IE was pretty bad but Firefox was decent. I interfaced a bit with the early Chrome team. Better performance was a necessary but not sufficient condition for s

IE was pretty bad but Firefox was decent. I interfaced a bit with the early Chrome team. Better performance was a necessary but not sufficient condition for success. Chrome was the fastest browser for at least six months but many early adopters wouldn't touch it without an extension framework. Certain extensions like Firebug had become extremely popular with developers by then. Google wanted these developers as early adopters. Once the extension framework was released then everybody hopped on the Chrome train (except for the Firefox purists), and Google proceeded to leverage their O&O sites (and spend billions of additional dollars) to pump distribution. Later on the extension frameworks (for all browsers) became riddled with malware and adware and are still a major source of vulnerability today.