
Browse Against the Machine - type0
https://medium.com/the-official-unofficial-firefox-blog/browse-against-the-machine-e793c0fee917
======
xg15
> _It’s faster, lags less, hogs much less memory than chrome, and in June
> we’ll release multi-process Firefox, putting us at performance parity with
> Chrome in most of the ways we mere humans can actually perceive._

I'm rooting for them but I really​ hope they get this done quickly. On
Firefox, I often have ~.5 second UI freezes throughout the use which lead to
an impression of sluggishness. Chrome, with the same number of tabs and
equivalent extensions doesn't have this. By all means, Mozilla, use tricks if
needed - keep stuff loaded in the background, defer script execution, prefetch
DNS etc - but perceived responsiveness​ is really important. Freezing UI of
all things is the worst that could happen.

Despite this, I'll stay on Firefox and look forward for the future.

~~~
SEMW
> I really​ hope they get this done quickly

You don't have to wait for them to enable it for everyone. Enable it yourself
by setting browser.tabs.remote.autostart to true in about:config (on ff48-53
this'll use one one process for ui and one for all tabs, I believe on 54+
it'll use more). (As long as you don't have any addons that don't support it,
anyway -- after enabling it, check in about:support under "Multiprocess
Windows", and if not, about:addons should show the offending addon. IIRC
there's a staged rollout, so it may already be enabled for you even if you
don't force it on, unless you have an addon that doesn't support it)

~~~
Sylos
browser.tabs.remote.autostart should already be default-enabled, unless your
extensions aren't compatible with it. It'll tell you "disabled by add-ons" in
about:support, if that's the case.

And you can enable multiple content processes prior to Firefox 54 by setting
dom.ipc.processCount to a number higher than 1. This is the maximum number of
content processes that it'll use, as you open more tabs. So, if your number of
tabs exceeds that value, it'll currently still distribute them among your
content processes round-robin-style.

You get the best performance vs. RAM ratio with this value at 4 (or I believe
rather just the number of cores your CPU has). This is also what Firefox 54
will ship with. You get the best security and best performance, disregarding
RAM, by setting it to something really high, like 500, so that a new process
starts up with each tab that you open (which allows each tab to be sandboxed
individually).

~~~
lucb1e
I didn't know about about:support, nice. It indeed says "disabled by addons".
Other than a binary search, how do I figure out which one(s)?

~~~
SolarNet
The addons ( about:addons ) page will tell you on a per addon basis.

~~~
lucb1e
I don't see it. Each addon has its icon, title, description, a "more" link,
and a disable, uninstall and preferences button. On the more page (trying a
few) I don't see any indication either. Where does it show for you?

~~~
mook
I believe you need to install the add-on compatibility reporter add-on to see
the marking (since the add-on modifies the add-on listing). See
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-
compat...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/add-on-
compatibility-reporter/) .

------
pandatigox
I'm going add a controversial opinion. I've been using Firefox my whole life
but recently I'm finding Safari to be a more appealing option than both
Firefox or Chrome.

Firefox, and Chrome to an extent, are powerhouses. They have a great community
with awesome and really creative extensions. Safari only just started adding
extensions and it shows: apart from the usual ad blocker stuff, there's not
much out there.

But Safari is fast and is tied to the OS so well that it's great for just
using the browser as a portal to the web. Safari has a menu option that allows
me to save quickly to my Downloads folder. I can use the share sheet to send
URLs, snippets of info straight to other apps. Also, if I'm crazy into
automation, I can set up workflows via Automator for even more efficient text
processing.

People champion Firefox as the sole defender of the web, but people often
forget that Safari is quite unobtrusive too. Sure, it maybe lacking in pushing
the frontiers of web standards, but for the most part, it stays out of your
hair too (Firefox has this quirky default homepage that likes you to send
these "witty" phrases)

~~~
roblabla
Safari being MacOS-only doesn't help its cause very much. It's also so far
behind on web standards that some started to call it "the new IE"[0]. Since
this, apple started to show some new love to safari in the form of the safari
tech preview, but it's still far from where it should be...

[0]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12051267](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12051267)

~~~
eriknstr
Furthermore, Safari is proprietary. Firefox is not and most of Chrome is not
(Chromium).

~~~
masswerk
Ahem, Webkit ...

------
scandox
Why did I move from Netscape to IE? Speed.

Why did I move from IE to Firefox? Speed.

Why did I move from Firefox to Chrome? Speed.

Why did I move from Chrome to Firefox? Negative feelings about Google.

So for myself the only things that work, hand on heart, are Speed or
Repulsion. You can't really sell repulsion. Therefore, I think their only hope
is Speed.

Admittedly I may be a crap example.

~~~
roblabla
Why did I move from chrome to firefox? Stability.

I don't know if it's just me, but nowadays, chrome just sucks so much firefox
manages to be _better_. Chrome tab crashes occur more often than ever before
and it uses a shitcrapton of memory. I remember the days where chrome was lean
and small and fast. Those days are long gone.

I've been sailing firefox for a year now, and to my great surprise, it has
gone from being an absolutely terrible memory hog and crash-o-meter to being
fairly efficient and stable. Sure it is still a bit on the heavy side of
memory, but in the meantime it doesn't lose my work every few days.

~~~
flai
I never had a crash, and thus never felt the need to switch.

------
rc_bhg
I just use it because Mozilla is the only browser I trust with my information
and privacy. They are the only ones who I think are genuine about trying to
protect me.

~~~
rcMgD2BwE72F
Yet Firefox doesn't sync cookies block/whitelist and permissions [0] Something
Chrome has supported since the beginning.

I, also, use (only) Firefox on mobile and desktop but sometimes I'm really
suprised by the lack of features to control data/privacy.

[0]
[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=978010](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=978010)

------
jbg_
I switched from Chrome to Firefox nightly for most browsing some time ago, and
it really seems that Firefox is moving at a furious pace at the moment. Its
performance and battery usage is light years ahead of a year ago, and in terms
of web standards support, at least in some areas, it's the best browser
available.

Also (not affiliated): If you've been tinkering with Rust or have thought
about doing so, Servo is well worth checking out or helping with - I think
helping to prevent Chrome from having an effective monopoly in Web browsing is
a noble cause even if you're not worried about Google's motives.

------
GlitchMr
I use Firefox myself. It's really fast, until you get into Google websites,
like YouTube - those websites work really slow (well, not that slow, just
noticeably slower), while there are no issues in Google Chrome - as if that
was intentional, even (like, Google detecting Firefox, and providing it slower
code).

~~~
intopieces
If this turned out to be true, is there an antitrust case there?

~~~
lucb1e
There might be, but I doubt it's on purpose. At best it'd be gross negligence
or something, but I'm not sure holding a monopoly by not actively supporting
the opposition (i.e. negligence) is punishable.

I experience the same issue and it's frustrating. Not that I use a lot of
Google services, but when I do... yeah the effect is noticeable. So much as I
like to point a finger, I expect it's just due to them not putting in as much
time to make their stuff run perfect in anything other than Chrome.

~~~
5ilv3r
Have you read google's website code guidelines? They actively encourage
breaking the standards to save characters as long as it renders ok. It's kinda
wrong, and I'm sure they have a little list of tricks they can pull to break
one browser but not another.

Example: Google search with firefox mobile has unclickable links if I change
my user agent to IE8. Literally nothing happens when I tap a link. They are in
too deep and starting to break things.

~~~
therealidiot
Google search on the desktop also has unclickable links if I change my UA to
Chrome while running Firefox

------
brynedwards
There are also patches for Chromium that remove Google integration and improve
its privacy features:

inox-patchset - [https://github.com/gcarq/inox-
patchset](https://github.com/gcarq/inox-patchset)

ungoogled-chromium - [https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-
chromium](https://github.com/Eloston/ungoogled-chromium)

Iridium Browser - [https://iridiumbrowser.de/](https://iridiumbrowser.de/)

------
yeukhon
I use Firefox as my main browser at work and at home, but Firefox performance
degrades as soon as I have 10 tabs opened. Not FF's entire fault though, a lot
of my tabs are JIRA board so there are some stupid Javascript from plugins
making the performance more worse. With Chrome, however, I was able to load
over 100 tabs easily and I rarely get a crash... So when I need to load lots
of tabs, I use Chrome. I still don't understand why. They both use multi-
process now, so where is the bottleneck? But I try to stick to Firefox
whenever possible because I like the browser.

The only issue with Chrome I have been having lately, despite not remembering
the error message, is I often can't type search terms on the url field and
then get search results from Google. I get an error message with a dinosaur
telling me something broke. I tried deleting profiles and even reinstall
Chrome, but no. I can reproduce this problem on two Macbooks I own, which
makes my experience with Chrome now pretty bad considering I can't search
directly from URL bar!

Also, while Firefox's devtool has improved a lot over the years, I can't seem
to find certain features. For example, it's pretty simple to preserve logs
under Network tab in Chrome, but where is it in Firefox? But to be fair, I
also use Firefox devtools in cases I can't easily from Chrome like editing
request in Firefox is simpler IMO. So it's a bit of pick and choose, depending
on what I need to do.

I love Firefox (I interned at Mozilla before), I've done some contributions to
Firefox, and I think the folks there have been doing a great job. But my
honest opinion is we still have some serious battle to fight, especially in
performance and plugin. I don't care much about syncing bookmarks myself
though so Chrome's integration with Google account doesn't matter to me.

~~~
prodmerc
How do you deal with that many tabs in Chrome? I found it to be a nightmare,
the tab buttons are small, you can't even see the titles. Typing a part of a
URL you remember in the address bar dumps you to Google search instead of the
actual URL.

Those two reasons were the only thing keeping me from switching to Chrome when
it was fast (apparently it isn't now)...

~~~
yeukhon
I have used [https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quick-
tabs/jnjfein...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/quick-
tabs/jnjfeinjfmenlddahdjdmgpbokiacbbb) and
[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbo...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/onetab/chphlpgkkbolifaimnlloiipkdnihall)

But these days I just keep opening a new one... most of the time I am just
searching for something on the Internet like documentations so going backward
is not really always a requirements.

------
xg15
> _Firefox for work, Chrome for play_

If the _Marketing head for Firefox_ opens like this, I'm honestly not
optimistic. So even he states that for some reason, using Firefox alone is not
sufficient for him. I think unless they find out the reasons for that, they
have little chance to become meaningful competition again - even though we
really need it.

Slightly OT, that being said, my feeling is that Chrome played on an unfair
playing field from the very beginning. I remember when Firefox was the
newcomer. With enormous effort and help of a phenomenal community-driven
grassroots campaign they managed to fight IE and, over 6 years, climb to ~30%
market share. It was an enormous success.

Then came Chrome and went from completely unknown to _beating_ IE in 2 years.

My feeling is that this can't be explained by better technology and features
alone but the fact that e.g., Google was in a position to put a Chrome ad
below the search field on the Google home page might have played a role.

~~~
bzbarsky
There were several things going on. The ad below the search field helped. The
agreements with various companies (e.g. Adobe) to stealth-install Chrome when
their products were being installed helped. The fact that a lot of the hard
work of getting web sites to be created to standards not just to "works in IE"
had been done by Firefox helped. The ads on TV all over the place helped. The
ads on posters in subways all over the place helped.

Better technology and features are nice, but huge marketing spend and sleazy
stealth-install agreements are nice too, if your goal is just market share.

------
rhaps0dy
Unfortunately Firefox (Chrome too) use more CPU than Safari when browsing
static pages or being unfocused. Which makes them a battery drain.

Otherwise I'd use Firefox everywhere.

EDIT: numbers on 2013 11-inch Macbook Air

Firefox 3-10% vs. Safari 0.2-2% when idling

Firefox 10-40% vs. Safari 5-10% when scrolling HN

~~~
otalp
Yup, Safari is far less taxing on the battery than Chrome or Firefox.

I'd consider Firefox for desktop, but it has to be Safari on mobile devices.

------
DavideNL
...meanwhile we still can't use "pinch to zoom" (trackpad) in Firefox, which
is available in Safari and Chrome for like 5 years now. Such a basic feature!
It's the main reason i personally stopped using Firefox.

~~~
Vinnl
> Such a basic feature!

As a programmer, I really dislike remarks like this. There are so, so many
features that are just as basic as that. All software will have features of
this caliber that are not implemented, disregarding the thousands upon
thousands of equivalently "basic" features that are.

~~~
thanksgiving
It actually shows the tragedy at Mozilla because our* hard-working programmers
have implemented this feature but Mozilla gets slammed either way.

Remember how people got in arms because Mozilla Firefox had some preference
that allowed people to disable loading images and javascript whole scale
across the browser? Well, I imagine Mozilla wouldn't be too excited to see
blog posts like this: [https://blog.codinghorror.com/this-is-what-happens-
when-you-...](https://blog.codinghorror.com/this-is-what-happens-when-you-let-
developers-create-ui/)

So what do we get? We get bugs that sit in Bugzilla for five years and nobody
wants to do anything about it.

* I am not a Mozilla employee and I can't speak for Mozilla

------
iamd3vil
I know lot of people here say that Chrome is much faster than Firefox. I agree
that sometimes chrome feels more responsive, but I want to tell my perspective
from someone who owns a very old and slow laptop. Whenever I just start
Chrome, it seems superfast until 5 minutes. Just open 5 tabs and some other
programs like Terminal and Clementine, my whole system just hangs. So I can't
even use Chrome because of the memory it consumes. Firefox actually seems very
responsive for me even if I open 10-15 tabs, I can open other programs when
it's open. Also I feel that in last two years I have rarely seen the UI
hanging in Firefox when a page loads (even with my shitty laptop).

So I am really thankful for people who work on Firefox and letting me use it
on a shitty laptop. Also it's one of the reasons I am learning Rust now so
that I can contribute to it.

~~~
jbmorgado
Well, using Google docs/sheets the difference is really big. I understand that
Chrome should be heavily optimised to use other Google products like Google
Sheets, but in the end, as a user it really makes a diference.

On a Macbook Pro from 2015, entering a simple Google Sheets documents and have
the page fully loaded and ready to work takes me ~8 seconds on Chromium, but
~17 seconds on Firefox. It's really a huge diference.

Still, I'm trying to use Firefox more and more because of privacy
considerations, but Mozilla really should up their game and have more focus in
their roadmap.

~~~
Certhas
I use Firefox as my primary browser. Do you have another example outside of
google docs that behaves that way?

The difference for google docs on my machine (three year old Laptop) isn't as
big as the one you describe and on ownclouds I don't actually see a
difference. Obviously google targets Chrome with Docs. You could equally well
say that Google needs to up their game there.

Where they really have catching up to do is with battery usage. Unfortunately
Friefox Mobile simply uses up considerably more battery for me.

~~~
JD557
I do have another example: Marathon UI.

If you access the marathon UI in Firefox, your browser will eventually slow
down to a crawl and the job JSON description will be rendered incorrectly (it
seems like a memory leak somewhere).

It works fine on Chrome.

~~~
dblohm7
It might be worth reporting this on webcompat.com

------
anonu
> [Chrome] is an eight-lane highway to the largest advertising company in the
> world. Google built it to maximize revenue from your searches and deliver
> display ads on millions of websites.

Can someone please explain this statement to me. Does using chrome change
which ads are displayed to you? Does Firefox do anything differently?

Personally I use ad blockers so my choice of browser is really based on which
blocker plugin is easiest to install. Chrome does this pretty well...

------
PeterStuer
Firefox is still set as my default browser, but it feels like every month more
and more sites just seem to QA only on Chrome :(.

~~~
nindalf
I see this a lot too, but I figure continuing to use Firefox and complaining
when I see broken websites is a good way forward. Far better than slipping
into a browser monoculture.

~~~
dblohm7
Report those broken websites to webcompat.com

------
rectang
Cue the "Give in to Google" defeatists, spiritual inheritors of the "Give in
to Microsoft" defeatists of yesteryear.

------
fiatjaf
Let me state here again that I would love to use Firefox, and I've tried more
than once, but Chrome DevTools are much faster.

------
tyingq
The messaging implies a strong stance, which I don't really see.

A strong stance would include ad and tracking blocking, on...by default.

This is more like "Optionally Browse Against the Machine After Figuring out
How".

------
jwr
Sorry, but until Firefox runs JavaScript code at least on par with Safari, it
isn't a good option for some of us.

I am the author of a reasonably large web app
([https://partsbox.io/](https://partsbox.io/)), and in real-life performance
on a Mac, Chrome is #1, Safari follows right behind it, and Firefox lags far
behind. So, Firefox isn't "faster" and doesn't "lag less", quite the opposite.

~~~
bzbarsky
Just out of curiosity, did Chrome get faster since
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13752024](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13752024)
or did Safari get slower?

In any case, I'd like to try to figure out what's going on here. Is the
problem reproducible with the publicly available demo of partsbox? If so, what
are the steps to reproduce? That is, what operations are you measuring?

~~~
jwr
I don't think either happened. I made a mistake, I intended to say that Safari
comes out on top. Sorry about that.

Yes, the public demo is just fine for trying things out. As for measuring,
Chrome does seem to have a faster JavaScript engine, as operations like search
indexing take shorter than in Safari. However, for interactive use, Safari
provides the best experience. I do not know why — perhaps due to the way it
updates the displayed DOM? In Chrome long computations in JavaScript run fast,
but Safari feels more snappy in real use.

~~~
bzbarsky
> Yes, the public demo is just fine for trying things out.

OK. Could you point me to the specific operations on the public demo that are
slow in Firefox? I've been trying a few things side by side with Chrome/Safari
and not really seeing a perceptible difference, but I don't really know my way
around this UI, so it's possible I'm not finding the right things, or not
noticing lag that you're noticing... Note that I was using a Firefox nightly;
if you're seeing the slowness in a specific Firefox release, which one is it?

~~~
jwr
> OK. Could you point me to the specific operations on the public demo that
> are slow in Firefox?

Sure — please try the search box. Enter "mkl" and observe: Safari and Chrome
feel snappy and provide instant results as you type. Firefox is noticeably
laggy.

------
vuldin
Thanks you Mozilla. As long as you continue to exist for your stated reasons
then I'll never stop using Firefox for what it's good at.

------
mirimir
I've been using Firefox since forever. IE was mostly hopeless. Opera was cool
for a while. But once I'd left Windows for good, Firefox was clearly the best
option.

I love that Chrome sandboxes itself. However, there's just too much Google in
it. Sure there's Chromium. But even that contains Google blobs.

So yes, Firefox it is.

------
cmurf
I don't have many problems with Firefox desktop, but in particular Firefox on
Android (and Chrome to some degree as well) is increasingly a nightmare with
news pages. As I'm scrolling and reading, the content jumps around as reflows
occur when e.g. an embedded ad or video renders and is squeezed into the
content. Instead of rendering the complete page with holes for this embedded
content to eventually appear, Firefox seems to render a compact page, and then
over the course of literally 2 or 3 minutes, it one by one inserts that
content, causing reflow, and unprompted scrolling. So I'm reading and then the
shit I'm reading vanishes and I have to scroll to go find it, start reading
again, and then FUCK it just happened again, rescroll to read it, and FUCK
FUCK FUCK it happened again!

~~~
abrowne
Two words: Reader View

~~~
cmurf
It helps a ton. But you have to cancel the loading of the page to get that
icon. And many of the pages I'm arriving at will do their own reload when I
click cancel, so it can be a juggling act to cancel, and in a brief window of
opportunity click on the reader view icon before the reload is triggered.

~~~
abrowne
Yes, it's not perfect. The worst is when the reader icon doesn't respond, so
you tap again, only to have it enter then exit reader mode in succession.

------
cyborgx7
I think teaching people that Google is dangerous and everyone using Chrome
makes it worse is important, and probably a good strategy for Firefox.

You can reasonably feel like Chrome is better than Firefox but I don't think
it's so much better that it is worth the trade-off.

~~~
culturalzero
It feels weird using Google now and knowing that I'm just training their AI.
Frankly, I don't particularly want that to move any faster than it already is.
One less user won't make that much difference, no, but I do think that
supporting Firefox makes a great antithesis to Google's forces.

------
stevemk14ebr
Ran a comparison just for fun. Ubuntu 16.04, on netflix chrome jumps between
~15%-40% CPU. Firefox was a solid 40%-55%. And i noticed UI lags when loading
netflix pages, took me 3 minutes to go back to chrome.

~~~
oculusthrift
ran same comparison on both my macbook air and windows 10 desktop and got the
opposite results. just want to point out that what happens on one piece of
hardware isn't indicative of everyone's experience.

------
raintrees
I periodically get asked by my clients about which browser is "best."

I respond that I use FireFox because of: Mozilla's mission/actions versus
Google's mission/actions, and NoScript protection on FireFox to stop undesired
behavior of websites I do not trust/have not vetted.

Personally, I use Chromium for the few websites where NoScript is over-
aggressive to their functionality, and that I have already vetted as being
acceptable to share all with (privacy, history, etc.).

And to make sure a problem I experience is not a FireFox-only problem :)

------
itaysk
The main reason why I dislike ff is it's GUI. Chrome is beautifully minimal,
and ff is the opposite. also - unify search and address bar already.

~~~
SolarNet
They have added search features to the URL bar. And you can remove the search
bar if you no longer want it. However many people prefer to use the search
bar. For example if I am googling for "System.IO" how does the browser know
that's a search and not a URL, hence I put it in the search bar.

------
ralphc
A big use case for me on Chrome is multiple users with their own passwords,
cookies etc. At work it's essential for logging in to multiple Salesforce orgs
at the same time, and at home I use it to manage multiple gmail accounts. I
can't consider using Firefox as my main browser until it has multiple users as
easily as Chrome does.

------
bocz
I've been a long term Firefox user, but recently I have switched to Opera. It
needed some tweaking to make the experience better for a power user, but it
works like a charm now. The built in VPN is a plus. Haven't had any
compatibility issues.

------
RRRA
Firefox needs multiprocessor asap and a great sandbox... after that, yeah,
fuck Chrome (except for those site who can't code against a standard, for what
they're worth)

------
RandyRanderson
Can someone explain to me why ppl think that splitting the browser application
into separate processes will positively affect performance?

~~~
1123581321
1\. Separate processes for UI and tab rendering/computation. Same reason iOS
is always smooth; in addition to allowing faster access to menus, inspector,
extensions etc., it simply feels faster to experience an interface at a
constant 60fps.

2\. Can pass work off to more CPU cores. I'm not sure of the real world
performance gain, but theoretically you could render three heavy tabs and the
Firefox UI on a 4 processor CPU almost as fast as one heavy tab in single
processor mode.

~~~
RandyRanderson
All browsers use multiple threads internally so single process browsers too
can use mutliple cores and, in fact, can more efficiently.

Further, most popular modern operating systems handle processes and threads
similarly internally.

I'm not sure what you mean by 60 fps. 2d apps typically don't have render
loops as games do - they only "composit" graphics typically by updating the UI
only if a section needs to be re-drawn.

~~~
1123581321
I am sure you are right, but Mozilla says FF used one process, currently uses
two (one for UI, one for content) and the final version of multiprocess will
use more for web content and extensions. [https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Fir...](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-
US/Firefox/Multiprocess_Firefox)

I shouldn't have said 60fps. I just meant low or no interface lag. Regardless
of what the system is trying to do internally, Firefox has performance issues
in the UI, so hopefully they can address those.

------
newbear
What about Vivaldi? I found it a while ago and Only use it occasionally but
when I do it's blazingly fast. Any opinions? Info?

------
newtem0
I use firefox for the treestyle tabs. I just cant live without it. I was very
excited to read about this overhaul coming in june!

------
webwanderings
> Chrome wants you to only use Chrome.

This is no different than saying Microsoft only wants you to use Hotmail.

Firefox did not build Gmail, nor does it have any serious interconnected
bookmarks manager. Why would I use Firefox when Gmail does not render well on
it and there is no way for me to seamlessly carry bookmarks, history and
everything else which is part of daily browser activity?

Sure, I use Firefox for work as well. It is fine. I don't need to worry about
gmail and personal bookmarks, etc at work.

~~~
hoschicz
> there is no way for me to seamlessly carry bookmarks, history and everything
> else

There is, Firefox Sync. It works pretty well and doesn't use your history to
target ads. You can sync bookmarks, open tabs, history, password, add-ons,
preferences.

When you sign up on a new device, FF also remembers your settings of what you
want to sync. Chrome, by default, syncs everything, including history, and
uses it to target ads.

~~~
webwanderings
> There is, Firefox Sync.

You didn't follow the real problem. Firefox Sync only wants you to use Firefox
Sync. Your data is not liberated to be used where you want it to be used.

~~~
UnrealIncident
Actually you can run your own FF Sync server.

------
itaysk
Interested why the author uses chrome for "play"...?

------
guilhas
Using Firefox with disk.cache disabled

~~~
cpeterso
Is the Firefox disk cache particularly slow on your computer?

Mozilla is developing a new feature called "Racing Cache With Network" (RCWN).
Based on feedback from Facebook and user telemetry, it was discovered that the
disk cache was _very_ slow for some users, especially with non-SSD hard disks.
With RCWN, if the disk cache doesn't return a cached result quickly enough,
Firefox will issue a network request and just return whichever content returns
first. Firefox will still check the cache first, but can avoid the extreme
outlier cases.

[https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=RCWN](https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=RCWN)

------
Melchizedek
I trusted them until they de facto fired a prominent employee for his
political opinions - opinions shared by a large portion of the population.

If they can do that to an employee, what can't they do to _you_ , an anonymous
user?

That said, I stick with Firefox for private use. But the trust is gone.

~~~
joecool1029
The last thing we were keeping it around for was the extension support, but
they unfortunately killed that so I now recommend Edge over Firefox for
resource-constrained systems. It's not there yet, but it's got a brighter
future than Firefox.

But yeah nothing pissed me off more than them saying they support choice when
they kill off well-supported standards they don't like [1], fire employees
over their (common) religious beliefs [2], take the longest to roll out
critical security features [3], and prioritize shitty UI updates that nearly
everyone hates [4].

All I keep hearing is that the new multi-process is so much faster, everything
is great now, but every time I run it on fairly decent systems (i7 from late
2013) it takes multiple seconds to switch tabs.

It really is a joke that their head of marketing wasn't fired for that post,
it only supports the true thing that Mozilla has come to stand for: hypocrisy.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_SQL_Database](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_SQL_Database)
[2]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brendan_Eich)
[3]
[https://community.qualys.com/thread/12421](https://community.qualys.com/thread/12421)
[4] [https://www.ghacks.net/2013/11/23/80-unhappy-firefoxs-
austra...](https://www.ghacks.net/2013/11/23/80-unhappy-firefoxs-australis-
interface-mozilla-report-states/)

~~~
johnsmith21006
Would stay away from Edge until matures. There has been significant Edge
security issues way more frequently than I would be comfortable.

------
poyj
Well you have to get Kim Kardashian and Donald Trump to use it, to make any
sort of dent. In this pointless attention economy propped up by Youtube,
Twitter and Facebook there don't seem to be any other ways.

------
hartator
> I head up Firefox marketing, but I use Chrome every day.

This is one thing to use it privately, this is another to say it publicly. I
think he should be fired. Not even considering the other contradictions of
this article. I think he has no idea how to lead Firefox marketing.

~~~
Vinnl
It's one of the browsers he uses. "Know thy enemy" and such :P

