Firefox or Chrome (Criteria: Speed, Privacy, functionality)

[Beskar]

Most of that was quite simply propaganda and FUD spread by the tech press and various Chrome fanbois around the time that Firefox decided it would be a good idea to ape Chrome and switch to the "rapid release" (version 4)

Unfortunately was not propaganda at all. I know a lot of people, including myself who switched and I know I never read any reviews. I simply noticed it took 10 seconds to load the .Org for example and every few days it kept freezing up going "BRAND NEW UPDATE MUST DOWNLOAD AND RESTART NOW" constantly with all my addons just getting invalidated and stopped working after each one.

[Husar]

The new Opera uses the same engine as Chrome if I'm not mistaken.

[Montmorency]

Looks like IE is the way of the future. It's only a matter of time.

[caravel]

Unfortunately was not propaganda at all. I know a lot of people, including myself who switched and I know I never read any reviews. I simply noticed it took 10 seconds to load the .Org for example and every few days it kept freezing up going "BRAND NEW UPDATE MUST DOWNLOAD AND RESTART NOW" constantly with all my addons just getting invalidated and stopped working after each one.

I know a lot of people, including myself, who did not switch... I and those other people did not have the same problem as you - nor have I ever seen this message about updates and restarts.

Can't remember the last time I had any problems with add ons either...

The new Opera uses the same engine as Chrome if I'm not mistaken.

Opera 15 is based on the chromium project, which is in itself a webkit based browser - though google have now forked webkit. So it's not just a case of being based on a different layout engine, more so it's based on another browser.

[Beskar]

I know a lot of people, including myself, who did not switch... I and those other people did not have the same problem as you - nor have I ever seen this message about updates and restarts.

Only people I know who use Firefox now are Linux users. Everyone who had a Windows OS swapped to Chrome pretty much all at the same time. From the comments in this topic, it seemed ACIN, Lemur and TinCow all swapped at the similar time for the same reasons.

Just saying there is more to it then it simply hand-washing it aside saying it is merely propaganda.

[drone]

Only people I know who use Firefox now are Linux users. Everyone who had a Windows OS swapped to Chrome pretty much all at the same time. From the comments in this topic, it seemed ACIN, Lemur and TinCow all swapped at the similar time for the same reasons.

I'm half-and-half (Windows and Linux), but I stuck with Firefox. Mainly because I don't trust Google and Ad-Block/NoScript is the best. There were memory issues a couple of years ago, but they have fixed most of the big problems and I've never had enough grief with Firefox to force me to change.

[caravel]

Only people I know who use Firefox now are Linux users. Everyone who had a Windows OS swapped to Chrome pretty much all at the same time. From the comments in this topic, it seemed ACIN, Lemur and TinCow all swapped at the similar time for the same reasons.

I am a GNU/Linux and FreeBSD user, but I use windows at work and still use Firefox. I can't at all relate to the problems you're referring to...

Just saying there is more to it then it simply hand-washing it aside saying it is merely propaganda.

I refer to it as propaganda because none of the ranting and raving which was posted on forums and blogs about "Firefox vs Chrome" at the time was based on fact - it was mostly pure fanboyism. Much of it was born out of some particularly vocal users' frustrations with the new rapid release cycle combined with lots of bluster and hot air. The response of some of these users was to switch to another browser which has a rapid release cycle... work that one out...

My Firefox ESR at work just updated to 17.0.10 today. The update was downloaded in the background as ever and it was installed when I restarted the browser (I didn't know there was an update - I closed the browser about 2 hours ago and opened it again just now to see "installing update", then Firefox just started up as ever).

By the way, I'm not saying that I like the rapid release model, just that the negative press about Firefox has been hugely exaggerated.

[Beskar]

Much of it was born out of some particularly vocal users' frustrations with the new rapid release cycle combined with lots of bluster and hot air. The response of some of these users was to switch to another browser which has a rapid release cycle... work that one out...

Chrome downloads and updates in the background with no prompting, you only notice when there is a slight change and a pop-up explaining a new feature, other than that, it was very hands free and manages by itself.

With Firefox was the severe bloat, then constantly getting demanded to be updated with in your face notifications, then you had to wait for 5-10 minutes for it to download, go through the entire install menu, ad-block and no-script being disabled and having to wait for them to update too, it was too tedious and aggressive.

This was around Firefox 4-6 like being mentioned, it might have been sorted now, but the switch already occurred and Chrome is still marginally better.

[TinCow]

Only people I know who use Firefox now are Linux users. Everyone who had a Windows OS swapped to Chrome pretty much all at the same time. From the comments in this topic, it seemed ACIN, Lemur and TinCow all swapped at the similar time for the same reasons.

Yup. I switched due to bloat on my own without reading any reviews of any kind. At some point, I cannot remember when, Firefox seemed to be taking ages to start up, ages to load webpages, updatedconstantly (and intrusively), and was utilizing a massive amount of resources. It was actively aggravating me, in the same way that Netscape and IE used to back when I switched away from both of those (in that order). At that time, I knew almost nothing about Chrome, but I knew that I wasn't happy with Firefox and I hated IE so much I wasn't even willing to give it another try. So, I installed Chrome and enjoyed the result. I've been there ever since.

As I said though, I was forced to go back to Firefox at work due to IT restrictions on my computer and have found the current version to be much improved over what it was back when I switched away. It's possible that some of my objections to the old Firefox were personal things that have changed about me, rather than about Firefox. For example, basically every piece of software out there switched over to regular updates on a weekly/monthly basis rather than the old-school major release schedule with only minor bug fixes in between. So, the constant software updates are still occurring, but I don't really care as much anymore, and I can often make them automatic so I don't have to see them or deal with them anymore. The computers I'm running have also continued to increase in power over the years, so it's entirely possible that Firefox and Chrome are just as resource hungry now as before, if not more so, but it's less noticeable because multicore computers can handle it better. Regardless, at some point I grew frustrated with Firefox on my own without outside input, and gave Chrome a try just because it was an alternative I had heard about but hadn't experienced yet.

Honestly, the new IE (actively required for some of my work systems) isn't really that bad either. However my hatred of IE still burns bright enough to keep me away from it for several more years, even if it performs better than anything else out there.

[drone]

Somewhere in the 3.X.X - 5 range, there was a significant amount of memory leakage in Firefox, and it did cause problems if you didn't restart the browser periodically. But once they got that sorted out it's been pretty solid.

[Xiahou]

Honestly, the new IE (actively required for some of my work systems) isn't really that bad either. However my hatred of IE still burns bright enough to keep me away from it for several more years, even if it performs better than anything else out there.

Ditto that. Also, I'll have a hard time ever trusting IE from a security standpoint.