5 ms·

It's faster than Firefox. Also it integrates better with Google services.

by vbeeaz 3y ago

Larrikin 3y ago
How is it faster than Firefox in a meaningful way? Is this even still true for the people who insist on keeping hundreds of tabs open at a time?
- marginalia_nu 3y ago
  At least on mobile, Firefox is so unresponsive it's a complete nonstarter on a slower phone. Chrome is fine.
  - concordDance 3y ago
    Seems fine on mine. You speaking anecdotally or do you have data?
    - marginalia_nu 3y ago
      Yeah, it's slow to the point of being completely unusable on my phone.
      - Larrikin 3y ago
        What's the point of even using the web if you don't have an ad blocker in your browser?
        marginalia_nu 3y ago
        I mainly use the parts of the web that doesn't require one.
      - leodag 3y ago
        Have you used it recently, or just years ago? It definitely used to be very slow, but since ~2 years ago it's very good, and my go to browser (my phone is not high end, by the way)
        marginalia_nu 3y ago
        I give it a spin every few months. Then I uninstall it because it's still irredeemably unresponsive.
  - flerchin 3y ago
    This is the opposite of my experience on android. Firefox with uBlock Origin is the only way to get some sites to load in any reasonable timeframe. The difference can be measured in 10s of seconds, and is more noticeable with worse hardware.
- fooker 3y ago
  It is, Firefox is tangibly slow for me on mac. Rendering/JS performance seems reasonable nowadays, but the UI has weird skips and freezes fairly often.
- boudin 3y ago
  My experience is the opposite, Firefox feels quite lighter, Chrome tends to use more resources and feels bloated.
  - easton 3y ago
    Me too and I don't really understand why. On Windows, pressing F12 to open Dev Tools takes a good five seconds in Edge but takes fractions of a second in Firefox. And page renders feel faster, although apparently they actually aren't in controlled experiments. Maybe one of the extensions I typically use in both works differently in Firefox.
- jeroenhd 3y ago
  I'm on Linux, and Firefox's performance is still behind Chromium. Mozilla only recently enabled hardware acceleration. There are benchmarks in which Firefox beats Chrome (https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/benchmarks/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/benchmarks/overview?numDays... has an overview) but in general Chrome is faster. On Windows and macOS Firefox is a bit more competitive, but important benchmarks such as JetStream and Speedometer still have Firefox easily beat (note the inverted score axes). That doesn't mean Firefox is slow per se, it just means Chromium (and WebKit) are faster. On Android I use Firefox for its addon support, but the UI is notably more glitchy and buggy than Chrome's.
  - ahartmetz 3y ago
    > JetStream and Speedometer If a website uses enough JS for that to matter, it's a problem on all browsers
    - jeroenhd 3y ago
      These web apps are quite usable on Chrome and useless lag fests on Firefox. Do I prefer the modern "let's ship a JS renderer with every webpage" approach? No, definitely not. Unfortunately, quite a few web applications and websites u visit disagree with me. There's also a perceptable difference in terms of browser responsiveness outside the page itself. Firefox seems to take longer to process UI input in my experience, for reasons I don't entirely get. There's a slight but visible delay before the page starts rendering that Chrome doesn't have, and that small delay adds up when you're working in web UIs fir a significant part of the day.
  - kelnos 3y ago
    Strange, on Linux I've found Firefox to be just as fast as Chrome. Granted, I've had all the hardware accel stuff force-enabled for years now, with no issues (on Intel iGPUs), so maybe that's why I haven't noticed any slowness.
Anthony-G 3y ago
I’d agree that Google Chrome was noticeably faster than Firefox up until around a decade ago. However, I haven’t noticed it to be any faster since then. What makes web browsing faster for me is the use of web extensions that disable the downloading of unnecessary resources and/or the execution of pointless Javascript, e.g., NoScript, uMatrix, uBlock, Privacy Badger, etc – the same extensions that will have their abilities greatly reduced by Manifest v3.
kelnos 3y ago
I haven't noticed any speed differences between Chrome and Firefox for quite some time now (Linux here, so maybe it's different on Windows or macOS). And I haven't found the Google services integration to be all that deep or interesting to matter. In fact, I'd found the opposite to be true: it's gotten in the way. Having the browser log into your Google Account directly has led to some confusing behavior, especially when signing into a second account via some webapp, which sometimes changes how the browser is signed in. Regardless, I think we all would be better off with a bit less integration of Google services in our lives.

It's faster than Firefox. Also it integrates better with Google services.

by vbeeaz 3y ago

It's faster than Firefox. Also it integrates better with Google services.

How is it faster than Firefox in a meaningful way? Is this even still true for the people who insist on keeping hundreds of tabs open at a time?

marginalia_nu 3y ago
At least on mobile, Firefox is so unresponsive it's a complete nonstarter on a slower phone. Chrome is fine.
- concordDance 3y ago
  Seems fine on mine. You speaking anecdotally or do you have data?
  - marginalia_nu 3y ago
    Yeah, it's slow to the point of being completely unusable on my phone.
    - Larrikin 3y ago
      What's the point of even using the web if you don't have an ad blocker in your browser?
      - marginalia_nu 3y ago
        I mainly use the parts of the web that doesn't require one.
    - leodag 3y ago
      Have you used it recently, or just years ago? It definitely used to be very slow, but since ~2 years ago it's very good, and my go to browser (my phone is not high end, by the way)
      - marginalia_nu 3y ago
        I give it a spin every few months. Then I uninstall it because it's still irredeemably unresponsive.
- flerchin 3y ago
  This is the opposite of my experience on android. Firefox with uBlock Origin is the only way to get some sites to load in any reasonable timeframe. The difference can be measured in 10s of seconds, and is more noticeable with worse hardware.
fooker 3y ago
It is, Firefox is tangibly slow for me on mac. Rendering/JS performance seems reasonable nowadays, but the UI has weird skips and freezes fairly often.
boudin 3y ago
My experience is the opposite, Firefox feels quite lighter, Chrome tends to use more resources and feels bloated.
- easton 3y ago
  Me too and I don't really understand why. On Windows, pressing F12 to open Dev Tools takes a good five seconds in Edge but takes fractions of a second in Firefox. And page renders feel faster, although apparently they actually aren't in controlled experiments. Maybe one of the extensions I typically use in both works differently in Firefox.
jeroenhd 3y ago
I'm on Linux, and Firefox's performance is still behind Chromium. Mozilla only recently enabled hardware acceleration. There are benchmarks in which Firefox beats Chrome (https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/benchmarks/overview?numDays=60 https://arewefastyet.com/linux64/benchmarks/overview?numDays... has an overview) but in general Chrome is faster. On Windows and macOS Firefox is a bit more competitive, but important benchmarks such as JetStream and Speedometer still have Firefox easily beat (note the inverted score axes). That doesn't mean Firefox is slow per se, it just means Chromium (and WebKit) are faster. On Android I use Firefox for its addon support, but the UI is notably more glitchy and buggy than Chrome's.
- ahartmetz 3y ago
  > JetStream and Speedometer If a website uses enough JS for that to matter, it's a problem on all browsers
  - jeroenhd 3y ago
    These web apps are quite usable on Chrome and useless lag fests on Firefox. Do I prefer the modern "let's ship a JS renderer with every webpage" approach? No, definitely not. Unfortunately, quite a few web applications and websites u visit disagree with me. There's also a perceptable difference in terms of browser responsiveness outside the page itself. Firefox seems to take longer to process UI input in my experience, for reasons I don't entirely get. There's a slight but visible delay before the page starts rendering that Chrome doesn't have, and that small delay adds up when you're working in web UIs fir a significant part of the day.
- kelnos 3y ago
  Strange, on Linux I've found Firefox to be just as fast as Chrome. Granted, I've had all the hardware accel stuff force-enabled for years now, with no issues (on Intel iGPUs), so maybe that's why I haven't noticed any slowness.

Anthony-G 3y ago

I’d agree that Google Chrome was noticeably faster than Firefox up until around a decade ago. However, I haven’t noticed it to be any faster since then. What makes web browsing faster for me is the use of web extensions that disable the downloading of unnecessary resources and/or the execution of pointless Javascript, e.g., NoScript, uMatrix, uBlock, Privacy Badger, etc – the same extensions that will have their abilities greatly reduced by Manifest v3.

kelnos 3y ago

I haven't noticed any speed differences between Chrome and Firefox for quite some time now (Linux here, so maybe it's different on Windows or macOS). And I haven't found the Google services integration to be all that deep or interesting to matter. In fact, I'd found the opposite to be true: it's gotten in the way. Having the browser log into your Google Account directly has led to some confusing behavior, especially when signing into a second account via some webapp, which sometimes changes how the browser is signed in. Regardless, I think we all would be better off with a bit less integration of Google services in our lives.