I think the author understates how much better Chrome was than everything else from the time it launched to the time Firefox went multiprocess. It was about a five year period.
Now I think most people just see no reason to switch. Better adblocking might motivate a few.
Yep. I actually switched to chrome back then specifically because it was faster than Firefox (which I had been using), and each tab was its own process so if one bogged down, timed out, or crashed I could just close it without losing everything. And then they made it a bloated mess and I went back to Firefox when they got their act together and opening the browser didn’t tank ram usage. There was a point where people switched to chrome because there were benefits. And now the whole browser infrastructure is just kind of garbage because Google investors need more money.
And then they made it a bloated mess and I went back to Firefox when they got their act together and opening the browser didn’t tank ram usage
I don’t think it was being turned into a bloated mess, as much as that it always was pretty slow, until Google started investing a lot in JS performance with the release of Chrome, and showed how fast it could be.
(Well, and as a result, websites started becoming more demanding, which did make browsers that didn’t keep up slow down more.)
Compared to the resources it used to take chrome is absolutely a resource hog and that’s why I describe it as bloated. I wasn’t describing Firefox as bloated. But I agree with you that it was slow and a bit clunky back then which is part of the reason I moved away from it.
I think the author understates how much better Chrome was than everything else from the time it launched to the time Firefox went multiprocess. It was about a five year period.
Now I think most people just see no reason to switch. Better adblocking might motivate a few.
Yep. I actually switched to chrome back then specifically because it was faster than Firefox (which I had been using), and each tab was its own process so if one bogged down, timed out, or crashed I could just close it without losing everything. And then they made it a bloated mess and I went back to Firefox when they got their act together and opening the browser didn’t tank ram usage. There was a point where people switched to chrome because there were benefits. And now the whole browser infrastructure is just kind of garbage because Google investors need more money.
I don’t think it was being turned into a bloated mess, as much as that it always was pretty slow, until Google started investing a lot in JS performance with the release of Chrome, and showed how fast it could be.
(Well, and as a result, websites started becoming more demanding, which did make browsers that didn’t keep up slow down more.)
Compared to the resources it used to take chrome is absolutely a resource hog and that’s why I describe it as bloated. I wasn’t describing Firefox as bloated. But I agree with you that it was slow and a bit clunky back then which is part of the reason I moved away from it.