[gitaarik]

Performance? Yeah there was once a time that Chrome was a bit snappier than Firefox, but nothing significant. I think it's mostly the placebo effect of people just thinking they are using a faster/slower browser.

Development of devtools was indeed quite good early on in Chrome. But Firefox already had the Firebug extension, which was basically the first kind of browser devtools as far as I can remember. And then Firefox also eventually implemented the devtools natively, and Firebug eventually disappeared. And that did take some time while Chrome had the devtools already native. But still Firefox with their open plugin system allowed for Firebug to evolve, and Chrome's devtools (and also Firefox's) was for sure inspired by Firebug.

So why do people use Chrome really? Placebo, hype, lack of historical context, and ignorance of privacy, I would say.