IE8 and Chrome Are Killing Firefox

With all of its add-ons, is Firefox facing a crisis in performance and identity?

I used to love Firefox. I’m an old Linux user that ran Mozilla on the Red Hat Linux desktop that kept me efficient while I was working for a dot-com before the bust. Back then I had to manage a Windows and Linux network with some AIX thrown in, so being able to run Linux was a life-saver, and having a decent browser like Mozilla didn’t hurt. (Neither did VMware Workstation.)

One of the things I really liked about Mozilla was that it was fast. Compared to IE at the time, it virtually screamed. Sure, some things didn’t work, and the fonts were HORRIBLE (if you were a Linux user back then, you know exactly what I’m talking about), but... hey, I was happy.

After the dot-com crashed and I started our consulting firm, I moved to a Windows laptop. I kept Mozilla. And then Firefox became the standard bearer for the Mozilla platform. And I was still happy. It was fast. It didn’t flake out like IE.

And then... well, something happened. Firefox became so focused on being a “platform” that it seemed to forget one of the main reasons people wanted to use it: speed. A fresh install of Firefox is fast. But if you start installing add-ons that goes away. Quickly.

Sure, the crowd will scream back at me “Well, don’t install add-ons!” That sounds great, but without the add-ons Firefox loses a lot of its luster. I now have a Windows 7 desktop, which comes with IE8, and my experience continues to be that IE8 is faster than Firefox, although I still prefer the Firefox UI. So what to do? Well, I moved to Chrome.

Chrome screams. It’s insanely fast. I love it. The only problem I ever have with Chrome is that it will occasionally hang completely when running Pandora+Flash. Outside of that, no issues.  As far as add-ons, I use just the basics:  IETab, Stayfocusd, and Feedly.

Would I go back to Firefox? No. Why? Chrome gives me all of the speed I need and IETab works relatively well when I need it. And if I’m having compatibility issues, then I go to IE8. Why would I keep Firefox as a middle-man?

It seems to me that Firefox is in the middle of a crisis. It’s getting too slow to compete with Chrome, and it’s not IE, so... is it just a “platform”? It seems to me that Firefox has lost its focused and potentially its long-term market.

• Microsoft
• Chrome
• FireFox
• IE8