I’m a devoted FF user, and have been forever.

But the response to Chrome shouldn’t be to launch new features.

Here’s the problem/challenge: when your friends switch to Firefox, your life doesn’t get better.

And the key to growing any piece of software (or just about any product or service, actually) is the opposite. People will recommend something if adoption improves their lives.

Fax machines? Life is better for me if you have one.

Fashion? Life is better for me if I’m not the only one wearing this.

Religious sect? Life is better for me if I’m not the only one in the building.

So, Firefox needs to add functionality that makes the surfing experience better for all users when more users use Firefox.

There are many ways to do this, and you can invent more than I ever could. Systems that allow for rating pages, or grouping them, or communicating (but only with FF users). [worth clarifying: I’m not saying that FF should arbitrarily exclude outsiders from a common form of online communication. I’m saying that FF as a tool can create new forms of communication and collaboration, forms that only work if you have the right technology. So far, web browsing hasn’t been about communication among browsers, it’s largely a monologue from the site to the user. The browser can be a lot more than that.]

In fact, this sort of functionality benefits any brand or product that can figure out how to create it.