Firefox is the default web browser installed on most Linux distributions. It is a well-known browser by Mozilla that respects user privacy by design, and
A Mozilla poll on Mastodon seen today (by a tech person with 1.5k followers), more than 1k people. Conclusion : Fediverse needs more variety of people :-)
On a more serious note, I think that too many people still have some trust in “do no evil” Google, so people don’t bother with anything else than the default Google Chrome on their Android phones, or find Firefox too slow on mobile. And on Chromebooks there is little choice for non tech users.
I think that too many people still have some trust in “do no evil” Google, so people don’t bother with anything else than the default Google Chrome on their Android phones, or find Firefox too slow on mobile.
Most tech consumers don’t give two shits about things like ethics of a company, or privacy, or things like that. Also, it’s been shown that Google intentionally hampers their site on Firefox (because when you spoof the user agent to say Chrome without changing anything else it magically works fine), and many large sites not only don’t bother to validate web apps for Firefox, they straight up prevent it from running (again, usually until you spoof the user agent). People with a good grasp on tech will look at this and realize what’s actually happening, but to the average person that uses technology but doesn’t necessarily understand technology, and probably have no idea what a user agent is or how it can be changed, this just looks like Firefox is inferior technologically to Chrome, so they use Chrome thinking it’s intrinsically better.
I agree on your “don’t give 2 shits” observation. Many people I know don’t even use Chrome but the - still much worse - Samsung browser, and saying that FF is better functionally, speedier, etc. and only takes a second to install doesn’t help. They just don’t care. Same with ad-blockers: “You can have an ad-free internet, and all sites load must faster!” --> Reaction: “Meh… [shrug]”.
On the whole I never encounter sites that break significantly, let alone don’t run at all. Maybe I’m just lucky then :)
A lot of the more “advanced” web apps don’t “support” Firefox (though Firefox can usually run them with a user agent spoof). The browser version of Skype for example.
A Mozilla poll on Mastodon seen today (by a tech person with 1.5k followers), more than 1k people. Conclusion : Fediverse needs more variety of people :-) On a more serious note, I think that too many people still have some trust in “do no evil” Google, so people don’t bother with anything else than the default Google Chrome on their Android phones, or find Firefox too slow on mobile. And on Chromebooks there is little choice for non tech users.
Most tech consumers don’t give two shits about things like ethics of a company, or privacy, or things like that. Also, it’s been shown that Google intentionally hampers their site on Firefox (because when you spoof the user agent to say Chrome without changing anything else it magically works fine), and many large sites not only don’t bother to validate web apps for Firefox, they straight up prevent it from running (again, usually until you spoof the user agent). People with a good grasp on tech will look at this and realize what’s actually happening, but to the average person that uses technology but doesn’t necessarily understand technology, and probably have no idea what a user agent is or how it can be changed, this just looks like Firefox is inferior technologically to Chrome, so they use Chrome thinking it’s intrinsically better.
I agree on your “don’t give 2 shits” observation. Many people I know don’t even use Chrome but the - still much worse - Samsung browser, and saying that FF is better functionally, speedier, etc. and only takes a second to install doesn’t help. They just don’t care. Same with ad-blockers: “You can have an ad-free internet, and all sites load must faster!” --> Reaction: “Meh… [shrug]”.
On the whole I never encounter sites that break significantly, let alone don’t run at all. Maybe I’m just lucky then :)
A lot of the more “advanced” web apps don’t “support” Firefox (though Firefox can usually run them with a user agent spoof). The browser version of Skype for example.