Firefox is bleeding users – 46 million people ditched the browser since 2018

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Mozilla’s Firefox browser is struggling to keep users on board. How bad is it? Well, in the past three years, it lost about 46 million users, according to the company’s own Public Data Report (via It’s Foss). Now, keep in mind, this is a browser that has to compete against the likes of Apple’s Safari and Google Chrome.  

As this Reddit thread points out, at the end of 2018, the reported active monthly users of Firefox were about 244 million. However, in Q2 2021, that number dropped to 198 million users. While still a significant number, this slow decline of users could be a more telling sign of things. 

Chromium-based browsers like Google Chrome, which happens to come conveniently pre-downloaded on Android, and Microsoft Edge, which serves as the default web browser for Windows, are gaining in popularity.

Mozilla launched Firefox in 2002 as a more user-friendly web browser than Internet Explorer. By 2008, Firefox was responsible for 30% of all browser usage. Internet Explorer still claimed the market’s largest share at 60%. Now, Chrome is at the top with about 65% of users. 

In recent years, Mozilla has made tweaks to its tracking protection settings in Firefox to safeguard users’ privacy, including default data protection. Apparently, this hasn’t been enough. 

As of date, Firefox’s monthly user figure is still quite impressive at 198 million. But to compete with the bigger names like Chrome and Safari, Mozilla has their work cut out for them. 

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Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com.