That's a setting in both browsers. Default is "Start with Startpage or empty page" in both browsers as well. You can always select "Restore last session" in both browsers.

Defaults really matter. Probably 1% of users would ever think to look for a way to change that behavior.

I think Firefox for a long time tried to optimize for those users who do want to tweak their software, and doing that can even be a way to make superior software (instead of aiming for the lowest common denominator), but it is certainly not the right approach to maximizing _web browser market share._

I didn't use Firefox for many years (because I thought it sucked; slow, bad defaults, always apologizing in this anoying way for having crashed the last time I used it) but I now use it every day again (though not as my default browser; I tend to keep all the major ones open) and I'm glad to see Mozilla recently seems to have changed their priorities and focused on usability and performance. I hope it's not too late.

When I last installed Chrome in a fresh installation of Windows (so no saved settings from previous installations), it defaulted to an empty startpage. Might just have been me, mind.

The problem is that if Firefox is getting this default wrong, what else are they getting wrong? And it should realize user state is sacred, I would even expect if I quit browser with something written in the address bar (or search bar, etc), when it starts up again, it should be able to preserve this half-entered user input!

I'm very happy that when I close my browser it kills all my tabs. If I really want something back I just view it from the history.

> I would even expect if I quit browser with something written in the address bar (or search bar, etc), when it starts up again, it should be able to preserve this half-entered user input!

I'm pretty sure no one expects nor wants this. You're definitely in a minority here. The problem you describe isn't very technical, it's simply that you want something else than most people else and you don't want to take the time to configure your browser to how you want it to behave.

Lots of people actually expect that. It's how phone apps work. There's no concept of "closing an app" in the iOS and Android guidelines. You just get the app out of the way.

I think the lack of improvements in desktop UX in the last 10 years is making every desktop OS to slowly adopt mobile UX conventions. Some of those new conventions are a step back.

I’m pretty sure watt is right...

But this isn't wrong, it's just your entirely subjective personal preference being different to someone else's.

Personally, I don't like it when browsers implicitly keep tracking things when I close the application and then fire up some half-baked version of the same stuff when I come back later. If I want to remember where I am, I can easily bookmark some or all of my tabs.

Firefox has had a particular problem in recent versions where it seems to think it crashed on the previous shutdown, even though there was no user-visible evidence of this, and then tries to restore the previous session even when it otherwise wouldn't. That's not helpful if your previous session involved shopping for surprise Christmas presents for the SO who is now standing behind you as you open the browser again several hours later for some entirely unrelated purpose, in a totally hypothetical example.

> when it starts up again, it should be able to preserve this half-entered user input!

I wouldn't expect this at all!

I'm sure I remember Chrome not preserving session state as its default setting either. It's been so long since I configured either of them though...

Isn't this google applications will track what you do all the time, and even after you close the application and restart it knows who you are and what you did?

Except for tabs in incognito mode. I wish there was an 'OK' for Chrome too. Especially since it is so easy to hit Cmd-Q instead of Cmd-W.

Both browsers have this configurable in settings. So they just use different defaults, which depends on personal preference.

But which is the natural default? The one where you lose a lot of state seems like a far worse choice.

It warns you. And there are people who do browsing in a one-off fashion: Open many thing, then close everything and forget.

Unless they removed it recently, Firefox will also let you restore the last session. You may have to use the default startpage, though.