We’ve covered the journey of Firefox for Windows 8 since the project was announced in late 2012. Our first real look at the app came in February 2013 when we took the app for a spin and did a hands-on of Firefox for Windows 8. This past August the team at Mozilla announced that Firefox for Windows 8 would come out in December.
We later learned that the release was pushed back to 2014. A bunch of updates later and the app finally went into open beta last month. Turns out that was all for nothing. Mozilla is killing Firefox for Windows 8.
In a blog post today, Firefox states that development for a modern Windows 8 app has stopped and won’t be resumed anytime soon. The company cites low user adoption. Here’s what Johnathan Nightingale, vice president of Firefox, said in the blog post:
“In the months since, as the team built and tested and refined the product, we’ve been watching Metro’s adoption. From what we can see, it’s pretty flat. On any given day we have, for instance, millions of people testing pre-release versions of Firefox desktop, but we’ve never seen more than 1000 active daily users in the Metro environment.”
The team at Firefox was optimistic with the massive ecosystem that would be present in Windows 8. At least that’s what the team at Firefox saw when they started working on the Windows 8 app in late 2012. Sadly though, they never saw the adoption they were looking for. Some more words from the Firefox vice president:
“Instead, we pull it. This opens up the risk that Metro might take off tomorrow and we’d have to scramble to catch back up, but that’s a better risk for us to take than the real costs of investment in a platform our users have shown little sign of adopting.”
Sad to see Firefox for Windows 8 go? Sound off below.
Source: Firefox Via: TechCrunch
Thanks for the tip Laura!
