Mozilla plans more major changes, too, such as a technology called WebRender that should speed up the process of painting a website as pixels on your screen. "I intend to do just that." Speed boost, compatibility hitchįirefox Quantum, version 57 of the open-source browser, is about twice as fast the version 52 that arrived in March. "We'll need to absolutely kill it for all of 2018 to see real change there," Mayo said.
Converting a download spike into a sustained increase in daily active users will take more work. Having more users on board gives Mozilla more muscle - and more money, since its main revenue source is sending our search queries to search engines like Google that pay Mozilla. For example, Mozilla has advocated for protecting website privacy with encrypted network connections and for the endangered principle of net neutrality. Mark 57, a Firefox-themed takeoff on an Iron Man suit, served as Mozilla's Quantum mascot.Īttracting more of us to Firefox is crucial to Mozilla's future and to its efforts to keep the internet healthy: useful, private, open to anyone and not dominated by individual companies. Phones, though, are where we're spending more and more of our online time. Mozilla is used by more than 100 million people daily, but most of those are on personal computers. "I'm pretty excited by the halo effect on mobile," Firefox Senior Vice President Mark Mayo said.
On Android and iOS devices, Firefox installations jumped 24 percent, Mozilla said, and installations of its privacy-centric Focus browser increased 48 percent. A total of 170 million people have installed Firefox Quantum, with millions more arriving daily.Īnd perhaps as important for the nonprofit organization, Firefox usage on mobile devices has picked up as a result - even though many of the big Quantum changes haven't yet arrived on Android-powered phones and won't arrive on iPhones because of Apple restrictions. The nonprofit has been increasing the profile of advocacy work like protecting privacy and fighting for net neutrality, but the layoff hit its core browser team.Nearly a month after releasing its new and faster Firefox Quantum browser, Mozilla says there's evidence the years-long overhaul has paid off.įirefox downloads by users of Google Chrome, the dominant web browser today, increased 44 percent compared with a year earlier, Mozilla said Tuesday. Mozilla cut a quarter of its staff in 2020, blaming a pandemic-induced cut in revenue from partners like Google that share ad revenue. Firefox remains a rarity on smartphones, where Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari are dominant. That's a lot of people, but it's less than the 300 million Firefox users Mozilla had in 2017 when it embarked on its Firefox Quantum project to speed up the browser and attract more users. Today, Firefox has 207 million active users each month, according to Mozilla's Firefox usage statistics. Firefox fights back against Google Chromeįirefox now presents your open tab as a standalone rectangular item to indicate you can drag it around.Browser privacy boost: Here are the settings to change in Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge and Brave.Mozilla cuts 25% of workforce after pandemic hits revenue.Firefox's waning fortunes reduce Mozilla's ability to steer the web in directions it likes,such as improving people's privacy and cutting how much they're tracked online. Firefox's rise was squelched with the arrival of Google Chrome, which now accounts for 64 percent of browser usage while Firefox dwindles.
And gone is the three-dot menu in the address bar, which Firefox users didn't favor, according to telemetry data Mozilla gathered through 17 billion user clicks over a month.įirefox is Mozilla's best-known project, a browser that helped reignite competition more than 15 years ago when Microsoft's Internet Explorer was dominant but stagnant. When websites request permission to use your camera and microphone - for example when starting a video conference - Firefox will present the request as a single pop-up. The new tabs present the open tab as a free-floating rectangle, a visual indicator that you can drag around to reposition it in the tab strip or disconnect it entirely into a separate browser window, Mozilla said. The effort is designed "to give you a safe, calm, and useful experience online," Mozilla said in a blog post. A new version, released Tuesday, cleans up the address bar, simplifies main-menu options, consolidates website permission requests and gives tabs a new look. Mozilla has reworked Firefox in an attempt to get rid of user interface clutter and to make its web browser easier to use.