Chrome won
Note: I worked for seven years at Mozilla and was the Technical Director before leaving for the foundation of a startup in the field of AI two years ago.
A week ago, Mozilla published a blog post where it highlighted its efforts to make desktop Firefox competitive again. At one time, I closely followed the browser market, but for a couple of years I have not studied it. It's time to look at some numbers:
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The chart above shows the market share as a percentage of each of the four main browsers in the last six years. This is StatCounter data, and you can bet that the data is distorted in many different ways, but in a global sense, you will have to say with confidence that Chrome captures the browser market, and everything except Safari is destroyed.
I have tried several different ways to draw a trend line, and an exponential approximation is best suited. This is quite consistent with the theories about the explosive spread of innovation and the slow decline of old technologies. If the six-year trend continues, IE should be largely dead in two to three years. Firefox does not feel much better, unfortunately, and is heading towards a market share of 2-3%. For IE and Firefox, such low market shares will further accelerate the decline, because web developers are not testing browser sites with a small market share. Having met the broken layout, users will switch to other browsers, which will cause even greater user outflow. Vicious cycle.
Shares of Chrome and Safari do not coincide as well with the line of exponential approximation as IE and Firefox. For Chrome, the reason may be that the market share is so large that Chrome is no longer enough new users. Some are stuck on older operating systems that do not support Chrome. The recent growth of Safari is not reaching the trend, most likely due to the slowdown in the growth of iOS devices.
The study of the previous schedule can be misleading, because it combines market shares on desktops and mobile devices. Safari / iOS dominates on mobile devices, while desktop Safari has a very small proportion. In turn, Firefox is not essentially presented on mobile devices. So take a look at the numbers from the desktops.
Unfortunately, this chart also does not predict a different fate for IE and Firefox. The overall market for desktops and laptops is growing slowly (most sales are for replacing old PCs, but new users are also adding). Despite the expansion of the market, the share of IE and Firefox is unsustainably decreasing.
Erik mentioned in a blog post that Firefox had more users last year. During this period, the relative market share of Firefox decreased from 16% to 14.85%. For comparison, the position of Safari desktop has not changed. This probably means that Safari’s market share is growing along with the (slow) growth of the PC / laptop market. There are two different theories that Eric had in mind when he mentioned in his blog post an increase in the number of users. Maybe he meant an increase in the number of installations. People often reinstall the browser on a new computer, which can be called a “new user”, but after that often the old computer is no longer used. It is also possible that the total daily audience has indeed grown due to the growth of the PC / laptop market, despite the deep failure of the relative market share. Statistics on the daily audience of Firefox is not open, so it's hard to say.
It’s pretty obvious from these charts that Firefox goes nowhere. This means that the revered foxy will remain with us for many, many years, despite the constantly decreasing market share. This also means, unfortunately, that reversal is almost impossible.
With the change of CEO about three years ago, a strategic decision was taken that Mozilla will again concentrate on Firefox and the desktop market. Until 2014, Mozilla actively invested in the development of a mobile OS to compete with Android: Firefox OS. I started the Firefox OS project and brought it to scale. Although we showed a surge and sold several million devices, we could not keep up with the explosive growth of Android. Many do not understand the strategic reasoning of Mozilla for developing Firefox OS. Mozilla’s original mission was to create a web by creating a browser. The mobile market has thoroughly undermined this mission. On mobile devices, the browser is not so important and necessary, and even more so a third-party mobile browser. On mobile devices, the browser is a feature of Facebook and Twitter applications, not a product. To influence the web through mobile devices, Mozilla had to build the entire stack with the web in its core. The development of mobile browsers (Android Firefox) or browser-like applications (Firefox Focus) hardly corresponds to a significant number of usage scenarios. Both Firefox Android and Firefox Focus have a market share close to 0%.
The strategic decision of 2014 to return to Firefox, and at the same time return to the desktop, was important for Mozilla. As Eric described in his article, in recent years, a lot of great technical work has been done with desktop Firefox. Relevant development teams have been expanded, and mobile development efforts have been curtailed. Desktop Firefox today is technically competitive with Desktop Chrome in many areas, and in some even surpasses it. Unfortunately, from the graphs it can be seen that all this has no effect on market trends. Browsers are a product of mass consumption. They look almost the same and work almost the same. All browsers work quite well, and if one of them will work a little faster or consume a little less memory, then this is unlikely to affect users. Even if Eric himself - who heads up the Mozilla marketing department - uses Chrome every day, as he mentioned in the first sentence, it's not surprising that almost 65% of desktop users do the same.
I started the Firefox OS project in 2011, because even then I was convinced of the death of desktops and browsers. Not instant death - now six years have passed, and they are still with us - but these are two old technologies that are not powerful enough to move on. I don’t think a new browser war will ever happen in which Firefox or some other competitor will take Chrome’s market share. This is how to introduce a new and improved horse in 2017. We are all on the machines. Some still ride horses, and horses have value, but the technology of transport has gone ahead.
Does this mean that Google owns the web in the same way that it owns Chrome? Not. Absolutely not. Browsers are what the web looked like in the first decades of the Internet. Smartphones have undermined the web, but the web has digested smartphones, so JavaScript, HTTPS and REST are working today in the heart of most applications. The future web will again be completely different. Much will remain, and some of its parts will be destroyed. I left Mozilla because I wondered what the web would look like when it was left mostly on devices and not on desktops and mobile phones. At Silk, we created an IoT platform based on web technologies such as JavaScript, and we are doing a lot to free up the rights to information by embedding AI in devices instead of sending all data to the cloud.
So let Google win the browser war, but they didn't get the web. Returning to the horses metaphor: Google makes the best horses in the world and they definitely won races. I just do not think that the race will continue in the future.
Addition: A lot of good comments in the HackerNews branch here . I like this one the most: “ Mozilla won the browser war. Firefox lost the next fight. But there are still many battles, and I hope that Mozilla will enter into a new one . ” I can not disagree.
A week ago, Mozilla published a blog post where it highlighted its efforts to make desktop Firefox competitive again. At one time, I closely followed the browser market, but for a couple of years I have not studied it. It's time to look at some numbers:
')
The chart above shows the market share as a percentage of each of the four main browsers in the last six years. This is StatCounter data, and you can bet that the data is distorted in many different ways, but in a global sense, you will have to say with confidence that Chrome captures the browser market, and everything except Safari is destroyed.
Trend
I have tried several different ways to draw a trend line, and an exponential approximation is best suited. This is quite consistent with the theories about the explosive spread of innovation and the slow decline of old technologies. If the six-year trend continues, IE should be largely dead in two to three years. Firefox does not feel much better, unfortunately, and is heading towards a market share of 2-3%. For IE and Firefox, such low market shares will further accelerate the decline, because web developers are not testing browser sites with a small market share. Having met the broken layout, users will switch to other browsers, which will cause even greater user outflow. Vicious cycle.
Shares of Chrome and Safari do not coincide as well with the line of exponential approximation as IE and Firefox. For Chrome, the reason may be that the market share is so large that Chrome is no longer enough new users. Some are stuck on older operating systems that do not support Chrome. The recent growth of Safari is not reaching the trend, most likely due to the slowdown in the growth of iOS devices.
Market share on desktops
The study of the previous schedule can be misleading, because it combines market shares on desktops and mobile devices. Safari / iOS dominates on mobile devices, while desktop Safari has a very small proportion. In turn, Firefox is not essentially presented on mobile devices. So take a look at the numbers from the desktops.
Unfortunately, this chart also does not predict a different fate for IE and Firefox. The overall market for desktops and laptops is growing slowly (most sales are for replacing old PCs, but new users are also adding). Despite the expansion of the market, the share of IE and Firefox is unsustainably decreasing.
More users?
Erik mentioned in a blog post that Firefox had more users last year. During this period, the relative market share of Firefox decreased from 16% to 14.85%. For comparison, the position of Safari desktop has not changed. This probably means that Safari’s market share is growing along with the (slow) growth of the PC / laptop market. There are two different theories that Eric had in mind when he mentioned in his blog post an increase in the number of users. Maybe he meant an increase in the number of installations. People often reinstall the browser on a new computer, which can be called a “new user”, but after that often the old computer is no longer used. It is also possible that the total daily audience has indeed grown due to the growth of the PC / laptop market, despite the deep failure of the relative market share. Statistics on the daily audience of Firefox is not open, so it's hard to say.
It’s pretty obvious from these charts that Firefox goes nowhere. This means that the revered foxy will remain with us for many, many years, despite the constantly decreasing market share. This also means, unfortunately, that reversal is almost impossible.
With the change of CEO about three years ago, a strategic decision was taken that Mozilla will again concentrate on Firefox and the desktop market. Until 2014, Mozilla actively invested in the development of a mobile OS to compete with Android: Firefox OS. I started the Firefox OS project and brought it to scale. Although we showed a surge and sold several million devices, we could not keep up with the explosive growth of Android. Many do not understand the strategic reasoning of Mozilla for developing Firefox OS. Mozilla’s original mission was to create a web by creating a browser. The mobile market has thoroughly undermined this mission. On mobile devices, the browser is not so important and necessary, and even more so a third-party mobile browser. On mobile devices, the browser is a feature of Facebook and Twitter applications, not a product. To influence the web through mobile devices, Mozilla had to build the entire stack with the web in its core. The development of mobile browsers (Android Firefox) or browser-like applications (Firefox Focus) hardly corresponds to a significant number of usage scenarios. Both Firefox Android and Firefox Focus have a market share close to 0%.
The strategic decision of 2014 to return to Firefox, and at the same time return to the desktop, was important for Mozilla. As Eric described in his article, in recent years, a lot of great technical work has been done with desktop Firefox. Relevant development teams have been expanded, and mobile development efforts have been curtailed. Desktop Firefox today is technically competitive with Desktop Chrome in many areas, and in some even surpasses it. Unfortunately, from the graphs it can be seen that all this has no effect on market trends. Browsers are a product of mass consumption. They look almost the same and work almost the same. All browsers work quite well, and if one of them will work a little faster or consume a little less memory, then this is unlikely to affect users. Even if Eric himself - who heads up the Mozilla marketing department - uses Chrome every day, as he mentioned in the first sentence, it's not surprising that almost 65% of desktop users do the same.
What does this mean for the web?
I started the Firefox OS project in 2011, because even then I was convinced of the death of desktops and browsers. Not instant death - now six years have passed, and they are still with us - but these are two old technologies that are not powerful enough to move on. I don’t think a new browser war will ever happen in which Firefox or some other competitor will take Chrome’s market share. This is how to introduce a new and improved horse in 2017. We are all on the machines. Some still ride horses, and horses have value, but the technology of transport has gone ahead.
Does this mean that Google owns the web in the same way that it owns Chrome? Not. Absolutely not. Browsers are what the web looked like in the first decades of the Internet. Smartphones have undermined the web, but the web has digested smartphones, so JavaScript, HTTPS and REST are working today in the heart of most applications. The future web will again be completely different. Much will remain, and some of its parts will be destroyed. I left Mozilla because I wondered what the web would look like when it was left mostly on devices and not on desktops and mobile phones. At Silk, we created an IoT platform based on web technologies such as JavaScript, and we are doing a lot to free up the rights to information by embedding AI in devices instead of sending all data to the cloud.
So let Google win the browser war, but they didn't get the web. Returning to the horses metaphor: Google makes the best horses in the world and they definitely won races. I just do not think that the race will continue in the future.
Addition: A lot of good comments in the HackerNews branch here . I like this one the most: “ Mozilla won the browser war. Firefox lost the next fight. But there are still many battles, and I hope that Mozilla will enter into a new one . ” I can not disagree.
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/329780/
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