If you actually see a difference in speed whilst browsing then you must have really bad internet, since most of the speed has to do with your connection, not the browser itself. (Also, since you haven't used firefox in who knows how long, 3.6 recently came out which is "20% faster", so if chrome really was any faster for you then it probably isn't anymore)
And yes, chrome does use less memory, but as I said earlier, run firefox in safemode (basically runs it at bare minimum) and it'll be very close to chrome, since all your firefox plugins and other crap won't be running. Firefox also PURPOSELY uses more memory, try checking the settings once in a while, it uses memory you don't need for other shit, and caching and w/e, and you can raise or lower the amount it uses. No point of having all that RAM if you're not going to use it anyway, I have mine using 400MB some times, but if you're computer only has a 1 gig total, or you need your RAM for something else, then it won't use nearly that much, so that's not even an argument in any way.
As for the layout, as I mentioned earlier, FireFox is much better because you can actually customize the layout the way you like it. Chrome forces you to use it's very limited layout. I posted a picture earlier, notice just one toolbar, not the default 2 or 3. You can also add or remove any of the buttons you want or don't want, making it much cleaner (or messier) than chrome. And this is all a default feature, not a plugin or anything of the sort to customize it. Stop being crippled and take about 5 seconds to clean it up.
And for anyone who is wondering, I do use chrome as well, firefox is just my main and preferred browser (as it's most definitely better).
2 things I like more about chrome:
1) Boot time, definitely faster.
2) Shows your most viewed sites and recent tabs when you open a new tab. (Although I have a firefox plugin to do this for me, but default features are always nice).