I used to use IE, but since they won't make the new editions available for XP, I went to Chrome, which is good once you turn off all the invasive things (that you can). I hate auto-updates as they always interfere with whatever you're doing on your PC at the time. Plus, I want to know what my PC is doing and when it does it (I check Event Viewer every day). Ccleaner is also a good thing to use to check and see what is going on in your PC.
I'm not a fan of Google (hate their politics), but the product is good. And Gmail is easy to use.