Firefox spokesperson Christopher Hilton tells The Verge that the browser has seen a more than 50 percent jump in users in Germany and a nearly 30 percent increase in France.
Brave saw a similar increase in users after Apple started letting users choose their default browsers on iOS 17.4 in the EU last week.
So as it turns out, if you give people a choice. Some of them will pick something else.
Aren’t they all still WebKit under the hood though? Until they allow other web engines this is still just the illusion of choice.
Browsers can now run their own rendering engines, which are sandboxed at the app level.
System-level HTML, like web apps on the home screen, are still using WebKit.
Which is how it should have been from the start.
So are we allowed to use all extensions on Firefox? Is it same as Firefox on Andriod?
Mozilla would have to update the iOS app to both run their engine and accept their plugins.
But it will never be like the Android app because the iOS app will still be sandboxed and not allowed to run code outside of itself.
Apple does allow other engines in Europe. Wether or not FireFox chooses to create one remains to be seen.
There’s nothing wrong with WebKit, so not much incentive for FireFox to do all that work.
Firefox uses Gecko and someday, it will use Servo. Brave uses Blink, which is Google’s WebKit fork.
*on desktop
Analytics nit:
30% of increase in daily installs ≠ 30% increase in users. It might lead to that, but only they maintain the increased install rates and maintain active users.
If I my sandwich shop sells 30% more sandwiches one day, that doesn’t mean I’m certain to make 30% more money at the end of the year. I might make more, I might make less.
Edit: also, this OS update has just rolled out. So this peak might last for a few days, then change once people are no longer getting the initial set up screen.
30% of increase in daily installs ≠ 30% increase in users.
Yeah the lemmy headline is poorly written (the source article is pretty clear).
Still 30% is a substantial jump and will eventually turn into a bunch more money for FireFox - a good thing if you ask me.
If I my sandwich shop sells 30% more sandwiches one day, that doesn’t mean I’m certain to make 30% more money at the end of the year. I might make more, I might make less.
It costs money to make sandwiches. Mozilla doesn’t even pay for bandwidth (Apple has that covered) - so the FireFox iOS app essentially only has overheads. Which means more users will be pure profit.
If I my sandwich shop sells 30% more sandwiches one day, that doesn’t mean I’m certain to make 30% more money at the end of the year. I might make more, I might make less.
That analogy only works if you buy the sandwich once, and it stays in your house forever no matter how much you eat it.
Apples users could not pick a default browser? Wtf?
Am more surprised you expected this to be a thing. When it comes to Apple users choice is always what Apple chooses. Otherwise they might hurt themselves.
Everything I’ve ever used gave me a choice, so I just assumed it was universal. Now I know.
I remember a long time ago, I worked with a lot of apple users and one had come to look at my unix machine. It had a then standard 3 button mouse which he found amazing. So I explained the whole copy and paste in X11 thing, and all the stuff you could do with several buttons depending on where you clicked.
He said that it was great but he regularly managed to miss the mouse button on his Mac so it probably wasn’t for him.
And I suppose that’s why apple does things that way.
It just works
I have iOS 15.4 and I have a default browser that isn’t Safari. This is more in reference to a new popup on first time bootup that asks you to pick a browser. You could pick a default one before this, you just had to go download it first like on a computer.
Okay that makes a lot more sense.
It looks people just needed to know what choices they had. I love Firefox.
Yeah, I switch browsers like I change my clothes, and Firefox has been awesome compared to Brave, Edge, and other chromium browsers.
I enjoy Firefox for the most part but unfortunately some websites just plain don’t work on it so I end up using Brave still frequently.
@[email protected] do you think these new users will stick around?
I saw you posted this in the Firefox community as well. Why did you mention Brave in the title here but not there?
