Chrome uses a process-per-tab model, so each tab you have open is its own running rendering engine/browser instance.<p>That is why you can have tabs crash and be closed without taking down the entire browser.<p>Firefox shares more state internally between tabs and as a result, a misbehaving tab can take the entire browser down.<p>All that being said, the Firefox team has been <i>super</i> aggressive as stomping out memory usage in the 6.0 and 7.0 releases and the work shows, they are doing a great job tuning Firefox.<p>Net-net, we all win.