cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1376783
Thought I’d never see the day when Firefox would match Chrome on Speedometer.
There’s also a few other benchmarks got a sizable boost. https://arewefastyet.com/
Speed almost doesn’t matter for me, since Chrome allows ads and Firefox actually lets me use adblockers and privacy badger. The time wasted on ads are way larger than the time spent loading a page.
never thought about it, but I tend to concur
Yeah. A pihole sped up the internet for me big time.
I’m a Firefox user, but doesn’t Chrome allow adblockers too? Both uBlock Origin and Privacy Badger are supported extensions on Chrome.
They do, but Chrome is actively trying to remove support for most advanced ad-blocking capabilities. Further, Google has no financial incentive to make their browser hospital to ad blockers as Google makes most of their money from advertising.
Google has pushed some half-baked ideas for how the web could work without having to block ads. Ad blocks aren’t best buddies with Google.
Thanks for the response and info. Another day where I’m glad to be a FF user.
Correct, but Chrome recently allowed ads through that weren’t block-able by uBlock Origin or any other blocker at the time. That’s when I switched back to Firefox, so I don’t know if anyone figured out a way around it.
What do you mean? Adblockers for Chrome exists.
Also note differences of these capabilities on their respective mobile apps.
They do, but Google reduced their utility. Ads from YouTube get through my uBlock Origin, and I see ads in my search results. This was a fairly recent development, as maybe a year ago I didn’t see any ads at all on Chrome. The day I got ads punched through my blockers, is the day I quit being lazy and migrated back to Firefox.
Google has no incentive to block ads when that’s part of their revenue stream, so they nerfed third party extension’s ability to actually work at intended.
Sure it does…
I rarely feel like the slowness of a website was due to the browser. I mean .4 seconds or .5 seconds does it really matter? I’ve been using Firefox since it was Firebird and speed has never really been a complaint. People need to measure and quantify everything.
What appeals to me about Firefox is how customizable it is, and all the extensions.
My bigger complaint is memory usage
On old HW it does matter. I use X220 Thinkpad, it’s still fast using chrome, and slow using firefox. But since 115, it’s noticeably fast… so… it matter, for me.
Same for me. Since I switched to Firebird/Firefox, no other browser has given me a reason to seriously consider switching.
I’m still a little mad that they had to change it from Phoenix. Such a great and evocative name.
I miss Galeon a little too. Practically invented the tabbed browser.
Firebird?
Phoenix became Firebird which became Firefox.
Since Firebird, eh? That means you are responsible for my beloved Mozilla suite being ditched for this upstart.
People stop using chrome.its not good for you nor for the internet.
What if I just… Spoof a Firefox user agent?? 😅
That’ll work but why not install firefox?
I just need to give it another chance, I literally removed Firefox two weeks ago after a problem using video calls, buuut I’m always fing around with the audio setup so Firefox may not have been at fault. For real though I never knew there is a Wayland mode, I’m excited to try it
Firefox is great… and we must use it at all cost
#eh /jk, no forcing, but Firefox indeed great!
No no people need to be forced to use Firefox. How else will they see the greatness?
And enjoy your ads?
I switched to Chrome a few years back because Firefox kept deleting my bookmarks.
Been using Firefox for over 15 years, including weird open source custom forks of it, and I’ve never run into that issue. I’ve got bookmarks kicking around that I imported into FF from IE on Windows XP.
Not saying it didn’t happen, but I’d hazard a guess that it was related to some bookmarks related addon you installed, or user error. Sorry you lost your bookmarks.
Why is Chromium slower than Chrome?
I wouldn’t be surprised if Google is keeping certain performance enhancements closed source so they can have a competive advantage over the competition that uses the Chromium source. They have been slowly making Android open source worse by not updating parts and moving things to closed source Google Play apps.
So when Google removed don’t be evil, they really meant it. It shows more and more each day.
They didn’t remove “don’t be evil”. It’s still there today: https://abc.xyz/investor/google-code-of-conduct/ (final paragraph)
Wow. I’ve heard that rumour being spread all over the place for YEARS now, and you’re the first to pull up proof that it’s still there. Interesting!
It looks like the code of conduct used to include a preface about don’t be evil, that’s what was removed.
“Preface Don’t be evil.” Googlers generally apply those words to how we serve our users. But “Don’t be evil” is much more than that. Yes, it’s about providing our users unbiased access to information, focusing on their needs and giving them the best products and services that we can. But it’s also about doing the right thing more generally – following the law, acting honorably, and treating co-workers with courtesy and respect.
The Google Code of Conduct is one of the ways we put “Don’t be evil” into practice.”
“Who put this ‘Don’t’ here? We’ll just get rid of that!”
They’re just build flags or compiler versions being different, no need to be melodramatic.
“We’re open source but not open source enough to your liking” is a VERY strange criteria for “evil” when most other commercial software companies are not open source at all.
~~Wild guess: APM? ~~
Edit:
It seems that chromium here on these benchmarks is unoptimized and it depends on what flags where enabled during building time: https://groups.google.com/a/chromium.org/g/chromium-dev/c/6q3AyYacjOo/m/XKQMdW4fBgAJThe real question
So, a larger number is better for this speed benchmark?
Nice! Although I have been using Firefox for years and never felt there was an issue with speed. Always been reliable for me.
Same here. And wasn’t some of that speed difference artificial? Didn’t Google serve their pages slower on FF on purpose for a while? “Do no evil” and all…
Never heard of that before. It wouldn’t take much for me to believe it though. Anyone have a link?
Normally I’d let you Google it, but given the topic
I use FF to help keep the browser “market” competitive. We don’t want to end up in the same situation as early 2ks where html standardisation was essentially “internet explorer compatibility”, and if you wanted to use newer features as a web dev you had to put multiple implementations, one for IE, and one for the others, as in the browsers actually implementing the specifications correctly. Now MS didn’t exactly do nefarious things with their market power, it was rather neglect, but it damaged the industry nevertheless. For Google, in today’s market, I’d anticipate they would use it to make it very difficult to block ads etc. Internet will become less free.
I use FF because it’s good.
MS didn’t do nefarious things with their market power? They virtually killed all competition in the market.
Chrome is worse. Because Chrome isn’t about having you use the browser, its about knowing what you do with the browser. Google already changes it’s search page, for example, on mobile Firefox can’t see the same sports results and league tables, and can’t easily see the reviews of local restaurants etc.
The graph totally threw me off, first I thought this post was a joke that Firefox got slower and is now as slow as Chrome.
For some dumb reason the y-axis shows the score, but it’s inverted…
It’s inverted because on most occasions the y axis represents time, so less is better.
In order to not have bemchmarks where a lower result on the Y-axis is worse, they kind of invert it for scores.
I know it is confusing, but it helps non-technical people.
If you are on linux wayland, enable wayland mode for firefox and enjoy the huge performance boost
Sadly I’m using XFCE, and XFCE isn’t ready for wayland, so I will keep waiting until wayland stable enough on XFCE. Other DE isn’t suiting my taste tbh. well it’s mater of preference, but XFCE is stable roboust DE for me to keep me focus on works
Good news: Xfce is working on Wayland support!
Bad news: We don’t know when it will be done…
Hahahaha… Well, let the dev team work in real life for a while tho. Hahaha
This sounds like what I’m missing 😁
Crazy fact. Firefox, for me, has ALWAYS been much faster/stronger on YouTube than any chromium based browser I’ve used. Better than chrome on their own site. This makes it even better. I love this browser.
YouTube has been ok for me in Firefox, but other Google apps, in particular Docs/Sheets, always become very laggy after a few minutes. When this happens, it seems to affect the rest of the browser too, so other tabs that I have open slow down as well.
I’ve read somewhere that changing the user agent fixes your issue. It is intentional.
That shit should be illegal. It’s just a violation of net neutrality from a different angle.
There are a lot of things that “should be illegal” in the capitalistic dystopia, but they just aren’t.
Google intentionally gimps what they serve to their competition to make them look worse. It’s definitely an anticompetitive practice, and they’re walking a fine line about it to not get in legal trouble.
Interesting. I have to try that. I remember reading that MS do the same for the web version of Outlook, but I don’t use that, so I can’t confirm.
Great, now implement modern exploit mitigations and sandboxing like Chrome uses. Firefox is objectively less resistant to exploitation. Some Firefox security has improved since the article was written, such as some sandboxing on Windows, but it’s definitely not as mature.
I’m not writing that Firefox is insecure. Security is very important to Firefox! However, Chrome has had more work done in the realm of browser hardening.
That is fair, but Chrome is undeniably more open to corporate exploitation. See things like the dramatically reduced utility of ad blockers on Chromium browsers.
I guess it depends on who you see as the greater threat at present.
This is why I use Firefox! For freedom.
I might start using Firefox when I will get a laptop later. Currently using Vivaldi for Android
I think it’s already on par with Chromium, most attack won’t work with sandboxing that introduced to firefox, and mostly now each site/iframe have it’s own process, so it’s on par with chrome, imho
As a security researcher, running each site in its own process isn’t enough. Chrome has a much stronger multiprocessing model on most platforms. For example, Chrome on Android sandboxes between processes whereas Firefox simply relies on the built-in Android sandbox, which provides limited protection between these processes. It’s much easier to break out of the sandbox in Firefox because it’s easier to move laterally, for one. Those processes have to communicate with each other at some point.
But, don’t believe me just because I claim any sort of credential on the Internet. It’s such a difference in security that GrapheneOS strongly discourages using Firefox for its weak implementation in addition to the link I provided above. From the link:
Worst of all, Firefox does not have internal sandboxing on Android. This is despite the fact that Chromium semantic sandbox layer on Android is implemented via the OS isolatedProcess feature, which is a very easy to use boolean property for app service processes to provide strong isolation with only the ability to communicate with the app running them via the standard service API. Even in the desktop version, Firefox’s sandbox is still substantially weaker (especially on Linux) and lacks full support for isolating sites from each other rather than only containing content as a whole.
I love Firefox. I use it anyway. It’s not insecure. But it’s absolutely not as secure because it lacks modern exploit mitigations. Running process per site is an improvement but it’s still less secure than the architecture used in Chrome.
EDIT: Sound less entitled.
I can’t speak for Android, it’s long way to go for sure, but on desktop, it’s great. And for Fedora PhoneUI / Phosh seems already working because it’s linux ootb.
in short android not included I suppose. They have custom multiple process sandbox, but last time I enable it, it broke everything in nightly
@garam
Firefox is not that bad 4 android, not that brilliant either
@henfredemarsWell, for me it’s great, but if we talk about sandboxing, it’s not there, not even in nightly, but it’s useful for me for day to day task, almost anything in Android
I think this is the page that the screenshot is from:
Lovely domain name lol
Why does anyone use chome, its way worse then any other browser you can install, they put so much junk on it.
Forced to with work.
I utterly hate it. I don’t have it on my personal setup or android mobile - been using Firefox for twenty years now, not gonna stop!
Don’t you have the option to use the Chromium Edge at your workplace? At least it has better features as compared to Chrome. My employer has all 3 of Chrome, FF & Edge installed but I use Edge over FF at office because they don’t allow 3rd party extensions.
What a world we live in where people are recommending what used to be Internet Explorer over Chrome.
Nope, it’s completely locked down by IT policy restrictions unfortunately.
I can use portable installs but last time I got found out I got a right bollocking!!
Financial org, so everything is very black and white unfortunately, although I did argue my way into having Notepad++
There’s a lot of non-Chrome Chromium browsers.
Not sure if it’s still a thing (I use DDG now), but back then when you visited Google on a non-Chrome browser, you would get a recommendation to use Chrome instead.
I’m proud of Firefox, but man, that’s a bad graph :)
Is this for both desktop and mobile versions? Sorry if that is a silly question.
Probably desktop. Or desktop and android. Remember that iOS locked down the browser years ago and require any third parties to run on safari’s bones.
Chrome and Firefox are building iOS browsers that do not require the apple WebKit. Everyone, including apple, expect apple to drop that requirement soon to help avoid antitrust issues.
expect apple to drop that requirement soon to help avoid antitrust issues.
I’m surprised it took this long.
That’s quite good to hear, do you have any further reading that you know of?
Edit: here’s the top article from DDG - https://www.theregister.com/2023/02/07/mozilla_google_apple_webkit/
Definitely not Android. Firefox is unfortunately quite a bit slower than Chrome based browsers. I still use it as I don’t really do much on my phone, but I hope they can optimize it further.
I use Firefox on android (specifically fennec f droid) and i use it since ublock origin can be installed and my fennec is hardened too
This is specifically for the Windows version. You can also find Linux and Mac results here by selecting the OS from the drop-down list at the top.
I only see Chromium and Chrome on the speedometer for Linux, not Firefox. Am I missing something?
Here’s what I see: https://i.ibb.co/g9yLrmp/image.png
I think for now it’s on desktop Windows? But on Linux I do notice faster react app load like reddit new design is faster. But I use lemmy, so it doesn’t matter now.
And that’s even considering the fact that Google deliberately throttles Firefox on their sites
Is that relevant for the benchmarks?
No
source?
Google.com on Firefox Android is an inferior experience compared to Chrome. You have to use an addon that changes your user-agent string to get the same experience.
@lazycouchpotato @xthedeerlordx just use brave search or startpage instead?
I use DuckDuckGo.
Heard good things about Brave. Gotta remember to use it.
