Remember the day when you discovered Firefox? How you could have multiple tabs? Add-ons? AdBlock? Firebug? When you discovered an add-on called IE tab and you could pretend as if IE6 never existed?

And then the day when you discovered Chrome? How a browser could be lightning fast? How adding multiple tabs did not seem to impact speed at all? That fast startup time in spite of having a bunch of Add-ons? The day you decided to make Chrome your default browser?¹

Today is that day again. Chrome is a clunky memory and CPU hog. You are scared to close Chrome because you dread the 200% CPU and 7200 rpm fans when you open it again. Many add-ons seem to have turned sinister. Corporate networks have accepted Chrome and are now restricting features. There is even an extension called Legacy Browser Support that can be forced installed by group policy and can’t be uninstalled².

And then the login. Chrome sync was awesome. You could bookmark on a desktop and continue on a phone. You could cross refer tabs and history. But then Chrome login also became Google.com login. Today you are scared to search for anything without thinking twice or going incognito, lest be inundated by adds for that stupid Groupon deal, making  you wonder how wide Google’s reach is.

At least on the desktop you can have ublock origin and Ghostery, escape from the non google ad world³, and pretend that all is good⁴. On mobile you have come to a point that you don’t care. Chrome custom tabs have proliferated into unimaginable places and apps. Anything and everything you click on an Android phone goes through Google. And somehow you still Open with Chrome in Safari on iOS.

Don’t worry, there is hope. And surprisingly it is Firefox. Not one but two. Lets talk about both.

Firefox Focus is a privacy-centric browser with ad blocking and tracking protection. It does not have tabs or add-ons or any bells and whistles. It is just a bare bones browser, that erases browsing history every time you close it. And it ts fast. This is meant to be the default browser on your phone so you don’t have to think twice before clicking that deal, add or a link in an app. You can Open with Chrome and go back to the google-web. This removes click-anxiety, and you dont have to worry of the consequences of your click. In the last few weeks of using it, Focus beings relief.

The regular Firefox is still a bit clunky, but the upcoming version, Firefox 57, is awesome. It is uncomfortably fast. It has Add-ons⁵, syncs bookmarks passwords etc across devices, and does not use your search history for showing ads. You can grab it in the nightly channel, or wait a few weeks for it to be mainstream. Firefox 57 (Nightly) is my daily driver now⁶. I use it on my Mac, work PC and Android. I am yet to face any issues. Did I say it is  uncomfortably, blazing fast?
To be honest, Firefox still lacks some nice features Chrome has. But as it is always with Firefox, add-ons cover most of these. And there are a few features that are very practical and useful, especially container tabs (set of tabs sand boxed from the rest, browser history, cookies – all. It is like having multiple instances of a browser)

¹ But let Firefox stay in the Dock/Notification area because you wouldn’t accept you have moved on?
² Chrome is too mainstream, and this may be a strong reason why I am moving away. There are others though.
³ You are still logged on to Google in chrome, and Google still tracks you. This may be why Google may win the ad war with Facebook. You can get out of Facebook, logout, logout again, logout again, click on “Don’t use my profile picture to sign on” and finally be outside the clutches of Facebook. Not with google. A topic of its own.
⁴ You don’t see ads, sure. But Google still knows about that Groupon deal that you visited ten times in two days. Also Chrome will come with its own native ad blocking. You know what it reminds me of? MSJVM and Microsoft JScript,
⁵ On desktop and Android
⁶ Well, almost. I have not logged on to google yet on Nightly and I am trying to use DuckDuckGo for search, even if it is with !g. But this is a separate topic of its own.