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I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? I use Firefox as my main

by simias 9y ago

I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? I use Firefox as my main browser but my girlfriend uses chrome on her computers so I get to use it from time to time. I don't notice any major differences, the extensions I care about are available on both browsers, the speed is not noticeably different etc... On top of that Firefox predates chrome so it's not like people not switching away from IE because they didn't know better. So what happened exactly? Is there some chrome killer feature that I just happen not to use myself?

NiLSPACE 9y ago
> I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? Because every time people go to google.com they see a popup that google works better in Google Chrome.
- ice109 9y ago
  Firefox should start reporting its user agent as chrome :)
  - NiLSPACE 9y ago
    There are people who actually do that because otherwise they get an inferior version of a website even though it works perfectly fine on Firefox as well.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
spcelzrd 9y ago
What happened is tighter integration with google services and every time you go to google.com, there's a prompt to download Chrome.
- eli 9y ago
  And they made a pretty solid browser. Tight integration with Windows didn't cause a similar spike for IE 11.
danielbarla 9y ago
I don't have a good answer to your question, but for me it was actually performance. And this is particularly baffling, since Firefox seems to do extremely well in all benchmarks, often beating out Chrome. But, as a quick test, I closed Chrome, and it was up again instantly (say 500ms). I did the same with Firefox (after a generous warmup / caching session), and got 4 to 6 seconds each time. Clicking links and page loading feels similar; on Chrome I don't notice it, on Firefox I always do. Am I the only one that feels this way?
- calcifer 9y ago
  > Clicking links and page loading feels similar; on Chrome I don't notice it, on Firefox I always do. Because Chrome, by default, enables prefetching [0] (it loads links before you decide to click on them). Firefox will never do that due to obvious privacy concerns. It's the usual "principle vs convenience" thing, where most people choose the latter. [0] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029?hl=en
  - pmontra 9y ago
    Actually http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.prefetch-next http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.prefetch-next says > Link prefetching is when a webpage hints to the browser that certain pages are likely to be visited, so the browser downloads them immediately so they can be displayed immediately when the user requests it. This preference controls whether link prefetching is enabled. > Possible values and their effects > true > Enable link prefetching. (Default) You can check the value in your Firefox with about:config and searching for network.prefetch-next My one is "false" and it's shown in bold face, meaning that I changed it to that value. Privacy concerns and also legal concerns: what if a site links another site that the legislation of your country (or the country you're travelling to) doesn't allow you to access? At least I get some hints of where I'm heading to if I'm loading pages myself.
    - dylan604 9y ago
      How does prefetching affect things like the not-yet-viewed website's stats? Since it is a Google browser and Google Analytics is so dominate, is it to Google's advantage to do this for reasons other than convenience to the user? (Inflated stats for the prefetched website even though the user never viewed it?)
6DM 9y ago
Do you remember when chrome dropped? Gosh it was so blazing fast in comparison to everything else. I think that initial period is why so many regular people use chrome. It hasn't gotten to the point to look anywhere else yet, at least in my opinion. I think the other thing that pushed it this far is just the fact that it's new.
- cptskippy 9y ago
  The same thing happened when Phoenix dropped. Over the years though it packed on the pounds though and started to look more like Navigator. Chrome's waist line has been expanding as well.
- Tomis02 9y ago
  > Gosh it was so blazing fast in comparison to everything else. It was dead slow, actually, unless you were running a modern (i.e. very fast) multicore PC and with a very small number of tabs. For example, when trying Chrome out soon after release, it managed to grind my PC to a halt because I dared open something like 5 tabs (whereas Opera was happily running double to triple digits). Back in 2008 multicore CPUs weren't as widespread as they are today, so for the most common cases Chrome was just slow, context switching PCs into the ground. > I think that initial period is why so many regular people use chrome. Regular people don't simply install new browsers, it's the people familiar with computers (like the family geek, or the guy maintaining PCs for a living) who push them unto regular people. Anecdotally it went something like this: technically inclined people were supporting Firefox (because it wasn't IE and because of A LOT of marketing) despite it being a crappy browser and there being better alternatives. Now, Firefox was not slow per se, but if definitely FELT slow, so when Chrome was launched the same people who had popularized Firefox started promoting the new shiny trinket. Everybody kept saying "it's so fast!" - well, it certainly FELT faster than Firefox, at least when it came to the UI, and that was enough to switch. > I think the other thing that pushed it this far is just the fact that it's new. I think so too. Shiny new things have the side effect of attracting the enthusiastic bandwagon jumping types, and enthusiasm can be contagious.
  - OskarS 9y ago
detritus 9y ago
Whilst Microsoft eventually started advertising Explorer as a response, Chrome was the first browser I'd ever seen advertised on billboard posters (liberally plastered all over London at least) and in non-technical magazines and newspapers.
DiNovi 9y ago
FF has memory and rendering problems
- sp332 9y ago
  Firefox worked to close all memory leaks a few years ago. New ones are treated as bugs and fixed quickly. They even got aggressive about limiting memory that addons use. You can check about:performance to keep an eye on them.
- ionised 9y ago
  For me personally, Chrome is WAY worse in memory usage than Firefox
ionised 9y ago
> but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? Google aggressively pushed Chrome on web users. Banner messages claiming the users browser was out of date (it wasn't, they just weren't using Chrome), or that this website works better on Chrome. Redesigning their web services to be coincidentally worse on Firefox. The numerous and excessive ways it was bundled with various other application installers. Most users don't customise and application install, they just stick with the defaults and the result was, they ended up with Chrome as the default browser.
livingparadox 9y ago
I can't speak for anyone else, but for me personally, the deep integration with Google is a feature for me. Almost everything I do is on Google (email, domains, drive, Cell Carrier), so having the deep integration with Google on Chrome makes my life that much more convenient. I got into chrome as a teenager, though, when my dad switched from firefox to chrome due to Chrome being apparently faster than firefox at its debut.

by simias 9y ago

NiLSPACE 9y ago

> I don't follow these things pretty closely but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? Because every time people go to google.com they see a popup that google works better in Google Chrome.

ice109 9y ago
Firefox should start reporting its user agent as chrome :)
- NiLSPACE 9y ago
  There are people who actually do that because otherwise they get an inferior version of a website even though it works perfectly fine on Firefox as well.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

spcelzrd 9y ago

What happened is tighter integration with google services and every time you go to google.com, there's a prompt to download Chrome.

eli 9y ago
And they made a pretty solid browser. Tight integration with Windows didn't cause a similar spike for IE 11.

danielbarla 9y ago

I don't have a good answer to your question, but for me it was actually performance. And this is particularly baffling, since Firefox seems to do extremely well in all benchmarks, often beating out Chrome. But, as a quick test, I closed Chrome, and it was up again instantly (say 500ms). I did the same with Firefox (after a generous warmup / caching session), and got 4 to 6 seconds each time. Clicking links and page loading feels similar; on Chrome I don't notice it, on Firefox I always do. Am I the only one that feels this way?

calcifer 9y ago
> Clicking links and page loading feels similar; on Chrome I don't notice it, on Firefox I always do. Because Chrome, by default, enables prefetching [0] (it loads links before you decide to click on them). Firefox will never do that due to obvious privacy concerns. It's the usual "principle vs convenience" thing, where most people choose the latter. [0] https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029?hl=en https://support.google.com/chrome/answer/1385029?hl=en
- pmontra 9y ago
  Actually http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.prefetch-next http://kb.mozillazine.org/Network.prefetch-next says > Link prefetching is when a webpage hints to the browser that certain pages are likely to be visited, so the browser downloads them immediately so they can be displayed immediately when the user requests it. This preference controls whether link prefetching is enabled. > Possible values and their effects > true > Enable link prefetching. (Default) You can check the value in your Firefox with about:config and searching for network.prefetch-next My one is "false" and it's shown in bold face, meaning that I changed it to that value. Privacy concerns and also legal concerns: what if a site links another site that the legislation of your country (or the country you're travelling to) doesn't allow you to access? At least I get some hints of where I'm heading to if I'm loading pages myself.
  - dylan604 9y ago
    How does prefetching affect things like the not-yet-viewed website's stats? Since it is a Google browser and Google Analytics is so dominate, is it to Google's advantage to do this for reasons other than convenience to the user? (Inflated stats for the prefetched website even though the user never viewed it?)

6DM 9y ago

Do you remember when chrome dropped? Gosh it was so blazing fast in comparison to everything else. I think that initial period is why so many regular people use chrome. It hasn't gotten to the point to look anywhere else yet, at least in my opinion. I think the other thing that pushed it this far is just the fact that it's new.

cptskippy 9y ago
The same thing happened when Phoenix dropped. Over the years though it packed on the pounds though and started to look more like Navigator. Chrome's waist line has been expanding as well.
Tomis02 9y ago
> Gosh it was so blazing fast in comparison to everything else. It was dead slow, actually, unless you were running a modern (i.e. very fast) multicore PC and with a very small number of tabs. For example, when trying Chrome out soon after release, it managed to grind my PC to a halt because I dared open something like 5 tabs (whereas Opera was happily running double to triple digits). Back in 2008 multicore CPUs weren't as widespread as they are today, so for the most common cases Chrome was just slow, context switching PCs into the ground. > I think that initial period is why so many regular people use chrome. Regular people don't simply install new browsers, it's the people familiar with computers (like the family geek, or the guy maintaining PCs for a living) who push them unto regular people. Anecdotally it went something like this: technically inclined people were supporting Firefox (because it wasn't IE and because of A LOT of marketing) despite it being a crappy browser and there being better alternatives. Now, Firefox was not slow per se, but if definitely FELT slow, so when Chrome was launched the same people who had popularized Firefox started promoting the new shiny trinket. Everybody kept saying "it's so fast!" - well, it certainly FELT faster than Firefox, at least when it came to the UI, and that was enough to switch. > I think the other thing that pushed it this far is just the fact that it's new. I think so too. Shiny new things have the side effect of attracting the enthusiastic bandwagon jumping types, and enthusiasm can be contagious.
- OskarS 9y ago

detritus 9y ago

Whilst Microsoft eventually started advertising Explorer as a response, Chrome was the first browser I'd ever seen advertised on billboard posters (liberally plastered all over London at least) and in non-technical magazines and newspapers.

DiNovi 9y ago

FF has memory and rendering problems

sp332 9y ago
Firefox worked to close all memory leaks a few years ago. New ones are treated as bugs and fixed quickly. They even got aggressive about limiting memory that addons use. You can check about:performance to keep an eye on them.
ionised 9y ago
For me personally, Chrome is WAY worse in memory usage than Firefox

ionised 9y ago

> but why is chrome so much more popular than firefox these days amongst non-technical users? Google aggressively pushed Chrome on web users. Banner messages claiming the users browser was out of date (it wasn't, they just weren't using Chrome), or that this website works better on Chrome. Redesigning their web services to be coincidentally worse on Firefox. The numerous and excessive ways it was bundled with various other application installers. Most users don't customise and application install, they just stick with the defaults and the result was, they ended up with Chrome as the default browser.

livingparadox 9y ago

I can't speak for anyone else, but for me personally, the deep integration with Google is a feature for me. Almost everything I do is on Google (email, domains, drive, Cell Carrier), so having the deep integration with Google on Chrome makes my life that much more convenient. I got into chrome as a teenager, though, when my dad switched from firefox to chrome due to Chrome being apparently faster than firefox at its debut.