
Firefox Private Browsing vs. Chrome Incognito: Which Is Faster? - ronjouch
https://blog.mozilla.org/blog/2017/11/20/firefox-private-browsing-vs-chrome-incognito/
======
ploggingdev
One of the interesting aspects about the recent Firefox Quantum launch, apart
from the amazing product itself, is the marketing. It's been incredible to
read the well written blog posts that appeal to a variety of audiences. Though
most are focused on the tech behind Firefox, a few, like the linked post,
appeal to a wider audience. Anecdotal, but the blog posts leading up to the
launch got me excited enough to download and use the beta version of Firefox
for the first time and it lived up to the marketing. I've tried switching to
Firefox multiple times over the past few years, but I always ended up
switching back to Chrome for the speed. It might be different this time.

What happened to the controversial cliqz program that they were testing? Last
I checked, Mozilla did not respond to the privacy concerns of the integration.

~~~
lloyd-christmas
> It's been incredible to read the well written blog posts that appeal to a
> variety of audiences.

I enjoyed the read, but this is somewhat irrelevant unless a variety of people
actually read it. I'm reasonably confident none of my friends read Mozilla's
blog.

~~~
awj
> I'm reasonably confident none of my friends read Mozilla's blog.

The point, though, is that they could. If you wanted to drop links to them
with more details about _why_ the should be excited about Firefox again,
Mozilla is actually producing those.

This is one of those things that only seems unimportant until people stop
doing it. Then you find out it was actually a pretty big deal.

~~~
eitland
Mozilla has definitely done a good job so far.

If we do our part then everyone might be rewarded with a healthier ecosystem
over the next months. (And "everyone " includes die hard Chrome users as well
as people forced to use IE at work.)

Edit: what I mean is that all consumers generally benefits from healthy
competition.

------
andybak
Remember that Chrome beat Explorer by being faster. Users care about that more
than they care about privacy et al.

Now - Chrome is slower vs Firefox Quantum's new privacy because of the ad
networks. The ad networks have had no incentive up until now to improve their
shitty code.

If people start switching to Firefox and turning on privacy more to get faster
browsing - they will lose the game entirely.

All that's needed is for a modest uptick in usage of this mode and for some ad
networks to get scared. They spend some of the pile of money they swim in to
not ruin everyone's browser experience and bam - we get a less crappy
internet.

If they don't shape up - then we get a faster internet with better privacy.
Even better.

~~~
gschier
Don't forget that Google advertises Chrome on the most popular website in the
world google.com, as well as in a lot of it's products. Chrome also ships with
Android, the most popular mobile operating system.

I assume these channels are a huge reason why people adopt it. I love the new
Firefox and use it every day but, unfortunately, I don't think it will come
close to Chrome's market share by just being slightly better.

~~~
takeda
Google even does scummy bundling of chrome with popular downloads. I don't
understand how people don't have problem with that.

~~~
jonathankoren
"Hey, I've noticed you have Google Calendar installed on your phone! You're
missing a bunch of other crapware! Install it now!"

Never. Enable. Notifications. They're just product management spam.

------
whizzkid
I really want Firefox Quantum to be at least as good as Chrome. But when I
tried watching some HTML5 videos, it started using a significant amount of CPU
on my Mac and it did not stop.

My experience for 3 major browsers on MacOS as follows:

\- If you want noticeably longer battery life when on the travel.

1- Safari

2- Chrome/Firefox

\- If you want seamless browsing experience.

1- Chrome

2- Firefox

3- Safari

~~~
scrollaway
Quantum has been really good performance wise on most sites. It's most
flagrant on the Stripe API docs, which are sluggish as hell on Chrome Linux
and butter-smooth on Firefox:
[https://stripe.com/docs/api](https://stripe.com/docs/api)

However, I have two major tab-management issues with Firefox which make it
near-unusable for me:

1\. No support for "scroll wheel to switch tabs" (scroll on tabs to switch
between them). This is a feature common to nearly all Linux software and
Firefox removed it a few versions ago. Quantum killed "Tab Wheel Scroll" which
reimplemented it.

2\. No support for multi-select tab management, which Chrome is amazing with.
If you didn't know, in Chrome, you can ctrl+click and shift+click tabs to
select multiple at once and close, move or snap all of them at once like in a
file manager. Super useful.

~~~
smcgruer
> sluggish as hell on Chrome Linux and butter-smooth on Firefox:
> [https://stripe.com/docs/api](https://stripe.com/docs/api)

Hi; I work on scrolling/rendering in Chrome. Thanks for bringing this to my
attention, that is some super janky scrolling in Chrome >_<. I've filed
[http://crbug.com/786991](http://crbug.com/786991) for us to look into it.

Some technical background (since this is HN after all); at a quick glance
there are two things going wrong here in Chrome.

1\. We would normally want to 'composite' the scrolling region here, which
means we paint the pixels only once into a saved layer and then just slide
that up and down as you scroll. I believe that is not happening on the Stripe
page because of the unusual way that they are doing the split-panel
background. Looks like we're currently unable to tell that the background is
an opaque color, so we can't apply sub-pixel font AA[0] - and on low DPI we
will refuse to composite in that case.

2\. Chrome's repainting of this page is really slow. :(. Firefox Nightly is
also repainting the page when you scroll (as far as I can tell), but they're
definitely doing it much faster than Chrome!

So our goal will be to try and figure out how to composite this page, and if
that's not possible then we'll have to dig into the slow painting.

Note: Because we composite more readily on high DPI devices (where sub-pixel
font AA[0] doesn't matter), this site should scroll nice and fast on a high
resolution display. This includes most new laptops, all (?) phones/tablets,
etc.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subpixel_rendering)

~~~
scrollaway
Thanks a lot for the insight! Really cool to see a reply straight from the
horse's mouth :)

> _Note: Because we composite more readily on high DPI devices (where sub-
> pixel font AA[0] doesn 't matter), this site should scroll nice and fast on
> a high resolution display. This includes most new laptops, all (?)
> phones/tablets, etc._

Not the case for me. Touchscreen display on a UX asus laptop, 3.2k resolution
on linux with intel card. Scrolling using the touchscreen is snappy, scrolling
using the scroll wheel (synaptics emulation) is even worse than on my desktop.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I think it depends on what your DPI is set to. The resolution itself doesn’t
necessarily mean much, but typically 3k+ resolutions are accompanied with >
96dpi configurations.

------
james_pm
I'm really liking what Firefox is doing around Private Browsing and FF57 has
brought me back to Firefox as my primary browser.

With the amount of tracking going on these days, a FF Private window is
literally the only way I'll sign into either Facebook or Twitter. I wish they
would also enable Tracking Protection and Do Not Track by default on non-
Private browsing as well, but that was an easy enough change for me to make.

~~~
chiefofgxbxl
I know at least with Do Not Track, advertising companies were asserting that
if a browser had activated it by default for the user, then the user showed no
intent on blocking the tracking; it was a decision made for them by the
browser, and thus couldn't be interpreted as the user's wish to not be
tracked. Same argument can be made about Private Browsing and Tracking
Protection.

Perhaps Firefox should display a "privacy start screen" the first few times
the browser is launched after downloading it, explaining the features to the
user, and allowing them to opt-in on their own decision?

For things like DNT or Tracking Protection, I imagine most common users do not
know about these things so the usage rate is much lower than it "should be".

Fun fact: in Firefox you can actually turn Tracking Protection on to use it
_all the time_ , not just when you're in Private Browsing mode: Options >
Privacy & Security > Tracking Protection > Always

~~~
ajnin
Using private browsing is definitely intentional, it's activated by the user
and not a default setting; besides it's actively preventing tracking from
taking place, it's not politely asking if advertisers would be so kind as not
do what they exist to do as DNT was naively attempting.

------
darksim905
My only problem with Firefox these days is that extension overhaul completely
screwed with how I browse, store & catalogue links & things I find. The fact
things like the tab groups extension are broken (and, the fact that it was
removed when it was a baked in feature years ago), is ridiculous. I see no
reason why they can't add this feature back as part of the browser.

~~~
loopbit
I'm on the same boat and, to be honest, it's making me think about _leaving_
Firefox. Looking at the number of forks that have appeared recently, I'm not
the only one.

Let me explain: I've used Firefox since the beginning (and Navigator before
that). I like Mozilla and I agree that most of the changes that they've done
internally in quantum were kind of necessary (although many could have been
handled better).

However, along the way, they've broken the way many people use Firefox and the
only answer the frustrated users seem to get is "but it's fast".

They've changed the UI to be similar to Chrome, to the point where the reload
button is not where it used to be. But it's fast.

They've broken the extensibility, which was (at least for me) the main reason
to use Firefox instead of Chrome, Chromium or any of the others. You could do
things in Firefox that the others couldn't even dream of. But it's fast.

While doing this, they've alienated plenty of plugin developers, people who
loved the Firefox ecosystem, some of which have had to rewrite their plugins
thrice already (with some being told to, essentially, "bugger off"). But it's
fast.

As far as I can tell, it's using more resources in MacOS than the old version,
at least the processor runs hotter and the fans kick in more often. I've had
issues with the CPU use sky-rocketing, but I believe that has more to do with
opening multiple tabs quickly rather than with one specific page. But it's
fast.

Honestly, I haven't noticed any major changes in speed in Quantum (it's a bit
snappier, that's it) and was happy enough with it's previous performance. IMHO
what we've lost is not worth what we've gained.

I'd move to other browser, but which one? None of the main ones have the
things I liked about Firefox and I don't really see most of the forks being
able to keep up the pace. I guess that I'll stay, hoping that the things I
love about Firefox will eventually come back.

~~~
Sylos
Well, it's not just to be faster. 57 is also quite a bit more secure and
extensions will break far less often in the future. It also means a lot less
maintenance work for Mozilla.

It's mainly more secure by having most things sandboxed now. That requires
Firefox to be executed in the new multiprocess architecture and for that they
would have had to kill off at least those legacy extensions that are not
multiprocess-compatible, which was essentially all of them as well.

Also, yes, multiprocess did also most definitely play into performance. But
we're not talking about the difference between 56 to 57, it's rather the
difference between 47 to 57. Because 48 already introduced multiprocess, even
though as a user you were still perfectly capable of installing a
multiprocess-incompatible extension, which then caused Firefox to drop out of
multiprocess whenever that extension became active. A completely intransparent
way for users to completely kill off their performance.

Lastly, you don't claim that what Mozilla did on a whole is wrong, but yeah,
just to point it out anyways: They are somewhat throwing power users under the
bus right now. They don't enjoy doing it (essentially all Mozilla devs just as
well are Firefox power users), but they do want to save their market share in
order to still have a word when it comes to web standards and the market share
just isn't made out of power users.

Around 40% of Firefox users in Sep. 2015 did not have any extensions
installed. Another sizeable chunk will have their ad blocker and nothing else.
This release won't affect these users negatively at all. They'll just get the
better performance and the better security.

The only thing I heard from my parents was my mum asking me, if it's normal
that Firefox looks different now. Maybe there'll be some confusion with the
new Library-button, but other than that, it's just yet another browser-UI.
They know this.

------
ajobaccount2017
Firefox Quantum is really fast! And I love it :)

However when comparing private/incognito browsing, my main concern wouldn't be
the speed, but privacy.

~~~
floatingatoll
“Loads 3 seconds fewer tracking scripts” seems like a shoe-in for your privacy
consideration.

~~~
zitterbewegung
I think the tracking scripts can have no upper limit to loading . Which means
that it would make the page more snappier also.

------
NikolaeVarius
I find that Firefox/Firefox-Dev seems to be very VERY slow on my 4k setup. It
works just fine when not connected to the 4K monitor, but when connected,
sites take like 5x longer to properly fully load. I've tested it with the
Debug stuff on, and it simply just shows render times being very very slow
with nothing else. It also pegs the CPU 100% while loading.

There are no errors, but I notice a LOT of GC Pauses in the perf dump

Chromium works just fine on these sites.

~~~
tedmielczarek
If you've got a specific site that this reproduces on that would be helpful.
If you can also provide the model of the monitor you're using and the version
of your OS that would help us track it down. Thanks!

~~~
NikolaeVarius
Not a specific site, just general slowness on all rendering.

This is with fully clean install and several attempts at cleaning profile. I
notice it seems to get stuck on "waiting for site" and "Performing TLS
Handshake", which is strange because im on a 100gbit line and I can get chrome
to load those sites full speed just fine simultaneously.

X1 Carbon Fedora 26 Intel Core i7-6600U 16 GB RAM

Mesa DRI Intel(R) HD Graphics 520 (Skylake GT2)

Do you have a good place to send these profile dumps to?

~~~
jlgaddis
> _... im on a 100gbit line ..._

How'd you get a 100 GbE NIC in that X1 Carbon!? :)

~~~
ComputerGuru
I imagine that’s the upstream :)

My situation is the opposite: workstation with a 10gbe connection the the
corporate lan but upstream is capped to 2gbe.

------
johndoe489
Firefox's private browsing lets you restore closed tabs, unline Chrome, which
is a small but noticable improvement for me.

~~~
dubya
Safari has this as well. I've taken to using private mode for just about
everything, mostly because I click on so many random links to Amazon, and
Amazon is so aggressive about trying to sell you things you've clicked while
logged in.

~~~
johndoe489
Same here. More specifically, I keep my general browsing history , and YouTube
history more relevant by opening random / "lol" content in a private tab.

That way the omnibar suggestions show me content that I'm more likely to
revisit and doesn't get clogged up with random results I don't care about; and
YouTube gives me more interesting recommendations.

------
evo_9
Personally I'd rather know which is more private/secure; speed for this use
case is secondary.

~~~
milkytron
Speed happens to be a byproduct of some of the security features being
implemented in this scenario.

------
Jeaye
I just really wish _every private browsing window were entirely separate from
the others_. It's odd when I log into something on private browsing, then open
up another private window for another service but find the first one still
logged in.

A marriage of private browsing + containers would also do the trick.

~~~
the8472
You could try one of the container management addons that simply spawn new
containers as needed, e.g. containers on demand[0]. In principle the
underlzing building blocks for containers and private browsing are orthogonal
that can be used at the same time, i.e. a container in private browsing mode
is yet another context that will have private browsing features (nothing
written to disk) but is also separate from other private browsing tabs. But
I'm not sure if that this is exposed through UI or APIs.

[0] [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-
on...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/containers-on-the-go/)

------
jvannistelrooy
I switched to Firefox for Mac and iOS completely the moment Quantum came out
of beta, and I really want it to succeed.

However, I experience severe speed problems loading Google apps (drive,
sheets, slides, inbox) along with occasional freezes and CPU spikes.

Additionally, I experience a bug on iOS where certain pages will only render
partially and turn completely blank when I scroll down. Refresh doesn't help,
which makes me open Chrome again to load the page.

Firefox is still my default browser as I'm still trying to convert myself, but
it turns out I'm typing this message in Chrome again.

~~~
Jyaif
Apple doesn't allow anyone to use anything other than the system provided
Webkit, so FF on iOS is just a wrapper for Webkit.

~~~
jvannistelrooy
That makes sense. I didn't expect the whole quantum engine to be running on
iOS, but I hoped hoped Firefox to be at least as be reliable on iOS as Chrome
(also Webkit) or Safari.

------
DavideNL
My only problem with Firefox is the annoying pinch to zoom on a trackpad
(Macbook) - pinch to zoom is (and has been for many years) so much better in
Safari and Chrome, it just hurts my brain to use it in Firefox. It's like
going back in time 10 years... and zooming seems quite a basic feature to me.

Other than that though, Firefox is my favorite browser.

------
leeoniya
i like firefox, but this article might as well show page load times with and
without uBlock Origin or uMatrix in both browsers.

it's nice that private mode is more private and faster by default though.

------
fastball
I know this isn't really the place for bug reports, but I'm having a very
interesting issue with FF57+.

I work on a University campus, and when I'm on the Uni wifi (eduroam), google
search does not work in FF. However, it works just fine in Chrome.

Super weird and I haven't been able to debug the problem.

~~~
ginkoes
Chrome uses its own integrated DNS client rather than relying on the host OS
resolver, so your problem may lie with broken DNS settings for your wifi
configuration. You can test it by running nslookup while specifying
alternative name servers.

~~~
DavideNL
Exactly. This is also somewhat of a privacy issue, since Chrome sends all Dns
requests for all websites you visit to Googles own dns servers, regardless of
which Dns servers you have cofigured in your OS... :(

------
robinduckett
Firefox in "Websites are faster when you don't load 44% of them" shocker

~~~
callahad
The nice thing about being a non-profit is that we can include a tracking
blocker for that 44% right in the browser, without it being counter to our
business interests.

~~~
4c2383f5c88e911
Would you mind to expand your point of view and provide evidence? Are you
perhaps referring to the cliqz experiment that was ran for less than 1% of
german firefox downloads? Are you sure you are not blowing things out of
proportion?

~~~
GrayShade
Germany has rather strict privacy laws, so it sounds like the worst pick for
something like this.

They're also planning [ _] to send more detailed browsing history as
telemetry, so there 's that.

[_]
[https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/81gMQeMEL...](https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.governance/81gMQeMEL0w/OVf_NL7yCgAJ)

------
imwally
Would the built-in tracking protection make anti-tracking add-ons such as
uBlock Origin redundant? Looks like it's using Disconnect's list but I'm not
sure how much this differs from uBlock.

~~~
rsync
I notice that if you enter incognito mode in chrome, while using ublock
origin, the extension is disabled in the incognito window/session.

However, it's not obvious to me that the protections offered by incognito are
a superset of the protections offered by UO and I wonder why this is desirable
?

Do I want incognito mode with UO running on it or is that unnecessary ?

~~~
daxterspeed
When you install an extension in chrome it's by default set to be disabled in
incognito mode (supposedly since some extensions don't respect privacy). From
the extensions page you can easily set UO, or any other extensions for that
matter, to remain enabled in incognito mode windows.

Last time I checked chrome does not by itself offer any tracking protection
while in incognito mode (supposedly since this would make it easier to detect
when a user _is_ in incognito mode). So you probably want UO enabled for that.

------
down
I switched today to firefox and it really feels faster, but also I remembered
how some things annoys me on Chrome, for example you can't modify new tab to
remove everything on Chrome, so in my case, it makes me to click around more
and procrastinate, as I see the sites there, also I never liked the Chrome dev
tools, I know the general opinion is that are better, but felt to complicated
for me and somehow slow, to busy.

------
em3rgent0rdr
I want to report a typo: "If you’d like to take it up a notch and enable
Tracing Protection" -> " _Tracking_ Protection"

~~~
floatingatoll
Thank you! I reported your comment and they should have fixed it by now.

------
eighthnate
I use both daily and both are fine when it comes to speed. Where chrome shines
over firefox quantum is in blocking ads. I use uBlock Origin on both and yet I
see some sponsored ads on firefox while I see nothing on chrome. It's not a
deal breaker but an occasional annoyance that I can live with.

------
toblender
My issue is that I'm on a corporate firewall, and I can't even navigate to
[https://google.com](https://google.com) on the new version of firefox, as it
complains about the certificate. It won't even let me add an exception.

~~~
CodesInChaos
If you're behind a corporate firewall (and want to be mitm-ed by it), you
should install their root CA instead of adding an exception for the invalid
certificate.

------
fwn
Sure, it's faster if some scripts are blocked. Wait how fast it gets as soon
as you add ublock Origin.

~~~
floatingatoll
Ironically, content blocker extensions have historically been a common source
of slowdowns while loading all pages.

~~~
sjwright
That's been historically true for Adblock Plus. Has anyone benchmarked ublock
as impacting the performance of Firefox?

~~~
akerro
[https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance](https://github.com/gorhill/uBlock#performance)

It might be biased since it's from µblock developer.

~~~
kodablah
Also really old. uBlock is fairly fast on the cosmetic blocking because it
does a couple of things: parses selectors themselves instead of querying for
all of them, and caches known selectors. It uses a mutation observer to check
for new elements.

------
t0mbstone
I can't use the new Firefox until it works with the following addons: 1\.
Lastpass 2\. Xmarks (for cross-browser bookmarks syncing) 3\. Adblock (or
uBlock)

As far as I know, it works with all of these now except for Xmarks. I am
impatiently waiting until then.

~~~
yborg
[https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-
sync/v...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/xmarks-
sync/versions/beta)

Works, but very buggy with multiple sync sources, might be server-side, I've
had trouble with failed syncs losing entire folders for a long time. I only
use the Upload/Download functionality and make sure not to have conflicting
syncs. The product has been on minimal life support for years, so can't expect
much I guess. But remains the only solution I've seen that works cross-
browser.

------
codepie
Firefox has a really good market in the mobile industry. I really wanted
Firefox OS to catch up, but it didn't. I am still looking for privacy-focused
OS alternative to Android, any suggestions?

~~~
Jeaye
> I am still looking for privacy-focused OS alternative to Android, any
> suggestions?

[https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/](https://puri.sm/shop/librem-5/)

------
bakhy
This is why I use Firefox on Android - with the uBlock Origin add-on
installed, it's really fast. There's no optimization like avoiding the
needless work in the first place :)

------
wodenokoto
Can I overload the tracking filter with, say, easylist[1]?

[1] [https://easylist.to](https://easylist.to)

------
egberts1
What a dud website for it is not compatible with Firefox mobile on iPhone

~~~
callahad
What specific app, and what version of it, are you using?

------
TylerH
They're both fast. Most people who use them don't really care if one saves
them a a few seconds to a minute over a standard browsing period. They care
about other features that aren't necessarily specific to the private aspect of
it.

------
0xbear
If someone from Mozilla is reading this: I (and I suspect many other people
who prefer to strictly segregate their “work” and “personal” data), would very
much prefer if you implemented built-in profile switching a-la Chrome. This
shouldn’t even be that hard given that FF already supports profiles. This is,
and has always been, an obstacle for me to seriously consider Firefox as my
only browser.

~~~
jedahan
You might be interested in Firefox Multi-Account Containers[1], an addon by
Mozilla, announced in [https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-
containers-are...](https://medium.com/firefox-test-pilot/firefox-containers-
are-go-ed2e3533b6e3)

[1]: [https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-
account...](https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/multi-account-
containers/)

~~~
0xbear
I know about those, but they are almost the opposite of what I want to have:
instead of completely separating the two worlds, they forcibly merge them in
the same browser instance (and Sync account).

------
danielricci
If you care about privacy, you should not be on the internet.

~~~
dEnigma
You realize that there is a very wide spectrum between absolute privacy and no
privacy at all?

------
catalunia
Frustrates me to see techies running chrome. You guys should know better. Are
you really willing to let google own everything just because chrome has this
one tiny feature that you like?

------
artursapek
Is anyone else getting tired of Mozilla shilling how fast their new version of
Firefox is? If it's really that good, let the product speak for itself.

~~~
cJ0th
Well, I don't blame them for promoting their product. Speed, however, is
probably among the least important things when it comes to incognito mode. I
would have appreciated it if they had spent more time figuring out how to
reduce fingerprints.

~~~
callahad
We are. It's not quite polished yet, but check out
privacy.resistFingerprinting (and privacy.firstparty.isolate) in about:config.
This all dovetails with our work to upstream the relevant patches from the Tor
Browser Bundle, which is also proceeding apace.

More info at
[https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting](https://wiki.mozilla.org/Security/Fingerprinting)

~~~
Dylan16807
> privacy.resistFingerprinting

Is there a reason that setting does so many different things?

I've been trying it for a few days but it's a real problem when I want some of
those settings but not others. For example the protection against canvas image
extraction needs work. It's stuck on 'ask' with constant popups, and once you
pick yes/no on a domain it's impossible to see the permission or change it
ever again. Until it forgets on browser restart and starts bugging you all
over again.

