Slashdot Mirror


Chrome 15 Overtakes IE 8 For Top Browser Spot

An anonymous reader writes "If you're reading this on Chrome, you're part of a wave that has ditched Internet Explorer or Firefox and helped vault Google's browser to the top Web browser spot worldwide." Are you reading this on Chrome? (I'm using Chromium right now, but that's pretty close.)

10 of 507 comments (clear)

  1. Re:First post from firefox by rhyder128k · · Score: 5, Interesting

    An excellent point. It's also worth noting that Firefox is the most popular browser in Europe. Probably due to those EU regulations about Windows offering a default choice. Y'know the ones that people said would have no effect anyway.

    http://uk.reuters.com/article/2011/01/04/us-internet-europe-idUKTRE70324F20110104

    --
    Michael Reed, freelance tech writer.
  2. Re:First post from firefox by InsightIn140Bytes · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Same goes for Opera, which is extremely popular in Russia and CIS countries and actually beats any other browser. It has like 50% market share in some countries. http://my.opera.com/dstorey/blog/2009/03/16/a-look-at-desktop-market-share-cis-edition

  3. For those of us with SSDs however... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've used Chrome a lot and like it even more. Unfortunately, a mere day's browsing generates 700,000 writes according to windows (almost an order of magnitude over any other browser). As an SSD user, this just isn't acceptable and all the fixes are a complicated way of 'shoving the cache onto a spinning disc drive'.

  4. Re:Firefox still rules by bhcompy · · Score: 5, Interesting

    without a proper NoScript solution, all other browsers fail. FF is a bloated beastly browser, but can't live without NoScript anymore.

  5. Re:No by hedwards · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The problem is that as long as MPEG LA expects to be paid for use of the standard you're going to have a two tiered net the way that it used to be with Flash. Granted most folks would have a license via MS, but it's a really shitty situation to have to either a licensing fee to use the web or violate somebody's patents.

  6. Re:First post from firefox by Requiem18th · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I also want to add that all the popularity of Firefox is due to it's own quality.

    Chrome is aggressively advertised in all Google services, specially Youtube.
    It also has TV ads including Super Bowl ads, using celebrities like Justin Bieber, Lady Gaga and even Hatsune Miku!

    It also tries to sneak installs by sponsoring freeware downloads with chrome bundled. Opt-out of course.

    They even messed up with the opt out option to make it hard to opt-out. I am specially offended by that *because* it is such a petty thing to muck with. It was a simple, straight forward Windows form but the opt-out option was semi-disabled. Oh come on that's just childish!

    So I'm not impressed by Chrome's market share. It mostly shows the efficacy of strong marketing. I'm not saying it is a bad browser, or that Firefox is perfect, just that Chrome's success isn't really due to some sense of superiority.

    And another thing.

    What is with Chrome fanboys? Google is a for-profit corporation vent on market domination. It is NOT a good thing if Chrome kills Firefox, the last thing we need is another browser monoculture.

    --
    But... the future refused to change.
  7. Re:First post from firefox by BrokenHalo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I also want to add that all the popularity of Firefox is due to it's own quality.

    True. Firefox is now a rock-solid, stable and mature browser. Having said that, I have actually been using Chromium as my default browser for a few months, for just two reasons:
    1. Chromium loads webpages perceptibly faster, and
    2. because Chromium by default takes up marginally less real-estate on my laptop screen with menubars, toolbars and whatnot that are not necessary.

    However, if Chromium were not available, I would not be persuaded to use Chrome, as I am not happy about the possibility of anything I do being relayed to Google.

  8. Re:First post from firefox by cayenne8 · · Score: 4, Interesting
    Interesting...........completely anecdotal, but I don't know anyone that uses chrome, much less even knows it exists for the most part of them.

    Hell, most of them I had to explain what FF was....

    --
    Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
  9. Re:First post from firefox by kangsterizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Hopefully 1. will be fixed soon. Chrome and Firefox are roughly as fast. Some pages load faster on Firefox. Some faster on Chrome.
    But ALL Google pages load faster on Chome (and Chromium of course). That's because they all use Google-only protocols (such as SPDY) which do make a difference.

    That's how you segment the web by the way, even if it's using open source stuff. Thanksfully, for that very one (SPDY) it's going to be in Firefox soon, hence, 1 would be fixed soon. But I'm *sure* Google will find other ways.

    They're probably going to include Chome-only tags (oh wait, they already do that! offline gmail anyone?) or NaCl components, or Dart only component.

    And that's why Google's actually turning evil after all.

  10. Re:First post from firefox by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 5, Interesting

    So you have the source code for Chrome and have built it from source?

    You have any of the really important Google software, i.e. the backend source code?