chrome and firefox

why do we have 2 different version of open source browsers, why cant they merge into one... what purpose does FF and chrome serves

Kentucky fried McNuggets

It is called competition. I would never use a Google Product to surf with. Maybe you should ask Google as Firefox has been around since it was named Phoenix. I still have that somewhere..

Its always good to have a choice

As others have said. Competition. I live in the Google ecosystem. Everything just works great together. Syncing from browser to phone to G+ to searching the net with their search engine. Some don't like Chrome because it's very basic as far as customizations go (appearance that is as the extensions are catching up with FF as far as tools to better the browser). Firefox is very different. You can make it look like what you want. Both get the job done for their respected users.