I am not sure how Google Chrome became the default browser on my Macbook Pro, but it’s gone now. Just way too many instances of “the Shockwave plug-in has crashed”, the fact that it won’t run the current version of Flash, and the frequent escapades of the “Chrome Renderer” and his evil twin, the “Chrome Worker” that slow my system to a crawl.
So I went through the peculiar (though obviously self-serving, to Apple) practice of changing the browser through Safari, Mac’s own browser which can’t be the default because of just too many incompatibility problems. Now I’m back to plain old Firefox.
How did I ever get into this pickle? I think I was lured by a casual invitation to try Chrome on the Google search page, and initially it seemed noticeably faster than Firefox (which has its own problems with plug-ins that are constantly getting out of date; but unlike Chrome, Firefox simply disables them rather than allowing them to crash the app). I also liked my fresh results with Bing, the browser which was oddly-enough (because it’s not Google) pre-loaded. Once a daily productivity app becomes a habit, it’s hard to change. But now they’re both gone. And I’m feeling a sigh of relief.