this post was submitted on 26 Jul 2023
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Firefox literally used to be a significant browser before Chrome showed up. Users have to download Chrome. It's not like it default. It's just a matter of changing habits. They swapped from Firefox to Chrome they can back. They'll do it for thr same reason so many people left IE for Firefox: it sucked.
When ads get overbearing and scammy, your favorite neighbor IT guy will install Firefox for them or something and tell them to use it. A child or grandchild will do the same. So it has always been. That's how adblock even became so big. People didn't use it before.
Ads are so bad now, I actually went out of my way to install Firefox on my phone. My less technical relatives just refuse to use anything but apps.
I think some people must be young and have not witnessed the late 90s, early 00s, before Firefox.
You had way more new users whose only notion of the internet was the blue e icon. Macs were less popular and of course there were no smartphones.
Microsoft pulled all the bullshit. "Extending" the standards so standards compliant browsers would not work, serving broken pages on non IE browsers and convincing an enormous amount of moron webmasters to tell you to go "upgrade" to IE while your browser could perfectly render their site.
Yet Firefox did break that stranglehold.
But you need to connect with people. Don't try to do it via relatively abstract concepts such as privacy or freedom. Tell them that they won't be able to block any ads in a year or so if they keep using Chrome. That they won't be able to download whatever they want.. etc etc.