I stopped using Pale Moon because it was rarely updated and I wasn't feeling safe using it.
Firefox shares roadmap as it loses users at an alarming rate
- Thread starter Parkinsond
- Start date
Mozilla Firefox’s desktop market share has slipped to 3.79% as of May 2026, according to StatCounter — down from 5.88% just a year earlier, in May 2025. That’s a loss of roughly two full percentage points in twelve months, on top of a decline that has been running for well over a decade. At its peak in November 2009, Firefox commanded nearly 32% of the global market. Today it sits in fourth place worldwide, well behind Chrome, Safari, and Microsoft Edge.
Much of what looks like “browser choice” today is really a single engine wearing different logos. Edge, Opera, Brave, Vivaldi, and Samsung Internet are all built on Google’s open-source Chromium project. Firefox, running on Mozilla’s own Gecko engine, is the only mainstream browser still holding out. On desktop, Chrome alone accounts for over 76% of usage, with Chromium-based browsers collectively pushing that figure even higher.
Firefox retains real strengths — its privacy protections are generally considered stronger than Chrome’s, memory usage with many tabs open is lighter, and its container tabs feature has no real equivalent elsewhere. But these advantages are largely invisible to casual users, who instead notice friction: sites occasionally rendering oddly because they were built and tested against Chromium first, an extension library that’s smaller than the Chrome Web Store, and a mobile presence that is close to nonexistent.
Firefox Falls to 3.79% Market Share: Inside the Slow-Motion Collapse of the Web's Last Independent Browser
Firefox Falls to 3.79% Market Share: Inside the Slow-Motion Collapse of the Web's Last Independent Browser. Mozilla Firefox's desktop market share has slipped to 3.79% as of May 2026, according to StatCounter — down from 5.88% just a year earlier, in May 2025.pbxscience.com
My prediction is one day Firefox will change to Chromium. Linux & TOR keep it alive but no one I know at work or in higher education has uses it.
Also forks, such as Zen, are consuming a fraction of the Gecko market share.
Firefox is dead
you can ring the bells 
Don't get me wrong I love it and use it now but it's been surpassed by Chormium.
Firefox is dead
Mozilla, the developer of Firefox, has warned that it may be forced to exit the browser market if it is no longer allowed to receive payments from Google for offering its search engine.
Mozilla says stricter antitrust measures against Google 'threaten Firefox’ - TechCentral.ie
Mozilla, the developer of Firefox, has warned that it may be forced to exit the browser market if it is no longer allowed to receive payments from Google for offering its search engine. According to Mozilla, a ban on these payments could lead the company and other independent browser developers...www.techcentral.ie
I've checked data on Statcounter for Firefox market share.
All platforms:
July 2025 2,45% > July 2026 3,3%
Desktop:
July 2025 5,3% > July 2026 6,43%
So it seems that they've increased their market share in last year. They still have around 200 M active users which is also not bad.
All platforms:
July 2025 2,45% > July 2026 3,3%
Desktop:
July 2025 5,3% > July 2026 6,43%
So it seems that they've increased their market share in last year. They still have around 200 M active users which is also not bad.
They’re solidifying into becoming niche, but as long as they keep getting funding and Linux communities keep using it, it doesn’t seem to be an existential crisis. Personally, if they don’t fall too far behind in terms of performance, efficiency, and essential features, there doesn’t seem to be a reason to move either.
I think it will attract more users as it continues to support MV2 extensions, making Firefox more convenient to use compared to other solutions like system-wide ad-blocking products.
Unless users switch to Brave with its Aggressively block shield option? I really don't notice a difference between that and FF with uBlock Origin, but I'm not a power user of those options, which does set it apart from Brave Shield. But still, when logged into my YouTube account in a Brave Container, no ads, even w/o being logged in, no ads
Maybe for users whose main language is English, there’s no difference between Brave Shields and Firefox with uBlock Origin. But for others, like me, I’ve noticed Brave misses some ads or what’s called a page redirect when clicking the seek button on certain streaming websites. I’ve reported them, but nothing happened, so for me, Firefox is now more convenient to use. Still, I have both browsers, and they’re both good.Unless users switch to Brave with its Aggressively block shield option? I really don't notice a difference between that and FF with uBlock Origin, but I'm not a power user of those options, which does set it apart from Brave Shield. But still, when logged into my YouTube account in a Brave Container, no ads, even w/o being logged in, no ads
For me, it was fixed either by adding hagezi pro list to Brave shields or by using ControlD hagezi pro in Brave settings.
I have the same opinion, it will adopt the chromium engine eventually in the future.
The collapsing userbase share will make it impossible to have funds to keep maintaining gecko.
No ads with any browser and uBlock Origin that includes EDGE etc. When MV2 is gone then we will see but I don't think uBlock will save Firefox. It's deadUnless users switch to Brave with its Aggressively block shield option? I really don't notice a difference between that and FF with uBlock Origin, but I'm not a power user of those options, which does set it apart from Brave Shield. But still, when logged into my YouTube account in a Brave Container, no ads, even w/o being logged in, no ads
Well its not dead yet, & while its not I will use it, it will be a shame when we are all in Googles ecosystem, (who knows what their long term roadmap is) Brave is OK but it takes a long time to trawl through the many options to eventually get something thats IMHO not as good as Libre Wolf, that can be fully setup in 5 mins, I'm not sure why users use anything else 
Even if Mozilla abandons Firefox, the code is open source, and those who hate Google and Microsoft (and they are growing in number) will take the code and revive Firefox once again, just like the phoenix, rising from its ashes.
FireFox could be in lifesupport but still can be saved. Maybe once the Native AdBlocker goes out and if devs can optimize it in terms of memory usage,users will come back.
While it's true that the entire project is open source, maintaining a web browser is serious work, especially when a company abandons the project. Pretty much all Firefox forks rely on Mozilla for security and feature updates. If it suddenly, stopped issuing updates, all forks would replace Gecko with Chromium.
It's one thing to copy entire code and just edit the parts you don't like and completely other maintaining every single line of code (30-32 million of them estimated by Gemini). This is the reason why we only have two browser engines today; you can't just ask AI to create you a web browser with completely new rendering engine from scratch. LadyBird development started before 2022 and here we are, 4 years later there's no even alpha version available. They are targeting 2028 for the first stable release.
The web browsers being 100% unprofitable also doesn't help the least. If it weren't for Google's money, Chromium wouldn't survive. Same could be said for Mozilla. Just look at Opera, they tried to compete in the game and didn't succeed as Presto was terrible. Microsoft tried with EdgeHTML; it died after a few versions and we're talking about Microsoft, one of the richest companies in the world that has all the money and resources. If Microsoft didn't succeed, chances of free-time developers maintaining 30-32 million lines of code, it being stable and without security risks are the tinniest.
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