update: firefox is the slowest of the 5 main­stream browsers — click here to read more.

i’ve been using firefox since it was called fire­bird, and then moz­illa got sued for name infringe­ment and had to change the name of the one browser that would really take a bite out of internet explorer’s market share.

ever since chrome came out, there was a lot of buzz sur­rounding its speed and even though it was a beta release, the sta­bility as well. but i didn’t con­vert right away because firefox had some­thing that chrome didn’t: adb­lock.

if you’re like anyone else who’s ever used the internet, you know ads are every­where. it slows down your browsing, cre­ates annoying sounds, and makes you acci­dent­ally click on things you oth­er­wise wouldn’t. you would be sur­prised how much time and band­width you save just NEVER EVER loading them in the first place. without adb­lock, chrome was dead to me.

… and then chrome beta 4 came out. and chrome sud­denly sup­ported exten­sions. and you guessed it, a few ad blocking exten­sions were out of the gate. so far, they don’t seem to be as effective as their firefox coun­ter­parts, but both exten­sions (adthwart and adb­lock) have been working very well non­ethe­less — keep in mind, both exten­sions are still in the exper­i­mental phase but are still very usable.

now, you can only use exten­sions with google chrome if you’re using the beta 4 ver­sion, which is sep­arate from the main one over at the offi­cial chrome site.

SO GET CHROME BETA 4 HERE: http://​www​.google​.com/​l​a​n​d​i​n​g​/​c​h​r​o​m​e​/​b​e​ta/

with this beta release, the sheer speed (trust me, if you think firefox is fast, you’re going to be blown away by chrome) and the fact that chrome now sup­ports exten­sions (and a quickly growing lib­rary of them too), have a feeling the browser market share land­scape is going to change dra­mat­ic­ally… for the #2 and #3 guys.

‘coz, as you’ll see below, internet explorer is still king.

too bad.