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Chrome Hits 20% Share As IE Continues Slide
jbrodkin writes "Google Chrome's rise in popularity has been remarkably fast and it's just hit a new milestone: more than 20% of all browser usage, according to StatCounter. Chrome rose from only 2.8% in June 2009 to 20.7% worldwide in June 2011, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer fell from 59% to 44% in the same time frame. Firefox dropped only slightly in the past two years, from 30% to 28%. While other browser trackers show Chrome with a lower percentage, there's a reason: StatCounter tracks total surfing, not the number of users. It's the Web's power users who are pushing Chrome to new heights."
Google pays affiliate commissions for every install of their toolbar and chrome. It's perfect bundle for those PC manufacturers who put all kind of stuff on new pc's (like Norton trials etc) and get paid for commissions. IE doesn't give them anything, so they throw in Chrome and make a little extra every PC sold. Chrome and the toolbar also pushed by affiliate marketers who try to get people to install it along their (sometimes shitty) software. So it's no wonder it spreads.
Better to see some Chrome installs out there because: it runs on multiple platforms, does a hell of a job in supporting web standards and is fast. Although it does crash on occasion, especially with web content. It also dies when you have 60+ Google Maps tabs open.
For me as a web developer I prefer to see more Chrome installs than IE, just it makes life easier. The only positive thing about IE is that they have gotten better at supporting web standards. Even though stuff that worked in IE 8 doesn't work in IE 9. and stuff made for IE6 and special modifications in IE7 still break IE8 and IE9. But I'm getting off-topic here.
Seriously? It's Google who just pushes their software. On our network, several users 'suddenly' had Chrome installed. If I remember correctly, it was bundled with Google Earth. None of them of course paying attention to the fact they got more than they bargained for. The very few "power" users - or in our case the people who just want to pretend they know anything about it, could install Google Chrome on their PC's without admin rights... Yes, Google's very sneaky with their setups. The only way to prevent it, is to already make certain directories on each PC and set it up so that no one but adminsn can write to these folders.
I wonder if this rise in popularity can be attributed to the Chrome ads on Google's homepage we've seen in the past...
The article did not provide much analysis but rather a "news report" style...oh well.
We should start a new Slashdot and return control to the geeks. It actually wouldn't be that hard to get some users to
if you go with fresh ie to google.com it's like going to spam city. it has an advert bar at the top to change your homepage to google(a big one, 2x the size of ie's program bar), what's worse the "yes" choice isn't yes, in finnish it's "sopiihan se" which translates roughtly to "oh that's okay" - softening the menu, but it's straight out of spam advertiser course to do that, yes/no would be sufficient, but it woudl be better that they wouldn't do that at all, it's using their monopoly in search to try to push their browser. and it does a "would you like to install a faster way to browse" pop-over on the google logo for installing google chrome. it's an atrocity, really - and it's like if ms and google have traded places.
also the stats are a bit suspect. (I roll with firefox normally)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Something about Firefox is ridiculously slow since FF4. It takes several seconds to start, webpages load slowly, scrolling is choppy. Maybe something is wrong with one of my add-ons, but I don't want to turn them off and then turn each on one by one to find out if that's the case. Nah, it was easier to just switch to Chrome. It's fast as hell and has almost all the features I need as someone who does not do any web development.
My only major gripe is that Chrome lacks the feature where it does an in-page search as soon as you begin typing. There is an extension that does it, sort of, but it's not quite as polished as in Firefox. The Chrome team has come out and said that they will not make it a built-in feature, which is sad. Once you get used to browsing text-intensive web pages by in-page search you'll never go back. It saves your eyes and your mouse hand a lot of work. Especially your eyes. I hardly read stuff anymore, I just type what I'm looking for. But I digress...
If Firefox fixes the speed problem they will get me back, whatever that means. It's not like I'm paying for anything.
Can we please stop saying 'surfing' and use 'browsing' instead? 'Surfing' just sounds silly.
StatCounter tracks total surfing, not the number of users.
Meaning that it's counting the ads and other stuff Firefox users are blocking.
Let's face it, Google thrives on advertising, it is the bread and butter of it's revenue stream and Google Chrome will never get even half of the ad-blocking capabilities Firefox users have.
echo '[q]sa[ln0=aln80~Psnlbx]16isb572CCB9AE9DB03273snlbxq' |dc
>>It's Google who just pushes their software. On our network, several users 'suddenly' had Chrome installed.
Yeah. I wanted to put the Google photo screensaver on my mom's computer. So a quick Google search, and here it is - http://pack.google.com/screensaver.html
So you click on "get google photos screensaver" and it takes you, not to a link to the download, but to a page for "The Google Pack" which has a bunch of checkboxes for various software options.
None of which are the screensaver. But Chrome is checked by default, as is Google Desktop. So a non-technical user might think that Google Desktop = hey, free screensaver. So they might download that. And get Chrome. (And all the other bloatware like Avast! antivirus found here:http://pack.google.com/pack_installer.html). I knew that it was probably part of Picasa, so I unchecked all of the bloatware options, and just downloaded Picasa, which indeed had the screensaver my mom wanted, and there you go.
But the point is:
1) Google is acting evil (if my mom had tried to do this herself, she'd be stuck with a horrible antivirus product - or two, there's two in the Pack)
2) Chrome installs are up because of their evil.
Giving free advertising to Chrome on Google.com is borderline evil, too. Leverage of monopolistic powers and all.
Many and I mean many businesses are coming up with plans to dump Firefox and use IE again thanks to Asa's big mouth. I read about them on slashdot all the time, and while some of you say it is an opportunity for Chrome, all I have to say is it is proof why you should only stick to Microsoft standards at work. No one ever gets fired for choosing them. ... end gripe
Either way IE 9.01 is now included by default with a Windows Update without a prompt so it's marketshare will increase. It may piss off a lot of users like Firefox 5 did though.
But still, Chrome is popular for many generation Y and home users. I am trying to get my family to dump Firefox and switch to Chrome because things like plugins and updates are automatic. No worries of old flash exploits eithers which is one of Chrome's strength. Still I find the hardware acceleration in Chrome lacking. IE 9 is smooth when I hit arrow up or down and pictures and text flicker like mad with Chrome as they are not fully accelerated.
http://saveie6.com/
Firefox could have become the rock solid browser that "just works".
The only reason we have standards like those set by W3C is stability.
There is no need for rapid releases any more because the major problems have been solved years ago. I am still using Firefox 3.0 as my default browser and while I had to install Chrome because Google-Translator mysteriously stopped working, otherwise I had no problems with it.
Because of the good extension-system, Firefox could be a rock-solid browser while all the experimental stuff and new functionality is done in extensions.
But no. Mozilla decided that Firefox has to be like Chrome. Of course not really like Chrome because to get the advantages of Chrome would require a complete rewrite of Firefox, so Mozilla settled for a completely nonsensical release-policy completely with automatic non-wanted upgrades ("What is my computer doing now? Oh, my browser changed again!").
Mozilla should understand that the 90s are over and people are no longer buying a new computer every 2 years and upgrade their software even more often. The new features (ALL of them) are not needed in the default install. They could be tested using extensions but there is absolutely no reason any more to change ANYTHING just for change's sake.
What we need is at least one browser-alternative that aims at creating a bug-free browser instead of a perpetual usability experiment.
Is Noscript here yet ? Google said they were working on it. (Nope, for your information the basic built-in functions of Opera and Chrome are nowhere near what Noscript can do)
And I understand that you've got to use RAM when you have RAM, but doesn't a browser that consumes about 1GB of RAM sound ridiculous to anyone ? Is that supposed to be a feature (increasing responsiveness ?) or a bug ?
Firefox is an open-source platform which is independent of any significant content provider. Chrome, like IE, is a project controlled by one company with a vested interest in directing users to particular content. I think we should find it concerning if Chrome is succeeding at the expense of Firefox.
Now I understand that many people really, really like Google, for important reasons such as their track record of being pro-standards and pro-freedom. But we should always support or oppose individual actions on their own grounds -- wherever possible, we should avoid depending on long-term trust of particular individuals or organisations, because there is no guarantee that we will still support their actions at some point in the future. We believe in political systems which have checks and balances. The same principle should apply here. A situation where the dominant search provider is also the dominant browser provider is one where we miss out on important checks and balances.
The situation is different from the phone market, where Android is squeezing a variety of closed platforms, thereby giving manufacturers and individuals more choice. In this case, there was already a viable and independent open platform, Firefox, and Google's offering is preventing it from becoming dominant.
perl -e 'fork||print for split//,"hahahaha"'
that one of the areas where if found chrome most useful is to read local (offline) documents. Starts faster than anything else for this purpose.
It's the Web's power users who are pushing Chrome to new heights.
So.. "power users" now equates to "people who have the most free time on their hands"? Because I really don't see how surfing a bunch of web page makes one a "power user". If anything, I'd think people who have no idea what they're doing, or who are just killing time, are far more likely to visit more web pages.
#DeleteChrome
If there are holes in drivers they should be fixed
Good luck with that. Oh, and if you're using Linux with the current nVidia drivers, be careful where you navigate with WebGL enabled...
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
"It's the Web's power users who are pushing Chrome to new heights."
I think that depends on the definition of power users. Because judging by customization and advanced features, Firefox or Opera would be better choices for power users.
Most Chrome users I know are the exact opposite of power users, they like Chrome because it's simple, it "just opens pages".
Nothing wrong with that if it works for you. But the point of tweaking and customizing a browser is not to make life more complicated, but to eventually save time when browsing by doing something faster. For example, a regular user will first open a new tab and then navigate to Youtube.com to search for a video of 'something', while a power user will highlight the word 'something' and "search with Youtube" from the context menu, saving quite some time in the process.
I know Chrome probably has that functionality as well, and don't get me wrong it's a good browser in many aspects. But the point is that the average (!) Chrome user doesn't use those features. I'd say the average Chrome user is barely any more of a power user than the average IE user.
So I wouldn't say Chrome adaptation is being pushed by power users, but much more by power marketing.
Firefox 3.6 is becoming the new IE6 due to people sticking with it because they don't like the new rapid release foxes.
Every 10 "rapid releases" (60 weeks) they should make a stable versions for businesses with their apps, schools who can only update after terms/semesters, power users and provide official add ons for classic features such as status bar, non awesome bar, menu bar, http:// display.
Also they need to become 100% html5/css3/js compliant and aggressively cull ram leakages. I became victim of Firefox 4 suddenly binge eating over a gigabyte of ram on a 3GB laptop, and Firefox feels slow on my main PC with i7-950/12GB RAM even with newer versions.
Netscape died a horrible death due to IE being better, and Firefox will be the same unless it can compete with Chrome/IE10.
Wikimedia browser share gives Chrome at 15.6%.
(This is just one site, of course. But (a) Wikimedia has no interest in pushing the numbers (analysts' business model is selling out) (b) it's a top-10 general interest site used by normal people, not just geeks (c) this is worldwide.)
http://rocknerd.co.uk
I think the median of several browser stat websites, as calculated by the Wikipedia entry for browser usage share makes much more sense, than taking one particular site's data - besides, StatCounter has always been biased in favor of Chrome. Not any political kind of bias, mind you, just the way they collect their stats seems to favor Chrome.
"The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
Yeah, damn Google for being so evil to create a browser that can be installed by non-admins! Damn them for making a browser sufficiently secure that it doesn't need elevated privileges! I expect my web browser to require lower-level access to my system. How else can I get infected by the latest malware? By clicking links in email? My company's servers scrub that too well now!
Why are only the firefox-faithful getting their comments modded up? I use Chrome over FireFox because it has, since day 1, been faster and more stable than any build of FireFox I can recall (anecdotally, of course).
And everyone seems up in arms because a company is promoting their software. *ooo big shock* That doesn't make them evil. Google still has one of the most privacy-friendly, user-friendly mentalities, because they recognize that it's hard to sell advertising to their customers if they drive away their users with "evil" practices ala Microsoft or Facebook.
Simplified: Browsers A, B, C are introduced in order to billions of users. Browser A starts with 100% of Market, using Marketing tools like bundling, until Browser B is introduced. Browser B does not have marketing dollars but over time achieves 30% share, Browser A falls to 70%. Browser C is introduced, using Marketing tools similar to Browser A, and in shorter period of time takes 20% share, mostly from Browser A. A now = 50%, B = 30%, and C = 20%.
65% of Slashdot comments are then griping about Browser C using Marketing tools of Browser A.
The real challenge is to think of something interesting to say on this topic. It's like commenting on which of your neighbors schoolkids is the smartest looking. Oh and sorry Netscape, you were the first A, but I wasn't talking about you.
Gently reply
Ironically, Google Toolbar is the only thing that stops me from switching from Firefox to Chrome. If Chrome could access my Google bookmarks as easily as Firefox could, I'd switch in a heartbeat. But every time I launch Chrome, it says I should import my bookmarks from Google Toolbar. I click on the option to do that, and it doesn't do it.
I'm still holding off upgrading to FF5, as it says my Google Toolbar will not work. Whether I stick with FF or not depends on whether or not Google Toolbar gets updated to work. If it does, I go with FF5. If it doesn't, or of Chrome gets fixed, I'll switch to Chrome.
look here
My web domain.
You have of course reported any known bugs to nvidia.
I haven't, no, but the person who discovered the hole did, about a year ago. Still waiting for the fix.
Unfortunately, both the silicon and the drivers were designed to run trusted code very fast. Being able to run untrusted code safely is an entirely different design requirement. The latest hardware is designed to be able to run semi-trusted code fast (although the drivers aren't really), but the older hardware isn't.
Addressing security holes by ensuring those who need to know about problems can fix them helps.
That only works if they have an incentive to fix them. 99% of nVidia customers don't care if shader code can compromise their system, because they trust all of the shader code that they run. They do care if they see a performance hit. If you produce a new driver that gives people a 10% drop in framerate, how many are going to thank you?
You'll notice that the responses to Microsoft's comments were all from browser developers, not from driver developers. People who work with the drivers know that they shouldn't be allowed near untrusted code. A typical driver for a modern GPU is a huge chunk of code that was developed with only one design constraint in mind: speed. The fact that the recent hardware is a bit safer is due to this same requirement: customers don't want the overhead of switching to kernel mode to talk to the GPU, so the newer chips just do some basic setup in the kernel and are designed to have all of the commands sent via a ring buffer mapped into the userspace process. Because the userspace process has more or less direct access to the hardware, the hardware now needs to provide proper isolation for unrelated processes. This makes it a bit more likely that it's safe. Of course, this doesn't prevent the WebGL code from being able to compromise the browser, it just prevents it from being able to compromise the system without compromising the browser first.
WebGL is nice in theory, but it's inserting untrusted code into a software stack that was never designed to be secure, and that's a problem.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
You do know you can easily prevent this in newer flavors of Windows by preventing the executable from running? Pre-creating directories is clunky at best, and not a good way to go in a larger environment IMO.
Just use a Software Restriction policy to prevent it. Easily managed, and easily updated in case the EXE folder, or EXE name changes.
Why Chrome's share is rising: http://bit.ly/ipbCaT This is _one_ reason. Then, there's the fact that Chrome is fast, good and "just works (tm)" for many, many people. Google also pushes adverts for Chrome in mass media/specialized media web sites, on other Google services (Gmail, YouTube...) and tries to bundle Chrome with some of its products. (eg: Google Earth). Add to that the people who just plain like it over Firefox or IE. So there are many factors involved, but bear in mind that Chrome is simple, fast, slick, responsive and "just works (tm)" for the average (and not so average) Joe. I use Fx myself because I'm addicted to some extensions that are not available in Chrome, but I think Chrome really is a good browser. Opera too, by the way.
2019 is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop.
I find it sad that an audience who ran away from MS a decade ago is willing to embrace something so easily from an arguably much more sinister source. Personally I have stopped using Google for searches (DuckDuckGo) and never embraced GMail except as a throwaway account.
You're not texting your mate so you can spell you properly.
If you look at the places where the most amount of time is spent on the web I doubt "power users" is the term you want to use...
I'll meet you at the intersection of "Should be" and "Reality"
Or better, figure out why so many of your users are deliberately installing a browser alongside the one you normally offer. So you force IE6 on them because of some intranet app. Great. Must you really make them suffer with it on everything else? Put another way: what reason is there to want to forcible prevent people from using Chrome (or Firefox or Opera or ...) if it makes them happier or more productive?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
And when browser makers inevitably choose to make WebGL click-instantiatable only (the way IE prompts when loading ActiveX controls) then what will you say?
I'll say 'gee, that worked so well for ActiveX, what could possibly go wrong?'
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
On a few machines that my relatives and I have, when Chrome is installed, it acts like the default browser even when it is not set to be the default browser - it happened on Windows AND Linux (Ubuntu/Xubuntu).
Yep. But the solution is... with root/su or sudo...
update-alternatives --config www-browser
Then press the number for the browser you want to be set back to default. Done. Simple enough, the only problem is trying to remember that command; good luck on that though, I just have it saved in a text file.
This is a system-wide preference-based setting, and it's truly pathetic that Chrome fucks with it; it shouldn't be tampered with by anyone but the user/root user, and not behind their back by any package.
Xfce has a "Preferred Applications" settings applet that would probably work (at least within Xfce and for the current user), and I don't know about KDE3, KDE4, GNOME2, GNOME3, etc., but they probably have something similar.
Or better, figure out why so many of your users are deliberately installing a browser alongside the one you normally offer. So you force IE6 on them because of some intranet app. Great. Must you really make them suffer with it on everything else? Put another way: what reason is there to want to forcible prevent people from using Chrome (or Firefox or Opera or ...) if it makes them happier or more productive?
Oh, you're one of those people who thinks it's IT's job to serve the interests of the rest of the company, rather than the other way around... :p
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Really? You think Microsoft expects a web browser to promote Windows sales?
StatCounter tracks total surfing, not the number of users
Why would you track total number of users instead of total surfing? By that reasoning, I am an IE user - I have it installed, and pull it up, oh, maybe once every few days, but I use Firefox 95% of the time. So by StarCounter's track, I would be a Firefox user, yet by this other way of reasoning, I am an IE user. Shoot, by that reasoning, you can really skew the amount of Safari users - how many people unwittingly installed Safari when they installed iTunes? Just because its installed doesn't mean its being used for surfing.
It's fine - all you need is a shader validator to ensure it can't lock up.
What you wrote is equivalent to, "all you need is to solve the halting problem to ensure it can't lock up".
The only real solution is to define a subset of GLSL for which this can actually be solved (similar to how Java defines a very narrow subset of what you can do with C so that it can verify memory safety). And that needs to be right there in the WebGL spec, because if every browser defines it for itself, then portability goes out of the window.
Generally speaking, I think that anything that's running in the browser and requests elevation is a bad idea. The reason is that, if such a thing becomes popular, it trains users to click "Yes, yes!" to get their dose of shiny. Imagine if WebGL is implemented the way you describe, and becomes a de facto API for various casual games on the web, the kind which millions of people use every day. Now you've got them all used to the idea that they have to regularly click through a dialog which asks them something incomprehensible about security to get their daily Farmville fix. Great - now, when something that actually is like ActiveX does come (Flex? Silverlight trusted apps?) and pops up the same prompts, do you think they will click "Nah, no way!" all of a sudden?
I have a fairly fast internet connection and Chrome seems to be just a tad bit faster than Safari, which seems to be a tad bit faster than Firefox. My uncle, however, uses the cheapest internet he could find and it just sucks. I suggested he switch from Firefox to Chrome and it made a world of difference. Sure, this is a small anecdote, but in our situation Chrome was noticeably faster on his slow internet connection.
I brought my laptop over there a couple weeks ago and after a couple minutes of Safari (which is my default) I couldn't bear it and opened up Chrome. Voila. It made a world of difference and actually made it seem like he wasn't being ripped off by his provider. I don't know what Chrome's secret is, but this is the type of thing that get people to switch. I never bothered switching from Safari to Chrome b/c the difference is so minimal on my speedy nerd internet and I'm too lazy to switch everything over. But with Joe-shmoe cheap-as-dirt internet, Chrome saves a lot of time.
"From the depths of my skeptical and rationalist soul, I ask the Lord to protect me from California touchie-feeliedom."
Nonsense. SPDY may bypass HTTP proxy-based adblocking systems, but in browser systems still work.
Furthermore it is entirely possible to have a transparent SPDY proxy for ad-blocking if you want, but because only Google is using it, nobody bothers upgrading the exiting http-proxy based adblocking tools.
Of course, in reality proxy-based adblocking is very rare. Most users just use in-browser tools like AdBlock Plus for Firefox, or AdBlock Plus for Chrome, or Opera's built-in content filtering.
Stylish sheet to fix many problems in Slashdot's D3: https://gist.github.com/801524
Chrome still can't display Asian fonts correctly. Japanese, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese and Korean Hanja are all rendered the same, even though they're all written differently.
This bug was first reported in 2008 and keeps getting pushed back; I literally can't believe this still hasn't been fixed, it completely breaks Asian support and means this browser can't be .
Oh a related issue; You can't choose fonts per encoding type, which means if you want to read English AND any Asian font, you can make one of them nice and readable but it breaks the look of the other.
Seems like most of the arguments above are over how google gets chrome installed.
The article explicitly points out they are measuring USE from actual web surfing, not installed copies.
I tried Chrome and although fast I didn't like the organization. After a week I went back to Firefox...memory leaks and all. Although it's not the fastest, I've not found Firefox bloated, but I don't install a lot of addons. Maybe I should give it another try.