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> I doubt anyone is going to magically be able to make Firefox faster if Mozilla's full-time staff is unable to

Maybe, maybe not. It depends where their priorities are. Firefox still has memory leaks that need to be plugged, etc. If Mozilla staff is divided between fixing memory leaks and adding features, then a group solely focused on memory leaks might have a better chance.

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Isn't part of the issue at hand that the extensibility of Firefox is deep, while that of Chrome is shallow(er)? I understand that deep extensibility isn't necessarily a cause for memory leaks, the ongoing inheritance of a community making use of that deep extensibility can limit

Also, I personally haven't been exposed to any evidence regarding the existence of memory leaks in a Firefox install with no extensions. Many people have anecdotal evidence of their issues with memory leaks, but I never see a corresponding claim for having no extensions installed.

Of course that point is also anecdotal.

IIRC, Firefox extensions are Javascript+XML... so shouldn't there be a garbage collector for 'memory leaks?' Or are we also including 'run-away memory usage' as 'leaks?'

In garbage collected environments, 'memory leaks' usually mean keeping references to objects even when they're not needed anymore.

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