Help me decide once and for all: Which is better, Chrome or Firefox?

[James T. Kirk]

Chrome has about 7 times the market share of Firefox, takes about a half to a third as much RAM (at least for me, anyway), starts up quicker (again, at least for me; and, yes, I do have Firefox Quantum), plays animated GIFs, animated PNGs, and HTML5 video much better, so I'm seriously tempted to choose Chrome. But then so many people I talk to seem to prefer Firefox, and also Chrome is of course Google so bye bye, privacy. Which do all you guys think I should go with?

[PaulBullion]

If you are worried about privacy, you can choose SRWare Iron instead of Chrome. It is basically the same with better privacy. Make sure to get the "Iron Update" extension, though, otherwise it will not update automatically which is a security risk.

Firefox has gotten faster with recent builds. Some of the extensions I like better than the ones for Chrome/Iron.

I use both, frankly.

[wjowski]

Firefox, and it ain't even close. Mozilla's not selling your baby pictures to Russian ad-bots.

[Tami]

There is a recent news article that says that Google is using Chrome to gather information about users. I don't know if it is true or not.

My first choice is Firefox, but I also use Chrome on occasion as needed.

[SUPERECWFAN1]

I used Chrome for a long time until months ago when Microsoft did an update and it made the browser **** up whenever you'd type out words. I would look this up and it admitted users were having to hope they'd patch this issue . I uploaded Firefox and have had no issues.

[DrNewGod]

Firefox works well enough to keep me happy. Aside from the aforementioned privacy issues, I prefer to touch the mouse as little as necessary, and Chrome also doesn't really support ctrl+ and alt+ keyboard commands; Firefox does.

[Elmo]

There is a recent news article that says that Google is using Chrome to gather information about users. I don't know if it is true or not.

My first choice is Firefox, but I also use Chrome on occasion as needed.

Google connects every account, device, and google-owned app that you have. It tracks your data across all platforms and gathers information about your computer behavior and browsing history, mostly to protect you against spammers and increase the strength of their captcha to prevent bots from getting to your information somehow, and by your choice this info is used to track advertising specifically catered to you, which when you think about it is pretty sci fi, definitely remember that from minority report

to most people this is pretty harmless though, however I can't trust a company worth billions with my information. I messed up by having tons of Google accounts and a Google phone, I'm not the kind of person who has anything worth leaking and I don't really fear or care about some online presence looking at my info, but how it affects the rest of the userbase concerns me. So many times have we seen serious drama regarding companies' lack of concern with data privacy in recent years. They should be using your data to improve their service for you and not anything else, however this information can be sold, hacked into, and shared around, and it could be simple stuff like what websites you visit and how much you use your keyboard vs your mouse, or more invasive like your personal photos and documents. In my opinion it is best to trust a browser that is not from a huge corpoation gathering loads of information about you, that you don't really know the extent of.

Also, read the ToC.

[PaulBullion]

Again, if the privacy concerns are the only thing turning you off Chrome, there is a workaround:

https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

[Kai "the spy"]

I only use Chrome for Netflix, as that won't play on Firefox for some reason. Anything else (like this board), I visit on Mozilla.

[Kirby101]

I find the add ons and adaptability of Firefox better.

[Crazy Diamond]

My first browser love is Firefox but with the loss of old extensions (for the time being) I have switched to Vivaldi. It based on Chromium (open-source version of Chrome) but acts like Opera before it was ruined. It's not quite as customizable as old-school Firefox but they're trying and you don't need a Google account to sync your data. However whenever I'm at work I use Firefox Quantum for personal browsing and it would be my main browser if it wasn't for most of my work tools needing Chrome which sucks.

[dancj]

I used to swear by Firefox, but when I switched to Chrome everything became so much easier and less cluttered.

It's possible that Firefox has caught up since, but I've seen no reason to switch back.

[wjowski]

Again, if the privacy concerns are the only thing turning you off Chrome, there is a workaround:

https://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php

Or just use a browser that wasn't born from an Orwellian fantasy.

[[rono]]

It's funny to see Firefox win this poll.
I guess it's all a matter of someone's experience.