Firefox Quantum: A leap forward, or a fatal trip?
I used to really like Firefox. Back in 2004, when Firefox 0.93 rolled out, I loved it. It was so much better than the competition. Mind you, when your chief rival is Internet Explorer 6, it doesn’t take much to be impressive. My love didn’t last, though.
Within a few years, Firefox grew slow and bloated. By the time Google released Chrome in 2008, I was ready for a change. Since then, I’ve kept a reviewer’s eye on Firefox, but I was never tempted to go back.
In the most recent web browser report from the federal government’s Digital Analytics Program (DAP), (the only reliable measurement of web browser popularity), Firefox is down in the dumps with 6%, far, far below Chrome, at 44.5%; Safari, at 26.7%; and even Internet Explorer, at 12.9%. Indeed, earlier this year, Andreas Gal, a former Mozilla CTO, declared Firefox all but doomed to a long, slow death. Not good.