When Firefox came out, and Mozilla became deprecated, that ended my (unusually supported-by-management) attempt to replace Outlook/IE on our desktops. Firefox was slow and crappy, but Mozilla (the browser) was fast and good, and it's suite had the tools we needed. This was my impression even having run all the milestone builds, which had a pain level about the same as passing stones -- ie, about 1/10th that of running Netscape 4. Admittedly NS4 sucked so bad that in comparison anything was better... hell, I even converted a few to IE just to get away from that POS.
The alternatives were Lynx, wget and telnet * 80, so Firefox it was for desktop-oriented HTTP requests.
The day Chrome was released was the day that Firefox stopped getting used on my desktop. At home it's been a great time. At work I get wrist slapped every 9-12 months by IT Security ("off the top of my head, uh, security reasons" no sh!t) but it's been so worth it to spend my days Fsckingslowfox-free.
FF has been garbage since day 1. Slow, crashy, unresponsive. Their mentality towards the people who use it is flabbergasting and demonstrates a total lack of understanding/experience in the field. Truly offensive.
The fact that people are up in arms _only over plugins_ should be enough indication that the core product is worth very little. Nobody gives a rats ass about Firefox, they care about plugins developed by individuals and companies who, IMHO, seem to be far smarter than those behind the platform they build on.
Good riddance.