Firefox is dead to me – and I'm not the only one who is fed up
- Reference: 1750159627
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2025/06/17/opinion_column_firefox/
- Source link:
Let me count the ways. Back in February, Mozilla changed [1]Firefox's Terms of Use and Privacy Notice for the worse . Mozilla removed a longstanding FAQ promise – "Nope. Never have, never will" – regarding the sale of your personal data to replace it with a less definitive pledge to "protect your personal information." Would it surprise you to know that a few weeks later, Mozilla announced that [2]AI would be its top priority in 2025 ? I note that this was listed above privacy.
Good luck with that AI move. Honestly, Mozilla, what the heck are you doing playing with AI, anyway? You don't have the resources to even sit down at the table, never mind be an AI winner. Those tens of millions you're betting on AI would be better spent improving Firefox or keeping your useful Firefox sideline programs, [3]Pocket and Fakespot , alive.
[4]
Pocket is a helpful program that many people I know use to keep "read-it-later" web content easily at hand. Mozilla claims it is killing that off because the ways "people use the web have evolved, so we're channeling our resources into projects that better match their browsing habits and online needs."
[5]
[6]
Tell that to the loyal Pocket users. As one Redditor [7]wrote , "I'm grieving. I used this feature nearly every day and loved the Kobo integration that allowed me to read saved articles distraction-free on my Kobo e-ink devices. It's the end of an era." Not everyone would rather watch TikTok videos all day. Some of us still like to read.
As for Fakespot, this was – believe it or not – a useful AI program. You could use this tool from Firefox to figure out if an online review was a real one. With fake reviews showing up more than ever, thanks to AI, I would have thought this would have been a great program to keep around. But, no, Mozilla didn't want to invest in their one successful AI service.
[8]
Go figure.
As for Firefox itself, users are reporting a [9]growing number of technical problems that have eroded the browser's reputation for reliability. In particular, even longtime users are reporting that more and more mainstream websites, such as Instagram, Salesforce, LinkedIn, and WhatsApp Web, either fail to load or function poorly in recent Firefox releases. In particular, Firefox seems to be having more trouble than ever rendering JavaScript-heavy sites. Like it or not, many popular sites live and die with JavaScript these days.
Users have observed that Firefox is slower than competitors like Chrome. Some people are reporting that the browser is running up to 30 percent slower. Issues such as high idle memory usage (2–4 GB with a single tab open), frequent freezes when restoring from a minimized state, and unexplained crashes have become common complaints, even on high-end hardware.
[10]
As my fellow Linux and open source journalist buddy Jack Wallen recently [11]wrote , "What was once a blazing-fast browser on Linux has become doggedly slow. On top of that, features started to disappear (such as Do Not Track). As well, the development team seems to be ignoring the fact that every browser on the market has moved ahead of Firefox with regards to Tab Management."
Thinking of Linux, traditionally a Firefox stronghold, Mozilla's handling of Snap and Flatpak packaging has been second-rate. The Snap version, in particular, is described as particularly [12]slow and buggy .
Also, second-rate and downright sloppy was how Mozilla fouled up in March with its lame announcement that an essential root certificate that Firefox used to verify add-ons, DRM content, and browser features would [13]expire shortly . Because Mozilla didn't deal with the issue, users had only two days to update their browsers before losing access to essential add-ons and secure content. Without this update, all add-ons would automatically be disabled, and DRM-protected content would stop playing.
Is this great or what?
[14]Some signs of AI model collapse begin to reveal themselves
[15]If Google is forced to give up Chrome, what happens next?
[16]Hey programmers – is AI making us dumber?
[17]Guide for the perplexed – Google is no longer the best search engine
Mozilla has also been laying off more and more employees. The latest cut came in May when the company let [18]another 5 percent of its staffers go . Only 17 percent of Mozilla employees approve of CEO Laura Chambers, according to Glassdoor.
Also of note is that Mozilla CFO Eric Muhlheim recently admitted [19]Mozilla depends on Google for 90 percent of its revenue . Yeah, all of you who still think Mozilla and Firefox are free and independent of evil old Google, wake up. That hasn't been the case for ages. If the [20]US Department of Justice is successful in breaking up Google and Chrome , Muhlheim admitted, it's game over for Firefox. The web browser would start a "downward spiral" that could put "Firefox out of business."
Would anyone even notice, though? According to the US federal government's Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which provides us with a running count of the [21]last 90 days of US government website visits , Firefox only has 1.9 percent of the web browser market.
I used to be a Firefox true believer. That was a long time ago. Today, I feel like you can stick a fork in Firefox. It's done. ®
Get our [22]Tech Resources
[1] https://www.theregister.com/2025/03/02/mozilla_introduces_terms_of_use/
[2] https://blog.mozilla.org/netpolicy/2025/03/27/mozilla-shares-2025-policy-priorities-and-recommendations-for-creating-an-internet-where-everyone-can-thrive/
[3] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/28/firefox_139/
[4] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2aFGRGgc8t1J129q8gPY5hwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[5] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aFGRGgc8t1J129q8gPY5hwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[6] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aFGRGgc8t1J129q8gPY5hwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[7] https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1ksvmgs/mozilla_pocket_is_shutting_down_in_july_export/
[8] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44aFGRGgc8t1J129q8gPY5hwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[9] https://connect.mozilla.org/t5/discussions/main-websites-do-not-work-on-ff-updated-january-2025/m-p/83689
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_software/front&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=3&c=33aFGRGgc8t1J129q8gPY5hwAAAJg&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D3%26raptor%3Deagle%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[11] https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-im-moving-away-from-firefox-and-firefox-based-browsers/
[12] https://www.reddit.com/r/Ubuntu/comments/1jdm1v5/firefox_snap_version_causes_systemwide/
[13] https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/root-certificate-expiration
[14] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/27/opinion_column_ai_model_collapse/
[15] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/opinion_column_google_chrome_potential_divestiture/
[16] https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/21/opinion_ai_dumber/
[17] https://www.theregister.com/2024/12/16/opinion_column_perplexity_vs_google/
[18] https://www.reddit.com/r/Layoffs/comments/1knmh9c/rip_firefox_yet_another_round_of_layoffs_at/
[19] https://www.theverge.com/news/660548/firefox-google-search-revenue-share-doj-antitrust-remedies
[20] https://www.theregister.com/2025/05/09/opinion_column_google_chrome_potential_divestiture/
[21] https://analytics.usa.gov/
[22] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: OK, but what now?
I agree. It’s bloody depressing.
I’m fed up of once-good software slowly turning to sewage until it gets to the point where it’s unusable and eventually dies. Usually because successive heads decide that it needs “improving”.
Wild horses wouldn’t drag me to use chrome. Problem is, as you point out, what else is there?
I hate this industry sometimes
Re: OK, but what now?
Vivaldi is my browser of choice (yes, I know -but?). However, sometimes I don't have a choice. Vivaldi cannot sense some vital hotel login screens to get wifi access in. Firefox does so I can get in and able to revert to Vivaldi.
Similarly some poorly designed online systems will not work properly with Vivaldi. So FF is the solution. Bad news for FF is my use is very, very limited so monetising me is pointless. The bad news for Vivaldi is that if FF was not there I would probably have to swop to one of the poorer Chromium clones.
Re: OK, but what now?
The problem with Vivaldi is that it would breach our software procurement policy.
Re: OK, but what now?
As Cory Doctorow put it "enshittification"
Re: OK, but what now?
IE6?
Re: OK, but what now?
It's time for a comprehensive review of browsers available to Linux.
Of particular interest to me are browsers capable of supporting powerful add-on software enabling an advertisement-free experience, cloaking, versatile viewing and saving of video content, means to civilise the likes of YouTube, control over cookies and scripts, easy organisation of bookmarks, flexible home page layout and choice of default search engines, and full control over linking among devices, with complete independence from Google, Microsoft, and similar entities. In essence, a browser like Firefox once aspired to be .
Re: OK, but what now?
That’s the biggie for me. FF has a massive array of plugins. I actually don’’t care much about what the basic browser is (as long as it’s not chrome); it’s the plugins that are the real value and will be very difficult to replace. Especially the ones that make the web half useful by keeping the shite out
Re: OK, but what now?
And me, my VPN extension runs in the browser rather than the OS and I much prefer it that way.
As it is Linux on ARM, there isn't an alternative that does this for me. I could start running the VPN client on the OS I suppose. But FF is working OK at the moment.
Re: OK, but what now?
Waterfox ?
Re: OK, but what now?
Presumably that question will be answered when El Reg publishes the missing second half of the article.
Re: OK, but what now?
https://ladybird.org/
But no where near "ready" yet.
What non Blink alternatives are there though? Safari?
Firefox stopped caring about the quality of their software the moment they forced out Brendan Eich. But there is no real alternative that doesn't give full control of web standards over to Google.
Same here. I choose between the lesser of two evils.
So it's a case of Firefox being the worst browser that we know of... except for all the others.
Fork it
Are any of the Firefox forks still maintained? I tend to only use Firefox for UBlock Origin but the browser hasn't been pleasant of late.
Re: Fork it
Yep. I use LibreWolf. There’s also a GNU one that strips out all the crap that Moz has added over the years - can’t remember the name now but they don’t make binaries so you have to build it yourself and life isn’t long enough to try that
Re: Fork it
I have started using the Zen browser, which is a fork with a different UI and eliminates the "call home" functions of Firefox. I am liking it so far.
Re: Fork it
Waterfox, simply because they still allow change of search engine in search box.
Re: Fork it
I use LibreWolf on Linux, Waterfox on Mac. Both support uBlock Origin.
Re: Fork it
Mullvad.
Re: Fork it
There is Waterfox, which is privacy-focused. They didn't remove the Mozilla account stuff, so you can still use your account to move bookmarks/extensions/etc.
Works just as good as FF.
Do they have the means to survive?
Most of their budget is currently coming from Google for having Google as default search engine. The way the antitrust lawsuit is going, Google will not be allowed anymore to pay them for that. Even assuming it's possible to maintain a fast browser with good features on a tiny budget, it's much harder when you have been used to a steady source of income. I don't know the internal details, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're desperate to find solutions.
Re: Do they have the means to survive?
I thought Mozilla Corp had 400 million sitting in the bank that they hadn't spent, from Google? Assuming the Google deal ends in the next few years, that should be enough to develop enhancements and features (or just bring the old ones back!) to make a browser good enough that she people will pay for it, surely?! Perhaps the EU will chip in wanting something properly open. Any sensible corporation or startup should see $20/year/user to avoid Google (or MS) knowing what all their employees are doing as money well spent.
Re: Do they have the means to survive?
Nowhere near enough people will pay for a browser app to cover the cost of keeping Mozilla Corp. afloat in it's current state, especially when there's no end of free alternatives out there. Look at their current market share - it would collapse further the moment they so much as hint at a freemium model. Donations wouldn't come close to addressing their financial needs either, and we've all seen just how well their other efforts to monetise the browser are going. The only viable future I can see for Firefox is for Mozilla Corp. to give up on their ambitions of becoming a major player in the tech industry, let most of their staff go, and transition to being a nonprofit conservancy that stewards the project as an open-source community-driven initiative. Otherwise, they'll at best continue to fade out into obscurity until they go bust, and likely get picked up by someone at a bargain rate. If that happens, I just hope whoever buys them is committed to the original vision of maintaining a viable alternative to the Google monopoly on standards and continuing to drive the development of an open web.
They keep removing features. When was the last time they added one?
Firefox. It's awash with Mozilla developer stupidity
I think that the real Firefox developers have left the house. The only "developers" left are the resume-padding "look ma! imma firefox developer!!" losers. They remove features because it's beyond their ability to add new ones. How else do you explain things like removing working useful features like the tabs preferences for absolutely no reason?
They've removed:
* Ability to turn off javascript
* Ability to not use tabs
* Activity indicator
* User profile manager
* Tab groups
* The ability to disable cookies
* Fine-grained cookie management ("accept/deny this cookie" dialogs)
* Sound (now PulseAudio only, no ALSA)
* RSS reader
* "Save tabs and quit"
* Ability to export history
* FTP
Re: They keep removing features. When was the last time they added one?
They've removed:
* Ability to turn off javascript
Available in a plugin like Noscript
* Ability to not use tabs
??? Eh? Just don't use them if you don't want to
* User profile manager
Still there.
* Tab groups
Still there,
* The ability to disable cookies
Still there.
* Fine-grained cookie management ("accept/deny this cookie" dialogs)
That's pretty clumsy. You can choose in advance which sort of cookies to allow or deny.
* RSS reader
Plugins are available
* "Save tabs and quit"
Your tabs are saved when you quit.
* Ability to export history
Plugins to do this.
* FTP
It's 2025. No one should be using FTP. No one.
Re: They keep removing features. When was the last time they added one?
RSS and script-blocking add-ons are the main reason I stick with firefox. The "Brief" RSS add-on is the best RSS reader (for me and my needs) I've ever used.
Re: They keep removing features. When was the last time they added one?
I don't know when it happened, but ALSA support is back. I previously used Chromium for streaming radio on my "music server" (a Pi 4) but after an update, sound was dropping out regularly. I installed Firefox ESR and it works perfectly.
(I use Vivaldi on the desktop PC for everyday browsing, Librewolf in a virtual machine for banking, and Chromium with previous data wiped when a site won't work with ads and scripts blocked.)
Re: They keep removing features. When was the last time they added one?
They did just put tab groups back again very recently, after removing it 9 years ago.
I'll quit firefox
on the day Ublock Origin stops blocking all ads.
Re: I'll quit firefox
This.
FF has a whole raft of compatible ad and tracking blockers that can be used all at the same time. No other browser does this.
Is it tedious and takes lots of time to set up for your personal preferences? Yes, but that's the fault of websites having all that shite to begin with. Don't blame FF for shitastic website design.
Re: I'll quit firefox
And that is largely why I've used it for the last 20yr or so. I suspect losing ad blockers will mean I laregly stop using the internet. You forget what a useless mess it is without blockers, a window with fly posters 60 layers deep.
Since it's the only browser that still supports a full uBlock Origin (rather than the mostly nobbled version in Chrome\Edge\etc) that's more than enough reason to stay.
FF is the perfect example why corporate America kills everything.
Soo much greed, for the last extra 1% when they didnt need to try and grab it. Just ask Trump he is trying to save i dont know what, but its a small amount, and has just destroyed the American economy.
I gave up on Firefox nearly 10 years ago when it couldn't be used to view content at several Canadian media sites; it gets rejected as an "unsupported browser."
Plus I find Chrome has better support for debugging/development.
That's a problem with the site, not the browser.
Sure, but if you need those sites, whatcha gonna do?
Most people are pragmatic; they'd rather use the tools they need, not something that may have better ethics but fails at important things.
We need a "shrug" icon.
We need a "shrug" icon.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
unsupported browser
I used to get that with Opera (the real one, not the Chrome reskin). It was never Opera's fault; those messages came from the web sites themselves. And it was never even sensible -- a bit of browser UA spoofing usually ended with a fully functioning experience. It's just lazy and/or stupid web coders. Opera coped by making spoofing/cloaking easy to do. Firefox, being a direct descendant of the granddaddy of commercial browsers, shouldn't have to.
-A.
Re: unsupported browser
Yeah.. Some of us are old enough to remember "This site works best in Internet Explorer 6".
I also remember the obnoxious "This site doesn't run in your old browser. You need to upgrade to IE6" - even though I was running a more modern and capable browser at the time.
Seeing that on sites I was planning on buying stuff from lost them a customer (and sometimes got a snotty complaint email/feedback - I was young and naive)
We need an "old fart" icon. I guess this is closest, but I'm not a windows user!
Re: unsupported browser
Don't blame me, windows user downvoter!
[quote="The Register Source Code"]
[/quote]
I left in 2021, after almos 19 yeras using it. The shitty "proton" interface and, above all, the unwillingness of Mozilla to listen to feedback (along with many other issues) made me show them the finger. I'll celebrate the day Mozilla disappears for good.
Like others, for me it's the ONLY browser that still has addons that block everything I most revile about what the Internet has become.
And it can and is fully forked (I switched to Waterfox quite some time ago).
So far, the long list of addons still work. They probably slow down my browsing even more so than un-modded FF vs Chrome or Edge, but I don't care. From tracking and ad blockers to DDG mods that let me locally block entire domains from search results. Heck, a quick glance shows me that half of my addons are just to make Youtube tolerable! From filtering sponsor blocks to stopping autoplay to preventing those annoying "are you still there?" because I run binaural sound channels for hours on time while coding.
Those times when FF is now broken enough that I have to use Chrome or Edge, traffic is routed through Pi-Hole, but a DNS black hole is simply not the same thing. I just want to smash my monitor because of how bad the experience is then.
So, no, FF is not quite yet done. But they're trying their hardest, it seems.
Vivaldi
Fellow developers always seem surprised when I tell them I don't use Firefox. It's not that I fell out of love with it sooner, I never really fell in love with it in the first place. I get fed up with Internet Explorer back in 2000 and jumped ship to Opera way before Firefox was even a thing. I did feel adrift in the final days of classic Opera when it failed to keep pace, and they then took a long time to deliver its rather lacklustre Chromium-based reincarnation on Linux. I did look elsewhere, briefly at Otter, but it was still in its infancy, and at Firefox, but it didn't appeal. If I remember correctly, it still didn't handle dark desktop themes well, which was the case for a very long time. If it had, I might have stayed. Fortunately, I was saved just in time by the arrival of Vivaldi. Yes, I'm sure many of you will be all too quick to point out that it is also Chromium-based, but it doesn't feel like it, and it doesn't come with the usual spyware baggage. The Vivaldi team, being a continuation of the original Opera team, have always been strong on this point and have earned my trust over these long years,
Re: Vivaldi
Vivaldi is also my choice.
It's reasonably private.
It's reasonably secure.
It's reasonably fast.
It's reasonably free of annoyances.
It's very customisable.
It's very stable.
That combination of reasonables and verys is good enough for me.
I used Firefox (and Waterfox) for years but as others are also pointing out, it's just got worse and worse as the version numbers have increased, and its forks are no better.
I may be a developer but I don't really care what engine my browser uses; I actually want to forget there's even a browser between me and the website I'm using, and Vivaldi gets me closer to that nirvana than other browsers.
Firefox, once a ground breaking browser
Back in the day, Firefox was a ground breaking browser. Like many in tech, I became an early adopter and evangelist to those around me. After Firefox version 3.6+, t seems to me users began to enter into an abusive relationship with Mozilla. Then, after too many years of living with Mozilla's constant bad decisions, the last straw for me was about five years ago when Mozilla's cert for addons went bad. It was on that day I switched to a Chromium clone.
Re: Firefox, once a ground breaking browser
Time to switch back,
Chrome anything is not your friend.
Sure it has flaws...
Our company has spent the last 15 years developing an independent HTML+CSS rendering engine (for print), and as part of this we've run tens of thousands of different tests on different browsers - the web-platform-tests, and our own.
For CSS, in general, our assessment is that where the browsers differ, Firefox is usually correct.
CSS is only a small part of the web browsing experience, and for bells and whistls and UI there will be other thiings to look for. But recently I was helping someone debug a website which was failing in firefox, and the fault was they had done something invalid that Chrome should have been rejecting, but wasn't. Specifically: element.style.height = "10" is invalid, Firefox rejects it but Chrome accepts it as "10px".
So be very, very careful with your "this site fails on Firefox" complaints, because we've been down this road before: 25 years ago it was Microsoft playing fast and loose with the rules, not Google.
Re: Sure it has flaws...
Unfortunately Windows has such a hold on the market that "correct" essentially means "works with Edge". Something may not technically comply with a CSS standard, but given a choice between "works with Edge" and "follows the standard" most people will take the former.
OK, but what now?
Chrome? Really? Like, really?
Oh, chromium... Really?
Edge? Ah, no, that's chromium again.
Opera? Brave? Nope, chromium again.
What is left?
Epiphany GnomeWeb (AFAIK this is Webkit-based)? If Gnome wasn't married to systemd...
So... What now?