There is much, or was at one point, much discussion about which of the two browsers was better. Which is more secure? Which has better performance? Which has more features? Is it slick chrome? Or aging Firefox?
Years later, the former is on top, with the latter falling behind more and more by day. Pretty soon they’ll just be another internet explorer! But which is really better? And why is Google’s offering so damn popular?
Start the Chrome vs Firefox war….. now!
One upon a time, there was this little sparky upstart in the browser world by the name of chrome. Firefox was the champion, with Mozilla leading many of the web standards. Then people started noticing chrome was faster, was more secure, and better performing. Bit by bit, Chrome took over. And now, Firefox has fallen out of favor, probably never to regain that old fame. But why?
Security
Firefox is not necessarily just the most insecure browser ever, don’t get me wrong (that honor probably does to IE at this point honestly). But it lacks certain security features chrome doesn’t. Specifically, it lacks sandboxing. Sandboxing means if one website is compromised, only that websites process is compromised and everything else should be safe (notwithstanding sandbox escape vulnerabilities). This means Firefox is more vulnerable than chrome.
More info on this can be found here: https://madaidans-insecurities.github.io/firefox-chromium.html (beware this source has been known to be somewhat biased, nonetheless has good info).
Performance
If you’ve ever used the two browsers side by side, you’ll notice the difference. Firefox can be significantly slower at times at rendering pages, if it loads them at all.
Let’s look at the benchmarks on this site for instance. Only two benchmarks did Firefox do the best in, rather pathetic if you think about it. And one test is developed by Mozilla themselves!
Popularity of Chrome
Here, hands down Google’s browser wins. Firefox has a measly ~8% market share, while chrome or chromium based browsers have ~80% or greater (source: here). Firefox will have to pull a miracle to catch up. And I’m yet to see one.
People are choosing chrome, and Firefox is failing to catch up. Badly.
The verdict
Chrome has won. Between itself and chromium based browsers, Firefox has no chance. Firefox is slowly dying, as much as I hate to say it.
Mozilla has been leaking profits (the profits they don’t siphon off to the CEO anyway) and leaking developers. Their search deals aren’t bringing enough in anymore. It’s only a matter of time although I’ll be happy to see that change.
Personally I will always recommend Chrome.
What’s your favorite browser? Let me know in the comments!
