21 comments

  • promiseofbeans 13 hours ago

    Not sure about this. See Firefox’s internal stats: https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity

  • stephen_cagle 13 hours ago

    Wait, is this correct? Firefox moved from 5% to 12% in one month? That seems unlikely...

    • rrrrrrrrrrrryan 13 hours ago

      I wonder if Firefox is a better user agent string for bots or AI?

      Or perhaps some big IT departments are switching the employee base from Chrome to Firefox because it now has better ad blockers?

      A mass of end-users switching browsers on their phones or home computers doesn't seem to line up with the reality that I'm living in though, though.

    • goda90 13 hours ago

      Didn't Google recently remove the flag that let Manifest V2 ad blockers work from Chrome?

      • wmf 11 hours ago

        There aren't millions of people who care about that.

        • Markoff 9 hours ago

          and those who care use Vivaldi it other alternatives anyway

          I recently switched phone (Pixel 6a with swollen battery to Xiaomi 13 (Shizuku solves most of the issues without installing custom ROM, which they made impossible through bootloader unlocking process)) and for now decided to not install Cromite yet, but keep Firefox which was offered in browser choice at beginning, still feel very annoyed by the new (not customizable) context menu, but they keep making it even more annoying like with blue persistent for telling you you had downloaded something as if regular notification wouldn't be enough and of course there is no way to get rid off the blue dot besides deleting download (record), just another annoyance

          or now they finally semi fixed home page with 8 pinned shortcuts, but despite not having anything else on home page you must still tap Show all, to see other shortcuts, why can't I show all the shortcuts directly on home page is beyond me, so much for Firefox customization

    • smallerize 13 hours ago

      Seems wrong. W3Counter shows the same % for June as for May (note that it's not only counting desktop share so it's much lower at 1.4%). https://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

    • echoangle 13 hours ago

      Yeah, really looks like some sort of data error

    • echelon 13 hours ago

      Chrome has enshittified so much that I don't know how anyone uses it.

      It actively violates users and shoves trackers and malware up their wazoo. And you're stuck in the cage with the abuser. There's no way to turn off the fucking ads.

      The Google Chrome team ought to be ashamed for what they've done.

      I'm hoping the AI era serves Google a much-needed comeuppance.

  • alexforster 13 hours ago

    It's much more likely to be a methodology issue than that Firefox's install base suddenly grew 240% in such a short period of time. Maybe some AI scraper juicing the numbers? Mozilla's telemetry could confirm this, so if they don't start bragging about a huge MAU increase, I'd assume this is wrong.

  • dxxvi 12 hours ago

    When Firefox has an internal adblock like Brave, I will come back.

    • VCFundedGenYer 42 minutes ago

      Waterfox has one built in, as does LibreWolf.

      Regular Firefox is bloated and contains poor decisions made by Mozilla. The best way to use it is to use the aforementioned forks which remove the excess and add sensible conventional features for security and privacy.

    • snowe2010 12 hours ago

      They have internal tracker blocking. Also, using brave and caring about privacy is rich.

    • Markoff 9 hours ago

      TBH uBlock Origin is better, so why bother

    • LargoLasskhyfv 7 hours ago

      It sort of has, if you're willing to use a fork called https://librewolf.net

      Not perfect, but much less work than to try to bend normal FF to your preferences.

      Works for me.

      • Itoldmyselfso 21 minutes ago

        That's ublock origin preinstalled, not internal/built-in adblocking.

  • Markoff 9 hours ago

    I recently switched phone (Pixel 6a with swollen battery to Xiaomi 13 (Shizuku solves most of the issues without installing custom ROM, which they made impossible through bootloader unlocking process)) and for now decided to not install Cromite yet, but keep Firefox which was offered in browser choice at beginning, still feel very annoyed by the new (not customizable) context menu, but they keep making it even more annoying like with blue persistent for telling you you had downloaded something as if regular notification wouldn't be enough and of course there is no way to get rid off the blue dot besides deleting download (record), just another annoyance

    or now they finally semi fixed home page with 8 pinned shortcuts, but despite not having anything else on home page you must still tap Show all, to see other shortcuts, why can't I show all the shortcuts directly on home page is beyond me

    so much for Firefox customization...

  • panny 13 hours ago

    Why was this auto [flagged] by HN? I had to vouch this.

    Edit: Aaaaand, [flagged] again in 26 minutes with no explanation.

    Edit2: Since I'm "posting too fast" once again, I'll just have to reply to you here. "flagged by users" in four minutes? I don't think so. Besides if hacking statscounter was so easy that it happens monthly as you claim (despite that not being proven out on the chart), it seems like a relevant discussion for a site named "Hacker News."

    • jsnell 12 hours ago

      [flagged] means flagged by users; if it was done by the system, it'd be [dead].

      I can't speak for others, but the reason I flagged it is that the number is untrustworthy and absurd. This is not an isolated case, Statcounter has these ridiculous errors on a monthly basis on one stat or another, before they silently fix whatever was wrong and the numbers swing wildly the other way. A discussion of a Statcounter spike is as fruitful as a discussion about the output of an RNG.

    • 27183 13 hours ago

      broken link maybe?

    • gilrain 12 hours ago

      Because it’s BS. Firefox usage telemetry is public. There is no such increase.