Web Browser Grand Prix: Firefox 15, Safari 6, OS X Mountain Lion

Round-ups
By Adam Overa
published

Today we're breaking out the Hackintosh for our first-ever Web Browser Grand Prix on Apple OS X 10.8 (Mountain Lion). How will Chrome 21, Firefox 15, Opera 12.02, and Safari 6 stack up against each other, and to IE9 and the rest of the Windows 7 browsers?

OS X And Windows 7 Winners' Circle

OS X 10.8 Placing

Swipe to scroll horizontally
PlacingWeb BrowserPoint Score
1stSafari23
2ndChrome20.5
3rdFirefox18
4thOpera5

Safari 6 places first on its native platform of OS X Mountain Lion, followed closely by Chrome 21 just two and a half points behind. Firefox 15 takes third place, trailing Chrome by just another two and a half points. Opera 12.02 loses big time on OS X, earning just a fraction of other OS X browser's point totals.


Congratulations, Apple!

Windows 7 Placing

Swipe to scroll horizontally
PlacingWeb BrowserPoint Score
1stChrome23.5
2ndFirefox22
3rdInternet Explorer, Opera7.5

Chrome manages to fend off Firefox once again, keeping its Window 7 Web Browser Grand Prix Championship. However, Firefox 15 is right on the heels of Chrome 21, and upcoming version 17 might change Google's luck if preliminary benchmarks of the new IonMonkey JIT compiler carry through to the final release.

For the first time in the history of the Web Browser Grand Prix, we have a tie in final scoring. Fortunately, it's just a tie for third, or in this case, last place. Opera is feeling the pain of losing Safari for Windows in a real way, with the low-end now totally vacant, Opera is comparatively worse versus the strong scores of Chrome and Firefox. Holding onto reliability and responsiveness is what keeps the Norwegian Web browser from succumbing to even IE9. Meanwhile, strong page load times and HTML5 performance scores are the only thing keeping Internet Explorer from the being the biggest loser on its own platform.

Congratulations, Google!

Follow Adam on Twitter.

Adam Overa
57 Comments Comment from the forums
  • glurg
    chrome ftw
    Reply
  • Eggrenade
    It would be nice if I could view the additional charts with only one click, and not in a separate window.
    Reply
  • lahawzel
    It's nice to see Chrome performing so well, but I'm still waiting on the Chrome equivalents of all the plugins I use in FF before I think about switching. The web just doesn't feel the same without them.

    (The nice popular ones like ABP, Lazarus, Greasemonkey all have equivalents; some lesser-used plugins like Rikaichan also have ports by now. Only a matter of time!)
    Reply
  • bennaye
    chrome is absolutely deserving of the award. say what you will about the frequent patch releases touted as upgrades, chrome is a very good browser, as shown by this month's article. even on OSX there is only a small margin separating chrome and safari. but the one qualm i do have with chrome is the lack of add-ons compared to firefox. and i a lot of people share this concern. the add-ons do make the experience that much better.

    as always, a great read.
    Reply
  • Would like to see this again after IE10 is released.
    Reply
  • JOSHSKORN
    How about 64-bit Internet Explorer 9 vs Waterfox 15.0?
    Reply
  • adamovera
    bennayechrome is absolutely deserving of the award. say what you will about the frequent patch releases touted as upgrades, chrome is a very good browser, as shown by this month's article. even on OSX there is only a small margin separating chrome and safari. but the one qualm i do have with chrome is the lack of add-ons compared to firefox. and i a lot of people share this concern. the add-ons do make the experience that much better.as always, a great read.All versions of Chrome hold up incredibly well cross-platform, if you look back at the two Linux WBGPs, it won there, too. Thanks for reading!
    Reply
  • adamovera
    AdamsTaiwanWould like to see this again after IE10 is released.Absolutely, a Windows 8-based WBGP is already in the cards for October.
    Reply
  • adamovera
    JOSHSKORNHow about 64-bit Internet Explorer 9 vs Waterfox 15.0?When we have more stable 64-bit browsers, I'll definitely do a 64-bit WBGP - including versus their 32-bit counterparts.
    Reply
  • I wish Tom's would fiddle around with the settings of these browsers for these tests. In every System Builder Marathon you overclock the builds, why not try and crank the most speed while ensuring better memory management out of the browser as well?

    Testing these browsers at stock doesn't reveal even an eighth of the picture.
    Reply