Bad news for the little browser that could: not only is Firefox no longer a "little browser" but it is increasingly having trouble competing. Back in 2009, Firefox was on the rise. But now, not only is Chrome eating its lunch but Firefox's user share is actually slipping.
Netmarketshare provides the data and
SJVN provides the analysis/funeral rites. He suggests:
For Firefox to remain a web browser power, it needs to make big improvements and it needs to make them now. Otherwise, Firefox may yet follow its predecessor Netscape into the web's past.
[ed. note: as a steadfast Opera user since 2000, this is all fascinating. Opera seems pegged-for-life at 3%]
Its perennial and terminal memory leaks, however, go on and on and on. One cannot leave any Mozilla browser resident for much longer than a couple of days before memory use becomes freaking ridiculous, leading to inevitable reboots (on ALL platforms, Win, Lin, and Mac).
I would have stuck with Chromium, but it really sucks -- pages load strangely, caching is just weird, and most importantly the plugin architecture doesn't really work. If you care about blocking ads smoothly and effectively, you're not using Chrome.
It does not surprise me, at all, that Firefox is declining. They've done NOTHING over 15 years except (a) suck Google's teat, (b) relentlessly and poorly copy Chrome, (c) reduce features again and again, and (d) IGNORE and deny and FAIL to address their chronic memory leaks.
It doesn't help that Google scummily (via malware-ish bundling) pushed Chrome down people's throats and that people let them do it, 'cuz Google.
Mozilla Foundation has been an abject failure as a force for good open source software. Firefox itself was a mediocre idea, poorly executed, and their purposeful burying of both MozSuite/Seamonkey and Thunderbird is just shameful. They have proven they don't deserve the eyeballs. Oh yeah, and they really really really like promoting bigots; that probably didn't help either.
It's freaking sad that Mozilla has let Google eat its lunch so completely, from mindshare to technology lead. It wasn't for lack of (criminally squandered) funding.