Slashdot Mirror
Chrome Is the Third Double-Digit Browser
An anonymous reader writes "Google's Chrome has taken the 10% market share hurdle, according to Net Applications and is past 15%, according to StatCounter. It is interesting to see that IE is declining at an accelerating pace and IE9 Beta cannot, despite the massive marketing campaign, dent Chrome's growth, while Firefox is holding on to what it has. It almost seems as if IE9 will not be able to turn around the decline of IE."
Is tied to Vista and Windows 7. Its marketshare in terms of Windows users is limited to the users of those operating systems. Sometimes integration is a bitch.
Studies also show that due to the icon, most Chrome users thought they were downloading a Pokemon application.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Seeing, as it is, that I am using Chrome on the mobile appliance I carry around, both Chrome and FFox (ffox being the main) on my notebooks and I have no IE as default browser on the two Windows devices that i still have for business reasons.
It deserves so much better than 10%!!!
Also, there is some weak indication in the data that those sticking with IE probably are die-hard and will sink as the OS-ship sinks, no sooner.
Never trust a spiritual leader who cannot dance -- Mr. Miyagi
I use Chrome and still come across some sites which have really stupid browser support. The site will support Firefox and Internet Explorer but somehow manages to not support Chrome and doesn't function at all (eg. Microsoft Online Services Admin Centre). It is also annoying when sites use Browser detection and say they only support IE, Firefox or Safari. Stupid!
(\(\
(^.^)
(")")
*This is the cute bunny virus, please copy this into your sig so it can spread
Balanced people certainly don't think MS is any more evil than Google or Facebook.
As a side note, I left FF months ago for Chrome and haven't looked back. I think most of the FF fanbase are those who still remember the glory days of old, not taking note that if you're praising FF and scoffing at IE you're just making yourself look like an ass to anyone who really shops around for software.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
And no doubt MS is getting worried about this. I wonder what part of Bing's success is due to it being the default search in IE. If IE loses share then their ability to push Bing also slides.
It's interesting to note that according to Net Applications stats IE may drop to under 50% market share sometime in the middle of this year.
Ryans Tutorials - A collection of technology tutorials.
Why would a beta of the browser stop the transition? It's clearly aimed at web developers and designers for testing, not at general populace. That's also where all the marketing is at. Actual users only see IE8 (if that!), and Chrome, of course, soundly beats it.
The only way to see if IE9 can turn the tide is to wait until it gets released (and rolled out to Windows Update, at least as optional update).
If you really want to compare the numbers, how about Chrome beta/dev installs vs IE9 installs?
Chrome (10.7%) + Safari (6.3%) = 17% with approx 7%/mo growth (yes, I know there are others, but the percentages are very small). In about 6 months, Webkit based browsers should surpass Mozilla derived browsers to become the 2nd most popular. Since both Mozilla and Webkit derived browsers will then be near 25%, add in Opera to push the total over 50% and finally IE will be less than half the web traffic.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
im thanking my lucky stars, heavens, whatever god/deities that are present out there, for this day.
... gimme a break ...
even as of this VERY moment, i am having to battle with standard incompliance of various ie versions (including next ones) and the different 'interpretations' they have of the same fucking pages than other browsers.
really
Read radical news here
I switched back to Firefox from Chrome.
Chrome is nice, a bit under featured, poor ad blocking (although it has gotten better its still slower and not as good as firefox.
In general, Firefox is faster than chrome all around. Even on older hardware, Firefox scrolls better than Chrome.
Firefox's bookmark manager is much nicer. I loved how chrome syncs your bookmarks but now that FireFox has it built in as well, I'm plenty happy.
Firefox has better color management. Chrome nice but... It still has that slight sluggish feeling about how it renders pages.
The new Firefox betas are looking and performing very well, so well that I switched back from chrome.
Chrome's ad-blocker isnt as fast as the firefox version of ad-block. Chrome is still a bit wonky in that area.
This isn't about X being less evil than Y. The more web browser options that are out there and the more evenly distributed their populations become on the internet, the safer we are from closed, non-free, or just browser-exclusive extensions rotting the platform.
I think it's great that Chrome has surpassed the psychological (but purely arbitrary) milestone of rendering web pages for a double-digit percentage of the internet's population. But the moment they have too much of the percentage is when my approval becomes concern.
Hey, look! It's Bono's brother.
Have Google or Facebook corrupted standards organizations? Threatened OEMs? Illegally abused monopolies to gain market share in other markets and lock out competitors? Massacred standards to create lock-in?
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
"Balanced people certainly don't think MS is any more evil than Google or Facebook."
Huh?
MS is the new IBM (established, but staid and losing relevancy). Apple is the new MS (proprietary market share). Google is the new Apple (innovative, with a somewhat fanatic following). Facebook is the new Google (up and coming, but no concept of reality). It's just the wheel.
Oh, you're right, in that they're all degrees of evil. IMO, Google slightly less than the others (hard to argue with free and transparent).
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
...and this new version of Slashdot looks horrible in all of them, and doesn't work as well as the previous version in any of them.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
IMO this version of slashdot is vastly better than the last one. I'm surprised that you liked slash 2.0 which (IMO) was far worse than any other version.
It certainly has the first from your list: https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/odjhifogjcknibkahlpidmdajjpkkcfn
Firefox has been suck a 20-something percent for 2 years.
Chrome has been growing for until spring of 2010, when it took a nosedive to low even negative growth. This correlates to IE market loss, so it is reasonable to suggest that chrome users are abandoning IE. The numbers also suggest that users are unsatisfied with Chrome.
The growth numbers also suggest that Safari has a steady growth indicating a satisfied user base that continues to use Safari. In fact the negative growth numbers of Chrome, and positive growth numbers of Safari means that the recent growth numbers for both are about the same, and Safari growth could exceed Chrome. This while other browsers growth is averaging 0.
From this is seems likely that MS can kill Chrome simply by delivering a competitive browser, without the tricks and subterfuge used to kill Navigator. Safari, Firefox, and Opera, OTOH, have clearly held their own and show sustained genuine growth over the long term, and therefore will likely continue o do so into the future.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
It appeared in newspapers, on billboards and on top of the Google homepage. I know Firefox did a newspaper advert a while back but it is still mostly a word of mouth product. But as everyone said before, fix the bugs in 4.0 or i'll be a Chrome zealot.
chrome nearly hit the Double-Digit mark by the end of 2009.. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp/
Page Rank boosting in Google.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
Anyone unable to get Chrome to autofill the new Slashdot password dialog? Not working for me.
Netscape Navigator had to have had double digit market share. Not to mention NCSA Mosaic. Probably a couple of the early text only browsers had doubt digit share too. At best Chrome is the fifth probably less than that even to reach double digit share. And yes I realize the headline was probably meant to apply only to current browsers. It's fun to be literal :D
All companies are evil to a degree, although IMHO MS is higher on the scale than Facebook and definitely Google.
Again my opinion.
But I don't see MS as intrinsically evil, just their leadership.
I'm waiting for the day MS turns over a new leaf, but it looks like that day is a long way off as it seems the likes of Balmer aren't going anywhere.
And also in Bing.
Thats not constructive at all. I use windows because it is compatible with the engineering software I have to run for my profession, and for the wide versatility win7 ult x64 offers, and frankly I rarely have problems with it. But at the same time I hate IE with a passion and am a strong supporter in google chrome for the same reason I love windows on my box. I mean, that whole thing was just a terrible oversimplified comment that makes ridiculous assumptions as to the character of anyone that isn't as gung ho everything anti-microsoft as you. Mind you, I too think they are evil, but not nearly a few percent as evil as Apple or Sony, but their OS itself holds enormous use for anyone that does more than just surf the web, and edit basic documents, especially for engineers of all kinds, I personally run about a dozen Autodesk products that run on Windows only, not to mention gaming and such.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
you're confusing monopolistic behaviors as something that could possible be something besides as unethical as you can get without whipping your workers and selling their bodies for sex.
Where is the mod rating for "scary"? Also,
You wouldn't be a geek if you didn't try uzbl. IE isn't geeky at all.
Dilbert RSS feed
I understand, if I were offered a job at MS I personally would be pretty divided about it.
But there are people out there that just want to make a living and don't concern themselves with "idealogical" stuff.
Almost all of MS schemes are concoctated by the top brass, if they were replaced MS could go in a total different direction.
You are pretty spot on in your analysis.
I have friends that work there, and they are far more open about stuff than Apple or even Google. They weigh in on support forums and follow up when people post problems.
If they can't talk about something they just say so instead of ceasing to communicate at all. Some even openly disagree with the company decisions.
The evil at microsoft was from the top. By the time you got to the coders and designers they were just overworked Joe Programmer types. They burned thru a lot of these guys.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I love Chrome, but it's full of annoying issues that cripple it completely.
Lack of real adblock is one of them. The way adblock works on chrome is an ugly hack, and it slows down the browser. At least on GNU/Linux, if you have adblock on, and you try to scroll on one tab while you have other tabs loading, scrolling slows to a halt. Also, adblock cripples scrolling while page is still loading on heavy pages. I develop security systems, if you load more than 2 or 3 mjpeg streams on chrome, they all slow down badly. There are several compatibility issues. It's canvas implementation is broken in many ways. The URL bar suggest drop down sucks. History is broken, dates are all wrong, it's impossible to see where you've been actually ordered by date.
Not to mention the most stupid of all chrome issues, the throttle limit on error pages. It makes debugging web apps IMPOSSIBLE on chrome. Also, the view-source functionality is broken and stupid. When you click on view-source, instead of seeing the current source, it GETs the page again, alongside any POST or GETs you have. Effectively a reload. This is CAOS when you are developing a web app. I went nuts seeing double-hits on my apache logs, seeing forms being submitted twice, until I figured it out (it's not properly documented anywhere, there is a work around, but it sucks). Also, the JS debugger sucks. It shows files you can't get to, shows errors on non-existing line numbers. At least on Ubuntu 10.10 Gnome/compiz the sync between current tab title and window title is broken, so after you click on another tab, you still see the old window title most of the time, you have to click back and forth several times to fix it. It makes it very hard to know where you are if you have many tabs open and can't see the full title in them. I can go on and on all night on things that are just totally brain-dead about chrome.
I fucking love chrome, it certainly is the best browser out there, but it has a long list of incredibly stupid bugs, miss-features and design errors that make it sometimes unusable, at least to me.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
Why not just use Privoxy?
When you're afraid to download music illegally in your own home, then the terrorists have won!
AFAIK, all keystrokes in the omnibar are sent to Google. Ever type the first few characters of a popular website into Chrome (on a fresh installation, no import of bookmarks)? Chrome fills in the rest because it's asking Google (pseudocode) SELECT * FROM domains WHERE LEFT_STR(domain,3)='nyt' ORDER BY hits LIMIT 1, thus giving you 'nytimes.com'.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
Chrome has a fundamental flaw, lack of customization. For example, you can't even customize your history, something that every browser since Netscape and IE have been able to do. But somehow in Chrome there is no ability to switch between full history and super-ultra-privacy mode. Not to mention there is no Chrome equivalent to about:config that Firefox has. As someone who likes to customize my most used piece of software how I like it, Chrome just fails in that regard. If Chrome was as customizable as Firefox, I would use Chrome as my primary browser, but since it doesn't have customization features that even IE has... I'm sticking with Firefox until it becomes completely unusable.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Every time I read about browser wars, it reminds me of the domestic cars in the 60s/70s .. leading into the 90s and new millenia. More and more, domestic cars lose ground to better made, better driven imports -- and we as consumers see the benefit. All that was really required was a little competition, and education.. domestics will get better slightly, then hit bankruptcy, then come out of bankruptcy with a viable product. If we transpose that onto the browser wars, MS will have a decent product in about 5 years, but will have completely lost face and market share to just about every foreign maker imaginable.
just some odd thought/ramble. cheers
We're like rats, in some experiment! -- George Costanza
My sister switched because at work, her draconian IT wouldn't give her admin privs and she needed to get away from IE (seriously if an IT dept isn't pre-installing a non-IE browser, they're just doing their users a disservice)... not even an exemption or "I'll install it for you".
So she installed Chrome and is quite happy with it on her work laptop. I have no idea if she's switched from Firefox on her home Mac, but she spends most of computer time at work anyway...
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
From this is seems likely that MS can kill Chrome simply by delivering a competitive browser, without the tricks and subterfuge used to kill Navigator.
I think you underestimate the effort that has gone into the open-source project Webkit (the engine for Chrome and Safari) and the corresponding javascript engines (Chrome V8, Safari Nitro).
Microsoft has sat on it's laurels for years, ignoring and impeding web standards and reaping monopoly rents on Windows and Office. Now that they can't hold back the innovation, they've got a whole lot of catch-up to do.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
Balanced people: "So....why should I care? Oh yeah, Microsoft's evil."
As a balanced person (I'm running OS X, Win7, Vista, OpenSuse, and Ubuntu currently); I'd be happy if Chrome/ium, IE, and Firefox were split down the middle. I would be happier if their were ten mainstream browsers with 10% usage. Competition is good.
IE benefited greatly from Firefox. Firefox might benefit from Chrome being around (it needs to, it has turned into a fat, sloppy, unfocused mess). Chrome might benefit from poor old Opera. And Opera will sit in a corner and feel depressed that no one loves it.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
All companies are evil to a degree, although IMHO MS is higher on the scale than Facebook and definitely Google.
Again my opinion.
But I don't see MS as intrinsically evil, just their leadership.
I'm waiting for the day MS turns over a new leaf, but it looks like that day is a long way off as it seems the likes of Balmer aren't going anywhere.
Well, even if the engineers know it's a terrible idea, if Ballmer and co decide today to screw up with HTML5 just to piss off the competition that's what the IE9 team will end up doing and what end-users will receive, so in that respect their leadership is Microsoft moreso than their engineers, developers and other employees doing the actual 'grunt work'.
Every once in a while the engineers do get to have their way, though, as shown by the not-too-important-but-still-valuable contributions they've made to Free Software in the past. But I have a hard time thinking of anything positive IE has ever done, and even its inception was tainted by one of Microsoft's most deplorable actions so I, for one, won't be sorry if/when Chrome and Firefox ever make it kick the bucket.
No problem is insoluble in all conceivable circumstances.
Oh wait, now you're predicting the fall of Firefox as well?
Democracy is for the people; you only vote once per season and we'll do the rest of the work for you don't have to.
i think the biggest mistake Microsoft had made was integrating IE into Windows with ActiveX controls, etc. maybe that allowed them to get a huge share of the market for a while, but the long term effects it had i don't think were worth the effort. too much insecurity and lack of trust. i hope that Chrome doesn't make similar mistakes.
Nobody uses multiple browsers. Also, once you switch you can't change your mind.
I use FF and IE on my main monitor and chrome on the 2nd. IMO Firefox got worse in the last release and IE9beta is better than it was. I am indifferent about Chrome. I'm not going to lie and say I use IE a whole lot, I don't. I wouldn't be a geek if I didn't at least look at it and form my own opinion though.
I'm only one more failure from dropping Firefox again though. Go ahead Mozilla, lose all my bookmarks during a crash again. I dare you.
You use multiple browsers and have never backed up your bookmarks...not really showing off any geek cred there.
Cream always rises, sh*t always sinks.
Please.
That explains why everyone on the Internet seems like a sock puppet for one of a handful of personalities. But it doesn't explain how so few people generate so much stupid, useless content.
Oh, I thought the headline indicated the story was going to be about how Chrome went from version 1.0 to like version 18 in two years, because of the stupid numbering scam^h^hheme.
I'm brain give to the parse error for you.
Someone flopped a steamer in the gene pool.
Its a pity I do not have mod points, but if I did, I would mod you as "+5 spot on".
I was once a volunteer in Mozilla, and I joined because I didnt want ONE company to be the overwheming majority as was at the time (with IE in the 90%). Before IE it was Netscape, and before Netscape it was Mosiac. Even the view at Mozilla was that they wanted to "make a difference", but were not aiming to be the "browser that rules the roost".
The people at Mozilla are actually quite pleased that we have a better "spread" among these days, where we are approaching a state where people choose the browser based on its own "value added features" rather than due to rendering features.
IE has benifitted from Mozilla, and certainly for the developers developing IE, Mozilla has injected life to their project. IE has come from being an awefull browser in IE6 to a fairly respectible Broswer in IE8. The IE team are known for sending a cake to the Mozilla team everytime Mozilla makes a major release. MS Developers HAVE been very friendly and assistive to the Moz devs. In turn, MS views Mozilla Firefox as a "tier 1" application, and work together with Moz to ensure compatibility.
Peopel choose IE/Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Opera based on their own preferences these days.
I still prefer Firefox for my main browsing, but there are times I kick up IE/chrome, etc.
I am similarly agnostic on my choice of OS, using Ubuntu for work, and development oriented stuff, and Windows 7 Ultimate for home/personal/media/gaming.
Have a nice day!
verson-number-wise?
Every end has half a stick.
Then please allow me to fix the joke: Someone visits a web site, maybe related to Pokemon or Milton Bradley's Simon, that appears broken in an old version of Internet Explorer. (If Chromon weren't Flash, I'd use it as an example.) He's instructed to download Google Chrome to play; the icon looks close enough to be related to the subject of the original site. So he downloads it, installs it, and sets it as the default web browser. Start > Internet still goes to the Internet, but now it's generating Chrome hits on Net Applications.
Surely you could just stop going to sites which have adverts you don't like? It seems a bit cheap to use a site's bandwidth, for content you clearly like, and not want to repay them by just being served a few adverts. You don't even have to click them for the site to get money.
Chrome is an awesome browser, though. Version 10 is sweet.
Chrome at home on OSX because Firefox had this nasty habit of beachballing whenever I clicked a link. I debugged as much as I could; disabled the 3 extensions I had installed, watched processes with top, watched disk stats, etc... Beachball for about 500ms whenever I clicked a link. Watching a flash video, it would pause about every 4 seconds for about 500ms... It was unusable... Couldn't figure it so switched to chrome...
...
Firefox at work on Ubuntu. Firefox is hateful because you can't remap any of the keys... What retard decided that 'copy' and 'paste' shortcuts should use ascii characters which means a different key sequence to copy/paste between your terminal and your browser; and what retard decided that Firefox should not allow you to override those keys? The Alt key is designed for keyboard shortcuts... Why can you not consistantly use the Alt key modifier on Linux seamlessly across all applications?
At least OSX has it right. Firefox and Chrome both have fairly consistant keyboard mappings on OSX. So I can use ALT-{C,V,N,T,A,Q} in my terminals and browsers consistantly...
Flame me now
Balanced people certainly don't think MS is any more evil than Google or Facebook.
If you make that: "Balanced people certainly don't think MS is any more evil than Oracle or Sony", then I agree. Well, I'm no fan of Facebook's lack of privacy and control either. But Google has quite a bit of credit with me for their enthusiasm for open source and giving stuff away for free.
IE 7 wasn't too bad, I'll be honest. I never used it regularly, but when I have used it there weren't any real problems. But IE8 is crap. It didn't work when it came out, and it still doesn't work. Just today I was on a state website looking for weather advisories and had to turn on compatibility mode just to view the page.
Many websites such as colleges and schools and medical websites for insurance and other healthcare work simply do NOT work with IE8. Still.
I was working on a brand new 48 port gigabit switch about 3 months ago using a netbook with windows 7 starter on it. I fired up IE8 and went to the switch. I was attempting to configure it, but settings would not take. It gave no errors or indications of what was going on, just nothing would work. I called the manufacturer and after discussing the setup the person on the phone said "try using a different browser like firefox" and wouldn't you know, everything just started working. Even compatibility mode would not work.
So, since Microsoft's flagship OS, their first good OS since XP came out, is tied to a browser that DOESN'T WORK, how can they be surprised that other browsers are gaining in popularity?
This is a joke, really. XP and the machines it is on are dying. No-one bought vista. People are buying win7 machines in droves. They CANNOT use IE7 on win7. IE8 is annoying and has problems. What are the average non-tech savvy users to do? Luckily the average ignorant user will encounter chrome because it pops up now and then bundled with other downloads like maybe Acrobat reader, various freeware apps, etc.
I was talking with a somewhat tech savvy person the other day who (sorta) makes websites. He said he has found and is stunned with the incompatibility that IE8 has with web standards. Stunned. According to him, If MS thinks IE8 should be the main browser out there why wouldn't they at least adhere or work with web standards?
Whatever. FF is good for surfing. I use Chrome for video, it seems to be better for stuff like netflix or other streaming.
Flappinbooger isn't my real name
What is interesting from the version transition graphs is that you can clearly see the different development cycles of the three top browser organizations.
Microsoft: http://www.conceivablytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/browser4.jpg
Mozilla: http://www.conceivablytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/browser5.jpg
Google: http://www.conceivablytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/browser6.jpg
I suspect the auto-updates on chrome are actually helping to increase the user base.
America, Home of the Brave.
You mean like JC but you'll be known as AC?
America, Home of the Brave.
Peopel choose IE/Chrome/Firefox/Safari/Opera based on their own preferences these days.... I am similarly agnostic on my choice of OS, using Ubuntu for work, and development oriented stuff, and Windows 7 Ultimate for home/personal/media/gaming.
Thats what confuses me about "fanboism" these days, we've gotten to the choice where pretty much everything is competitive in performance, stability, and features. MS, especially, has come a long way, Windows7 is a rock solid release, and probably the best thing MS has done in a very lone time. Playing around with the IE9 beta also shows that IE has really become a contender (and not on monopolistic grounds anymore). Linux, likewise, has come very far, it used to something that I loved, philosophically, but pretty much hated to use, to something that has a user experience that is pretty much as pleasant as the two corporate behemoths.
I still worry about Firefox though. I'm frightened it might change into some gigantic bit of bloatware that does pretty much everything, but none of it terribly well.
My only real complain on the state of browsers is that everyone is trying to look like the new guy, Chrome.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Except that my server logs still show the following: IE8: 47% IE7: 21% Firefox: 21% IE6: 9% I guess today is just a good day for everyone else, and a normal day for me after-all.
Bullshit. The internet has been free for so many years, and it will continue to be free. The software behind 80% of the internet is free software. If we can create the software that you use to run your website for free, you can run your website for free.
I don't believe in copyright, and I'll do whatever I want with any content. If you can't find a better business model, then you are welcome to walk away.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I'm typing this on Chrome right now. I like its zen-like simplicity, a window with a text box across the top. Type something in to that box and it does something sensible with it. No fuss, no hassle.
At work I switched from Firefox to Chrome. At home I switched from Safari to Chrome.
...laura
I agree with what you said about Windows 7 (caveat, i have Ultimate in 64bit guise). I like the way I can use win XP mode for 32bit/16bit compatibility, even to the point of loading some older 32bit drivers for USB devices no longer supported in 7/64bit such as my scanner.
I woudl also arguably say that Vista also came of age recently, and although not quite as sharp as 7, its still a lot better than it was. I LIKE the UAC in concept. I liek that IE7 and 8 on those platforms starts in a low privelledge mode (severely restricitng the damage that can be done via bugs/dodgyness).Therefore I personally do NOT find XP great any more, with the way it handles security.
I LOVE ubuntu too. I like its all-in-one way of doing things.
Personally I am not too worried about Firefox. It has a certain set of features that some would want. Its like cars, you use a slow, but high capacity van for lugging things around, or a nimble roadster for nimble driving with your significant other (or alone if you wish!), but no matter what vehicle you use, you can generally drive on all roads. This is what the web should be, you choose your client, but that should not prevent you from browsing virtually all sites.
I am not too bothered about everyone looking more like chrome, because try using firefox3.6/IE on a netbook, and see how much space is "lost" thanks to the app frame.
Have a nice day!
Quoting WP:
A footnote in Mozilla's 2006 financial report states "Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006, however Google renewed the contract until November 2008 and has now renewed the contract through 2011.[8] Approximately 85% of Mozillaâ(TM)s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract."
The financial FAQ dated November 18, 2010 says:
What is the status of the organization's contract with Google?
We have had a productive relationship with Google since 2004 and that relationship remains healthy. To date, we have renewed our contract three times, in 2005, 2006 and 2008. The current version extends through 2011.
So through 2011 Mozilla has a very good deal. But then Google didn't have a browser of their own and desperately needed Mozilla to break the IE monopoly. I suspect that these negotiations will go quite differently. I'm sure the deal will be extended but I doubt the terms will be anywhere near as favorable as they have been. Google has seen how easily they can now push their own browser into the market, they don't "need" Firefox that much anymore. And from a strict business point of view, where would they go? Bing? Yeah, I'm sure the open source community would love Microsoft as their default search engine. Not to mention that currently Chrome has targeted the IE holdouts. If they go their separate ways, Google will do their best to win Firefox users too. I'd put good money on the browser market looking completely changed in 2-3 years.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
...what?
/* No Comment */
I installed chrome, didn't like it and uninstalled it. Thunderbird started crashing. I found a "chrome" search running that had a conflict with thunderbird. Stopping the search (which I wasn't running) allowed thunderbird to go back to working. I still haven't found what was running the search.