Chrome Set To Take No. 2 Spot From Firefox

CWmike writes "Google's Chrome is on the brink of replacing Firefox as the second-most-popular browser, says the Web statistics firm StatCounter, which shows that Chrome will pass Firefox to take the No. 2 spot behind Microsoft's IE no later than December. As of Wednesday, Chrome's global average user share for September was 23.6%, while Firefox's stood at 26.8%. IE, meanwhile, was at 41.7%. The climb of Chrome during 2011 has been astonishing: It has gained eight percentage points since January 2011, representing a 50% increase. During that same period, Firefox has dropped almost four percentage points, a decline of about 13%, while IE has also fallen four points, a 9% dip. That means Chrome is essentially reaping all the defections from Firefox and IE."

Comments

Re:Chrome

[alendit]

[...]yet is claimed to be an "open" browser.

Which Chrome developer, of cause, never did, but hey, don't let the facts stop you from hating!

PROTIP: Chromium - open source, Chrome: closed source, based on Chromium.

Re:Why?

[LordLimecat]

List of reasons:

1. Better built in insight into where the resources are going. Open the Chrome task manager, viola-- all the stats you could want, and even more if you click the "stats for nerds".
2. Better control over Extensions-- you can see extensions running in their separate process, and terminate them if theyre a problem.
3. Extension modifications dont require a browser restart-- installing, uninstalling, configging, activating, etc all happen immediately
4. Built in "view source" kicks the everloving crap out of Firefox's, and is only (somewhat) rivaled by Firebug (at least to my non-html coder eye). It is a breeze to modify a live HTML page, or execute javascript in the context of the page, or any number of other shady-business tricks you might want to do. I actually designed a splash screen for a simple launcher by going to my company webpage, and using Chrome to modify the look of it because it was easier than using paint.net.
5. Tab performance (creating, destroying, moving, tearing) is about twice as good as any browser except for Opera. Press and hold ctrl+t in firefox and in chrome, see which performs better.
6. Built in no-hassle translation that Just Works (TM). No need to hunt around for an extension that once in a blue moon I want to view a foreign webpage.
7. Built-in, auto-updating latest versions of Flash, and a PDF reader. The PDF reader is believed to be Foxit based, which is even better.
8. Much, Much, Much better auto-update system. Firefox is getting there, which will be wonderful, but its not there yet.
9. Native MSI support, with an official package (which Just Works-- even updating-- without everyone having to have admin!!!!), as well as official GPO templates, and the ability to push extensions to a whole network

It is also POSSIBLE that firefox js speed has caught up... but when I was designing a Debian based live CD for troubleshooting last year, chrome was a no-brainer because on low-performance systems I might be working on, its CPU usage was just plain lower.

There are a bunch of reasons, but it basically boils down to, Google has a ton of money, and can pay for full time devs to keep churning out massive progress every few weeks. googlechromereleases.blogspot.com is fun to visit and see what crazy thing theyre working on this week.