I'm not sure how you can say if they're broadly unpopular - certainly you mostly hear complaints but that could be because the only people bothered enough to write about it are the ones who don't like it.
I'm personally a happy user and like almost all the changes they've made over the last few years. I like the new UI. I haven't felt the need to post anywhere about being roughly content with it.
The market share stats looked bad long before they started messing with the UI, no?
I also was a happy user for like 15 years, I used to actively recommend it to everyone, but they keep removing the features I like. They broke extensions, removed bookmark descriptions, RSS, a "smart" omnibox that made it harder to find what I use the most, the recent changes to tabs. I still keep it as default because I'm used to the dev tools, but they just keep making it worse, I'm not surprised they're still losing market share.
I'm personally a happy user and like almost all the changes they've made over the last few years. I like the new UI. I haven't felt the need to post anywhere about being roughly content with it.
The market share stats looked bad long before they started messing with the UI, no?