>The existence and popularity of Chrome has turned FF from a decrepit bloatware to a sleek modern web racehorse.

Please don't spout this crap. Firefox has definitely improved a lot in some areas recently, and I'm sure competition helped, but this idea that it was getting worse before chrome is an artifact of websites getting more complicated.

Try to browse gmail or facebook with firefox 1.0 and it won't feel as slim or fast as you remember...