Have a look at the trends[0] and tell me it does not show a descent to darkness.
1. Firefox was at ~30% market share at its apex (it's now half that)
2. It got surpassed by a newcomer with no previous experience in browser making in less than 3 years
3. And the newcomer was so much better at technical stuff and marketing that it not only kept superseding Firefox but it kept growing uninterrupted ever since
3. Meanwhile, instead of stabilizing and reversing the trend, Firefox's usage share just kept tumbling down to the level of Internet Explorer's (Internet Explorer!)
4. It. Never. Recovered. Seriously, it had around 12% market share a month ago[1], below IE's share. That's ridiculous.
Of all those points, I think maybe #4 shows Firefox's irrelevancy best: the most generous estimates now place it around 14% global market share, barely above while Chrome is striving at around 60%. If IE is becoming more and more irrelevant (it is, right?), then surely Firefox is becoming just as irrelevant as well.
Even though the data isn't ideal and there are probably some +/- percent point errors between Netmarketshare, W3counter, Alexa, Google, etc., the trend is identical among all these reporting platforms.
While the trend is correct, I would argue that the original authors statement that this is due to Chrome having been "a faster, more secure and versatile browser" is omitting the elephant in the room:
The main reason for Firefox's (and IE's) decline IMHO is the pink line "Mobile vs Desktop" in the chart you linked to. People won't bother installing a different browser if the one that comes with the device they use is halfway decent (on iOS, they don't even have a choice). And so as more and more browsing comes from smartphones and tablets, more and more people will use Chrome (Android) or Safari (iOS).
Unfortunately, this is quite a depressing finding for Firefox, because it means that all technical enhancements will not be able to move the needle much. (The rise of Firefox on the desktop was arguably helped by the EU requiring Microsoft to implement the browser choice window in Windows; unless something like this comes along for the dominant mobile platform(s) it will be an uphill struggle.)
Edit: And the move to mobile might even affect desktop browser usage because of things like link- and password-syncing. If you use Chrome on mobile, you might want to also install Chrome on your PC to be able to sync your settings across.
> Unfortunately, this is quite a depressing finding for Firefox, because it means that all technical enhancements will not be able to move the needle much
Precisely, and this is exactly what becoming irrelevant is. It does not matter anymore.
"Irrelevant" is a strong, dismissive word that comes with a certain arrogance that I don't think fits the facts at all in this case.
The author said FF became irrelevant after 2008, which is false. It was popular for a long time after.
The answer to the question "how popular is a browser" should not be answered by anything other than stats for your own sites. Global stats don't interest me.
While Chrome certainly did rise in popularity and overtake FF, it was absolutely not in 2008 that happened according to the browser stats of the network of mainstream popular sites I worked on for a few years at that time. I do remember seeing a discrepancy in the "global stats" vs the actual stats from Google analytics I was accessing on a regular basis, which told a different story.
1. Firefox was at ~30% market share at its apex (it's now half that)
2. It got surpassed by a newcomer with no previous experience in browser making in less than 3 years
3. And the newcomer was so much better at technical stuff and marketing that it not only kept superseding Firefox but it kept growing uninterrupted ever since
3. Meanwhile, instead of stabilizing and reversing the trend, Firefox's usage share just kept tumbling down to the level of Internet Explorer's (Internet Explorer!)
4. It. Never. Recovered. Seriously, it had around 12% market share a month ago[1], below IE's share. That's ridiculous.
Of all those points, I think maybe #4 shows Firefox's irrelevancy best: the most generous estimates now place it around 14% global market share, barely above while Chrome is striving at around 60%. If IE is becoming more and more irrelevant (it is, right?), then surely Firefox is becoming just as irrelevant as well.
Even though the data isn't ideal and there are probably some +/- percent point errors between Netmarketshare, W3counter, Alexa, Google, etc., the trend is identical among all these reporting platforms.
0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#/m...
1: https://netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?options...