It’s likely that Hackaday readers have among them a greater than average number of people who can name one special thing they did on September 23rd, 2002. On that day a new web browser was released, Phoenix version 0.1, and it was a lightweight browser-only derivative of the hugely bloated Mozilla suite. Renamed a few times to become Firefox, it rose to challenge the once-mighty Microsoft Internet Explorer, only to in turn be overtaken by Google’s Chrome.
Now in 2025 it’s a minority browser with an estimated market share just over 2%, and it’s safe to say that Mozilla’s take on AI and the use of advertising data has put them at odds with many of us who’ve kept the faith since that September day 23 years ago. Over the last few months I’ve been actively chasing alternatives, and it’s with sadness that in November 2025, I can finally say I’m Firefox-free.
Just What Went Wrong?
It was perhaps inevitable that Firefox would lose market share when faced with a challenger from a player with the economic muscle of Google. Chrome is everywhere, it’s the default browser in Android and ChromeOS, and when stacked up against the Internet Explorer of fifteen years or so ago it’s not difficult to see why it made for an easy switch. Chrome is good, it’s fast and responsive, it’s friendly, and the majority of end users either don’t care or don’t know enough to care that it’s Google’s way in to your data. When it first appeared, they still had the “Don’t be evil” aura to them, even if perhaps behind the warm and fuzzy feeling it had already worn away in the company itself.
If Firefox were destined to become a minority player then it could still be a successful one; after all, 2% of the global browser market still represents a huge number of users whose referrals to search engines return a decent income. But the key to being a success in any business is to know your customers, and sitting in front of this particular screen it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that Mozilla have lost touch with theirs. To understand this it’s necessary for all of us to look in the mirror and think for a moment about who uses Firefox.
Somewhere, A Group Of Users Are Being Ignored
A quick straw poll in my hackerspace revealed a majority of Firefox users, while the same straw poll among another group of my non-hackerspace friends revealed none. The former used Firefox because of open-source vibes, while the latter used Edge or Safari because it came with their computer, or Chrome on their phone and on their desktop because of Google services. Hackaday is not a global polling organisation, but we think it’s likely that the same trend would reveal itself more widely. If you’re in the technology space you might use Firefox, but if you aren’t you may not even have heard of it in 2025. It’s difficult to see that changing any time soon, to imagine some killer feature that would make those Chrome, Safari, and Edge users care enough to switch to Firefox.
To service and retain this loyal userbase then, you might imagine that Mozilla would address their needs and concerns with what made Phoenix a great first version back in 2002. A lightweight and versatile standards-compliant and open-source web browser with acceptable privacy standards, and without any other non-browser features attached to it. Just a browser, only a browser, and above all, a fast browser.
Instead, Mozilla appear to be following a course calculated to alarm rather than retain these users. Making themselves an AI-focused organisation, neglecting their once-unbeatable developer network, and trying to sneak data gathering into their products. They appear now to think of themselves as a fad-driven Valley startup rather than the custodians of a valuable open-source package, and unsurprisingly this is concerning to those of us who know something about what a browser does behind the scenes.
Why Is This Important?
It is likely that I am preaching to the choir here, but it’s important that there be a plurality of browsers in the world. And by that I mean not just a plurality of front-ends, but a plurality of browser engines. One of the reasons Phoenix appeared all those years ago was to challenge the dominance of Microsoft Internet Explorer, the tool by which the Redmond software company were trying to shape the online world to their tune. If you remember the browser wars of that era, you’ll have tales of incompatibilities seemingly baked in on purpose to break the chances of an open Web, and we were all poorer for it. Writing Javascript with a range of sections to deal with the quirks of different browser families is now largely a thing of the past, and for that you have the people who stuck with Firefox in the 2000s to thank.
The fear is that here in 2025 we are in an analogous situation to the early 2000s, with Google replacing Microsoft. Such is the dominance of Google Chrome and the WebKit-derived Blink engine which powers it, that in effect, Google have immense power to shape the Web just as Microsoft did back in the day. Do you trust them to live up to their now-retired mission statement and not be evil? We can’t say we do. Thus Firefox’s Gecko browser engine is of crucial importance, representing as it does the only any-way serious challenger to Blink and WebKit’s near-monopoly. That it is now tied to a Mozilla leadership treating it in so cavalier a manner does not bode well for the future of the Web.
So I’ve set out my stand here, that after twenty-three years, I’m ready to abandon Firefox. It’s not a decision that has been easy, because it’s important for all of us that there be a plurality of browsers, but such is the direction being taken by Mozilla that I am not anxious to sit idly by and constantly keep an eye out for new hidden privacy and AI features to turn off with obscure checkboxes. In the following piece I’ll take a look at my hunt for alternatives, and you may be surprised by the one I eventually picked.
Firefox still supports uBlock Origin, Chrome does NOT. I have switched to Firefox.
Exactly, our rights are being eroded day by day and Chrome based browsers have done my dirty. Firefox still allows for privacy, even if I have to spend 5 minutes unclicking all of the sponsored and invasive reporting crap…that part irritates me a lot. As for AI, I wholheartedly embrace our AI overlords and look to ways to make my life easier to manage and data easier to find. Google search isn’t what it used to be, direct searches do not surface exact matches anymore, and the first page is often just sponsored crap. The lack of advertising, sponsored links, and “look at me, eyeballs” in ChatGPT has made it one of my first lines for internet searching.
This is why I moved to opera, it’s chromium based so has the advantages of webgpu support (firefox only just got this in July I think)
But at the same time still has support for uBlock Origin / is more resistant to removing the older plugin api
i was happy with chrome and then google started being evil so im back on firefox as well. i dont like change. its why i still design my 3d prints in an old version of 3dsmax, why i still haven’t switched to linux or updated windows. i have no reason to change browsers at this juncture.
+1, desktop and android
Ublock is great, keeps Amazon off my search results.
I consider two things essential for the web today – ublock origin, and Dark Reader (forces dark mode on sites).
When chrome started becoming questionable, I moved to Opera, which uses chrome’s core. However chrome went after ad blockers by altering how chrome’s core worked, and browsers based on it would follow suit. At the time, Opera would not give an answer on whether it keep chrome’s anti-ad block.
So I moved to firefox which has its own core, and allowed adblockers.
But likely many companies, Firebox is now having AI shoved everywhere it is not needed.
I certainly don’t blame anyone for switching but there are forks that remove such things.
I’ve been using Librewolf for many years now and will continue to. I still prefer Firefox but for me a fork that removes the things I don’t want/need has been and continues to be the answer.
It would have been nice to include in the article which non-Firefox, non-Chrome based web browser Jenny settled on this November that’s she’s finally fully parted from Firefox.
https://brave.com/ maybe.
We’ll have to wait for the next episode to find out.
Brave is Chromium-based and, while it is rather good at privacy, you should also know that its leadership is politically problematic.
It’s Hackaday’s version of the cliffhanger, so you have to tune in again next week. I was thinking the same thing… click-bait article.
Not really. Click-bait would be having some kind of sensational claim in the headline, causing you to want to click on the article itself. The article is usually rather un-sensational at that point.
Clearly, here, the title states what the article is about, and that it is Part One, thus implying that there will be a Part Two.
You don’t have to “tune in” again next week at all. Unless you are eagerly awaiting the second part of the story, in which case you will get what is promised. If you are disappointed you can get a refund of your subscription fee at any time.
I only keep portable Ungoogled Chromium for one of those edge cases where site refuses to work in Firefox. For everything else I can’t imagine web without uBlock Origin. Google and their Manifest can fill their filthy asses with expanding AB foam.
To be honest… I very rarely run into a website that doesn’t work on Firefox… Usually the site itself is just a ‘modern web experience’ and is generally terrible and broken no matter what device or browser I try.
….friggin…. looking at you Home Depot…. >:(
ui design is lostech.
I run into it a shocking amount. Probably about once a month. I’ve been forced to use chromium browsers to sign up for benefits.
Firefox 140.0 ESR on Fedora 29 KDE. No problems with Home Depot.
I tried uBlock Origin a year or 2 ago. Initial setup was too daunting; I gave up after a few hours. I use NoScript, which is a nuisance but effective enough.
After using it for more than two decades, nothing saddens me more than Firefox’s demise but the truth is, Mozilla embracing the worst side of AI now is hardly relevant at this point. Firefox turned back on developers when they replaced powerful XUL extensions with what essentially was a copy of Chrome’s crippled web extensions. And then again when they made signatures obligatory to run extensions on anything but nightly or unbranded releases, forcing people to use AMO whether they wanted or not.
Mozilla ignored thousands of complaints, even those coming from the devs of the most downloaded extensions. They replaced freedom with restrictions in the name of “security,” much like Apple or Microsoft, and using the same excuse, too. I guess it was unavoidable they’d abandon everything they ever stood for when most of their income comes from Google.
You raise fair points, but just to put the record straight, Firefox does not force anyone to use AMO – if your extension is signed you can distribute it anyway you’d like and it can be permanently installed on the release version.
And talk about replacing ‘freedom with restrictions in the name of “security”‘, remind me again which browser unilaterally came up with the MV3 spec and forced it down everyone’s throat, and which one committed to continuing to support MV2 in response to complaints.
Mozilla may not be perfect but if the alternative is to just cede the internet to the whims of a corporation that literally chose to abandon its pledge to not be evil, I for one will gladly stick with Firefox.
the problem is everyone in tech is embracing ai and few are giving us an option to turn it off.
airgap all the things. id like to see people start making operating systems and software that works well in an internet free environment. id like to see it become a major movement frankly.
I still prefer Firefox developer’s tools over chrome. It makes it easier to pull content out of sites that do not want you to.
There are a few reasons why Firefox’s market share fallen:
– lack of marketing, when was the last time you seen an ad for firefox (not their whatever service, but firefox itself as a browser)?
– their management trying to steal every last cent to themselves, just look at how their leadership’s payroll increased tenfold in a few years
– abysmal speed in the mid 2010s compared to webkit/blink based browsers (luckily they overcome this)
– lack of innovation (just look at chrome with their recent webusb/webserial or even webmidi), Mozilla is not driving the web standards forward anymore
– no competitor to electron/nodejs (as much as I hate both)
– random VPN / share / AI / junk services nobody needs, a browser should be a browser
– giving up control over (or abandoning) profitable IP (RUST) (not to mention the servo project)
– not to mention how they shoot themselves in the foot with the removal of NPAPI
Firefox is in a downward spiral, less and less websites support it, thus less and less users it can get/retain, thus less marketshare, thus less and less websites support it …
The only reason it lives is because Google’s support. But that was under attack not too long ago.
Chrome obviously have the bigget market share as Google allready from day one where able to push Chrome both through their websites and as an ad in installers.
But, I wonder how correct the numbers are, taking into account all the nerds using Firefox but have set the user-agent to Chrome to get a better experience on Googles websites. I do use Firefox, but haven’t changed user-agent myself.
Firefox itself is imho still alive but no longer well, it’s Mozilla that’s rotten to the core and that rot has now spread to Firefox. Unfortunately Mozilla has been rotten for decades now and I doubt we can turn things around. The management has been lining their pockets with easy money from Google’s “we’re not a monopoly if we keep the other guy alive” payments to Mozilla and doing absolutely nothing with it. Firefox should be the main product and raison d’être for Mozilla, but when you look at what Mozilla does and how it advertises itself, Firefox seems to be mostly a footnote.
Brother, I hear you.
In addition to all the other complaints, I’ve noticed several trends over the years that make firefox less and less attractive.
They went from an inviting, warm color scheme (oranges and reds) to icy cold. Everything is now steel grey or icy blue, every time I use the product I want to scoot up next to the radiator.
Setting the browser to reload the pages on restart is a complete PITA. By default it wants to use local cached pages, which doesn’t work out for sites like Hackaday or the national weather service (or any news feed, or Slashdot). Then there’s “delayed load” which will only reload the tab when you bring it forward, because I totally want to do nothing for 10-15 seconds while each page loads, instead of having everything loaded in the background and ready for me when I want it.
(Note: That last bit might be better now, I only upgrade firefox every compile of years and haven’t looked at it recently.)
Then it changed the extensions API and several of my favorite ones no longer work.
You can no longer have a custom start page local to your computer, with links for things you frequently need, you can have an extension for that but it’s locked down so that the extension can’t blank the address bar and can’t put the actual location of the file in the address bar and can’t open the page with that address “selected”. And other things that made certain extensions very useful.
They got rid of the search field and use the address bar as both address and search, because whenever I typo an address I want to google search what I typed instead of showing an error.
(But you can put the search field back with an extension, but if you do that the address bar still does searches.)
I don’t upgrade mozilla on a regular basis, for the simple reason that I don’t want to spend 2 hours trying to find every obscure about:config setting needed to put the broswer back into the mode I’m used to. I do that once, about every 2 years or so.
I’m about ready to dump firefox and try something else.
WTF is this guy talking about? what AI?
Using debian package, see no AI. Mac and Windows users have already lost, so it doesn’t really matter what they use.
When Chrome first came out it was just faster than Firefox. I switched to it until Google started making me uncomfortable about a decade ago, and only go back to ungoogled chromium (like others said) when a website won’t work with anything else. Even if Google didn’t make me Squamish, I’d stick with Firefox over chromiums because of the Manifest v3 stuff hamstringing adblockers.
Looking forward to the next installment.
I use Firefox home (Linux) and work (Windoze). I guess I don’t see problems here. I use the stock one with no extensions except those for blocking (ublock origin, adblocker). Browsing seems no different than in years past. Pulls up webpages, stores my bookmarks. Plays videos. Best part is it still allows a MENU bar. Yesss. Nothing is missing. It just works. No thought of having to ‘move’ to another browser.
Other customization is to default to duckduckgo for searches. But that is it.
I was a firefox user for a long time. Their updates seem to be frequent and obstructive to smooth use but that wasn’t the deal breaker. After an update it no longer kept me logged in to Youtube. I didn’t want to keep logging in as I go there more than once a day. So I switched to Edge. Wouldn’t use Chrome I tried years back and wasn’t impressed. Beats me how Microsoft got anti-trust over Windows and IE but google flips by with Android and Chrome. Didn’t want to but I could not find a solution for the login problem.