Why I Dumped Chrome for Firefox

The line must be drawn here! This far, no further!

I used Chrome as my browser of choice for nearly a decade. This was out of the ordinary for me because I am usually the explorer, finding new ways to make my life better (or, sometimes, worse). However, for some reason, my browser felt sacred, and whenever I began to consider changing browsers, I quickly dropped the notion. Why fix something that isn’t broken?

But at the beginning of the pandemic, I began thinking: does Chrome really deserve my loyalty? I’ve used many other browsers for web development or for fun, so I knew that Chrome didn’t offer the best user experience possible. There was nothing keeping me tethered to Chrome other than the slight inconvenience of switching.

So, in a leap of faith, I downloaded Firefox (using Chrome, something one might normally have expected to occur through Microsoft Edge or Internet Explorer) and after I installed it, I closed all my Chrome tabs and windows. Since then, Firefox has been my browser of choice when using a PC.

Why dump Chrome?

• It’s just not that good.

Since its release in 2008, Chrome has improved vastly. In a turn which was unimaginable just over a decade ago, Chrome has supplanted Internet Explorer as the global browser of choice. This is not for no reason; unlike Internet Explorer, Chrome is easy to use, its appearance has kept up with modern design, and its performance has remained good enough.

What I had not realized is that competing browsers were not idle during this time. Competitors like Firefox and Safari (as well as newcomers like Brave and Vivaldi) have vast, rich feature sets, with privacy at the forefront of most browser designs. The most popular plugins like grammar checkers, ad blockers, and password managers support all major browsers. I was expecting to come back to Chrome with my tail tucked between my legs, but against expectations, switching to Firefox felt like an upgrade. In the end Firefox checked all the boxes I used Chrome for (extension support, clean interface, and speed) but it did most of them better.

But the one thing Firefox does best is also something I did not realize would be important to me