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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."
The climb of Chrome during 2011 has been astonishing: It has gained eight percentage point since January 2011, representing a 50% increase.
Well is that really a surprise? Google pushed it really hard in their search engine and YouTube, and pays software developers to include it in their programs like all those toolbars and adware do. Of course it gains matket share so fast as software distributors are pushing it for the money they cain from installing on users computers and Google uses their huge market share to push it.
Through Firefox... see it's still fast. Unless someone got here first. Then it was through IE.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
I use it to wall in Google. Since everyone has put Google+ icons on their sites, Google scripts are running on every page I go to, and I don't like that. (I long ago walled facebook into IE since I don't use either.) But I continue to run Firefox as my primary browser, but now Google is blocked out of everything, well, except super cookies, I imagine.
chrome has an even faster release schedule and it is actually gaining users at an ridiculous rate.
The problem is that Mozilla's revenue is directly tied to the number of installs (i.e Google searches). If their marketshare goes down, it might as well be the end of Firefox soon. Their CEOs have failed to diversify the revenue in spite of getting paid > 500k/yr.
This space for rent.
Chrome's silent, background auto-updates don't hurt either. What? You've already installed a new version and I just need to restart the browser? AWESOME *restarts browser, tabs restore* boom, new, updated Chrome.
Web developers care. They want to support the majority of users and typically will gather statistics and read articles about it. The days when you could cover your bases by testing for IE and Netscape are over. Devs that tested for IE and firefox should consider adding Chrome in order to cover >80% of their users.
Man, you really need that seminar!
So they're up to FF 7.0 now? Mine is 5.0 (according to the About box) and when I click on "Check for Updates" it says Firefox is up to date. Am I really expected to update to 7.0 by going to mozilla.org and downloading a new install? That's never going to happen. I might as well go to Chrome.com. Oh wait, that's been updating automatically in the background. I'ld rather it didn't, but I don't mind a little prodding every now and then like Thunderbird does. Why have a "check for Update" box if they are never going to update but just keep coming out w/ new numbers?
I switched to chrome only recently after firefox started taking 1.6GB of RAM while running the latest version, with almost no add-ons installed. It seems many people had issues like this, but it wasn't believed by the Firefox team.
I've never understood why people preferred Chrome to Firefox
Both of them have similar UIs, more or less the same features (if I'm not mistaken, Firefox has more), and they're both reasonably fast. Firefox has a more extensive add-on catalog, more configuration options, and as of Firefox 7 is the fastest browser currently released outside of maybe Opera. Chrome is nice, and I don't mind using it, but I can't think of a single major advantage Chrome has over Firefox that would make people want to switch. The only reason I know of for why my friends are using Chrome is because "it's faster", but as of 7 that's null and void.
Can anybody help me out? I'm not trolling here, I seriously want to know what Chrome has over FF.
"Our country is not nearly so overrun with the bigoted as it is overrun with the broadminded." -Archbishop Fulton Sheen
... but I keep my Firefox up and use hundreds of tabs/day (opening/closing),
In the end, the memory leaks of FF6.0.x just made me switch to Chrome. I would eventually plateau around 2.2GB of RAM (peak 2.5GB) with few tabs open, system crawling down to slow pace, *seconds* of waiting before a click makes FF react at all, Flash video pausing every 12s or so. PDF viewing freezing all tabs. Unusable.
I'll give FF7 a try though.It's "only" at 600MB right now (1GB peak) with the same usage pattern.
May eventually happen, but It's going to be a bit...
Stats from from a real world web site over the last 30 days...
MS Internet Explorer No 891,058 47.4 %
Firefox No 317,909 16.9 %
Safari No 264,506 14 %
Google Chrome No 162,473 8.6 %
Android browser (PDA/Phone browser) No 93,691 4.9 %
Unknown ? 54,509 2.8 %
IPhone (PDA/Phone browser) No 28,603 1.5 %
Mozilla No 25,610 1.3 %
Opera No 12,074 0.6 %
BlackBerry (PDA/Phone browser) No 9,396 0.4 %
"GET / HTTP/1.0" 200 51230 "-" "Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; Setec Astronomy)"
Firefox had been my browser of choice for years, but lately (is mozilla listening?) it's kinda sucked. I used it regularly on three desktops and a laptop, and sometime this year it's started to hang regularly and exhibit extremely slow behavior. Task Manager shows MASSIVE memory usage and significant CPU usage.
Needing a browser to verify a website I maintain, and with Firefox taking forever to do anything, I tried Chrome and have switched to it. Chrome renders significantly faster and doesn't appear to consume nearly the resources of Firefox. I'm sold.
I'm not getting religious here -- I am happy to go back to Firefox if some future version performs well. But in the meantime, I gotta get work done.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Chrome seems to be faster and more responsive.
The update cycle for Chrome may be faster, but people knew that from day one. Those who didn't like the update cycle didn't adopt it. On the other hand, Firefox went from a slow update cycle with easily distinguished bug and feature updates to something similar to Chrome. So people who are more conservative with updates (rightfully) feel burnt.
And did I mention the user interface? Chrome and Firefox may be quite similar these days, and are liberally borrowing from each other. On the other hand, Firefox's UI has changed dramatically over the past few years while Chrome has been more of a steady evolution.
In short, all of this change has alienated existing Firefox users. All of this change also gives a sense that Firefox lacks any real sense of direction. Is it any wonder why people are slowly ditching it?
There is one reason, and one reason alone that I stick to Firefox: Chrome doesn't give you control over the cache settings. I have seen it take up over 50GB of disk space for a cache, which is simply ridiculous. While there are ways to clear the cache, there's no way to tell Chrome not to use a disk cache at all.
Sure, there's a launch-time option for the amount of disk cache to use and where to store it, but there's nowhere you can go in the options to set it permanently. For that reason alone, I keep going back to Firefox. It does what I need it to do, and yes, it's a pig when it comes to memory use, but my system can handle it, and at least that memory gets freed up when I close the program.
I love that 1 source from Ireland shaped the opinion of the article. I like both Chrome and FF. I think we have all been lab mice, for Chrome as the platform for netbooks. Thats where chrome will shine, imho.
It's not the schedule. It's the process.
When chrome updates to a new version, I don't even know about it and everything just works (including all my addons). When Firefox updates, I have to wait an additional few seconds while it updates, I have to close out a splash page informing me of all the new features that I won't use and I have to figure out how to update and re-enable my all addons which have now magically turned off.
When I open a web browser, I want to do something. If you get in my way of me doing something for 30 seconds every few weeks plus spend 5 minutes trying to get selenium or other addons up and running again, you have failed at your purpose as a web browser.
It is even worse when you have a scenario where you have a few dozen firefox installs across various VMs.. I dread FF updates now because it means that I'm either reimaging test machines or going through a bunch of updates.
Karma: SELECT `karma` FROM `users` WHERE `userid`=138474;
Indeed, unfortunately the reason for this, is the limitations of chrome vs firefox, are more built to handle the rapid cycle. Firefox's greatest stregnth is the level of depth it allows it's ad-ons to go. Which is why chrome has a weaker adblock and I don't think chrome even has a noscript. The problem is that deeper level of integration, dosn't particularly like having it's foundation massively modified every 3-5 weeks.
In recent months, I've noticed that Google Maps satellite view has been pretty hideous in Firefox. Satellite view tiles get updated on a haphazard basis with long delays, and that wasn't the case beforehand. It's just as much a problem on fast machines as it is on slow ones. Recently, I decided to fire up Chrome, and, lo and behold, the satellite views work quite nicely.
It makes me wonder whether it's Firefox's fault, or if Google Maps has been tweaked to work better in Chrome, or perhaps both.
Oh, no! You have walked into the slavering fangs of a lurking grue!
I'm amazed more don't put two and two together. Most of Mozilla Foundation's income comes from Google. Seems like a huge conflict of interest...
And many others feel the same way - below is an excerpt from a cnet article from a few years ago to ponder when considering what's happened with Firefox lately...
"However, the open secret in the tech sector is that at the end of the day, Google calls the shots. As this blog post will explain, when a pro-user security feature in the browser threatens Google's business model, it is the feature that is made to compromise--not the search engine."
Read entire article at http://news.cnet.com/8301-13739_3-9776759-46.html
One has to wonder whether some driving Firefox development are really in cahoots with Google with the objective of marginalizing Firefox as a Chrome clone.
Regardless of whether that's the case, Firefox is looking to be more like Chrome all the time ... and, hence, imho, it's no surprise so many Firefox users are flocking to Chrome.
I'm still happily a Firefox user. Mozilla has given me an open-source browser with nigh-limitless user customization and control, with seemingly the least amount of conflicts of interest embroiled in its development. The entire Chrome ecosystem seems to be part of Google's recent wave of bad decisions that seems to highlight they can no longer be trusted to act in the best interest of the user and privacy, when there is money to be made; contrary to the Google of five years ago who seemed to be able to resist the void.
Chrome as a browser seems to be better serving Google's needs than the user's needs. Be it the lack of comprehensive AdBlock,NoScript, and HTTPSEverywhere addons (and tons of others) and other user privacy settings, Chrome vs Chromium "conveniences" and other issues, its appearing more and more to me like a better version of IE - integrated and serving Google instead of Microsoft. That's not what I want in my web browser.
Especially amongst the educated, open-source and privacy knowledgeable community I'm surprised how many have switch to Chrome, typically citing resource or speed uses. I really don't think its acceptable to be the sort of person who runs 20 high-end addons including a ton of Stylish and Greasemonkey scripts and then says the browser is using a lot of memory with your sixteen tabs open.
Firefox, Thunderbird, and other Mozilla projects are more important now than ever - open source, standards compliant, privacy respecting, user focused and customizable. Everyone here would balk if I suggested we should all switch to Internet Explorer, Hotmail, MSN, Bing, and Skype because of convenience - Why kowtow to a monoculture just because its Google? This is not to say never use Google products, but we need to make it perfectly clear that we do so because they offer terms that serve our needs, including privacy, as users - not because we have so much invested we're now locked in. Google's gleaming facade has dulled considerably with some of their more recent decisions and spots of possible greed, arrogance, and apathy may be showing up - they need to know that we won't stand for it.
While Firefox isn't perfect, I urge everyone to be alert and make their usage decisions with the long-term ramifications in mind. In a world where most business interests would rather have you access their "cloud" services through a dumb client, completely on their terms, we need to stick up for some of the last bastions of user focused software that can be introduced to laypeople with ease and show them a real difference in the experience! How many of you introduced a friend or relative to open source software with a Mozilla product, which they found to give them better security, privacy, features, and customization? That's worth its weight in gold, so to speak. Sure, the geek community will always be able to roll up Midori or Lynx or some sort of other custom Gecko/WebKit browser from the bowels of a repository, but Firefox is relatively unique in that its features are nearly as accessible, secure, and powerful for the layman as they are for the guru. Trading that in for a product which is controlled by a corporation who's shortest distance to money infringes on user privacy and security is not a smart idea.
What's the problem with Webkit? It's not even a Google project.
Dilbert RSS feed
I don't even know about it and everything just works (including all my addons)
How does the number and functionality of your Chrome Add-ons compare to Firefox add-ons?
Bit by bit the Firefox developers are fixing all the causes of that.
It wasn't the brighest idea to do rapid releases before they addressed all of that.
Maybe the underestimated the impact ?
But to keep doing that probably makes it worse.
New things are always on the horizon
Yes, I RTFA and it doesn't seem to say. Growing sales of Android phones and tablets would give a huge post to Chrome's marketshare, and while you could count it as the same browser, the distinction should be noted.
You were asking why people use Chrome, saying you can't understand it.
A user kindly took the time and extensively explained it. You dismissed all of his reasons, and continue to express puzzlement on why anyone would use Chrome.
It's not anecdotal if it's happening to a person personally, it's a fact. Similar to the anonymous user above, I switched to Chrome because it was faster than Firefox, and used less memory. I don't care that this doesn't happen on the Firefox dev's machines. It doesn't happen on my machine, either, when I use Chrome.
Pretty much every single addon I've used regularly in Firefox is available in Chrome.
How does the number and functionality of your Chrome Add-ons compare to Firefox add-ons?
Remember that most add-ons are (a) redundant or (b) too esoteric to be used by most people (Just what I need! Another kind of stock ticker! Ooooh! And here's a nuclear waste countdown clock!). As such, for what most people need, Chrome and Firefox are basically equivalent. They weren't when Chrome started, but they are now. To seal the deal, Chrome has a more appealing download page for their add-ons, so I tend to search longer and end up using more add-ons in Chrome than I ever did in Firefox.
Chrome seems simpler to use than Firefox ever was. Maybe, eventually, an open source project will get usability right, but I'm not holding my breath. Most open source guys worry about simple stuff like programming - usability is hard. Chrome - the experience is just better.
That is all.
Firefox was really the browser that broke the internet out of MSFT's painful grip. There is good cause for brand loyalty there.
In the early 2000's, Internet Explorer 5 and 6 had nearly 90% of the browser market share. The only real competitors were Opera, which was basically adware at the time, and Mozilla Suite, which still felt like a re-branding of the godawful 90's Netscape browser even though it used the Gecko engine.
When Firefox came out in the 0.x stages around early 2003 (named Phoenix then Firebird), it was out of this world. It was free. It was insanely fast. It rendered old quirky pages as well as IE did, and supported open and well-documented standards for future projects. Best of all, it was secure -- unlike with IE, you wouldn't get rooted and spyware'd to death from ActiveX garbage.
But times changed. I switched to Chrome well over a year ago and haven't really looked back. It's just too quick and bloat-free in native speed, UI navigation, and especially versus the damned updates Firefox has. Sadly, I'd almost consider the test version of Internet Explorer 10 to be a better browser...
Sorry, you are wrong.
The firefox extensions actually do their job - they screen out what they are supposed to screen out from the first reference. Scripts that you refuse to run, for instance, arent even downloaded.
The chrome versions are cosmetic only. They still download all the crap (ultra-annoying when on a slow connection,) and from what I understand even execute much of it, they simply remove the results from the final rendered page. This is not an acceptable substitute, and I have been told that because of basic design decisions true no-script on chrome is impossible.
As corporations go, google has a pretty good reputation, and they have earned it for the most part. But they make their money from advertisers, and therefore they have to play to what the advertisers want. The last thing advertisers want is for you or I to have any privacy from them. It would be stupid to expect google to put our interests above the interests of the people paying their bills. So I dont even blame google for making chrome the way they did. I just wont use it.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
User Agent strings aren't the only way of identifying browsers. Generally these days, you do UA strings and object detection. Basically the latter is running JavaScript with a whole bunch of if statements to see if certain objects are defined. document.all is an IE only thing, and window.performance only exists in IE9 for instance. window.opera only exists in Opera (duh).
With WebKit browsers (Chrome, Safari), you can detect to see if they have Canvas and WebGL support. With IE, you can even use conditional comments.
If you have a UA string claiming to be Firefox 2 but it responds to document.getElementsByClassName, you know something is lying to you. ;-)
To see how this sort of thing works, take a peek at http://www.quirksmode.org/js/detect.html
catch (HumourFailureException e) { e.user.send("You, sir, are a humourless idiot."); }