and Firefox, DuckDuckGo, Brave, Vivaldi, and Safari are all now joining Tor's ranks.
Jonah Aragon is a system administrator who also helps run the recommendation site Privacy Guides. The site focuses on open source software, and the Firefox browser ranks high on its site. "Firefox's privacy credentials are on par with any of its commercial counterparts," he said. "Unfortunately, these privacy features are not enabled by default and can only be manually enabled by the user when needed."
Image sourcePrivacy Guides
In addition to the Firefox browser for Android and iOS, Mozilla also runs a browser called Focus, which has enhanced privacy protections by default. But the two browsers have different use cases, so Deckelmann doesn't think the two will be merged into a single product. And, while Firefox relies on privacy protections to compete with other browsers, it's not the first browser to cite these features, such as Safari, which was the first to cite blocking third-party tracking by default.
The emergence of a large number of browsers of the same type makes Firefox lose its advantages. Many people have expressed their views on "how to make Firefox browser outstanding again in the future".
A former Firefox employee felt that Mozilla should stick to a unique strategy for its flagship browser. Another former employee said: "Firefox is really a privacy-optimized browser, but they're trying to get different utility and revenue from different paths."
Bart Willemsen, Gartner's vice president analyst focused on privacy issues, also said: "Once a user is lost, it is very difficult to get back unless there is a compelling reason." He was a Firefox user in the earliest days, and in his view Come on, Firefox faces a challenge of finding a unique niche. The challenge is not only in marketing, but also in product, to find a position and keep moving forward. Either way, in the final analysis, I hope that Firefox can go to the end on a path.
And for Deckelmann, making Firefox more personal is key. Her vision includes trying to increase the functionality of the browser to adapt to people's online needs. For example, Firefox revamped its browser homepage last year to allow people to pick up previously abandoned searches and unfinished articles. It also redesigned its Android app and added password manager functionality to the Firefox app. Mozilla has also been focusing on relationships with partners, including most recently with Meta.
Deckelmann said Firefox will continue to find ways to keep people's browsers personalized. While she's not sure the resulting thing will be what people expect from a traditional browser, Firefox will always put people first. And just this week, Firefox announced a partnership with Disney to change the browser's colors and associated ad serving for a new Pixar movie in a bid to win a Disney subscription. The deal shows that Firefox is indeed pushing in the direction of personalization, but it also shows that it may take some strange paths when it comes to finding revenue streams.
"Firefox doesn't need to be as big as Chrome or Apple's Safari to be successful. What Firefox really wants to be is a viable option. Make the internet a better place by giving everyone different options." This is Deckelmann's thoughts on the future of Firefox.
Although Firefox has suffered a setback in recent years and its market share has dwindled, it's still important. Mozilla is pushing businesses to be more privacy-conscious. At its core, Firefox's key product is different. Today's browser market is dominated by Google's Chromium codebase and its underlying browser engine, Blink, the components that turn code into visual web pages. Microsoft's Edge browser, Brave, Vivalai, and Opera are all using Chromium adaptations. Aside from the WebKit browser engine Apple is using, Firefox's Gecko is the only alternative to Blink.
"This market needs diversity," Willemsen said. "If Firefox's market share is further reduced, there will be less competition for Chrome." And in order to open up Internet standards and prevent monopoly, the market needs this differentiation. The good development of the Firefox browser will make the web a better place, but now the big question is: Firefox will figure out how to get itself back on top.
Reference link:
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/02/is-firefox-ok/
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