this post was submitted on 16 Dec 2025
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How about you make it something people have to turn on, and make it useful enough that they will enable it?
Or, better yet, step down as CEO. Pick someone who is in touch with what the project's dedicated userbase actually wants.
a userbase that is largely shrinking?
Most of the "abandon Firefox" rhetoric I've seen is due to their sudden focus on cramming in AI while simultaneously ignoring or half-assing long wanted features (e.g PWA support).
And to think that shoving in AI will fix any pre-existing userbase shrinkage is like thinking having a baby will save one's failing marriage.
it’s been shrinking for well over 10 years, nothing to do with ai
Last data I saw showed user base pretty flat for the past 5 years.
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1mhks3h/firefoxs_weekly_active_users_fall_below_150/
https://data.firefox.com/dashboard/user-activity
230,000,000 in 2021 204,000,000 in 2025
I don't go to the website you linked to. Sorry.
no problems, what's Chromes userbase by comparison?
Kind of a change of subject, and I'm too lazy to open a tab and look. I'd guess about 1,000x more?
Also you missed that they changed the definition recently, because you don't visit the other site (fair enough):
https://www.reddit.com/r/firefox/comments/1p7k50p/firefox_monthly_active_users_increased_by_about/
So the real usage is actually closer to 150 million, or 70 million less users in 7 years, or roughly 10 million a year
So like I said, nothing to do with AI, it's pretty clear them avoiding AI is doing fuck all, it's not increasing their user share with other users looking to get away from AI and it's not stopping users from leaving.
Gee, our userbase is shrinking. What should we do? learn what the users want and cater to their needs? No, definitely what we must do is double down and force more unpopular features. That will surely bring back the users that left because of our previous decisions.
/s
Does that include those who have switched to a Firefox fork like Librewolf?
Those who use Firefox are more likely to be tech savvy. They're therefore more likely to be comfortable switching to a Firefox fork as well.
Firefox keeps getting worse, why would those with the know how stick with it when they can use a fork which is better?
Right, opt-in not opt-out.
Or add it to the list of onboarding steps at the very beginning. Otherwise, it's either on by default or off by default, and our (or Mozilla's) definition of "easy" is entirely open to interpretation.