It was better than Firefox at the time. Firefox only needed to be better than IE so it has become a bit of a ram-hungry bloaty mess, then Chrome came along and was actually really quick. How the tables have turned.
Yep. I was very young at the time but what I remember is firefox being spoken of as kind of a "hack" to make everything web-based faster compared to IE.
Then chrome came out and firefox was completely replaced. It felt like an instant change. Anyone that knew anything about computers was using chrome.
I think that chrome is still living off its glorious past.