For years, Firefox has been the go-to browser for tech-savvy users, who mainly want to avoid using Internet Explorer. More recently, Firefox has been losing users to Chrome, albeit slowly. Fast-forward to today, and it’s increasingly common to hear people complain about Firefox’s bloat, and its performance issues.

I still use Firefox, but I’d switch to Chrome in a heartbeat if that browser had a bookmark sidebar. And I’m not the only one: the comments in this Chrome Help Forum thread clearly show users’ frustration with Google’s foot-dragging.

Apparently Mozilla can see the writing on the wall. A new effort is underway to improve Firefox’s quality. Part of this will involve identifying and removing features that are incomplete or ineffective, which should help to reduce bloat and improve performance. It’s way too soon to know if this will be enough for Firefox to hold on to notoriously fickle browser users, but at least Firefox may now have a chance.

Meanwhile, Microsoft’s new web browser (Edge) is going to complicate things if it really is as fast as claimed.