Can't avoid Chrome on a Chromebook. On the MBA, I use Chrome as well. I've migrated to Firefox on my Windows and Linux laptops, but I thought Firefox had battery issues on MacOS.
I usually keep about 5-7 pinned tabs open (Gmail, Contact, Calendar, Keep, Drive, HackerNews, etc) and cycle through ~3-7 transient tabs, and I find that the browsing experience is not enjoyable on 4GB machines anymore.
I don't have any distinct cpu/memory/battery profiling datasets to provide anything but a personal anecdote. I dropped Chrome due to general laptop responsiveness in favour of a combo of Firefox with AdNausem and Privacy Badger.
Which, has worked fine for my use (not noticed any adverse battery effects but I've also not been actively monitoring), though I don't use nearly the number of google services you've listed. Your results may differ, I've heard mixed reviews (again, anecdotally, so take with a grain of salt) of google services in firefox and safari.
> but I thought Firefox had battery issues on MacOS.
Does it still, are you referring to 70+? Firefox 70 in October came with big improvements[1], I didn't do any testing though. I think I saw some benchmarks showing it's slightly worse than Chrome, but it was minor. Can't find them right now unfortunately.
It is deeply psychologically jarring, but Firefox runs through the Android and I think Linux compat layers on a Chromebook just fine. I have no idea how much this actually buys you when the OS is by Google for running Chrome, but it does work.
I usually keep about 5-7 pinned tabs open (Gmail, Contact, Calendar, Keep, Drive, HackerNews, etc) and cycle through ~3-7 transient tabs, and I find that the browsing experience is not enjoyable on 4GB machines anymore.