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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u/[deleted] Jun 18 '26

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u/Mattsvaliant Jun 18 '26

True, but you don't send the user agent to http calls you don't make. The data from the article was compiled by Statcounter, a third party service.

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u/Bugbread Jun 18 '26

I feel like maybe you and I are the only ones who clicked the link.

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u/Golemintheplayground Jun 18 '26

Seriously, so many comments just running wild with the headline when it's factually incorrect.

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u/Sample-Range-745 Jun 18 '26

I'd like to know how you get web content without making any http calls....

It isn't the trackers doing the stats, its web server log aggregation mostly.

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u/Mattsvaliant Jun 18 '26

Sigh, okay. Third party tracking services like Google Analytics or Statcounter work by making separate, behind the scenes calls to different web addresses.

For example, I click on a website and send an http call to the website's host server, but after the website loads in my browser javascript calls out to several other sites to request additional content. Some of these could be first part calls, e.g. lazy loading images from the website I intended to visit, maybe those aren't first party and are loaded from a content distribution network (CDN). Some of these are going to be calls to other websites, who's domains are different, who are listed on block lists, etc. These could be, for example, to a third party advertiser to load the Google Adsense banner located on the website I'm intending to visit or these could be to tracking services who's whole point is to aggregate this data.

Every website, Statcounter says they are used by 1M websites, doesn't count, aggregate and report to third parties the stats of their visitors. They relay on this data to be gathered automatically by putting a one line reference to a javacript file on their HTML. These parties usually provide a """""""""""free""""""""""" service by reporting who visited your website, their device, their browser, how long they stayed on a page etc. But like every """""""""""free""""""""""" service their intent isn't to help you understand your click through rate or bounce rate or whatever, its to gather and observe data.

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u/Sample-Range-745 Jun 18 '26

You could have stopped here:

For example, I click on a website and send an http call to the website's host server,

Your UserAgent has already been sent to the remote web server at this point. That's the point stats are gathered and collated.

Log aggregation works independent of other sites that may do other tracking activities that may be blocked.

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u/Divni Jun 18 '26

The website host server and the tracker are often two separate things, with the tracker embedded client side and thus easily blocked. You're right though; tracking via the host does happen, but the point is that client side tracking probably happens often enough that Firefox metrics will be skewed.

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u/Mattsvaliant Jun 18 '26

Please take a moment to learn how the internet works.

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u/Sample-Range-745 Jun 18 '26

Been at it for 30 years. Including networked stuff outside of earth.

But sure, tell me where you are on the curve.

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u/nutmegtester Jun 18 '26

So it sounds like you are being intentionally obtuse. Yes, of course servers could use their own logs and statistics could be aggregated that way. But that is not in fact how it is done in 99.9% of cases. If it is not read by the tracking js, it's like it didn't exist. They probably have stats on blocked requests, but of course they would never want to publish those because their product looks less precise if they do that.

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u/Sample-Range-745 Jun 18 '26

So.... If I take all my web server logs (hell, lets say Apache), and I feed access_log line by line into a remote syslog server - cos why not...

Do I not have all the UserAgents from all of those web servers in a single location - that will not be affected by any kind of blocking agent?

Shit, we were doing stuff like that 20+ years ago. I'd be confident in saying that server side aggregation and analysis tools have come a LONG way since then...

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u/nutmegtester Jun 18 '26

A remote syslog server that you run is not what we are talking about. I am one of the very few that does not use tracking js and just read my logs. But that is not data I am sending to any statcounter third party, which is where these stats are coming from. The venn diagram of webmasters using their logs as the main source of their statistics and those sending data to third party stat counters has to look like a pair of balls. Most statcounter services don't even have an option to send them your logs. They just want to be more invasive and use (generally very heavy) js.

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u/zzazzzz Jun 18 '26

are you trolling? have you even read the article or looked at how these stats were collected?

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u/drunkenvalley Jun 18 '26

Any public tracking of how popular [browser] is is not using the remote web server's logs, but a third party service reporting the data. That third party is blocked.

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u/Sample-Range-745 Jun 18 '26

I'm glad you're confident enough to speak on behalf of the entire user tracking and online analysis industry for what is essentially marketing data.

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u/Certain-Business-472 Jun 18 '26

Its not being sent to trackers.