30-day Firefox Challenge

Everyone seems to be on the Google hate train as of late. What I don’t understand is how many of these so-called “Google haters” still use Google Chrome. Microsoft recently announced that they were moving to Chromium and Opera has already made the switch. This leaves us with a three browser engine market, a dangerous place to be.

Many of today’s tech users are unaware of the browser history that has many of us veterans worried. Browsers used to only be made by Microsoft after they put Netscape out of business. Once this happened, browser development completely stagnated… until Firefox came along.

Chrome was even Better

I used Firefox for many years, until Firefox suffered the same fate as Internet Explorer. When Google Chrome came along, it was so fast. There was no separation of URL address bar and the search box, they were one in the same. Chrome was clearly faster, easier on memory and just felt like a better user experience.

So I’ve stayed with Chrome for many years, even as I saw it grow to be the largest browser market share globally. I don’t think Firefox ever got there. At best it competed with Internet Explorer, but Google with their influence has been able to put Chrome as the #1 browser world wide, with everyone else a distant second.

All-In on Firefox

I like healthy competition. It helps everybody be at their best. For this reason, I’ve decided to go back to Firefox for 30 straight days. I’ve always kept Firefox installed but it hasn’t been my primary browser for years. I mostly just used it to check the appearance of websites or apps I’ve developed.

I’ll keep regular updates on my blog about the problems I’ve encountered or things I’m really excited about. Since my company is very much in the Google Apps ecosystem, this is the thing I’m worried the most about. If web developers like me have done a good job building a standardized web, I should barely notice the change.