Emerging browser war: Google Chrome vs. Mozilla Firefox
Google Chrome will support add-ons and user scripts à la Firefox Add-ons and Greasemonkey, Google engineer Ojan Vafai said during a panel discussion on the future of Web browsers at Web 2.0 Expo in New York on Friday.
The news that Google Chrome is going to support extensions and user scripts has raised the curtains to a new browser war between Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome. The launch of Google’s browser Chrome has changed the landscape of the browser war. Prior to the launching of Chrome, Firefox was gaining popularity rapidly and everyone including me firmly believed that it will soon be numero uno browser. The record-breaking downloads of Firefox 3 had substantiated that opinion. The success of the Firefox is mainly attributed to its ever increasing, innovative extensions and plug-ins and the great support it has from the large community of open-source developers.
When Chrome was launched, most of the users seem to like its stability, minimalistic lay-out and the speed. However, most of them were not ready to make it their default browser because it was still a beta version and it had no extensions like in Firefox.
I feel that the competition between Chrome and Firefox is getting hotter with the fresh news leaked from Google camp. Mozilla may come up with more advanced features in its upcoming version of Firefox. Already, it is said that Javascript VM to be used in Firefox 3.1, TraceMonkey, is much faster than V8, that used by Chrome. Moreover, Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich has already indicated that they would look at better process-isolation techniques than that of Chrome to improve security and integrity of Firefox.
Let us wait and see what this browser war has in store for us in the coming months.
Good news: It is the end-user who will be the ultimate winner in this war for supremacy.
Do we really need these many browsers?
No doubt the browser wars are hotting up now. The latest releases from Google, Microsoft and Mozilla all look good. The features set being promised in each subsequent release of the browsers will only make the choice difficult for users.
it’s funny, the more i use Chrome, the more unstable it seems to get… crashes a lot more, can’t handle sites with flash, hangs every time i close a tab… all that to say, i’ve switched back to Firefox
You are right about the end user being benefitted by choice. Chrome is quick due to its Webkit background and it may pose a serious challenge to Firefox in that dept. Mozilla CEO must be grinding his teeth. Nice touch with the picture.
I use Chrome and Firefox just like I use Linux and Windows XP. Linux for features and Windows for games. Similarly, Chrome for usual browsing, checking mail, etc. and Firefox for blogging.
@Vinay Competition is always beneficial to users. Ultimately it is end-users who get benefitted by the number of options they have.
@Dinesh Babu Thank you.
@Santhosh On the contrary, I believe, user will switch from one browser to another depending the nature of the work he does on Web.
@Media boy Chrome is still in beta and it is natural that some problems may occur initially.
@ Thank you Anniyan. Even I have been using Chrome mostly to open my gmail and for other browsing purposes. I got so accustomed to the add-ons of the Firefox that I feel it very difficult to leave Firefox altogether.
Chrome sucks big time. I am an active internet surfer and use multiple tabs and new windows. I havent gone through a single session without the browser hanging or crashing.
Their unique feature of isolating each tab as a separate process doesnt really work. The whole thing freezes and I have to use the Task manager to close it.