I stopped using Google Chrome

Recently, I have noticed Chrome has become more bloated, slower, and a big battery hog. The battery life of my 13-inch Macbook drains quickly when I have Chrome open.

Beyond the poor performance, Chrome is also continually trying to be more than a web browser. Google has based Chrome OS on Chrome, brings many of the features to Windows and Mac versions of Chrome. I want a simple browser that isn’t trying to become a whole OS. It feels like Chrome is not trying to innovate anymore like it did in the past. I know there are limited ways to move forward, but other browsers like Opera, Brave, Safari all have a unique value prop:

• Opera is blazing fast
• Brave is solely privacy-focused
• Firefox is privacy and speed-focused with its ecosystem
• Safari’s optimized for Apple’s ecosystem

Chrome’s value prop is that it’s powered by Google and syncs well within the ecosystem.

So I asked on Twitter what browser people were using if they switched from Chrome.

Over the past couple of weeks moved away from Chrome to start using Safari. The issue I ran into is most extensions I need for my daily job don’t work in Safari. I need extensions to check for Google Analytics and Google Tag Manager. As a result, while I am using Safari as my main driver, I still jump over to Brave since it’s based on Chromium.

Since switching, I’ve noticed longer battery life and the ability to open more tabs. Safari also alerts me when certain tabs are using too much memory, killing them in the background. There are a few other perks, including:

1. privacy settings to prevent cross-site tracking
2. Apple Pay buttons
3. Autofill of one-time security codes, and other Apple ecosystem perks

I doubt I will ever move back to Chrome unless they offer some more productivity tools or massive performance upgrades. If Chrome offers more privacy controls and lets you dial back some of the tracking, I would also consider moving back over.