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I don’t trust Chrome. A browser from a company that makes most of its revenues selling targeted ads. They recently modified the way Chrome handles web pages so the adblockers no longer have full control of the content. Speed is irrelevant when your privacy is at risk.
 
Good to know about this. Not sure whether there will be an impact on battery for mobile devices/laptop. I don't use Chrome often.
 
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Google is evil. Chrome is a multi lane highway straight (and fast, I guess) into the depths of compromised data hell.
 
I switched to Waterfox (based on Firefox ESR) in macOS, Windows, GNU/Linux and Android here.

Better privacy than Google and faster than both Firefox and Safari :)
 
The browser is only as fast as your Internet connection, most of us have fair to better Internet connection and don’t see any difference. :rolleyes:
True. I have a 500 Mbit connection, and it still feels perfectly fine. I could upgrade to 1 Gbit or even 2, but I doubt it would feel 4x faster.

The only times I might slightly notice a difference are when downloading apps or updates. But the one situation where it would actually matter is downloading games that are tens of gigabytes... and that only happens a few times a year, so it’s not really worth it.
 
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I just tested it on Chrome which only has a few tabs open and Safari which has dozens of tabs open across Personal and Work profile windows. I got a 44.4 in Chrome and a 38.2 in Safari on my M3 Max with a random assortment of background apps open. Nothing controlled. Even so, it's just not worth it to use the privacy concerning Chrome that drains my battery faster. I just use Chrome to review websites in development as one of my final QA passes. And I'm willing to bet Safari will have some speed improvements when it updates this autumn.
 
I just read:

as it packs memory nicely in Oilpan's backend

And had to remind myself this is intended to be a technical opinion rather than, well, something else. :)
 
Honest question for the experts:

Why is browsing the web today still laggy and slow like it was 20 years ago?

e.g. I visit a page, then visit another page on the same site, and then click the back button. It takes maybe 2-3 seconds for that previous page to load again. Until that point, the page is frozen. I can't scroll.

What's going on there? Why is it so slow? Even just requesting the complete page afresh would be quicker. A cache look-up can't be that slow on a modern computer. What's happening in those 2-3 seconds? And why can't web browser developers get rid of it?
 
I am just glad Apple doesn’t ship their devices with preinstalled Chrome🤣

Last time I had tried Chrome on my Mac was 10 years ago, and when it magically started installing all the Google’s trash into my Launchpad I decided that I don’t need such a browser.

Now in 2025 I can say I am almost google-free. I have zero Google apps on my iPhone. Use search from Safari and they constantly try to lure me into downloading their apps, and whenever I need to check smth on their Maps I get strange “we have detected bad traffic from your network, complete captcha” - thats their punishment for me constantly refusing to install app on my phone
 
Honest question for the experts:

Why is browsing the web today still laggy and slow like it was 20 years ago?

e.g. I visit a page, then visit another page on the same site, and then click the back button. It takes maybe 2-3 seconds for that previous page to load again. Until that point, the page is frozen. I can't scroll.

What's going on there? Why is it so slow? Even just requesting the complete page afresh would be quicker. A cache look-up can't be that slow on a modern computer. What's happening in those 2-3 seconds? And why can't web browser developers get rid of it?
I am no expert but here are few guesses:

- Web complexity increases with each JavaScript update, and developers love to slap it everywhere. It is quite resource intensive. Disabling hardware acceleration in browser helps a bit but doesn’t fix;

- Trackers, lots of them. Each time you visit website you literally get bombarded with trackers, they automatically save their links in browser cache. Best way out of it is to install adblock which gives tremendous speed boost to older devices due to that;

- Old and cheap servers on which websites work also may be part of the issue. It includes older connection protocols (100mbit vs 300 or 1k that have been gaining popularity since 2013) and older server components (like HDDs vs SSDs). Some companies just cannot afford better servers if they run it in-house instead of outsourcing to large companies, maintaining servers is a huge job and “if it works - don’t break it” thing is often pioneered at these workplaces

Just asked AI for fun and it gave me surprisingly similar answer - malfunctioning or slow frameworks (JavaScript) messing with specific web design choices, slow computers and hardware, a lot of dynamic content on website (like images, videos, trackers). I was also always curious about this. For me it often helps to just close safari/firefox and reopen it again, I don’t know but works every time
 
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Honest question for the experts:

Why is browsing the web today still laggy and slow like it was 20 years ago?

e.g. I visit a page, then visit another page on the same site, and then click the back button. It takes maybe 2-3 seconds for that previous page to load again. Until that point, the page is frozen. I can't scroll.

What's going on there? Why is it so slow? Even just requesting the complete page afresh would be quicker. A cache look-up can't be that slow on a modern computer. What's happening in those 2-3 seconds? And why can't web browser developers get rid of it?
That's not my experience. Web browsing is lightning fast and I use a range of different browsers.

Maybe you have some dodgy extensions causing the slowdown??

Also, web browsers are quite resource hungry considering how advanced they are these days, so you will notice some performance hits on old hardware.
 
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