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> ...for a fraction of a second faster load speed of some pages (, which is often even "fake" as Google artificially slows down some pages for Firefox users or

> ...for a fraction of a second faster load speed of some pages (, which is often even "fake" as Google artificially slows down some pages for Firefox users or engineers them in Chrome optimization specific ways,) disregarding any privacy concerns... That is false and defamatory. Chromium is noticeably faster than Firefox on a large swath of popular websites and web applications, the majority of which Google does not control; particularly on resource-constrained devices, and on Linux. Memory usage comparisons on different machines with different pages and different other applications running are beyond meaningless. Chromium will use less memory if you don't have much, and it will use more if you have memory to spare; I'm sure Firefox will do some similar things.

wizzwizz4 7y ago
It isn't entirely false, though. Google has been known to break other browsers. Of course, we can't know that it's deliberate, but… remember https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824? > For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our [EdgeHTML's] hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life.
neandrake 7y ago
I heard that google has been shipping HTTP2 and/or HTTP3 functionality which would largely work only between the chrome client and servers which support those. That might also result in those pages appearing to load faster between different browsers.
zelphirkalt 7y ago
Deactivate pre-loading of websites the website you look at links too and then talk again. Chrome uses all kind of tricks to trick you into thinking it is the faster rendering browser. Deactivate the gimmicks and then look at a comparison. There wont be much difference there. Also I'd rather have my browser have a low memory footprint, than using GBs of more RAM, just to load a page a fraction of a second faster. Still the whole argument is laughable, because even if I saw every page a second or 2 slower, it would still be worth it, if it protects my rights online. Also using more memory just because I have more, to the degree of using all of it, is not a good strategy. Sorry, I run other applications too, the browser is not the only contender for my RAM. I highly doubt that Firefox does anything half as aggressive with regard to memory as Chrome does, in order to "impress the user" with their speed. As I said, sitting on over 200 tabs and only using 33% of my RAM, while other applications are running too. It is not simply eating up all my memory, as I have seen Chrome doing with loads of tabs.
- microcolonel 7y ago
  > Deactivate pre-loading of websites the website you look at links too and then talk again. Chrome uses all kind of tricks to trick you into thinking it is the faster rendering browser. Deactivate the gimmicks and then look at a comparison. Why would I hobble interesting performance features of the browser just to compare it unfairly to a browser which lacks those features, or doesn't implement them properly? FWIW I have some forms of prefetch disabled, it's still faster. Chromium is in fact faster, in addition to having more of those "tricks" to hide latency. > Still the whole argument is laughable, because even if I saw every page a second or 2 slower, it would still be worth it, if it protects my rights online. What rights do you gain by using a Netscape fork rather than a KHTML fork? Both Mozilla and Google censor extensions and occasionally install proprietary components the user did not ask for; but Google doesn't preach about being some saintly do-gooder (and Chromium distributions with privacy and do-good claims like this are about as trustworthy as Mozilla). > Also using more memory just because I have more, to the degree of using all of it, is not a good strategy. Sorry, I run other applications too, the browser is not the only contender for my RAM. AFAIK it will size down when other applications allocate more memory. > I highly doubt that Firefox does anything half as aggressive with regard to memory as Chrome does, in order to "impress the user" with their speed. Is that... a good thing? Seems like you're spinning Firefox lacking sophistication as some sort of great advantage. Added: If you just don't want to be attached to google services, or have the possibility to accidentally enable a google service, you can try ungoogled-chromium.
  - zelphirkalt 7y ago
    One: Ungoogled-Chromium still adds to web engine mono culture, so that wont be a good solution. Two: I did mention GNU IceCat, for those worried about Mozilla. So all your points about "Google is not worse than Mozilla" drip off like raindrops off a raincoat. Aside from that, I do not see Google implementing privacy enhancing features in their browser, nor do I see it happening in Ungoogled-Chromium. Mozilla developers on the other hand did provide us with some tracking protection features during the last months. So I am not buying what you are trying to sell me.

wizzwizz4 7y ago

It isn't entirely false, though. Google has been known to break other browsers. Of course, we can't know that it's deliberate, but… remember https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18697824? > For example, they recently added a hidden empty div over YouTube videos that causes our [EdgeHTML's] hardware acceleration fast-path to bail (should now be fixed in Win10 Oct update). Prior to that, our fairly state-of-the-art video acceleration put us well ahead of Chrome on video playback time on battery, but almost the instant they broke things on YouTube, they started advertising Chrome's dominance over Edge on video-watching battery life.

neandrake 7y ago

I heard that google has been shipping HTTP2 and/or HTTP3 functionality which would largely work only between the chrome client and servers which support those. That might also result in those pages appearing to load faster between different browsers.

zelphirkalt 7y ago

Deactivate pre-loading of websites the website you look at links too and then talk again. Chrome uses all kind of tricks to trick you into thinking it is the faster rendering browser. Deactivate the gimmicks and then look at a comparison. There wont be much difference there. Also I'd rather have my browser have a low memory footprint, than using GBs of more RAM, just to load a page a fraction of a second faster. Still the whole argument is laughable, because even if I saw every page a second or 2 slower, it would still be worth it, if it protects my rights online. Also using more memory just because I have more, to the degree of using all of it, is not a good strategy. Sorry, I run other applications too, the browser is not the only contender for my RAM. I highly doubt that Firefox does anything half as aggressive with regard to memory as Chrome does, in order to "impress the user" with their speed. As I said, sitting on over 200 tabs and only using 33% of my RAM, while other applications are running too. It is not simply eating up all my memory, as I have seen Chrome doing with loads of tabs.

microcolonel 7y ago
> Deactivate pre-loading of websites the website you look at links too and then talk again. Chrome uses all kind of tricks to trick you into thinking it is the faster rendering browser. Deactivate the gimmicks and then look at a comparison. Why would I hobble interesting performance features of the browser just to compare it unfairly to a browser which lacks those features, or doesn't implement them properly? FWIW I have some forms of prefetch disabled, it's still faster. Chromium is in fact faster, in addition to having more of those "tricks" to hide latency. > Still the whole argument is laughable, because even if I saw every page a second or 2 slower, it would still be worth it, if it protects my rights online. What rights do you gain by using a Netscape fork rather than a KHTML fork? Both Mozilla and Google censor extensions and occasionally install proprietary components the user did not ask for; but Google doesn't preach about being some saintly do-gooder (and Chromium distributions with privacy and do-good claims like this are about as trustworthy as Mozilla). > Also using more memory just because I have more, to the degree of using all of it, is not a good strategy. Sorry, I run other applications too, the browser is not the only contender for my RAM. AFAIK it will size down when other applications allocate more memory. > I highly doubt that Firefox does anything half as aggressive with regard to memory as Chrome does, in order to "impress the user" with their speed. Is that... a good thing? Seems like you're spinning Firefox lacking sophistication as some sort of great advantage. Added: If you just don't want to be attached to google services, or have the possibility to accidentally enable a google service, you can try ungoogled-chromium.
- zelphirkalt 7y ago
  One: Ungoogled-Chromium still adds to web engine mono culture, so that wont be a good solution. Two: I did mention GNU IceCat, for those worried about Mozilla. So all your points about "Google is not worse than Mozilla" drip off like raindrops off a raincoat. Aside from that, I do not see Google implementing privacy enhancing features in their browser, nor do I see it happening in Ungoogled-Chromium. Mozilla developers on the other hand did provide us with some tracking protection features during the last months. So I am not buying what you are trying to sell me.