Firefox slow?

After performing the earlier speed test, I decided to re-install Firefox.  It loaded much faster and the page test went better.  Four seconds to load the page. Still not as fast as the others, but at least in the same league.

So what made the difference?  Could be that I had too many plugins or just one that was causing problems.  Perhaps the fact that Firefox has a community of open source developers creating sometimes awesome, but sometimes slow plug-ins has hurt Firefox.

Probably too late for me to go back.  I've become a Chrome user by default even on my Mac at home. Chrome loads quickly and displays info fast.    

Firefox slow and getting slower?

I was a Firefox booster a few years ago.  It was a refreshing alternative to IE with some great features.  But something happened.  Firefox became slower.  It took longer to load. I started using IE whenever I was in a hurry. Then performance decreased.  It took longer to open a page. At that point I abandoned Mozilla except for certain websites that struggled with IE.

I wondered if I were just imagining such things, so today, after experiencing long delays with Firefox, I decided to speed test it against Chrome, Safari, and IE .  Not a scientific test, but a test nonetheless opening the same web page from a link.

The results were predictable for these browsers.
Chrome:  Less than 2 seconds
IE: Less than 3 seconds
Safari: Less than 3 seconds
Firefox:  13 seconds

Perhaps it is some plug-in I use.  Or some setting.  I would be interested to know if you see similar results.