Is Firefox Failing?

An incredibly shrinking Firefox faces endangered species status

In the last 12 months, Firefox's user share -- an estimate of the portion of all those who reach the Internet via a desktop browser -- has plummeted by 34%. Since Firefox crested at 25.1% in April 2010, Firefox has lost 13.5 percentage points, or 54% of its peak share.

At Firefox's 12-month average rate of decline, Mozilla's desktop browser will slip under the 10% bar in June, joining other third-tier applications like Apple's Safari (with just a 4.8% user share in February) and Opera Software's Opera (1.1%). If the trend continues, Firefox on the desktop could drop below 8% as soon as October.

The numbers for Firefox were even worse when both the desktop and mobile data are combined.

Firefox's total user share -- an amalgamation of desktop and mobile -- was 9.5% for February, its lowest level since Computerworld began tracking the metric nearly six years ago, and 3.4 percentage points lower than in July 2014, the last time Computerworld analyzed the data.

Browsers come and go. Anybody remember Netscape? Heck, I even made a little money on it's IPO. Sure glad I didn't hold onto it.

I switched away from Firefox to Chrome last year, for the most part. While I still have Firefox loaded, and use it rarely, mostly because it was starting to be balky, particularly when flash players were involved. But the final push was this:

After Eich resigns, conservatives slam Mozilla—and call for boycott

Media coverage of Mozilla and its Firefox Web browser over the past week has largely focused on new CEO Brendan Eich and his 2008 opposition to gay marriage (in the form of a $1,000 donation to California's Prop 8 campaign). Yesterday, Eich resigned from Mozilla, and Mozilla has had plenty of support for letting Eich leave.

I don't care a damn about Mozilla's support for gay marriage, but I damn well care about whether they discriminate against people based on their political opinions.