Why is Firefox so popular?
December 7, 2008 – 1:01 amOver the last 4 years, firefox is becoming more and more popular, and its market share is increasing by 5% each year over the last 4 years. But since one hasto actively download and install the program (on Mac and Windows), why do people choose to download and install Firefox? Why not Opera, Safari, Konqueror or any other browser?
This week, several articles I read brought the breaking news that the market share of Microsoft’s internet explorer is shrinking to below 70% for the first time since 1999 (http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=1). Internet Explorer gained a near monopoly, simply by forcing it to the customers by bundling/integrating it with the operating system Windows, and I believe this is the major reason why this browser still holds such a big percentage of market share. Many people simply use the browser they are given, unless there is an alternative that has significant advantages.
On the other hand, apparently, the near-monopoly has made Microsoft extremely lazy, resulting in a browser that does not even meet the open web-standards, it is slow and has to catch up with alternative browsers. The lack of meeting open standards is an increasing frustration with web-designers and alternative producers of web-browsers like Opera (http://www.opera.com/press/releases/2007/12/13/). Having to catch up with other browsers is painfully clear when simply looking at tabbed browsing and extensions. The tabbed browsing was introduced by Opera in 1994 and only after practically all other browsers supported the “tabbing”, Microsoft introduced this feature in Internet Explorer 7, more than ten years after Opera did.
Also speed is in favor of Opera, when compared to the top-4 of the web-browsers, and also in this case, the market-leader (Internet Explorer) does not do a very good job (http://lifehacker.com/396048/speed-testing-the-latest-web-browsers). Firefox is left somewhere in the middle.
The only field where Firefox beats all competitors is when it comes to extensions. Though there an amazing amount of well-designed and useful extensions (or widgets) for Opera, and a few extensions for Internet Explorer, the real master of extensions is Firefox. Its open source code combined with a decent market share apparently is a very attractive combination to developers and resulted in more than 5000 Firefox extensions in just a few years (http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/customize/), and the number of extensions is growing rapidly. There are many types of translators, weather add-ons, but also highly specific add-ons such as “biofox”, “FireMath” and “Water Levels of German Rivers” (if someone finds a more weird add-on please let me know!!!). The most curious extension that is being worked on is one provided by Microsoft and is called the Open XML Document Viewer, which allows you to view OOXML document right in your browser (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NKSF6w0EK0s). Also the look of Firefox is highly flexible and you can install many different themes.
When looking at features like speed and innovation, Firefox and Opera are a close match and Internet Explorer is lagging far behind. Looking at the market share trends however, Opera and Internet explorer are no match for Firefox, probably due to the numerous extensions, though there might be several other small advantages that add to the popularity of Firefox.
P.S.: It is very interesting to see what Chrome will do. Will it be able to gain popularity as fast as Firefox? It is far behind its competitors, but Google has a very important advantage: it is well known. If it will gain a fair market share, will Chrome pick it from Firefox or from Internet Explorer? Only the future can tell I guess.
14 Responses to “Why is Firefox so popular?”
I’m a huge Firefox user, and the plugins are the reason. The plugins make Firefox so versatile, I’ll never be able to switch to another browser. I tried Opera recently and I was shocked at how fast it was, but without my favorite plugins I feel like I’m surfing the web naked.
But that said… I think the fact that other browsers are gaining market share is proof that the concept “monopoly” doesn’t make much sense. How can a company have a monopoly on anything when there are viable alternatives? Personally, I don’t think that monopolies can exist, at least without government assistance, but even when Microsoft’s products have been the most popular they’ve never had anywhere near 100% market share. And when they make bad products, people naturally start moving over to better ones.
By Darren on Dec 7, 2008
In reply to Darren: IE has so much market share because up until recently the majority of people didn’t know there WAS a viable alternative. I’ve met countless people who considered the internet to be “the big blue E”, and they didn’t realize there was a different choice or what exactly they are working with.
By Emanuel on Dec 7, 2008
Darren, you’re looking for the term oligopoly, or perhaps near-monopoly…
By Vincent on Dec 7, 2008
I think the fact that Firefox is open-source itself attracts open-source programmers, who are most willing to make extensions for free. Thus, you get the most extensions around Firefox, in spite of the process being complex, changed incompatibly every so often, and generally painful.
Those extensions really can attract users. As far as I can tell, everyone else scrambled to copy Firebug, so for some time Fx had page development tools that were far better than the other browsers (which had nothing: if you had an IE layout bug, you searched for it on PositionIsEverything first.) Stepping through JS and visualizing the CSS box model did more to advance my understanding of both topics than anything else.
Lastly, once someone discovers one browser that’s far better than their old one, it’s going to take one that’s far better than _that_ to make them put in the effort to switch again. I have Opera installed on my machine, but I only use it for compatibility testing, because it doesn’t offer anything that offsets the losses: SearchOnTab and FireGestures (configurable and covers more actions than Opera’s built-in mouse gestures), Ctrl+Tab navigation that doesn’t avoid unread tabs, and the general pain of having different keyboard shortcuts.
I almost became a convert years ago, before Mozilla was truly ready, but Opera had ads at the time. Ads suck, and $30 or $40 (whatever it was) was a lot of money to a teenager. So I put up with Mozilla instead until stumbling across Phoenix 0.3.
(P.S. I know how Ctrl+Tab truly works in Opera; but that design inherently pushes unread tabs to the bottom of the list, where you have to tab across *every* read tab, because they’re not in the stack-ordering yet. It’s immensely irritating: I _don’t_ want the tab list in a different order every time, and I _do_ want to read my unread tabs!)
By sapphirecat on Dec 7, 2008
@Vincent
Have you ever even peeked into Opera’s preferences? Tools -> Preferences -> Tabs. Also Firefox’s gestures are not even as smooth as Opera’s. Since Opera 5 I haven’t come across a browser which fills works as well.
By Dude on Dec 7, 2008
A lot of it has to do with momentum.
I’ve used Firefox since it was called Phoenix, so I continue to use it. Opera isn’t so much better that it’s worth a switch.
By Steve Klabnik on Dec 7, 2008
my google chrome crashes alot
but it is fast
By natasha on Dec 7, 2008
Maybe it crashes because it is fast……driving slower prevents accidents
By mckooiker on Dec 7, 2008
Firefox’s secret sauce is a love of freedom.
By Ash on Dec 7, 2008
I would use Opera or Chrome if either of them had proper ad blocking. In Firefox, I have Flashblock installed, and I can right-click on an image and select “block images from this server.” This makes the web dramatically more usable. I know several other people who use it for the same reason. Chrome has no ad blocking. In Opera, the UI for setting it up is uselessly slow.
My guess is that this is the single biggest reason, but that there is a dozen other possible reasons that people have.
I actually would love to switch browsers if something else had useful ad blocking. It’d be easy to do much better than Firefox (e.g. a lot of servers have both ads and non-ads, so I can’t reasonably block those). I don’t like Firefox’s memory leaks and crashes.
By Peter on Dec 8, 2008
firefox hands down the best
By Tom on Dec 8, 2008
Firefox with its large horde of extensions, my favorites being ABP and NoScript, makes my web experience much faster and safer. I’ve been using it since the public review version and haven’t looked back since.
By Imo on Dec 8, 2008
I used NoScript in Firefox ,in Opera is eaier to obtain such an effect, you just have to turn off flash,java,javascript globaly , and on the websites you need them you just right click use the :Edit site preferences” and enable what you need in that site. I suggest reading the Getting started tips to find more about Opera, i use it bacause it runs fast, i like the mouse gestures and it looks better then firefox.
By simion314 on Dec 9, 2008
I am a huge fan of Firefox and have used since (i can’t remember) but I am investigating other alternatives at the moment. The lack of speed from Firefox compared to Chrome, Safari, and Sea Monkey are the main reasons I am investigating a change.
By Les Dobson on Jun 9, 2009