Mozilla Firefox began as a thorn in Microsoft’s side when Netscape finally bit the dust, and now Google Chrome is taking over the mantle as newest incumbent in the browser space. Both Google and Mozilla frequently appeal to early adopters and it will be interesting to see how loyalty shifts between the two progressive organizations. Speed is the name of the game right now, and Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome are neck and neck according to SunSpider tests.

Mozilla just released Firefox 3.1 beta 2 (which by default activates the TraceMonkey engine) and Google Chrome .4.154.33 just pushed out. That means there was an opportunity for the lines to shift, but below are some SunSpider results from CNET. Smaller results are better because that indicates the best speed. Note that Firefox is only a hairline better than Chrome.

Right now Google Chrome is still in beta, and it has a significant disadvantage when compared to Firefox because right now it lacks a plugin architecture. In Firefox, that enables a seemingly limitless set of new features, all it takes usually is a few searches to find the functionality you’re looking for. Or, if a plugin doesn’t already exist it’s usually pretty easy to find a developer willing to chip in and create it.

IE 8 has a long way to come before it even compares to its open source competitors, and Microsoft should be concerned about its declining browser marketshare.

Speed isn’t the only important part of browsers. Reliability and usability are important too. In the past, Firefox has suffered from memory consumption problems and it sill has a tendency to launch slowly on a freshly rebooted computer. Interestingly though, speed was a key factor that attracted users to Internet Explorer originally and pushed them away from Netscape.

May the heated competition lead to better browsers for us all.

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Entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 2:41 am under Google, Internet, Software, Technology.

Read more entries by Matt Jansen.
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