It’s remarkable really. They are competing against another browser which users have to actively go out and find, then install.
Some people are used to how chrome looks and that’s powerful glue, of course, but very few normal users (ie almost none of us in here on Lemmy) needs things beyond what both Firefox and Chrome does equally well.
The simple difference in adoption rate is this: Google pushing Chrome through people’s use of Google. Diminish the need for Google, diminish people’s discovery of Chrome.
Also, I cannot understand why they need this many people. If 5% of their workforce is 60 people, they have 1200 people employed. I can almost guarantee that Google’s Chrome team isn’t 1200 people strong.
Maybe Firefox would be better being smaller and more nimble. Maybe they should stop pretending they’re a company and start pretending they’re a foundation (which is what they are). 300 people working on a core browser seems a lot of full time people, still, and that’d be a quarter of what they are today.
Also, Mozilla’s inability to produce a simple interface for embedding Firefox is simply baffling to me. The reason so many other skin-browsers are built on chromium is that it’s a LOT easier to embed.
I speak as someone who’s run Firefox since the day it was born.