Mozilla CEO quits, pushes pivot to data privacy champion... but what about Firefox?
Opinion I know people who even today donate to the Mozilla Foundation and swear by the Firefox web browser. Their numbers are declining by the day.
And when I see Mozilla Corp's CEO Mitchell Baker stepping down, I wonder if it's really because she'll be more useful devoting all her time to the foundation than overseeing Firefox's decline into a web browser afterthought.
Yes, I know some of you love, love, love Firefox. In 2004, I was championing the browser when Firefox was a wet behind-the-ears beta. For years, it was my favorite web browser. Not because it was open source but because it was so much better and more secure than Internet Explorer.
Today, only a relative handful of Firefox users are left. According to the US federal government's Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which gives us the running count of the last 90 days of US government website visits, only 2.2 percent of visitors use Firefox.
2024's top web browser is – surprise! surprise! – Chrome with 48.2 percent. It's followed by Apple Safari, thanks to America's love affair with iPhones, with 35.6 percent. Then comes, believe it or not, Edge with 8.5 percent. Firefox is in fourth place and continuing to fall.
