Firefox had some major memory leaks when Chrome first launched (2008). It became noticeable with the more tabs you had and the longer the browser was opened. This was also during the days for consumer systems with 16GB max RAM & 32GB on higher end enthusiast systems.

We also have to remeber that this was 10 years before Google romoved their “Don’t be Evil” motto, and there was still a great deal of trust that had been earned by tech professionals.

So when Chrome came in, had a minimalist UI (for the time) and was light weight and memory light without any obvious memory leaks, it was a performance boost for a toooon of users.

Chrome has since become a memory hog and is now being developed and pushed by a company that has become heavily enshittified & evil. Firefox has become lightweight, memory efficient, and is an FOSS product that’s not evil and enshittified making it the right choice in 2024, but is going to be an uphill battle that hopefully more tech professionals move to as Manifest V3 becomes a reality.