Like most people, I’ve used Google’s Chrome browser for as long as I can remember. My first experience with the browser was when I bought my first smartphone, and it was one of the pre-installed browsers. It was convenient and, to be fair, just worked. Not once did I think about the disadvantages of using it as compared to the many Chrome alternatives.
Even when I got my hands on my first laptop, I remained a loyal Chrome user. I never thought about what I could be missing out on or the actual cost of using Chrome as your go-to browser. But that bliss didn’t last after discovering the downsides of using Chrome.
What made me start questioning Chrome
I was content with Chrome
All was going well with Chrome, but it wasn’t long before I started noticing a major issue with the browser. I would open the browser, read a few articles online, and open linked articles in new tabs for more context. A few tabs in, and I started noticing my laptop complaining. It wasn’t just sluggish; fans started roaring as it struggled to keep up with the demands of running installed programs. I didn’t think Chrome could be the culprit at first. I thought it was just my laptop getting old, and sure enough, it had begun showing its age—I didn’t buy it brand new.
I was using an HP ProBook series laptop at the time, but I can’t remember the model. It wasn’t a workhorse or anything—it was a simple laptop that I relied on for my university studies and a bit of entertainment from time to time after wrapping up the day. So I survived by simply running one program at a time because my initial conclusion was that my laptop was slow. I later upgraded to my current laptop, the M1 MacBook Air, and surprisingly, I still faced sluggishness at times, especially when browsing the web.
My laptop was brand new, so there was no excuse, and I wasn’t running games or anything. Just the usual programs like a music player, a good note-taking app, and Chrome. It was then that I realized the problem wasn’t my laptop; there was a program hoarding memory. Worse, I didn’t know which app was the culprit. However, it didn’t take long to realise it was Chrome all along after I started a strategy of running one program at a time. After discovering this, I didn’t stop there. I decided to dig a little deeper.
The truth I discovered about Chrome
It changed my mind about the browser
After learning about Chrome’s memory-hoarding attributes, I wondered what else I might be missing. So I went online to learn more about the disadvantages of using Chrome as my browser. It was then that I uncovered two key reasons that made me ditch the browser for good.
1. Chrome uses a lot of memory
If you search on the web for the term “Chrome + memory”, you’ll see lots of articles written about fixing Chrome’s high memory usage and lots of threads of users complaining about the same. It was then that I knew it wasn’t just me—Chrome really is a memory hog. One of the key reasons for this is that Chrome treats every new tab as a separate process.
So if you have five tabs open, you’ll see each of those tabs running separately in memory. While this isolation is good for security and privacy, it comes with a huge performance cost. To put it into context, I downloaded Chrome and gave it a quick spin while writing this article, and the results were bad. For almost every new browser tab I opened, it occupied around 500MB or slightly over 1GB.
That’s just a single tab! Imagine if you’re doing heavy research and have like a dozen tabs open. If you don’t manage your tabs well, Chrome can easily eat up 20GB or even 30GB of memory. I regularly have dozens of tabs open, so it was clear as day that Chrome wasn’t for me.
2. It doesn’t respect your privacy
Another issue I discovered about Chrome in my little research was its data privacy practices. It’s owned by Google, whose business is heavily anchored on collecting as much data as it can about its users. That’s why Google pays Apple billions of dollars each year to set its search engine as the default, because your data is much more valuable.
The company tracks user activity to build profiles for effective ad targeting—the bread and butter of its multi-billion dollar business. As a result, like many of its products, Chrome collects all of your activity online, which has tarnished Google’s reputation among privacy advocates. The company was even fined $5 billion in 2023 for allegedly spying on users in Chrome’s incognito mode, according to NPR.
Of course, I know there are ways to protect your privacy in Chrome. And as someone who writes about tech, I considered that route. But why should I go through all that trouble when I could just ditch Chrome for a browser that respects my privacy? See, if Google really wanted to protect user privacy, it wouldn’t hide such important features buried deep in the Settings section. If it cared, it wouldn’t even have such options enabled by default to begin with.
What I use instead of Google’s Chrome browser
After learning about Chrome’s memory hogging habits and privacy issues, I made a decision to ditch the browser for good. I immediately began exploring alternatives to Chrome in search of a new favorite browser—and it’s safe to say I’ve been on a bit of a browser discovery journey. I’ve used Firefox, Arc, Zen, Vivaldi, Edge, and many others.
But what finally stuck is Vivaldi. I chose Vivaldi as my go-to browser because, above all, it respects user privacy. According to the company’s privacy policy, it collects minimal data and, most importantly, is transparent about how it uses that data. For example, it anonymizes IP addresses before storage and doesn’t profile its users. Additionally, Vivaldi doesn’t sell user data, so I’m confident my browser activity won’t be monetized.
It also has several privacy-focused features, including Proton VPN, tracking prevention, an ad and tracker blocker, and third-party cookie blocking. You can even enable so-called Location Override to protect your actual location without using a VPN.
And no matter how many tabs I have opened, it has never slowed down my base M1 MacBook Air with just 8GB of memory. For every open tab in Vivaldi, the estimated memory usage when I hover over the tab header is around 200 MB. The only time I’ve seen 500MB of memory used by a single tab was with web applications like Asana and YouTube. And that is still a far cry from Chrome’s memory use per tab on web applications.
Don’t stick to Chrome. Better browsers exist
Chrome might be the browser that comes pre-installed on your device, but there are many better alternatives. Especially with a thriving ecosystem of browsers based on Google’s Chromium engine, you can have it all—privacy, performance, and access to Chrome’s vast library of extensions.
Whether you’re looking for airtight privacy, solid performance, or greater customizability, you’ll certainly find an option that meets your needs. And like Chrome, they’re all free, so there’s no excuse. Just download one, give it a try for a week or two, then do the same for another until you find the one that you can use daily.