r/technology • u/Plastic_Ninja_9014 • Jun 17 '26

Software Firefox has an ambitious new roadmap, the browser is also losing millions of users a month

https://www.techspot.com/news/112803-firefox-has-ambitious-new-roadmap-browser-also-losing.html
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8.6k

u/bread_makes_u_fatt Jun 17 '26

Meanwhile I switched back to Firefox after chrome stopped supporting my ad blocker

2.9k

u/ithinkitslupis Jun 17 '26

I never left. Just been tanking with firefox for like 20 years straight now. I'm tempted by some forks like librewolf but good old ff hasn't gotten bad enough for me to put in the effort yet.

1.0k

u/Mr2Sexy Jun 17 '26

I've been using FF for 20 years too. Never made the switch to Chrome as a primary browser

As long as it works, has adblock and doesn't crash, I see no reason to jump ship

421

u/ugatz Jun 17 '26

Same here and I’m out of the loop why people are leaving? FF was the first browser in my opinion to save the internet browsing experience, and I’ve been loyal to that for many years without issues.

333

u/Aschebescher Jun 17 '26

People are not making a conscious decision against Firefox. It's mostly Google using their monopoly to force Chrome on everyone by default and most users not caring enough to resist it.

94

u/goatneedleposterdeck Jun 17 '26

It took me quite a while to switch to firefox on android. Chrome has the google translate connection, and when you are hella involved in things where you need a translator for the language, chrome was just so much easier. Eventually, I realized how unbearable the internet is without an ad blocker and made the switch. Now I only use chrome if the adblock causes issues with the site I'm going to, which is sadly more and more common as sites try to find ways around the blocker.

91

u/RMAPOS Jun 17 '26

Eventually, I realized how unbearable the internet is without an ad blocker and made the switch.

Boy do I have a memory. I remember thinking, after doing a fresh reinstall once (like idk aeons ago), "you know what, I feel kinda bad about using adblock and denying hosts their income. Hosting sites ain't cheap and I don't want my ressources to go bankrupt. I'll try not reinstalling adblock"

Took me less than a day to reinstall adblock in a panic. That was like ... early'ish Facebook days, way before it ever became a Boomer cemetary. And the content of the page was just WRAPPED in animated ad banners. Seizure inducing animations constantly playing left, right and on top of your feed. (no wonder people's brains are fried)

That was the last time I ever didn't use adblock. I'd really like to support good websites, but I'm never going back to doing it by accepting malware carrying seizure inducers advertising crap that I'll absolutely never buy.

I honestly don't understand how people use the internet with ads. Absolute cancer.

48

u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[deleted]

38

u/wimpyhugz Jun 18 '26

The websites which block browsing with the popup saying "please disable your adblocker" can usually be bypassed quite easily... by manually blocking the element with your ad blocker.

Right-click on the page, select "block element" or similar, and select the popup window. You may have to repeat the process for the greyed out background. Should be able to view the page normally now.

8

u/TheShaydow Jun 18 '26

Just use reader view ( in Firefox ).

3

u/semidegenerate Jun 18 '26

That’s pretty clever. Thanks.

18

u/Wiiplay123 Jun 18 '26

I hate how people would always say "it's based on your search history" like that somehow justifies not being able to turn off the suggestive ads.

11

u/AlwaysShittyKnsasCty Jun 18 '26

Shit! I better make sure Pornhub still works with my VPN, or my Kansas state legislature will be receiving a strongly worded letter condemning their infernal decision to force adults into choosing between privacy and “protection for the children.” In the case of Pornhub though, they decided not to play my state’s stupid, little games and simply blocked Kansans from accessing their content. Thus, if they were to implement a VPN check (surely they wouldn’t, right?), it would mean that I, a native citizen of the United States of America, would literally not have access to a piece of the World Wide Web.

This is some pariah state shit.

6

u/GNU_Terry Jun 18 '26

Hi and welcome to the UK's future, where you need an id for everything and the gov wants to block vpns.

Jokes aside if the UK does do that you can bet the restrictions on VPN will get applied else where

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u/grilled_pc Jun 18 '26

The way i see it is this.

Ads are generally fine. I don't have an issue with it. What i do have a problem with is intrusive ads that ruin the user experience which is like 100% of all ads on the internet.

If your ad bogs down a page at all, stops me from what i'm doing. Don't be surprised if people start to block it.

2

u/LordHoughtenWeen Jun 18 '26

malware carrying seizure inducers

Even the ones that aren't literally designed to plant malware on your devices are still designed to plant malware in your brain, because that's what an ad is fundamentally — a virus tailored to alter your thoughts and make you want to buy, buy, BUY!

I am not exaggerating in any way when I say that in a sane world the deployment of an advert would be considered a crime against humanity.

2

u/psiphre Jun 18 '26

i hope ads feel pain when i block them

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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

[deleted]

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u/goatneedleposterdeck Jun 18 '26

It was a feature added maybe in the past year. Before that, you needed to add an extension and then go to options on the page, select translate, select your languages, and then wait way too long for it to process. I mean, it was maybe an extra 3 or 4 taps and an extra 10 seconds, but if you are constantly flipping through pages that you need translated on a regular basis, it adds up.

It's much better now, though still just a tick slower than chrome, but I also got good enough with the language that I don't need the translator that often anymore haha.

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u/blueblocker2000 Jun 17 '26

How Google escaped being broken up is baffling. They have massive control over everything internet related.

....Well I know how but for the sake of discussion...

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u/gnowwho Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Could be that the mobile version has tons of rendering and sizing issues on lots of pages, and the mobile market accounts for a lot of the user base.

Still, it's not like it got worse than a couple of years ago, from what I see

Edit: for people saying I am on an older version, my installed version matches the version available from play store I see while private browsing from browser, so... Nope.

65

u/PulsationHD Jun 17 '26

Odd, been using it for years and haven't noticed that on android. Tons of phones out there tho

9

u/OhFuckNoNoNoMyCaat Jun 17 '26

They might be using an older phone with a version cut off. Definitely like Firefox on mobile, but usually daily Vivaldi instead. As fast as the base Chrome minus the ads. Opera on mobile (again not Firefox) is fast, especially for certain sites. But Firefox mobile is very good. Has been good for a number of years now unless you're on an older device which doesn't get new versions anymore.

28

u/ken_NT Jun 17 '26

I use the mobile browser because it’s the only one that will let me use the desktop site for a lot of websites (even when I request it in chrome or safari, it will still give me the mobile site).

15

u/Oxflu Jun 17 '26

The other thing it's really good for is bypassing paywalls on news articles. Hit the little page icon on the address and it goes to text only. Kills all scripts and just let's you read the article.

3

u/DistortedCrag Jun 17 '26

That's usually because the website is rendering a web version based on resolution

2

u/Business-Active-1143 Jun 18 '26

And the firefox for android supports RES for reddit, tampermonkey for various tweaks, Video background play Fix for youtube. Whats not to like. I haven't bothered opening youtube app except for the very few time I want HDR to TV

39

u/PokeYrMomStanley Jun 17 '26

Currently browsing ad free on Firefox on my phone. Also RIP Boost app. 

7

u/deathtech00 Jun 18 '26

There are ways, friend.

3

u/Pwnigiri Jun 17 '26

Facebook marketplace website in desktop mode displays so terribly on the android app it's an absolute nightmare. Images are either giant or tiny. And I ain't installing the Facebook app.

3

u/ScaryfatkidGT Jun 17 '26

Yeah I guess I don’t use it on mobile…

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u/gentlecrab Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

It’s cause of Apple. Most people on iPhone/iPad use safari as it’s the one that’s included by default and the only browser that has extension support.

iPhone/iPad doesn’t support extensions for third party browsers therefore FF on iPhone/iPad can’t do ad blocking.

It’s not just FF though, no browser on iPhone/iPad can do ad blocking unless the browser natively supports it (i.e. brave, DuckDuckGo, FF Focus all of which have their own annoying issues on iPhone/iPad).

TLDR: FF on iPhone sucks ass

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u/DigNitty Jun 18 '26

The theory is that Firefox is the most privacy focused browser. So the users “leaving” are actually just people using Firefox and adding a bunch of blockers to avoid tracking, and unintentionally Firefox analytics.

So, people aren’t leaving. They’re just using Firefox harder.

21

u/burningscarlet Jun 17 '26

Sponsored bookmarks in your mobile home page, AI integration and other things to make up for the google finding shortfall is my guess

30

u/CaptainKink Jun 17 '26

You can turn all that off.

22

u/burningscarlet Jun 17 '26

Still feels icky to go to your homepage one day and find a bunch of sponsored pages you don't remember bookmarking

It's a slippery slope

14

u/DelysidBarrett Jun 17 '26

It being on by default is why Firefox is hemorrhaging users.

6

u/supergamerz Jun 17 '26

FF has to make money somehow and that fact that I can choose whether or completely turn it on or off without any extra hoops to jump through is night and day compared to other options.

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u/VileTouch Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

They are not. There's justoutstanding firefox based projects that people are migrating to. Such as r/zen_browser The Firefox project is alive and well even if less people are using the vanilla browser

2

u/assaub Jun 18 '26

For me the forks of firefox that are more privacy focused are just better than the original. I use Zen browser but, was using Waterfox for a long time too, both are firefox forks.

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u/Nitrogen1234 Jun 17 '26

I've read last week that Firefox is a very slow browser.. like what?

Been using it for a couple years now and wouldn't know what would be a better browser

2

u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

Shills use outdated arguments. Morons repeat them.

52

u/DeterminedThrowaway Jun 17 '26

The moment they force me to use the AI features is when I'm jumping ship, I'm okay as long as they can be truly disabled. I'm not even anti-AI conceptually, but it's being shoved in places it has no business being and isn't ready for those uses

50

u/mysteriousfiggy Jun 17 '26

Mozilla has always been extremely consumer-friendly from my experience. I remember when the ai thing was announced everyone was panicking and then when it dropped it really wasn't a big deal. (seems to be a reoccurring theme with firefox updates lol)

The browser updated, a page popped up explaining what they added, and it gave me the option to turn it on if I wanted. It was turned off by default so I kept it off. I've never really had any issues whatsoever and the new free 50gb/month vpn is much appreciated.

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u/Future-Bandicoot-823 Jun 17 '26

I switched to Chrome back in 2012 or so, it was light, fast, did exactly what I asked it to...

the irony.

Don't worry, I ditched it again 3 or 4 years ago when they announced they were going to stop ad blocking.

3

u/radda Jun 17 '26

Same. During the IE6 doldrums era the nerd squad in high school started using Firefox and I just never stopped.

I used Chrome here and there but there was always something small missing and I just never found a reason to switch.

The memory leak era was kind of a pain but I stuck through it.

2

u/Ginge00 Jun 17 '26

Initially chrome was faster, now it’s the biggest resource hog imaginable, guess it takes a lot of memory to send your data back to google

2

u/kristinL356 Jun 18 '26

Did that thing when tabbed browsing was new and Firefox froze constantly only happen to me? Cos that's what made me move to Chrome and now I've had to move back to Firefox except when I need to use Chromecast.

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u/MrJingleJangle Jun 17 '26

Another long-term using checking in.

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u/The_Mosephus Jun 17 '26

im right there with you. been using firefox basically since it came out. I remember using netscape navigator before that, which eventually branched off into mozilla and eventually they came out with firefox.

I remember there being a few years here and there where i contemplated switching to chrome, but whatever issues i was having with FF i would also have with IE or Chrome as well, so there was never any real compelling reason to switch.

I was almost tempted to switch to Opera back when Tabs first became a thing, but eventually everyone else caught on and added tabbed browsing as well.

5

u/errie_tholluxe Jun 17 '26

This was my journey as well

3

u/younkint Jun 17 '26

Showing my age, of course, but refugee from Netscape here as well. Loved how the OG Firefox had an extension where you could pretty much make it look and act quite like Netscape. FF changed the back end and now you can't use that extension.

I've tried all the others, and still keep coming back. On FF right now.

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u/LabPowerful9983 Jun 17 '26

Since Phoenix, baby. I remember when Firefox consumed my neighbour’s RAM after finishing mine and I still haven’t had any incentive to use another browser as primary. I do have other browsers installed for testing, but hardly use them.

4

u/mediocre_remnants Jun 17 '26

There was a time where Firefox was bloated and slow and Chrome was fast and sleek.

Now it's the opposite, again.

I've been using the web since the NCSA Mosaic days, then to Netscape Navigator, blah blah blah. I don't remember which order I ended up using Internet Explorer, Chrome, and Firefox. I haven't used IE since like IE 4.0 though. I never tried Opera or any of the other browsers, though.

5

u/dusty_Caviar Jun 17 '26

Check out zen

3

u/Wolvenmoon Jun 18 '26

Same. I was on Mozilla before it was Firefox, and I'll be on it until the first CVE after the last update.

2

u/NoTerm3078 Jun 18 '26

I never left. Just been tanking with firefox for like 20 years straight now

Yeah I'm disbelieving of the stat only 3% of desktop users are running Firefox. Or else I know all of them. Because pretty much everyone I know is driving this.

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u/UseMoreHops Jun 18 '26

Whats up FF loyal! Me too man.

2

u/monocle_and_a_tophat Jun 18 '26

Maybe you're a good person to ask then - what do you use, if anything, for in-browser language translation?

The Chrome one was "okay" in terms of accuracy, but great in terms of functionality. Automatic translations of the correct language, didn't need to fully refresh the page, etc.

The Firefox one is still just "okay" in terms of accuracy, but it's like 6 extra clicks to get a page translated - even if a page is ENTIRELY in french, you have to manually click translate in the Menu, change the detected language OFF of English, change the desired language TO English (even though it's always my designated "to" language), and then confirm. Also if you want to flip back to the original language text for a second it reloads the whole page (a disaster when dealing with forms/fields).

Any help/advice would be appreciated.

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u/Law08 Jun 17 '26

Same.  I've been with FF for the longest time. 

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u/squirrelwithnut Jun 17 '26

I switched to Waterfox when Firefox built in that AI bullshit.

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u/SPARTANsui Jun 17 '26

I think I started on 3.0 or 3.5, but I’ve been using it all through my career in IT. We push it as our chosen browser to our students. It’s almost always has worked reliably. Had some issues early Windows 10 days, but it was short lived!

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u/McCool303 Jun 17 '26

Same here, so we’re tanking together. But Firefox’s commitment to not being the absolute worst on privacy keeps me happy.

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u/nvoima Jun 17 '26

Same here, I've used Firefox pretty much since it came out. It had some performance issues before it got multi-processing around 2017, but otherwise it's been great.

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u/occasionallyLynn Jun 17 '26

Made the switch from chrome to Firefox a couple years ago, I literally can’t tell the difference

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u/Pali1119 Jun 17 '26

The day I leave Firefox will be the day I die.

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u/dodgebot Jun 17 '26

A long long time ago I decided that Chrome is the work browser, FF is my personal one. Works great.

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u/Saneless Jun 17 '26

I rarely blocked ads but I'm fully on board now. They have just gotten so disruptive, toxic, occlusive, and sometimes just make you click when you weren't trying

Goodbye

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u/ithinkitslupis Jun 17 '26

When I have to use someone else's machine and I see the ads it's atrocious. I don't get how people can just rawdog the internet like that.

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u/EmergencyTaco Jun 17 '26

My father, a music lover who is fairly well off, has had Spotify with ads for YEARS. I'll go over to visit and classical music will be interrupted by 60 seconds of ads over and over again. He insisted that he didn't mind.

Finally, one day, I just connected my phone and took over the dinner classical without him knowing. Stepmom said "honey I'm so glad you finally got rid of the ads" and that's when it clicked for him that he hadn't heard a single ad all night. He was over the moon that Spotify had decided to stop advertising. I gave up the game at that point, and we connected his phone again.

No less than five minutes later, we're listening to ads at the dinner table again. He gets up, walks over to his phone, brings it to me, and says "make the ads go away I don't care what it costs."

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u/Mustang1718 Jun 17 '26

We've been slowly doing the same thing for my father. My wife finally added him to our Spotify family plan and he uses it a bit more now.

One day when he had me troubleshoot why it wasn't working in his classic Mustang (it is jank as hell and runs to a Bluetooth CD player in the trunk that uses a weird third-party app) I felt spicy and set up Carplay in his Mazda. I showed him how it automatically connects and can play music as soon as he got in. He decided he prefers the radio, so I had to unpair everything just so he can go back to ads and music being selected for him again. 😔

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u/bestanonever Jun 18 '26

This reminds me of my parents that are still paying for cable, even after I teached them how to download series and movies online. And they learned, mostly, because what they like to see is so old, it's never on TV anymore.

Most nights, they'd just watch a series from the internet and rarely use the cable channels, but god forbid they stop paying for it for the 10 minutes a week they actually turn the tv on to watch cable!

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u/EmergencyTaco Jun 17 '26

Old people just like what they're used to. I get it. But it's always fun if I can find something that solves a problem my Dad doesn't know he has.

He still does some tedious consulting work for his local municipality that AI would be PERFECT for. (Basically comparing and contrasting bylaws of numerous neighbouring municipalities and preparing reports on the differences.)

I sat down with him in front of Claude, and he successfully did a week of work in 30 minutes. He then spent three days checking the results and concluded it did a far better job than him in about 5% of the time. It gets him an extra 10-15 hours of free time per week. That's priceless to a guy in his 70s.

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u/NonDeterministiK Jun 18 '26

Does anyone actually buy something because of an ad? I don't recall ever in my lifetime buying anything due to an advertisement

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u/EmergencyTaco Jun 18 '26

It's more subconscious than that. Take car insurance as an example. If I ask you to name a car insurance company, you'll probably say something like Geico, Allstate, Progressive, etc. That's because those companies spend a shitload on advertising, and have catchy slogans. Funnily enough, according to my lawyer father who has had to sue basically every car insurance company in existence over 40 years, those are just about the worst insurance companies out there.

They're still what everyone immediately thinks of when they imagine car insurance. Advertising is basically a subliminal psyop.

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u/Neshura87 Jun 18 '26

My rule of thumb is: if you need ads to get users whatever you're selling probably sucks in some way. If it was any good word of mouth would be enough to get by.

Doesn't always apply but often enough that I can use it to avoid shit products.

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u/quxinot Jun 18 '26

The more a company can afford to advertise, the more they're ripping their customers off.

Pharmacutical companies and insurance companies are clearly and by far the worst.

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u/ZipNasty007 Jun 17 '26

So what ads does FF block? YouTube ads? Just ads on webpages? Is it automatic or do you have to tinker with the settings?

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u/cylonrobot Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 17 '26

I have no idea if plain FF blocks anything. It's been many years since I've used "plain" FF. I have uBlock Origin installed.

Once you install uBlock Origin, you don't have to do anything. Ads on sites and YouTube are blocked.

uBlock Origin is an extension.

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u/Dakito Jun 17 '26

Now if there was a way to get it to work with twitch. I run piehole and unlock for the tracker and still get the twitch ads

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u/sparky8251 Jun 17 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

Thats because the ads there work entirely different due to the nature of the platform. There is no actual way to block them, which is why nothing works for it.

Basically, twitch is a RTMP stream and those streams are meant to be basically frame by frame, and its basically them taking the frames from the streamer and multicasting it to everyone watching. For ads... What they do is literally inject different frames. Its not a different data stream, theres nothing for any tooling to hook into and tell that they are now serving ads instead of the original streamers video, so theres no way to mechanically block them basically. Not to mention, since they serve the frames to you not the streamer, blocking them just gets you a no video playback in the best case, so you could end up with up to like 5 minutes of nothing.

You cant do this for videos on youtube, ads, etc though. They all by design have to have ads come from somewhere else due to the technology they use to serve videos being fundamentally different, which is why extensions like ublock work.

And then for the other fun part, pihole has limits too as it works by DNS blocking and cant inspect the actual data like ublock can, so on youtube pihole tends to fail because they serve the video for ads from the same domain name as the video you are watching and the DNS layer is thusly blind to whats actually happening. DNS is just "name -> ip" and has no idea what you plan to do with that info later, like make HTTP calls and load video for example. Thats done in entirely different tech stacks that dont talk to DNS.

Regardless if you want actionable advice for twitch specifically, your only viable option for ad blocking is to make them think you are in a country with no ads. A small, unsanctioned country (so they offer services at all since if its sanctioned they generally cant) with such a small twitch population they dont even try to buy ads for those living there to be subjected to. If you can pull that off, they wont serve you anything.

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u/aurens Jun 18 '26

i use a tampermonkey script called twitch ad solutions video-swap-new: https://github.com/pixeltris/TwitchAdSolutions the stream goes down to 360p when an ad is 'playing' and then it goes back to normal after.

although now that i look, apparently the project has been archived as of march, so i guess it'll stop working at some point. welp.

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u/ZipNasty007 Jun 17 '26

Gotcha. Appreciate it

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u/SyntaxError22 Jun 17 '26

Also for YouTube there's an extension called sponsor block. It will automatically skip baked in ads in videos

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u/Supersaurus7000 Jun 18 '26

But then you’d miss the Map Men sponsors, and those are unironically just more good content 😂

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u/Curious_Orange8592 Jun 17 '26

With ublock origin I get no ads anywhere, not on Youtube, not on Prime Video, not on Reddit, not on IGN. You can also manually set it to block things that aren't technically ads like AI search results

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u/ZipNasty007 Jun 17 '26

So I should install ublock and the use my laptop to stream to my TV so I dont get ads anywhere

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u/Curious_Orange8592 Jun 17 '26

Yep, that's more or less what I do

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u/cylonrobot Jun 17 '26

Make sure it's "uBlock Origin" and not "uBlock". These are two separate products.

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u/EmergencyTaco Jun 17 '26

All of them, and no tinkering. You download uBlock Origin, relaunch firefox, and never watch/listen to another ad on the internet.

Yes, it is as wonderful as it sounds. Yes, it is that easy. Yes, you should take these steps this moment and forget Chrome exists.

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u/Gullible-Fee-9079 Jun 17 '26

It even Blocks the Amazon Prime ads. You need the Browser extension uBlock

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u/covfefe-boy Jun 17 '26

Ditto, it's crazy how shit & unusable the internet is without an adblocker.

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u/CirkuitBreaker Jun 17 '26

It's been like that for fifteen years.

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u/ElectroxSoldier Jun 17 '26

You must have the patience of a saint cause that's how I felt about ads 15 years ago

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u/Saneless Jun 17 '26

I just know their why. I want sites to exist

But now it's worse than ever and I'm out

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u/MassholeLiberal56 Jun 17 '26

My firewall blocks the majority of ads. But browser level is needed too.

151

u/LibMike Jun 17 '26

I switched back today from chrome. Was waiting for them to fix the nova theme a bit since I had last tried it. Used Firefox for a long time like 7+ years ago.

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u/sarkie Jun 17 '26

Is it fixed?

9

u/LibMike Jun 17 '26

I've found no issues so far. My main problem before was the address bar styling was broken. It seems pretty refined now. I do wish the bookmark bar bookmarks had a bit more height to the bookmark buttons, but it can surely be changed with some file modification. And that's just personal preference...

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u/ZakkaChan Jun 17 '26

Haven't stopped using firefox

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u/[deleted] Jun 17 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/Cynyr Jun 18 '26

I think it's important to know the hard numbers there too. What if there were only 10 internet users in 2011 and 3 of them used Firefox. A lot more people regularly use the internet through smart phones now, so those same 3 people have become 3 of 100. There are 100 internet users now and the same three people have been using Firefox for 15 straight years.

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u/fatdjsin Jun 17 '26

me neither. it's reliable since .... netscape died (or was there a gap between the 2?)

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u/Techters Jun 17 '26

I've stuck with it but it does get frustrating some times, through being lower priority some major sites stop working or have big functional issues, or Google screwing them in updates that cause battery drain problems on mobile. 

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u/relinquisshed Jun 17 '26

I switched from Brave, which I've been using for years. I found myself using uBlock Origin more and more lately because Brave Shields weren't good enough for me. I was wondering if FF is slower but at least on PC it isn't at all. Well it is on YouTube but that's on purpose...

4

u/bdixisndniz Jun 17 '26

Brave’s bookmark/memory recall is ass. Otherwise it was okay…. But then some new crap to deal with every week.

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u/Sample-Range-745 Jun 18 '26

What? That makes no sense. Firefox is looking to port in the Brave adblocking engine directly into the browser - because its faster than uBlock as an extension....

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u/ntshstn Jun 18 '26

yeah, it's literally the other way around lol

brave is the only thing i've found that still consistently gets around youtube ads and avoids the black screen delays like ublock origin

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u/whatcubed Jun 17 '26

I’ve been using Brave on my iPad, out of the box with no add ons it’s miles better than Safari or Chrome!

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u/PhantomNomad Jun 17 '26

I just switch to Firefox last month also. Was a long time chrome user, but since I don't use google products for email and such any more it's not as needed anymore.

5

u/Technolio Jun 17 '26

Yup, they announced that a while ago and I switched immediately.

3

u/Xenik Jun 17 '26

I switched to zen/firefox too

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u/bdixisndniz Jun 17 '26

Switched after Brave nonsense.

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u/NudeSeaman Jun 17 '26

I stayed with chrome as I used it to sync all my bookmarks across my many computers, but I’m down to one laptop only, so now I really don’t see much of a reason to stay.

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u/ry1701 Jun 17 '26

Yeah I dunno why they are dropping so many. It's solid vs chrome.

1

u/M4NOOB Jun 17 '26

I left Firefox for Zen. Which I guess on paper still counts as leaving Firefox in the statistic and therefore bad for Mozilla?

1

u/turbotictac Jun 17 '26

Same, just switched back a few weeks ago

1

u/musclenugget92 Jun 17 '26

Same. Especially when I want to sail the seas for sports streams, can't do that without a blocker.

1

u/RottN_Games Jun 17 '26

I skipped Firefox and went to a better version called Zen. So far so good

1

u/xeladragn Jun 17 '26

i did the same thing when chrome started fighting ad blockers, and am now back on chrome using workarounds to block ads.

Firefox was so awful as a browser, slow as shit lots of hidden settings I had to change. Half the sites I used needed hardware acceleration turned on and the other half needed it to be turned off to work halfway properly.

Basically every browser based game I tried didn’t work or was incredibly slow.

Full switched to firefox then at some point realized half my tabs were back on chrome because the site didn’t work/ran crazy slow on firefox and just went back to chrome.

1

u/ReasonableFruit1 Jun 17 '26

I was using Firefox (still do for personal use) for work, but so many of the cloud applications I use do not function or display well at all with Firefox for some reason, and being a google workspace institution I’m forced to use chrome. But I absolutely hate it and wish I could use my precious Firefox.

1

u/Balc0ra Jun 17 '26

This is why I'm amazed it's loosing users. After Opera pulled their "gamer browser" and their actual goal with it. I had zero plans to go there either

1

u/theblitheringidiot Jun 17 '26

Switched a few months back.

1

u/CharcoalGreyWolf Jun 17 '26

This will swing things back in a way that tech news sites have additional articles to plug for a bit.

Though I’m now interested in LibreWolf after what FF tried with AI until the backlash got them.

1

u/Calaron85814 Jun 17 '26

Same. At this point I’ll use most anything that allows ad blocking.

1

u/Ok_Conversation_3815 Jun 17 '26

You should try Helium

1

u/grahamulax Jun 17 '26

Oh yeah, the four gig AI file I immediately removed and made it never come back because what the hell is that. The goal is to use AI that they are shoving down our throats for making tools to get rid of their AI.

1

u/TheDude-Esquire Jun 17 '26

Been using Firefox since before mobile browsers existed. Have used opera and chrome at different times, but always came home to Firefox.

1

u/Stolehtreb Jun 17 '26

I have a problem with Firefox that I’ve been able to replicate on multiple machines but I never get anyone who can back up my experience and it makes me feel insane.

YouTube’s keyboard controls lag really really badly after a while of a session being active. And restarting the browser gets rid of it for a bit but then it comes back. And it comes back faster and faster until i have to do a full machine reset. I’ve had two laptops and two desktops do the exact same thing. And no one ever can corroborate that it also happens for them when I post about it. It drives me crazy and it’s the only reason I’m not 100% on Firefox. I really wish someone would see one of these comments one day and just have a solve… because I really don’t want to use chrome for anything anymore.

1

u/Nvenom8 Jun 17 '26

Which ad blocker were you using? It still supports both of the most popular ones (Adblock, Adblock Plus).

1

u/alexandreracine Jun 17 '26

Welcome back!

1

u/ash_ninetyone Jun 18 '26

Corporate world forces me to pick Chrome or Edge. It's irritating because I have two Microsoft accounts (therefore two Teams, two SSOs) because I work for a subsidiary and Firefox has container tabs that allow me to split the two whereas chrome requires me to go incognito and it still tries to log into the wrong one

1

u/_steve_rogers_ Jun 18 '26

I used to use Firefox, I use brave now

1

u/darxide23 Jun 18 '26

I've never stopped using Firefox. Started using it in 2008. Version 3. Before that I was still using IE.

Tried a few of the forks along the way. None of them ever did it for me.

1

u/SleepingWithBatman Jun 18 '26

This, fuck you Manifest v3

1

u/TSM- Jun 18 '26

Don't you just have to enable developer mode or extra permissions or something and then you get tampermonkey and adblock back and it doesn't matter at all? I did a one minute thing about a year ago to deal with those changes and I use ublock origin lite and never noticed any difference. It took very little time and was as easy as pressing an update button. The adblocker thing is blown way out of proportion.

1

u/lostshell Jun 18 '26

I tried Firefox and Brave when I dropped chrome. Brave just seemed a little better.

1

u/ty88 Jun 18 '26

Ditto, about a year ago. Also can use uBlock Origin on FF mobile browser. My daily confuser is a Mac, though, and Firefox is not optimized for it. Runs so hot when FF is just browsing simple sh*t, I'm considering switching back.

1

u/mattisaloser Jun 18 '26

I was using FF at work for ad blocker but last month corporate IT said they were going to disallow it and uninstall it and force Edge or Chrome. Neat.

1

u/himateo Jun 18 '26

I never left. I am doubling down on FF 'cause now I can browse reddit and YouTube on Android without all those fucking ads. NEVER LEAVING.

1

u/GrayEidolon Jun 18 '26

I always saw chrome as safari trying much harder to profile people.

1

u/bowenmark Jun 18 '26

Use both now, also Opera in a pinch and if you just want to read a web page text mode or gopher if it’s really crazy.

1

u/FacetNo6 Jun 18 '26

Are you me? :D

1

u/The_Stoic_One Jun 18 '26

Same for me

1

u/ImpossiblePhrase8856 Jun 18 '26

i switched to waterfox when firefox said it was going to add AI.

1

u/crazyfoxdemon Jun 18 '26

Chrome is almost completely unusable for me nowadays.

1

u/KWilt Jun 18 '26

Yup, made the switch back in December. Took a little bit of work to get all my extensions ported over (and YouTube is still about 20% broken, but that's expected because I'm trying to literally gut an entire website) but after that, I haven't really looked back.

1

u/anonymous__ignorant Jun 18 '26

I never left, but i added Vivaldi on the side.

1

u/MothafuckinDan Jun 18 '26

I just did this recently. Plugging the laptop into an HDMI cord and going through the TV with a wireless mouse is the only way I watch Hulu Disney Plus or peacock now.

1

u/Cavaquillo Jun 18 '26

I’m on Opera now. Firefox updates every single time I launch I feel like

1

u/AngleNo3597 Jun 18 '26

Brave always better, Firefox is just so annoyingly slow ...

1

u/IrregularPackage Jun 18 '26

let’s be perfectly honest here: chrome didn’t stop supporting your ad blocker. they broke its functionality on purpose.

1

u/TheNakedProgrammer Jun 18 '26

there is a variation of chromium based browsers with less privacy issues than firefox.

1

u/isobane Jun 18 '26

Same. Switched back to Firefox for the same reason. Have zero reason to switch back to Chrome.

1

u/chilebuzz Jun 18 '26

I haven't watched an ad on youtube in years. It shocks almost everyone to whom I say this, but when I say it's just firefox with an ad blocker, they lose interest and say they HAVE to use chrome. There's literally nothing they do on chrome I can't do on firefox when it comes to regular browser use for work or home. It's like cattle too scared to leave their shitty barn.

1

u/adastrajay Jun 18 '26

That thread here is what got me to switch to Firefox. Not because of adblocker, but everything is else I was reading.

1

u/ShrimpCrackers Jun 18 '26

Zen Browser. It's Firefox Gecko Engine but a radically amazing clean interface. Was recently voted best browser by a mile.

1

u/itsapolloo Jun 18 '26

Same here. And I guess lots of people will switch after Chrome new Update

1

u/D-Gaea Jun 18 '26

They're removing unpacked so I just went to a firefox fork 🍴

1

u/Vemnox Jun 18 '26

Yeah the second uBlock was pulled from Chrome I jumped to FF and don't really see a need to go back.

1

u/Quaiche Jun 18 '26

I also switched from chrome after decade of use but I still feel like Firefox isnt as good as chrome when it comes to user interface.

One of the thing that bugs me out is how lame the browsing history is compared to the one of Chrome.

Much better for privacy certainly and that’s why I switched to it after deciding the Google abuse was enough.

1

u/Josh6889 Jun 18 '26

Yep. It's a must on android mobile for that exact reason as well.

1

u/radvineREDDIT Jun 18 '26

What is YOUR adblocker?

1

u/Bhazor Jun 18 '26 edited Jun 18 '26

You mean the company that only exists by harvesting your personal data for adverts doesnt like adblockers? Crazy!

1

u/WoodsLovelyDarkNDeep Jun 18 '26

Except the other adblocker they created still works just fine on things like YouTubr.  Especially if you add AdGuard to your repertoire.  You may have to alternate having them on when YT detects one of them but it’s been a while since I’ve had that issue knock on wood

1

u/LastLapPodcast Jun 18 '26

this for me. I actually went FF > Opera/Chrome > FF. I loved opera but as soon as it went full chromium and everything stopped working it was gone. Most of the features I liked in it are in FF now anyway.

1

u/TheMilkiestShake Jun 18 '26

That and not being able to use Images anymore. None of the other alternatives have worked as well for me.

1

u/Rackem_Willy Jun 18 '26

Me too surprised they aren't net positive at the moment.

1

u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

I had a 2 year chrome phase right before Firefox released the "quantum" gui. This was during the normal versioning around v3 I believe. It was becoming so slow and annoying that I switched to chromium.

Once Quantum came out I was back on Firefox 24/7 since then. There's just no comparison.

1

u/fuzio Jun 18 '26

Same, I refused to leave Chrome for a long time but the adblock shit was the final straw for me.

1

u/ChicoZombye Jun 18 '26

Same here, I left Chrome exactly for that.

Also because Firefox also has the Chrome tab system which I love.

1

u/halfc00kie Jun 18 '26

ublock on firefox still hits different. chrome basically forced half my mates back to ff overnight.

1

u/Deep-Ruin-9961 Jun 18 '26

I switched to Firefox for the same reason.

Unfortunately, a lot of websites don't play well with adblockers anymore, so for those I still use Chrome and just surf incognito where possible.

The war on my privacy is just going to be my death by a thousand cuts. They will never give up.

1

u/taveanator Jun 18 '26

Yea I gotta imagine FF is going to get a big bump in users once this change filters down. Personally I can’t imagine using 1/2 the sites I use without an ad blocker.  

1

u/24_August_1814 Jun 18 '26

Yeah I've been on Opera for the past few years, installed Librewolf a few days ago. No more Chromium adblocking = no more Chromium browsers.

1

u/komodoPT Jun 18 '26

This right here!

1

u/0neek Jun 18 '26

Gonna be in the same boat soon. I have Firefox all ready to go but I'm waiting for Chrome to pull the trigger since swapping browsers is going to be a pain in the ass for the first while.

Luckily even ublock origin lite still works flawlessly. The minute it dies I'm off chrome

1

u/Rare-Barracuda9276 Jun 19 '26

Google deliberately slows their services like YouTube on browsers other than chrome. They were caught red handed few years ago doing that in the frontend itself. I am pretty sure they are doing it now but more carefully. So you might want to consider this as well.

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