Google can keep its Chrome browser but will be barred from exclusive contracts

> Google started, developed, and built Chrome into the best browser available today

I don’t think this is as settled as you imply. I tend to like Google products, and do almost everything in the Google ecosystem. But my browser is normally brave or Firefox, because better Adblock is so so impactful. I feel that chrome is a valid alternative, but that no browser is really clearly “the best”. In your view, what is it that makes chrome the best?

> In your view, what is it that makes chrome the best?

As a former Firebug fan: Chrome/Chromium has had superior browser dev-tools experience for over a decade now.

Brave is based on Chrome (Chromium).

You should try out Firefox’s if you haven’t. It’s pretty good now and I haven’t found something that I’ve been like damn wish it was there. Lighthouse testing I guess?

Whenever I use chrome, I'm missing the style editor and multi-line repl mode from firefox. When I switched to firefox from chrome, I didn't miss anything. There might be new features chrome has added since that I would want if I knew about them

1. It might not be the best across all metrics today, but it definitely was a few years ago.

2. While it's true that other browsers like Firefox have been catching up to Chrome in speed, it's still true that Chrome help lead the way and if not for it, the web would've likely been far slower today.

3. There has been an explosion in other browsers in the past few years, but admittedly they're all chromium-based, so even that wouldn't have been possible without Chrome

While I agree on those counts, the debugger in Chrome handles large files of minified code, deep framework stack traces, and stopping in dysfunctional code better.

Anecdotally, I've seen many geeks (who certainly don't make their browser choice based on an annoying popup, and are generally more on the anti-Google side) use Chrome rather than Firefox, at conferences etc. (but this is mostly 5+ years ago). Not the majority, but plenty of well-informed opinionated people.

I believe especially back then, Chrome performance was significantly better than Firefox. On Android, Firefox was so slow and unpolished that the ad blocking couldn't make up for it (and even that wasn't available from the start).

Safari has been better for going on 5 years now, funny thing is it was worse for long enough that it seems everyone, even to this day, refuses to believe it.

Faster in basically every dimension. Supporting way more than FF in terms of specs. Way more efficient on battery. Better feeling scroll, better UI.

Agreed. Only thing lacking is the multi Google account/profile support

Except for infinite loops in JS. Firefox still handles those better.

Any source for that?

https://www.browserating.com/ doesn't put it in top5 on any non-ios platform?

Profile came to Safari in iOS 17. https://support.apple.com/en-au/guide/iphone/iphd27a9ff22/17...

Similarly with Safari 17 on macOS.

Firefox dev tools tell me why my requests and scripts fail because of CORS or blocked by a plugin or what have you. Chrome doesn’t remotely even provide that info.

I honestly have never seen a Chrome dev tools feature that was better or necessary for good web development that Firefox didn’t already have in the last 15 years. Yet I always see this bizarre sentiment of how the dev tools were better “just because”.

> Anecdotally, I've seen many geeks use Chrome rather than Firefox, at conferences etc.

Have you asked them why? I'd be willing to bet that it's because of vendor lock-in if you boil down to it. Lots of things only work on Chrome. Video calls are especially prevalent right now, but there's a bunch of bot detection shit that only works on Chrome too.

When Chrome started, it was the best because it introduced the process-partitioned model that allowed it to completely avoid a common failure-mode among its peer browsers at the time: one bug in the processing of one tab would crash the entire browser (a problem exacerbated by the existence of a now-defunct plugin ecosystem where third-party code was running inside the browser process; we basically don't do that anymore). That was becoming brutal on users as more and more of the work they did every day transitioned over to web-based.

The other browsers have picked up the partitioning since then as a feature so the playing-field is far more level.

Yes and IIRC it was not due to any forced factor, just because they considered it better.

Chrome is the "best" because all of the other browsers continue to fail at real world marketing. The best ads and marketing continue to be real life stuff - billboards, bus signage, people handing out flyers, etc etc etc. You can't just hype a browser on social media or web forums, and you can't hype it solely to those who are tech savvy.

A solid example of this right now is all of the Mullvad VPN ads I've seen on the Seattle Light Rail lately. Google used to have ads everywhere for Chrome. The only time I saw Firefox stuff was the rare t-shirt at a tech conference.

Chrome caught up in the last year or so, but also speedometer is also fairly arbitrary. Open/close, tab open/close, tab switch, scroll, initial load, resizing all still far better. Actual app performance depends on the app but for a few years Safari was clearly better.

So your source is your personal opinion. Got it.

100% objective, in fact among better web developers this has been common knowledge. There were plenty of articles, side by sides and benchmarks over the last years showing it.