Why is Chrome so Popular, is there something I'm missing out on?

[terrytek]

nope there's nothing good about chrome that you should worry about. in fact. i absolutely hate it. all it does is just hog fucking ram. firefox does it too to an extent, but not as much as chrome.

[Tsuki]

no extensions on edge means im not using it.  its got a bunch of cool features, but i dont have any use for them.

chrome does eat a lot of ram, but its got everything i need. it also lets me log in on any computer and have all my bookmarks and everything, which is great.  i havent used vivaldi yet though, i may give it a shot.

[olbaze]

I used Chrome for 3 years, and about a month ago I switched to Microsoft Edge and Vivaldi. And I can't see much difference. I honestly don't understand why Edge gets so much hate, I really like it a lot. I started using Edge when I built my new PC and I was too lazy to re-download Chrome and Vivaldi and I haven't thought about switching back since.

 

My main reasons for sticking with Chrome:

• Chrome on Android
• Google Sync
• Extensions
• Top of the line performance and stability

Looking at Edge, what I see is no extensions, no Android version, no syncing of any kind and it's ugly. It's so far behind the curve from the  starting point that even giving it a fair chance wouldn't make sense, I simply couldn't use Edge as it is right now to do what I need a web browser to do.

 

I know people who use no extensions and don't even know of their existence. Heck, I was one of those people for many, many years. But right now? The first thing I do on a fresh web browser after getting it online is get my extensions set up.

[terrytek]

My main reasons for sticking with Chrome:

• Chrome on Android
• Google Sync
• Extensions
• Top of the line performance and stability

Looking at Edge, what I see is no extensions, no Android version, no syncing of any kind and it's ugly. It's so far behind the curve from the  starting point that even giving it a fair chance wouldn't make sense, I simply couldn't use Edge as it is right now to do what I need a web browser to do.

 

I know people who use no extensions and don't even know of their existence. Heck, I was one of those people for many, many years. But right now? The first thing I do on a fresh web browser after getting it online is get my extensions set up.

firefox has all those, but it uses a whole lot less ram and cpu.

[olbaze]

firefox has all those, but it uses a whole lot less ram and cpu.

 

I do flip between Firefox and Chrome. My issues with Firefox are:

• Firefox for Android is inferior (mostly the sync, but I have also seen some websites that don't function properly on Firefox)
• Firefox is still not multi process outside of Nightly, which means a single tab hanging results in all the windows hanging
• Flash on Firefox sucks (not Firefox's fault, though)

I have plenty of RAM and even when I only have 6GB, RAM was only an issue when I was doing heavy multitasking (Twitch + game + bunch of tabs open). Chrome has been getting a lot better with RAM lately.

 

Honestly, I can't wait for them to implement e10s on Stable and for Twitch (and hopefully Crunchyroll one day) to offer HTML5 streaming. I don't like some of the decisions Google has made when it comes to Chrome and their catering to the lowest common denominator is rather sad. Not to mention the privacy concerns and the anticompetitive suit they have going on with EC.

[terrytek]

I do flip between Firefox and Chrome. My issues with Firefox are:

• Firefox for Android is inferior (mostly the sync, but I have also seen some websites that don't function properly on Firefox)
• Firefox is still not multi process outside of Nightly, which means a single tab hanging results in all the windows hanging
• Flash on Firefox sucks (not Firefox's fault, though)

I have plenty of RAM and even when I only have 6GB, RAM was only an issue when I was doing heavy multitasking (Twitch + game + bunch of tabs open). Chrome has been getting a lot better with RAM lately.

 

Honestly, I can't wait for them to implement e10s on Stable and for Twitch (and hopefully Crunchyroll one day) to offer HTML5 streaming. I don't like some of the decisions Google has made when it comes to Chrome and their catering to the lowest common denominator is rather sad. Not to mention the privacy concerns and the anticompetitive suit they have going on with EC.

ok i admit the multi process would suck on it but at least it doesn't hog ram like a motherfucker.

 

 

correction: it does. i've had firefox crash 4 times within 30 minutes.

[Nishizumi]

I was personally considering jumping ship to Edge, but the lack of extension support kill everything. I need those extensions man!

[GoodBytes]

I believe that Chrome started to be popular when Firefox was popular. Because at time Firefox was moving at snail paste. It started to become IE in terms of development speed, and has lost his... well.. fire.. to be motivated to continue to strive. The Web browser got heavier and more bloated than before. You can have a program that is feature rich, and not bloated with good coding, but alas that was not the case.

 

So Chrome came out and people started to switch, especially in Europe, and then spread everywhere. It was light weight, did about everything Firefox did, started fast, was fast, and gave a fairly solid experience to the user. It also integrated to Google service bringing Google own all sites together, and with Android gaining popularity at the time, with abilities such as syncing bookmarks between desktop/laptop and phone, it just made sense for people to switch. This was also helped a lot by the fact that at the time, Google has this really awesome image of it self.

 

Today, Chrome is no what it used to be. Google uses the web browser to push failed services to people, the web browser got clunky, crashes a lot, uses A LOT of RAM, eats up a lot of CPU to render pages seriously affecting battery life of laptops and Windows powered tablets, in an area where people are more and more mobile. Firefox has FINALLY waken up, around the time of Windows 10. Firefox is now high-DPI aware, a bit faster, more polished, added features like edge like Reading mode, improved its PDF viewer, and more. There is this renewed energy, which is really nice to see.  Oh and Firefox is officially 64-bit, well.. there is officialy a 64-bit version of Firefox after 20 or so years it seems!

 

Edge web browser is indeed impressive, and Microsoft has been improving it since Windows 10 was released. It still pays catchup, by continuing implementing web standards, and adding features that other web browser has for a while now. Edge development is definitely moving fast. It is still missing extensions, but it is coming soon, at least to Insiders of Windows 10. The option has been found in Edge under Redstone via enabling a variable in the registry, but it does nothing, and a website was made to show how to install (for insiders) extensions.

 

 

Website picture (website removed when it was found out):

http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/microsoft-accidentally-launches-edge-browser-extensions-website-497405-2.jpg

 

 

So, it should be publicly available with Redstone update expected to release around summer time (about 1 year since Windows 10 is released).

 

What is more interesting, is if Microsoft would be able to implement extension support in Edge for Windows 10 Mobile. As they said it would be tricky, as on smart phone, highly optimized code is a must, even if you have Apple fancy latest and greatest CPU, actual real world performance is very slow compared to even an Intel Atom CPU (ok, maybe not that bad Apple CPU are pretty powerful), but you get my point. So you have 2 problems that Microsoft faces:

 1- Poorly coded extensions (they might be well coded for desktop, laptop,s but too heavy for phones)

 2- Due to lack of screen space, where do you put the icons for the extensions if it needs one for options and such?

 

So we will see, but it would bring another leg up to Windows 10 Mobile if they find a way, even if they do things like limit the number of extensions to 2-3.

I think it would be pretty exciting.

 

AdBlock Plus said that they will release their extension for Edge already. Maybe they got some early Edge code in hand from Microsoft to get started with their extension, or maybe they'll jump day 1 of extension support of the web browser and start developing full force one.

 

 

Anyway, competition is good. I hope people are open to try something new, even if it is switching from Chrome to Firefox, or Firefox to Edge, or Chrome to Edge. Competition at 3 is really powerful for consumers. We see this time and time again, once a product get super popular, innovation is reduced, energy/motivation is reduced, and quality is reduced, affecting everyone.

[deWaardt]

Edge is a good browsers, but chrome works and I don't feel like making the switch.

[Speedbird]

Because Chrome was great when it launched and had many exclusive features. Now, it's not so good, but people still use it. Because it's god-damn Chrome. IE on the other hand though, was way behind in technology when Chrome came out. When IE6 was released, MS had a huge market share for browsers, and stopped developing it really until 2011, when IE9 came out. But the bad reputation of IE and the good of Chrome has remained, and people still love Chrome and hate IE no matter what. And IE's bad reputation has carried on to Edge, which people already dislike because of the lack of extension support and telemetry.

[Kiyuubi]

You're not missing anything. It's proprietary software that invades your privacy.

[Guest]

I believe that Chrome started to be popular when Firefox was popular. Because at time Firefox was moving at snail paste. It started to become IE in terms of development speed, and has lost his... well.. fire.. to be motivated to continue to strive. The Web browser got heavier and more bloated than before. You can have a program that is feature rich, and not bloated with good coding, but alas that was not the case.

 

So Chrome came out and people started to switch, especially in Europe, and then spread everywhere. It was light weight, did about everything Firefox did, started fast, was fast, and gave a fairly solid experience to the user. It also integrated to Google service bringing Google own all sites together, and with Android gaining popularity at the time, with abilities such as syncing bookmarks between desktop/laptop and phone, it just made sense for people to switch. This was also helped a lot by the fact that at the time, Google has this really awesome image of it self.

 

Today, Chrome is no what it used to be. Google uses the web browser to push failed services to people, the web browser got clunky, crashes a lot, uses A LOT of RAM, eats up a lot of CPU to render pages seriously affecting battery life of laptops and Windows powered tablets, in an area where people are more and more mobile. Firefox has FINALLY waken up, around the time of Windows 10. Firefox is now high-DPI aware, a bit faster, more polished, added features like edge like Reading mode, improved its PDF viewer, and more. There is this renewed energy, which is really nice to see.  Oh and Firefox is officially 64-bit, well.. there is officialy a 64-bit version of Firefox after 20 or so years it seems!

 

Edge web browser is indeed impressive, and Microsoft has been improving it since Windows 10 was released. It still pays catchup, by continuing implementing web standards, and adding features that other web browser has for a while now. Edge development is definitely moving fast. It is still missing extensions, but it is coming soon, at least to Insiders of Windows 10. The option has been found in Edge under Redstone via enabling a variable in the registry, but it does nothing, and a website was made to show how to install (for insiders) extensions.

 

 

Website picture (website removed when it was found out):

http://i1-news.softpedia-static.com/images/news2/microsoft-accidentally-launches-edge-browser-extensions-website-497405-2.jpg

 

 

So, it should be publicly available with Redstone update expected to release around summer time (about 1 year since Windows 10 is released).

 

What is more interesting, is if Microsoft would be able to implement extension support in Edge for Windows 10 Mobile. As they said it would be tricky, as on smart phone, highly optimized code is a must, even if you have Apple fancy latest and greatest CPU, actual real world performance is very slow compared to even an Intel Atom CPU (ok, maybe not that bad Apple CPU are pretty powerful), but you get my point. So you have 2 problems that Microsoft faces:

 1- Poorly coded extensions (they might be well coded for desktop, laptop,s but too heavy for phones)

 2- Due to lack of screen space, where do you put the icons for the extensions if it needs one for options and such?

 

So we will see, but it would bring another leg up to Windows 10 Mobile if they find a way, even if they do things like limit the number of extensions to 2-3.

I think it would be pretty exciting.

 

AdBlock Plus said that they will release their extension for Edge already. Maybe they got some early Edge code in hand from Microsoft to get started with their extension, or maybe they'll jump day 1 of extension support of the web browser and start developing full force one.

 

 

Anyway, competition is good. I hope people are open to try something new, even if it is switching from Chrome to Firefox, or Firefox to Edge, or Chrome to Edge. Competition at 3 is really powerful for consumers. We see this time and time again, once a product get super popular, innovation is reduced, energy/motivation is reduced, and quality is reduced, affecting everyone.

I'm not the biggest Chrome fan, but chrome can hardly be characterized as 'crashes a lot'... it's generally the most stable browser out there in my experience.

[Guest]

I was personally considering jumping ship to Edge, but the lack of extension support kill everything. I need those extensions man!

lack of cross platform is a big killer too. with Chrome/Firefox/Opera you can sync bookmarks/favorites etc... across pretty much any device regardless of OS (windows/linux/osx/android etc...). With edge you can sync with...windows devices

 

IMO sync is one of the most important features of any modern web browser, and sync being limited to one platform is a huge limitation. Same reason I don't use safari on my mac, even though otherwise it's the best browser on OSX.

 

I think the main reason chrome is so popular is that it has the most reliable sync implementation and works on all major platforms.

 

I was hoping Microsoft starting to offer more apps on android/osx was a sign that edge might get some cross platform support, but alas it doesn't appear so.

[Crowes]

Edge isn't fast, it just has exaggerative animations.