This post seems weird to me as I recently switched back to Chrome for Firefox precisely because Chrome is faster than ff. It is visibly faster for me and most recent articles I could find after I googled 'Chrome versus Firefox' showed exactly that - that Chrome is faster than Firefox on the more important metrics right now.
When people actually test these things I think they generally show that Chrome isn't undeniably faster than Firefox.
Chrome wins on Javascript execution and Firefox currently has major startup problems because of a large codebase and poor UI that continually interrupts you and asks for restarts.
But Firefox wins, against stereotype, for memory usage and page load speed (more so with ad blockers installed).
They've clearly lost the faith of many vocal geeks, but I'm really not sure how much of that is based on fact rather than some kind of herd instinct.
I use Chrome on a slower PC. Although Chrome consumes more RAM than Firefox does, it actually feels noticeably faster on any PC. On old slow PCs (and mobiles) this makes a hell of difference. Firefox became usable again when it abandoned XUL (for some years before that it was pure torment to use so I had no choice but to switch to Chrome) but still isn't as fast as Chrome is. I only use Firefox happily on faster PCs.
Honestly, recently I've consistently noticed Firefox running faster than Chrome for my usage scenario. It might be bias, but I find browsing on Firefox a more enjoyable experience and uses a lot less of my system resources.
I stuck with Firefox through the times where it was much slower than Chrome for idealistic reasons as well, but now I feel like speed is less of an issue because they are both pretty even.
IMO Chrome is great, but Firefox has more features that I like. The minor speed differences are inconsequential and FireFox is faster at some things anyway.
Agreed. I also always feel like linux communities or hackernews is gaslighting me into thinking that firefox is just as fast as chrome. It's not. There is a tangible speed difference when using it.
Chrome without a doubt feels faster than Firefox to me. I think Firefox's performance has degraded over the past 6 months or so. I can't prove it (just anecdotal based on my experience), but it got so bad that I switched back to Chrome (and have been loving it).
Every time I use Chrome, my Macbook Pro becomes slow and everything pages to disk. It's snappy when it starts, but in Chrome 20 or whatever crazy version number they're on now, there's still a lot of leaks. It's very frustrating.
But for some reason everyone has the impression that Chrome is both fast and uses less memory than Firefox, when the evidence points to the speed difference being anywhere from minimal to completely unnoticeable (I recently read a paper which suggested that Chrome's JIT optimizations have a negative effect on overall performance due to their expense). Furthermore, Firefox uses substantially less memory in general.
I think more recent benchmarks showed that Firefox became faster than Chrome, although I'm not keeping a close eye on it and I agree with you that it's arbitrary.
For the past 6+ years I only use Chrome rarely and as an Internet Explorer replacement.
I find firefoxs performance to beat chrome. While it's true Firefox lags slightly behind chrome in benchmarks, it also uses about a quarter of the RAM as chrome and electrolysis has fixed most of the hang problems I have. Why would I want something imperceptibly faster that makes every other app on my machine slower. And even with the nerfed addon system it's not like all the addons are going away, though some really popular ones will. RIP tab groups.
Then there's the soft arguments, chrome is designed to share my data with google and isn't fully FOSS, etc.
It used to be true. But now firefox and chrome are pretty comparable. Although YMMV depending on the specific site. And sometimes it isn't because a chrome is inherently faster, but because a site has been heavily optimized targeting chrome, because chrome has more market share.
To counter your anecdote with some more anecdote, I just switched from Chrome to Firefox and have felt that the latter has some serious performance advantages over the former.
I find FF actually faster than Chrome. But maybe that's because I actually open multiple tabs which load in background, then I just switch between them. Though to be fair, I never knew about this difference... It just felt that Chrome is slower somehow.
I wonder if they are both the same, it's just that us users have learned different workflows based on strengths of each browser?
I find FF actually faster than Chrome. But maybe that's because I actually open multiple tabs which load in background, then I just switch between them. Though to be fair, I never knew about this difference... It just felt that Chrome is slower somehow.
I wonder if they are both the same, it's just that us users have learned different workflows based on strengths of each browser?
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