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Google Chrome Becomes World's No. 1 Browser
redletterdave writes "Just six months after Google Chrome eclipsed Mozilla's Firefox to become the world's second most popular Web browser, Chrome finally surpassed Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Sunday to become the most-used Web browser in the world, according to Statcounter. Since May 2011, Internet Explorer's global market share has been steadily decreasing from 43.9 percent to 31.4 percent of all worldwide users. In that time, Chrome has climbed from below 20 percent to nearly 32 percent of the market share. Yet, while Chrome is now the No. 1 browser in the world, it still lags behind Internet Explorer here in the U.S., but that will soon change. Chrome currently has 27.1 percent of the U.S. market share, compared to Internet Explorer's 30.9 percent, but IE is seeing significant drop-offs in usage while Chrome continues to rise."
Like Chrome without the invasive EULA.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
Statcounter just tracks requests. Google Chrome started using pre-loading pages, which artificially inflates page views.
Move along.
They game and spam other search engines
I clicked your link. I read the article you linked. It has nothing at all to do with the text you provided for it. O_o
:o
I can't tell if you accidentally linked the wrong article, or were doing a pretty clever gamble...
Except for plugins.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Sorry, but it's not just because of marketing.
The fact is Chrome's a good browser, it moved the state of the web forward, and Chrome's win is well deserved.
In hindsight, Chrome's dropping of the menu was brilliant. I actually don't use 99% of the time.
Secondly, it's fast. It loads pages fast. It loads fast from a cold start. It loads a new tab fast. It loads a new window fast with Ctrl+n. Firefox is sluggish by comparison.
Thirdly, it doesn't have a propensity to crash. I don't bother quitting it if I want to restart it. I just kill it with xkill. I know that there won't be a problem (data corruption or whatever) when it starts up again. If there's some other problem (laptop battery down), it opens the tabs I had open if I tell it to.
By contrast, it's a joke how every time Firefox opens it has the "Well, this is embarrassing" tab ("We couldn't open the tabs you had open last time due to some error, etc.").
Fourth, there's the "senior moments". It's when the Firefox window goes gray in Ubuntu. Seems it happens randomly. Even little kids have picked up on that ("the internet's not working!"). No, Firefox is not working. Doesn't happen in Chrome/Chromium.
As for tracking, use Chromium and turn query completion off.
I'm not a lawyer, but I play one on the Internet. Blog
I see a problem with StatCounter stats -- biased demography. StatCounter (in contrast to other players) is used predominantly by small to medium sites.
Now who is the most frequent visitor to a small or obscure site? The webmaster! They keep looking at their site many times every day.
Hence, most of the StatCounter stats are from the webmaster demography. I can assure you that webmasters are biased towards Google. That means that they are more likely to use Google browser.
If you use a stats source that is used only by the biggest players (a la microsoft.com), you will see totally different stats:
IE: 54.09%
Firefox: 20.20%
Chrome: 18.85%
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0
The article sez: Google was spamming its own results, but stopped when people called them on it.
No it doesn't. To quote:
Google's statement, according to SearchEngineLand, is:
"We've investigated and are taking manual action to demote www.google.com/chrome and lower the site's PageRank for a period of at least 60 days.We strive to enforce Google's webmaster guidelines consistently in order to provide better search results for users.
While Google did not authorize this campaign, and we can find no remaining violations of our webmaster guidelines, we believe Google should be held to a higher standard, so we have taken stricter action than we would against a typical site."
The demotion is a response to a campaign in which bloggers were found posting low-quality content related to Google Chrome in an effort to promote a Google video about King Arthur Flour. At least one of the posts had a hyperlink to the Chrome download page, which can help a site rise in Google search results through Google's PageRank algorithm. But paying people to include such links violates Google's guidelines.
"So far, only one page in the sponsored post campaign has been spotted with a 'straight' link that passed credit to the Chrome page," Sullivan writes. "It's also unlikely that the campaign overall was designed to build links. But my impression is that Google's deciding to penalize itself anyway with a PR reduction, to be safe."
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
> How so?They install chrome w/o permission?
They have in the past, yes. For example, until Microsoft bought Skype, a default Skype install would install Chrome and make it your default browser. If you wanted to avoid that you had to jump through some hoops during the install.
How much money do you think Google paid Skype for that deal?
They have similar deals with Adobe (installing Flash will install Chrome too), some antivirus vendors (Kaspersky, say), and lots of other software distributors.
Welcome the the way business is done in the Googleplex.
> What??? It doesn't run on HTML5 Firefox or IE9?
Nope. It explicitly sniffs for WebKit and refuses to run on other browsers.
> What error does it give you?
"Your browser is not supported".
Safari will always be significantly higher than it should unless you code specifically to ignore the splashscreen's preview feature's HTTP header, which you cannot do in javascript (have to do it with server code), if you're using Google Analytics (very likely).
Thats because that stupid splashscreen executes everything, from javascript to flash ads, and thus trigger all tracking scripts and stuff.
That ends up with you seeing ultra-inflated safari figures, as well as inflated safari bounce rate.
On our site (not huge my some standards, but still several hundred thousand hits per day), and catering to a younger demographic (so higher than usual safari), about 30-40% of our safari hits are "fake" because of this.
sigh...
Let's see:
-The toolbar can't be customized
-No real AdBlock
-Extensions are glorified userscripts
-Installs Google Updater
-Memory usage goes through the roof with a lot of tabs opened (higher than Firefox could ever hope it to go)
Yeah...
Let's see:
-Toolbar isn't manipulated to hell and back, but does have movable components.
-I have AdBlock running on mine right now.
-Extensions are components created by someone to do something inside of the browser. It doesn't matter what they are made from, unless it slows things down. (That wasn't meant as a jab against Firefox)
-The updater can be turned on/off in settings.
-I have 4Gb on my laptop and I've had 20+ tabs open with Windows 7 (work computer... not personal). No issues.
yeah... jesus, you sound like a Mac hater or something, just making shit up randomly.
-- This space for lease, low setup fee, inquire within!
Monopolies are NOT illegal. I swear to god this is one of the most misunderstood facets of US law. The Sherman Anti-Trust law establishes one illegal act. This is for a Trust (a business with a monopoly on a sector of the economy) to use that Trust to gain another Trust in a second business. In other words, it's illegal for Microsoft who has a monopoly in Operating Systems to use that Monopoly to gain a Monopoly in Internet Browsers.
The Sherman Anti-Trust act came about because the large Trusts of the early 20th century used their Trust to gain control of other businesses. Carnegie used his Trust in Railroads to gain a trust in Steel and Coal. Rockefeller used is Trust in Oil to manipulate early Automobiles, plastics and the petrochemical industry. JP Morgan used is Banking Trust to basically screw everyone.
It's not illegal to have a Trust or to gain a Trust unless you already have a Trust that you are using to gain a second one. The Sherman Anti-Trust act has as a penalty for abuse of a Trust in that it allows the government to forcibly break up the business into smaller pieces (or leavy a fine and restrict the business), but if you never abuse the Trust you can't be punished under the Act. Admittedly it's hard for a Trust NOT to abuse the Trust to further their business but it's not illegal to have a Trust.
> But did Google *pay* for Angry Birds to do that?
I have no idea what their contract, if any, with Angry Birds looked like.
But they have certainly been encouraging web developers to do just that, yes.
> And what is your source for that Skype behaviour?
Personal experience, for one thing. You can see a screenshot from the advanced install at http://people.mozilla.org/~khuey/skype-install-2011-10-3.png if you want.
As far as a Google search not finding anything.... https://www.google.com/search?q=skype+chrome+bundling shows http://www.webmasterworld.com/goog/4135280.htm and http://www.winrumors.com/skype-for-windows-updated-to-remove-google-product-bundling/ and http://mynetx.net/6494/skype-removes-google-integration
It also finds, not coincidentally, http://www.osnews.com/comments/25184 (do read the first response too!) and http://www.salsitasoft.com/2011/09/23/wonder-how-chrome-is-growing-market-share-ask-adobe/
A similar search on Bing also finds http://www.quora.com/Just-got-a-Skype-update-and-they-wanted-me-to-install-Chrome-Why