It's becoming obvious that Chrome will beat Firefox and become #2

[polyarchist]

This is just my opinion, but I do believe that Chrome's user base is climbing at a much faster rate than Firefox when it debuted years ago.

I think it's obvious that Chrome will beat Firefox's marketshare fairly soon despite its lack of the robust features that Firefox has because:

1) Chrome's interface is still way more responsive than even the latest Firefox 4 Beta 9. Firefox has a major disadvantage in they refuse to rewrite the UI from the ground up, while Chrome is the fastest starting browser for Windows by far.

2) People LIKE Chrome's minimalistic interface because there's more on the page to see, while Firefox still can't get rid of that big orange button.

3) People have a blind, unwavering, almost religious faith in anything Google does, simply because it is the only company that gives out the most web-based products for free. (so they can get your info into the cloud) Google is already at the core of what most people on the web do, so they will begin to move towards Chrome no matter what.

4) Google quickly added extensions, and that's all that was needed to start turning the tide away from Firefox.

5) People notice the added speed from Webkit, since it doesn't take a genius to see that Gecko renders more slowly. (simply because it is wayyyyyyy more complex code than Webkit)

6) People seem to like having a browser that "just works" and you never even see the updates applied in the background. Overall, Chrome is a much more streamlined experience for the average user than Firefox is.

Add more reasons if you can think of them, and if you disagree, tell me why.

[Xilo]

Firefox has decent extensions. Chrome doesn't. Chrome has almost 0 customization and is extremely basic.

NOPE

[iuerg87yerg879e0rg9erugjer]

chrome is without doubt going to catch up to mozilla in terms of market share, i used to be an firefox fan boy but these days firefox is just soooo slow compared to chrome 10.0 or IE 9 beta 1

[nw2001]

Firefox came out long before alternate browsers were considered viable, you can thank firefox for people even accepting anything other than IE.

Whether it over takes it or not I don't know.

[polyarchist]

Firefox has decent extensions. Chrome doesn't. Chrome has almost 0 customization and is extremely basic.

NOPE

That's exactly WHY it will beat Firefox. Most people want something that "just works".

[fhpuqrgrpgvirzhpujbj]

Firefox will always stay on top because it is simply a better browser. I like chrome but I prefer Firefox.

[Rigby]

That's exactly WHY it will beat Firefox. Most people want something that "just works".

What a ridiculous comment. Firefox works just fine, you don't have to install addons but it's nice to have the option unlike with Chrome where you're stuck with what you get (which is very little).

[farmeunit]

I'll never use Chrome as long and the TAB behavior in the address bar works like it does. I'm not really interested in saving a few milliseconds when browsing, so speed isn't that big of an issue for me. Firefox isn't that much slower. I will admit, the UI in Firefox (reading opening tabs, etc.), isn't as smooth as I'd like.

[ViperAFK]

yeah it has the behemoth google behind it.

[polyarchist]

Firefox will always stay on top because it is simply a better browser. I like chrome but I prefer Firefox.

I used to love Firefox as well but even Opera 11 is a better browser than the stable version of Firefox.

[M4nB3arP1g]

I use Firefox 3.6 but I could see chrome overtaking Firefox. I like chrome from the brief times I tried it on others computers but I would never use it on my computer because I don't trust Google enough to use it as my browser I will wear my tinfoil hat :shiftyninja:. The only problem I have right now is I don't know what I am going to do when Firefox 4 comes out because I hate it. I have tried to use the betas four or five times but always come back to 3.6 for multiple reasons.

[-KJ]

yeah it has the behemoth google behind it.

Yep.

[polyarchist]

7) When most people see Firefox 4 Beta for the first time, they immediately say on web forums, blog comments, etc : "Oh look, they copied Chrome"

People thus start to get the idea that Chrome is more innovative, and once they try Chrome, they get hooked on the speed advantage over Firefox.

[ncc50446]

You are all wrong...Opera will win :p lol

FF 4 > Chrome > FF 3.6

Firefox 4 is an improvement to FF 3.6 by a lot. It's still not as fast as Chrome, but the look and feel is much better in my opinion.

At work I have Opera 11.01 as primary browser, then on my second monitor I have FF4 pre-beta 10. It use to be Chrome.

The only add-on that I had was for Canadian spelling and spell bound (For text-fields).

[COKid]

Does NoScript work with Chrome? No? Besides, I do not trust anything Google does. But to each their own.

[polyarchist]

You are all wrong...Opera will win :p lol

FF 4 > Chrome > FF 3.6

Firefox 4 is an improvement to FF 3.6 by a lot. It's still not as fast as Chrome, but the look and feel is much better in my opinion.

At work I have Opera 11.01 as primary browser, then on my second monitor I have FF4 pre-beta 10. It use to be Chrome.

The only add-on that I had was for Canadian spelling and spell bound (For text-fields).

Personally I think Opera is the best browser for people to go to if they think Firefox is too slow or Chrome is too untrustworthy.

If only more people used it... :pinch:

[Subject Delta]

Yes, because the average public don't give a flying fig about extensions, user javascript, tab behaviour. They want something simple to use, and fast. The problem is that all of you are thinking like nerds when you should be thinking like the average web using layman. Chrome is by far the easiest web browser to use, and it pretty much ties with Opera at being the fastest. Firefox not only seems to be getting more buggy with each release, they actually seem to be going back with their rendering engine as well, a lot of work is needed on Firefox. I am a tech geek, and I don't even care about extensions. I use ad muncher to get rid of advertising, and the only addons I use in Chromium are ESPN cricinfo, Chrome 2 Phone, Awesome Screenshot, and F.B Purity. I use my web browser to browse, I don't need it to do a million things in one go. Chrome may not be as customisable as some other browsers, but it is slick, extremely fast, and easy to use, and that is why it is turning into such a hit.

[Commodore Max]

5) People notice the added speed from Webkit, since it doesn't take a genius to see that Gecko renders more slowly. (simply because it is wayyyyyyy more complex code than Webkit)

Complexity has nothing to do with performance.

[leedogg]

Personally I think Opera is the best browser for people to go to if they think Firefox is too slow or Chrome is too untrustworthy.

If only more people used it... :pinch:

Opera is becoming my primary browsing browser primarily for its browsing speed and ability to stack tabs, however there are still a few extensions i miss from chrome such as the autopager, built in rss feed and gmail checker. The only reason I use firefox is for its greasemonkey script support.

[polyarchist]

Opera is becoming my primary browsing browser primarily for its browsing speed and ability to stack tabs, however there are still a few extensions i miss from chrome such as the autopager, built in rss feed and gmail checker. The only reason I use firefox is for its greasemonkey script support.

Well I know that Opera has a gmail checking extension already, and I'm sure that those other extensions will come in time. Also, many of the popular scripts already are compatible with Opera as it has built-in script support like Chrome does.

To be honest, I'd love if Opera became #3, and Firefox went to #4, because Opera has so much more work ahead of it, yet it still renders just as fast as Chrome and has a more responsive UI and rendering speed than Firefox.

[Elessar]

Chrome takes roughly 2 seconds to load up on my computer, Firefox about 8-9. And it's been that way since FF3, 4A's and 4B's...I'll stick with Chrome.

This is coming from a die-hard FF2 fan.

[Xilo]

When you have a modern computer, speed isn't that much of a concern.

[Udedenkz]

There are many many things which Chrome simple fails at, including but not limited to,

Even with the newer API, there is no proper content blocking in Chrome; Some things will still be loaded. SRWare Iron type adblocking on the other hand suffers from false positives.

No Script wannabes are much more limited and require a more PITA setup in Chrome than in Firefox.

Chrome tried fitting the page on one piece of paper and adding a scrollbar in the printed version, while Firefox actually printed the page out properly.

The download manager is worthless for professional use.

Understanding what tab has what open is impossible after a certain amount of tabs. Whereas Firefox has an easily scrollable tab bar.

The new tab page lack customization, does not address privacy concerns.

Otherwise, Mozilla needs to feel the burn a bit more IMO, but from *good* browsers which deliver a good mix of features and performance such as IE9 and Opera, not Chrome.

[polyarchist]

When you have a modern computer, speed isn't that much of a concern.

I have a fairly new laptop with a higher end Core 2 Duo processor and 4GB of RAM and Chrome boots up instantly, while Firefox takes 2-3 seconds to boot.

Modern hardware won't blur the line between bloated software and streamlined software.

[Nagisan]

I like Chrome over Firefox, but I would rather use Opera than either of them.

That being said, I think Chrome will eventually "beat" Firefox, if both continue on their current paths, but it doesn't matter much to me cause neither one of them compares to Opera for my usage (and neither one of them will unless they dramatically overhaul their browsers).