Firefox vs Chrome: Battle of the Browsers

Google chrome is the most popular browser on all platforms including mobile. But the second most popular browser is firefox. Firefox is a privacy-focused browser and unlike chrome, it doesn’t allow your activity to be tracked by other websites unless you explicitly allow that. The browser had its days but then Firefox started falling as Chrome got better. Performance on smartphones remained a big issue for firefox and the reason for chrome taking over.

But in the year 2020 when everyone was busy with COVID firefox decided to redefine its mobile browser. The new redesigned Firefox mobile browser is more elegant, speedy, and powerful than ever. Let me highlight a few points in all these departments:

Elegance

When it comes to smartphones we all love better-looking apps. Apps that can make us feel good about using them. This is why motion UI is getting popular. Chrome gives a good user experience but the new Firefox is far better than Chrome in terms of User experience. “Firefox lets’ you choose between a bottom based or top based search bar”. Most people with large screen smartphones prefer bottom based interface as it is more convenient.

You can switch between tabs by swiping left and right just like in chrome or you can use the tab switcher menu which comes up by swiping up or down depending on your search bar position. There are several other customization options like choosing a tab view grid or list. The address bar has a built-in QR code reader, you have a button to quickly turn on incognito mode on the home page. You also have an option to change your default search engine. The default one is duckduckgo the privacy-focused search engine.

Features Chrome User Needs

Reading mode: Chrome doesn’t support reading mode but firefox gives its user an inbuilt reading mode to allow them to read a text-only view of a blog without images or ads distracting them.

Collections: I find myself keeping certain tabs open in the background in firefox so that I can read them later. But in Firefox, you can just save them into a collection and forget about keeping tabs open in the background. This reduces overload on your device and you still can read those articles later on. It’s like pocket for firefox.

Extensions: Chrome doesn’t support extensions on mobile. There are reasons like overload and others. But firefox support extensions. Only a few official extensions as of now. But the support will expand soon. Extensions are really useful. We all find ourselves using them when they are available.

Performance

The new firefox is built on a new rewritten rendering engine Gecko. The new rendering engine makes the browser insanely fast and if you turn on the strict privacy mode then it will be next level speed. However, you won’t get website performance as powerful as chrome. Its because everyone optimises their website for chrome even google renders old ui on other browsers and latest and feature packed UI only on chrome. Firefox tried its best but the websites that are optimised for chrome can’t get any better on firefox.

Privacy

When it comes to privacy there is only one thing you need to understand. If you are using Firefox and turned on privacy mode your activities aren’t being tracked. And if you turn on the strict privacy mode then your activities become almost impossible to track. Privacy means Mozilla. That has always been Mozilla’s focus. You can read about full privacy details here.