Slashdot Mirror
Google's Chrome Declining In Popularity
holy_calamity writes "After launching in a blaze of publicity that even warmed Slashdot, Google's browser grabbed a 3% share of the market, but has been slipping ever since, and now accounts for 1.5%. Google has also stopped promoting the browser on its search page. Assuming they wanted it to grab a significant share of the browser market, have they dropped the ball, or is this part of the plan?" On Slashdot, Chrome is still the #4 browser (after FF, IE, and Safari) but it was ahead of Safari for a few days, hitting almost 10% of our traffic.
Seems some basic things don't work... Basic functional issues: #1 Chrome UI Freezes uploading files. #2 Stops playing you tube vidoes after third one, need to restart chrome to play video. #3 Memory hog, freezes sometimes when low on memory. Firefox, IE, Opera, Safari don't have these basic functional issues. Maybe a limited beta would have been more suitable...
Codeweavers has a .deb package, if that helps.
Personally, I don't use adblock, and don't really understand the need for it. I use flashblock, to get rid of annoying flash ads, and for the really annoying image ads, I can usually just use firefox's built in image block them. Most other ads aren't that annoying. I don't mind a site displaying advertisements as long as they are not annoying and tasteful.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
When running multiple tabs, it can't deal with more than one page running Shockwave at once, it seems. This affects Hulu and Youtube videos when you have another page like CNN.com open in a separate tab. Very annoying.
That said, I recently dropped Chrome after using it since it came out. There are a few things I miss, such as Firefox's 'omni' bar not being as good, and the new tab page, but otherwise I prefer my Firefox.
The real value is that you can subscribe to a block list and never have to block ads manually. I use AdBlock Plus and the Filterset.G filters. I've never once needed to right-click on an image ad and tell AdBlock to block it. I simply don't see ads at all.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
A day after I started using Chrome, I discovered Privoxy. Haven't touched AdBlock since.
"I think an etch-a-sketch with an ethernet port would beat IE7 in web standards compliance."
I use Chrome pretty much just for Slashdot. I use Firefox for almost everything else.
I assume it's the faster javascript (or maybe just placebo effect, who knows) but Slashdot seems a lot more responsive in Chrome than in Firefox.
The preferred solution is to not have a problem.
If you drag&drop an image file from a page to your desktop, the file is corrupt. (It's the right file size, but no editors can open it.) The screen fails to update often in strange ways, for example, it might randomly stop drawing the scrollbars.
It needs lots of work, in short.
Comment of the year
"Assuming they wanted it to grab a significant share of the browser market, have they dropped the ball, or is this part of the plan?"
My assumption is that this is a standard Google release - something half ass that only mostly works... which someday Google may come back to and fix, or maybe not.
There is a group in Europe that is distributing Chrome minus all of the ills and Google junk. It's vastly better.
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php
Chrome Vs Iron
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php
Clear win, IMO. Open source made this possible - and in only a couple of months.
The upcoming Firefox 3.1 (December???) will negate much of the speed differences. At that point, Chrome's only real advantage will be the separate-process-per-tab feature.
For me, having separate processes would be nice, but it's the addons that keep me in Firefox. Here, Chrome has an uphill battle: it's not enough to have the ability to have addons. I also need specific addons, like the oft-required Adblock Plus, and lesser-known addons, such as "Better Gmail 2" and "Remember the Milk for Gmail". I actually have a pretty long list, and, as long as Chrome doesn't have most of them, I'm not even going to think about switching.
There's a firefox add on that does something similar to the new tab page. I've never used it, just happened to see it the other day.
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I don't know how I was modded insightful, I was trying to be funny.
The parents post was very insightful with or without the remark I joked about.
If you have something that you dont want anyone to know, maybe you shouldnt be doing it in the first place -Eric Schmidt
"Firefox skin"? You do realize that Chrome comes with a Javascript engine written completely from scratch? And that Chrome is based on WebKit?
Remember, there are no stupid questions. But there are a lot of inquisitive idiots.
they need to define categories of Beta.
They have.
The details are trivial and useless; The reasons, as always, purely human ones.
Google did not build Chrome to capture market share. They did not create it to launch a product or to circumvent adblock (duh).
They built it for a real strategic reason: to make sure the web remains usable and open. If Google hopes to serve web apps in the future, they depend on the quality of browsers, and the current browser architectures apparently don't satisfy them.
Changing Firefox wasn't an option and attacking IE is a mission with very little payoff for Google. So Google chose to inject their design principles into the market by creating a radically new, yet incomplete browser, and release it open source, so it gets adopted. If Microsoft steals this technology to make IE9 even better, Google's mission will have succeeded.
There's an Economist article which explains all this pretty good as well:
link