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Chrome Becoming World's Second Most Popular Web Browser

Posted by Soulskill on from the now-stop-hijacking-my-middle-click dept.

redletterdave writes with news that Google Chrome is in the process of surpassing Firefox to become the second most popular web browser. Pinpointing the exact time of the change is difficult, of course, since different analytics firms collect slightly different data. The current crop of media reports were triggered by data from StatCounter, which shows Chrome at 25.69% and Firefox at 25.23% for November. Data from Net Applications shows Firefox still holding a 4% lead, but the trends suggest it will evaporate within a few months.

30 of 511 comments (clear)

  1. And still... by bwintx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And still Mozilla doesn't get a clue that some of the recent changes are driving away users. Amazing.

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    1. Re:And still... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Chrome today is what the early releases of Firefix were: a lean, fast browser with a stripped down UI.
      Firefox has become a bloated piece of garbage.

    2. Re:And still... by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      And still Mozilla doesn't get a clue that some of the recent changes are driving away users. Amazing.

      Every time Chrome gains market share, the Firefox developers think they need to make Firefox more like Chrome, when that's exactly what's driving people away.

    3. Re:And still... by buchner.johannes · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think Mozilla is very happy with the stats, because the real news is that the IE usage went down to almost ~50%, and we have today a diversity of browser (engines). Diversity ensures that we don't drive into a dead end, and Mozilla paved the way for alternative browsers, pushing websites away from IE-only design, and making the new technologies we have today possible (CSS, everything beyond HTML4, fast JS) -- although we have to give Microsoft credit for inventing Ajax.

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    4. Re:And still... by Pope · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Every time Chrome gains market share, the Firefox developers think they need to make Firefox more like Chrome, when that's exactly what's driving people away.

      Took the words right out of my mouth. Firefox devs' biggest problem is that they're duplicating Chrome's interface without any reflection or realization of why Chrome does things a certain way.

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    5. Re:And still... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If you haven't used it for a long while, how do you know it's still slow and unstable?

    6. Re:And still... by Millennium · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Pretty much this. That's not to say that Chrome is bad: it isn't. But Firefox is trying to be Chrome, and no one is ever going to be better at being Chrome better than Chrome itself (except possibly Chromium, but that's something of an academic debate).

      In the process, Firefox is rapidly losing its own way. This is a shame, because I found more than a few of Firefox's old ways better than its new ones, or Chrome's for that matter. We're losing choice in the browser market because it's coming down not so much to a choice between Chrome and Firefox as between Chrome and imitation-Chrome, and Chrome will always win that.

      tl;dr version - Firefox lost its way when it started imitating other browsers, because it will never be able to beat the originals. It must instead become its own original, as it once was.

    7. Re:And still... by cockroach2 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yet the only thing they really need to copy to get me to come back and try Firefox again is to replace the 13-click procedure for broken SSL certificates with a simple pop-up window. As it used to be.

    8. Re:And still... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You guys are such hypocrites. When versions aren't released fast enough and you end up with memory leaks for months, you whine. When Mozilla takes a pro-active stance and decides to do faster release to get more stable code out there faster, you whine because .. the browser updates? WHO GIVES A SHIT? It's a number you never see unless you actually look for it, and it gets you a better product in the end. Seriously, what the hell?

    9. Re:And still... by chispito · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think Mozilla is very happy with the stats, because the real news is that the IE usage went down to almost ~50%, and we have today a diversity of browser (engines).

      Despite what you might think, I'm pretty sure Mozilla is interested in more than just sticking it to MS.

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    10. Re:And still... by 0123456 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You guys are such hypocrites. When versions aren't released fast enough and you end up with memory leaks for months, you whine.

      Uh, what?

      Why do you need to go from version 9 to version 10 in order to fix a memory leak?

      The only difference I've seen between 3.6 and whatever the heck version Ubuntu is shipping right now is that every new version has removed useful features or moved them around on the menus so I have to hunt around to find the damn things again.

    11. Re:And still... by Runaway1956 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Ditto, here. My Firefox is at 11.0a1 (2011-11-23). My updates come from the Ubuntu repositories - maybe if I downloaded them directly, I'd be a build ahead.

      There are differences between all the browsers, but I really can't tell that either Chrome or Firefox is "better" than the other. What was it that Shakey guy said? "Much ado about nothing", I believe. I DO NOT like IE, but Chrome, Firefox, Opera, and Safari all get the job done for me. I don't pay much mind to the metrics, to be honest.

      Although, I do look forward to the day that IE falls to 2nd, then 3rd, and then to 4th place. Just doesn't matter who is in 1st, 2nd, and 3rd!

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    12. Re:And still... by Creepy · · Score: 2, Insightful

      they may be developing more slowly, but they break plugin compatibility with each release now, and they also say that pleasing corporate users by maintaining compatibility with stuff like the java plugin is not important at all. This decision doesn't just affect corporate users, though - I've stopped using Firefox at home because they broke my slingbox player twice now and I'm fed up with it. I switched to IE at home, and I hate IE with a passion (I'd use Chrome, but Chrome wasn't supported yet when I checked last - I just checked and as of Nov 17 it is supported, so time to make that switch).

      Congratulations Firefox - you've managed to change me from biggest fan to I hate your f**king guts.

    13. Re:And still... by elashish14 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      And yet some users (like myself) still prefer Firefox because that bloated garbage actually translates into useful features. Firefox is still the best browser in terms of customizability and (consequently) respecting users' privacy.

      As far as I see, Firefox and Chrome occupy different niches - Chrome for more of a lean, one-size-fits-all approach, and Firefox for a more custom browsing experience (which, in my opinion is what makes it great). I know that Chrome has come a ways with some of the essentials like script- and ad-blockers, but Firefox still has the edge. While I'm sad to see that more users choose Chrome than FF, it doesn't mean that the most popular browser is the best. If that were the case, IE would still be king.

      Though it still annoys me to no end that Firefox can take 700MB on memory. On this machine with only 1GB of RAM, that's pretty serious. But it's still worth it IMO. I'll be upgrading soon anyways

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  2. Firefox is to blame by lsolano · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I'm not saying that Chrome is not a good browser, but, what happened IMHO is not that Chrome is getting better, instead, FF is getting worse every day.

    I do not know how the Flash Plugin in a browser can suddenly take the 90% of a i7 CPU.

    FF people forgot what made them succeed: simplicity.

  3. Déjà vu by Rik+Sweeney · · Score: 3, Insightful

    When Firefox appeared on the scene, it gave Microsoft the kick up the arse it needed to improve their crappy, aging browser.

    When Chrome appeared on the scene, it gave Mozilla the kick up the arse it needed to improve their crappy, aging browser.

    It'll be interesting to see if the same thing happens in a few years with IE.

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  4. They screwed it with the new release process by danielcolchete · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Do you know what changed between FF4 and FF10? Almost nothing! Really! From FF6 to FF10 it is nothing for sure. But they managed to break addon compability 7 times in between. So, from what I understood, we were going to have releases from often so that we could get more features more frequently. We got nothing! Or almost nothing. I jumped of from FF6 to Chrome and I lived happily ever after. By the way, 5% of the Internet users are stuck with the outdated FF3.6 today, without the HTML5 advances of FF4 and FF6, because of this new release process. It is as if we need another browser vendor holding the web back. Thank you Mozilla.

    1. Re:They screwed it with the new release process by Microlith · · Score: 3, Insightful

      they managed to break addon compability 7 times in between

      Which is inexcusable really, I mean, it's not like the betas are kept behind closed doors and dropped on users and addon developers at the same time. That addon developers can't be arsed to keep up with the changes and really, the shift from FF3.6 to 4.0 broke more addons than subsequent changes from 5-11 (especially if you use the Addon Compatibility Reporter to enable them.)

      Well, except for the competent ones like NoScript and AdblockPlus, which work great even up in the latest builds of Nightly.

  5. Until Pepper is pwned (again) by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Chrome is popular partly because of three things: it's new, users are ignorant (below), and the Chrome plugin API[0] allows the browser to do some really fast, but braindead[1], crap (aka ActiveX/IE) like running native system code in a sandbox.

    Re Ignorance: There has been a lot of misunderstanding towards mozilla "memory usage" over the years because users can't figure out that each of the 100 tabs they have open consumes a certain amount of memory. And several of those tabs, running Adobe Flash in the background, simply bring their system to it's knees.

    Yeah, chrome is snazzy, and Mozilla does some brain dead stuff too, but I trust them more than Google. Furthermore, segregation in the market space is actually a really, really, really good thing for the consumer.

    [0] - http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/06/25/mozilla_on_npapi_pepper/

    [1] - http://www.tech.slashdot.org/story/11/10/24/151238/bug-opens-chrome-to-easy-remote-code-execution

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  6. One advantage FF has over Chrome, IMO by bjdevil66 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Google's views on privacy. Maybe my view is born of ignorance about what Chrome actually does track vs. doesn't track, but as of now I just can't trust them enough to use that browser all the time. I can't get past the, "Just don't do anything wrong..." comments by the Google leadership a while back.

  7. I'm sticking with Firefox. by Beelzebud · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I trust Firefox with my privacy rights more than I trust Google, which is simply an advertising company.

  8. Adblock by NYYz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I like Chrome, but until Adblock works as well as it does on Firefox I'm not interested. I'm not willing to watch Youtube commercials.

  9. stranglehold broken; don't do it again by Onymous+Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Diversity ensures that we don't drive into a dead end, and Mozilla paved the way for alternative browsers, pushing websites away from IE-only design, and making the new technologies we have today possible

    Exactly. Their main objective at the outset was to "take back the web". The shape of this graph, where it comes back from monopoly around 2004, is because of Firefox. We all have good reason to be thankful.

    Microsoft's stranglehold on the market let them define the standards including not make any progress for 5 damned years. Stuck with cross-browser incompatibilities, stuck without technological progress or many of the features we take for granted these days, stuck with a browser that got everyone's system hacked and ate up countless geek hours with reinstalls. Man, what a nightmare.

    And it wasn't just Microsoft's fault. It was also the fault of the users who did not opt for a heterogeneous browser ecosystem. Granted, it's a lot to ask the average person to defend a "heterogeneous browser ecosystem", but at least the geeks (and epidemiologists) should get it. And if you don't, let me spell it out for you: Don't push us towards browser monoculture . Not again, please. That sucked.

  10. Re:Inevitable. by Freedom+Bug · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Once Chrome gets the breadth of plugins that Firefox has, it'll be no better than Firefox.

    Modern Firefox is virtually as fast as Chrome and actually uses less memory than Chrome. `The problem is that many Firefox extensions leak memory and really slow Firefox down. The reason that Chrome's plugins don't is that Chrome plugins simply aren't allowed to do a lot of the things that Firefox extensions do.

  11. Screw them both by DJ+Jones · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I switched to Opera just 2 days ago and it blew my mind. It's fast, lightweight and does everything you need and nothing more. It's what firefox used to be before it jumped the shark.

  12. Re:Inevitable. by jenic · · Score: 4, Insightful

    AdBlock Plus runs on Chrome. It's in Google's Chrome Web Store.

    Get back to me when they have a fully functioning NoScript.

  13. Thank you by Gordo_1 · · Score: 3, Insightful

    The Slashdot bandwagon immediately sees the opportunity to point out that "Firefox sucks because 8.0 should be called 5.0.3" and you reveal the real reason that Chrome is everywhere: They're bundling it with bloody well everything but the kitchen sink and the same lemmings that used IE6 until recently are now finding Chrome icons on their desktops.

  14. Re:Inevitable. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And fully functioning adblock plus. Because right now, it sucks.

  15. Re:Safari by Nethemas+the+Great · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There's a "good" side to mac-like behavior?

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  16. Re:Complete lack of surprise by kripkenstein · · Score: 3, Insightful

    How difficult is it to set a stable extensions API, make extension developers aware of it, and then making the browser get out of the way?

    It's very difficult, with certain types of extension APIs.

    We could just drop the current extension API entirely and replace it with one like Chrome has. That would make things much simpler, it could be stable, there would be no way for extensions to leak memory or slow down the browser, and the browser could auto-update very easily. However, that means throwing out all the current extensions that Firefox has. Worse, that new extension API would not allow recreating all the current extensions either - stable, safe extension APIs are necessarily more limiting: They are stable and safe because they don't let extensions do everything. The upside is safety and stability, the downside is the addons are less powerful, that is they can do less. As one example, Firefox addons can radically change how the browser looks, Chrome addons cannot. There is a tradeoff here, I am not saying one approach is better than the other, but just that you can't have everything.

    Firefox is taking two paths here: First, we are adding a new, safe&stable extension API (Jetpack addons). But we are also keeping the existing one, and making a lot of complex changes to the browser to allow those addons to be updated automatically etc., so the current downsides are less troublesome. That takes time, but each release is an improvement (in the number of addons that can auto-update, for example).