Firefox is bleeding users — 46 million lost in three years

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Mozilla's Firefox, the once prevalent internet browser, has reportedly lost 46 million users over the by three years. The likely culprits are the lack of significant updates and the overwhelming popularity of browsers like Google Chrome. Fifty-fifty Microsoft was making this challenging for Mozilla, coercing users to apply Border, before changing its mind subsequently much public outcry.

The website Itsfoss.com was showtime to break the news afterward examining Firefox'southward Pubic Engagement Study. In the study, information technology shows a steady refuse that spanned the grade of three years. At the finish of 2018, Firefox had over 244 one thousand thousand active users. Fast frontward to 2021 and there's only 198 one thousand thousand agile users left. That's a meaning drop in a short amount of fourth dimension.

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Firefox wasn't e'er struggling to maintain users. At one betoken, it competed with the likes of Internet Explorer, which was male monarch in the early 2000s. Back in 2008, Firefox accounted for around 30% of all browser usage. That was of grade earlier Google'south Chrome was on solid footing.

Nowadays, Chrome towers over other desktop and mobile browsers with its 65% market share. This is partly because of Google'south constant updates and dominance on Android devices. It's also because both Firefox and Microsoft's new Edge browser can't seem to evolve chop-chop enough to compete. Although, Edge is at present Chromium based, so information technology'south closer to Chrome.

Mozilla'southward Firefox won't disappear overnight. Information technology still has a big number of users, and it'due south the default browser for Linux users. And of grade, not all users are pleased with Chrome, which is even so a memory hog. That said, if this downward spiral continues, information technology could spell trouble for Firefox, which makes 94% of its revenue from royalties earned through web browser search partnerships.

Essentially, the more users Firefox loses, the less money it makes. Before this year, Mozilla did see a radical redesign, and has doubled-down on password security and VPN features. Mozilla is nevertheless a low-cal browser overall, and the addition of features could help it meliorate compete with Google Chrome, but if this down tendency continues it could spell doom for Firefox.