Firefox is fine and quick as long as you don't need to use any heavy Google apps. Some people might even consider this a plus. For me, between work and personal use I'm effectively married to Gmail, Google Calendar, Google Docs, and Google Hangouts. Unfortunately that makes Firefox a non-starter for me. Not to mention Firefox's privacy settings trigger countless reCAPTCHA gates across most of GSuite. I get that this is not Firefox's "fault" and it's done intentionally by Google, but as a user it becomes my problem.
I really want Firefox to work for me and I'd love to drop Chrome, but last time FF made big noise about performance improvements I tried it out and Gmail was still unusably slow.
I use Google Calendar and Google Docs without any issues in Firefox. I agree Gmail is coded terribly and do not use the web site! I stick to using Thunderbird on the computer, and checking email on my phone. Have not been using Hangouts for a couple years, though.
For me, the way Google is keeping Gmail terrible for other browsers is exactly the reason to not use Chrome. No way I'm OK with that.
FWIW I use all of those apps on a daily basis with Firefox and have not noticed any performance issues. It may be worth giving it another try if you haven't in a while.
Indeed. Hangouts is one I find works better in Firefox even! But I observe it seems to vary. Perhaps Intel Macs has some quirks that makes it more peformant and reliable in Firefox.
I switched to FF when Quantum came out. I use it exclusively. Not because I hate Chrome, but because I don't see any need for chrome. Once in a while I see a website that forces me to use something other than FF. But it happens rarely, and it is mostly some webgl-based under-development demo website.
I even use it on my phone. The mobile version is definitely worse than Chrome, but it has plugins (or it used to! nowadays it only support a few popular ones which is a shame) and also I can send tabs from my phone to my computer (which is a better place to read articles anyways).
I switched back to Firefox last week and I had the same experience -- Google apps and Slack were dog slow. But after a day or so they were working fine, I imagine it's a matter of populating the cache. YMMV.
I really want Firefox to work for me and I'd love to drop Chrome, but last time FF made big noise about performance improvements I tried it out and Gmail was still unusably slow.