[pastrami_panda]

> even when there were faster and more fancy alternatives available

This seems to indicates there's not faster alternatives around anymore, but the last time I tried FF (4-6 months ago) I couldn't make the transition because the lag was pretty obvious when coming from Chrome based browsers. Is this not the case anymore?

[DangerousPie]

I use Firefox and Chrome at the same time and I don't really notice any difference. Maybe a bit for Google apps (Hangouts, Docs, Meet, etc) but I just see that as a symptom of Google's attempts at using their market dominance to harm competitors, which makes me want to use Firefox even more.

[jk7tarYZAQNpTQa]

It seems to me that Google is always trying to make their products run much slower on browsers that aren't Chrome.

[cratermoon]

It's unlikely they put any effort into intentionally make them run slower, it's just that they are written to work optimally on Chrome and minor differences in the behavior of things like the V8 vs. SpiderMonkey and Blink vs Gecko. Given that each one is written with different tradeoffs, it's not surprising things perform differently.

Whether or not the Google programmers use specific proprietary knowledge about the behavior of Chrome to optimize performance is different. If they do, that would be similar to the things that got Microsoft in trouble.

[clankyclanker]

I'd agree with you, except for Google's long and sordid history of doing exactly that, time and time again (found with a 30-second search):

https://tech.co/news/google-slowed-youtube-firefox-edge-2019...

https://www.techspot.com/news/79672-google-accused-sabotagin...

https://www.zdnet.com/article/former-mozilla-exec-google-has...

Google knows that every time they release a Firefox bug, FF's user percentage goes down a tiny bit. Repeat over dozens of bugs, for years, and you have a strategy.

There's one blog post from another Mozillian that I can't find anywhere that came out within the last year with other examples, I think it was on HN.

[bscphil]

> There's one blog post from another Mozillian that I can't find anywhere

You are looking for https://web.archive.org/web/20180728122724if_/https://twitte...

[ficklepickle]

I read that post. It was enough to convince me of malice at the time. I don't have the link though.

[samstave]

What is your opinion of Brave Browser.

I use Brave + Ublock exclusively.

[DangerousPie]

I haven't tried Brave, never understood the point of it. What does Brave + uBlock offer you that Firefox + uBlock doesn't?

[BrendanEich]

I hope you mean uBlock Origin.

Brave and uBO share filter tech and we aim to make uBO unnecessary (this may require setting shields to aggressive). We do much more than any extension can do, and Google has made it clear they will further restrict extension APIs.

https://www.theregister.com/2019/05/29/google_webrequest_api...

https://brave.com/privacy-updates-7/ (latest in series)

[DangerousPie]

What does Google restricting APIs in Chrome have to do with Firefox? I haven't heard of any plans like that from them.

[usernameak]

Firefox has had same API as Chrome for a while.

[mFixman]

I think this might be more about perception than anything else.

I've used Firefox since 2006, and Chrome always seemed heavier, laggier and uglier. Maybe it's the snappy iOS-like animation when you scroll to the bottom of the page that makes it seem snappier?

[jan_g]

It's not imaginary - for years Firefox drained battery on macbooks really fast. Then there is this pesky issue of randomly freezing whole laptop for a minute or so, usually associated with file uploads or locking screen [1], [2], [3], ... Fixed in one version, then appears again in the next version.

I still used Firefox a lot for various reasons (and still do), but I'm not blind to how it performed.

[1] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1595998 [2] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1415923 [3] https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=1489785

[Sodman]

Firefox is fine and quick as long as you don't need to use any heavy Google apps. Some people might even consider this a plus. For me, between work and personal use I'm effectively married to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Hangouts. Unfortunately that makes Firefox a non-starter for me. Not to mention Firefox's privacy settings trigger countless reCAPTCHA gates across most of GSuite. I get that this is not Firefox's "fault" and it's done intentionally by Google, but as a user it becomes my problem.

I really want Firefox to work for me and I'd love to drop Chrome, but last time FF made big noise about performance improvements I tried it out and Gmail was still unusably slow.

[neogodless]

I use Google Calendar and Google Docs without any issues in Firefox. I agree Gmail is coded terribly and do not use the web site! I stick to using Thunderbird on the computer, and checking email on my phone. Have not been using Hangouts for a couple years, though.

For me, the way Google is keeping Gmail terrible for other browsers is exactly the reason to not use Chrome. No way I'm OK with that.

[jakemal]

FWIW I use all of those apps on a daily basis with Firefox and have not noticed any performance issues. It may be worth giving it another try if you haven't in a while.

[kiwijamo]

Indeed. Hangouts is one I find works better in Firefox even! But I observe it seems to vary. Perhaps Intel Macs has some quirks that makes it more peformant and reliable in Firefox.

[hojjat12000]

I switched to FF when Quantum came out. I use it exclusively. Not because I hate Chrome, but because I don't see any need for chrome. Once in a while I see a website that forces me to use something other than FF. But it happens rarely, and it is mostly some webgl-based under-development demo website.

I even use it on my phone. The mobile version is definitely worse than Chrome, but it has plugins (or it used to! nowadays it only support a few popular ones which is a shame) and also I can send tabs from my phone to my computer (which is a better place to read articles anyways).

[chociej]

Have not ever noticed any performance problems using FF for Google products, personally. Works great.

[koningrobot]

I switched back to Firefox last week and I had the same experience -- Google apps and Slack were dog slow. But after a day or so they were working fine, I imagine it's a matter of populating the cache. YMMV.

[Abishek_Muthian]

It also depends upon the operating system among several other variables,

I didn't find noticeable difference between FF and Chrome based browsers(Vivaldi, Edge) on macOS(although Safari runs circles around them) after using them extensively. I used each of them for a separate project with several common websites loaded in them, there were different quirks for each browser(especially reg tab hibernation) but latency was not one of them.

On Linux FF seems definitely faster than Chromium, although there are occasional DNS errors which stops loading the web pages altogether(likely result of my own doing). I've stopped having different browsers for different projects and just use FF for all.

On Android with Chrome, not just Chrome but even WebView using it is astonishingly fast(e.g. DDG browser), I presume it's because of data saver feature. On de-googled android like LineageOS, FF/Fennec seems to be on same level as Chromium and DDG is faster here as well.

On iOS, everything is Safari.

I don't use Windows much, but I've seen others mentioning Edge seems to be faster than Chrome recently.

[ptato]

How much faster is it for you guys? I legitimately can not tell the difference.

[tempest_]

I find them to be close enough to imperceptible for just normal html and css etc.

The stumbling block for me as FireFox user is I am increasingly bumping into web apps that preform poorly in FF but are fine in Chrome for one reason or another. One instance I bump into a lot is ElasticSearches Kibana runs like trash in FF for some reason.

[StavrosK]

It sounds like the old "nobody uses Firefox because nobody tests on Firefox because nobody uses Firefox" vicious cycle, unfortunately.

[cortesoft]

I am guessing performance differences might be masked by good hardware? Sometimes performance differences don't show up until you use an underpowered machine.

[foerbert]

I don't think it's just that. I have a half-dead Chromebook with linux, and I use Firefox on it. Some years back I ran Chrome on it because it worked better, but at some point I started seeing issues with Chrome and tried Firefox again. I've been using Firefox since.

[moritonal]

No. I still use Firefox, but when I use Edge or Chrome it hurts a bit just how much snappier they are.

[Sohcahtoa82]

I switched from Chrome to Firefox about a year and a half ago. Chrome definitely felt more snappy, but the difference wasn't that much.

Except on Facebook. My Facebook tab is incredibly laggy, and gets more and more laggy the longer I leave it open. I'm one of those users that tends to keep 50+ tabs open, and I have to close and reopen the Facebook tab at least once a day to keep it from becoming a nearly frozen mess. Even then, if a video is playing and I click it to make it fill the window, it takes several seconds for it to happen. And with an i9-9900K, 32 GB of RAM, RTX 3080, and a 1 TB NVMe drive, my computer is definitely no slouch.

[kaba0]

But facebook is a pile of... like I have a screenshot of FF’s task manager showing facebook using 800 MB of memory!

In a way I see it as a win, I really really hate opening it on desktop.

[hiq]

Did you have ublock origin installed on Firefox?

I feel that most people complaining about slow browsers have no blocker installed.

[sodality2]

My CPU immediately pumps to 100% usage after opening google docs. Granted, it's on my old laptop, but I can use electron apps and they run far better than gdocs.

[kiwijamo]

Interesting, I have uBlock Origin and indeed I can't tell the difference between Chrome and Firefox.

[bartvk]

Did you see lag on all websites? Or in specific instances? Which platform and on what kind of hardware?