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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.
The "Chrome effect" is the spike of internet trends that only happens on the weekends because geeks and other home-enthusiasts are using alternative browsers since there is no real restriction. What is the percentage of use during 9a-5p monday through friday? Looking at intra-week stats shows this heavily favors IE, or at least it has in the past. What is the trend for business adoption of alternative browsers?
I'm not sure what to think. I've wanted Microsoft to lose its dominance ever since it eclipsed Netscape browser in 1999, but to replace one evil company that abuses it users, with another evil company that spies on people, is like a pyrrhic victory.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
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...
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...
Except for plugins.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
Can you please list some Chrome only tags? Are these tags Google created? Or are these HTML 5 tags that other browsers don't exactly support yet?
Some of, but not all of, Chrome is open-source. You really want that transparency in a web browser these days. Use Chromium instead.
Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
BROWSERS: Do you adjust your browser stats for prerendering/pre-loading?
Two browsers are affected by preview-type requests - Chrome and Safari.
Chrome
Further to a significant number of user requests, we are now adjusting our browser stats to remove the effect of prerendering in Google Chrome. From 1 May 2012, prerendered pages (which are not actually viewed) are not included in our stats.
Some points to note:
Prerendering was announced by Chrome in June 2011. This change did not have any significant impact on our stats.
Chrome is currently allowing the detection of prerendering behavior via its Page Visibility API.
Google specifically states:
"Important: This is an experimental API and may change-or even be removed-in the future, especially as the Page Visibility API standard, which is an early draft, evolves."
This means that in the future it may not be possible to track/remove the effect of prerendering on Chrome.
If other browsers adopt prerendering then it may not be possible to track/remove the effect of prerendering on those browsers. In that case, the fairest solution would be to include all page views (prerendered or not) for all browsers rather than only excluding prerendering in Chrome. That scenario would require us to revisit this methodology change in the future.
Safari
The Top Sites feature in Safari shows preview thumbnails of frequently visited sites. These preview thumbnails are refreshed by Safari periodically. Unfortunately, it is not possible to exclude these previews from being tracked. To get a bit technical, this is because the "X-Purpose: preview" header is only sent with the request for the base page. The header is not sent as part of requests for images, CSS or JavaScript that have to be downloaded and executed as part of the Top Sites preview. With online web analytics (as provided by StatCounter) the relevant header information is not passed so these preview requests can't be detected and therefore can't be removed. Ideally Safari will change this to ensure to send the "X-Purpose: preview" header with all Top Sites HTTP requests, however this is not the case at present.
Where is the cake for Google, Microsoft?
You love to send one to Mozilla every so often, why not Google? Look at how far they have come! Isn't it amazing? Wittle Goog all growed up!
What? No cake policy? Aw, you're just no fun now.
These are the figures for visitors to a 250,000 visits a month site in the UK:
Internet Explorer 44%
Safari 20%
Chrome 17%
Firefox 13%
In any case, I'm not sure what 'choice' many visitors have. Some people get what their IT department installs, others stick with what is on (eg Mac/Safari or Windows/IE), others with what their familt IT support insists on.
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
Still mainly a Safari (Mac) man myself, but I'm happy to see anything knock IE off its perch.
Except for noscript. There's nothing even close to noscript. The existing attempts to implement something like noscript on chrome are just awful beyond belief. I don't give a damn if chrome's JS engine is safer, I don't want the annoyance of JS-powered ads. Nor do I want the annoyance of having it globally turned off and being cumbersome to re-enable.
>>>tags that only Chrome understands, I wish they would stop doing that and stick to ratified standard.
Netscape/Mozilla did it when they were dominant. Microsoft did it too. Now it's google's turn.
BTW both those companies are good examples of how no monopoly lasts forever. New upstarts come-along and end the monopoly.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
I'm not sure what to think. I've wanted Microsoft to lose its dominance ever since it eclipsed Netscape browser in 1999, but to replace one evil company that abuses it users, with another evil company that spies on people, is like a pyrrhic victory.
My logic is to celebrate the contenders even if it's just more of the same corporations. Am I the only web developer that noticed that Internet Exploder started getting passably decent as Firefox & Chrome were breathing down their necks? I welcome any sort of race when before it was just the aborted full frontal lobotomy that is IE6 as a candidate.
Besides, roll your own chromium and kiss any privacy raping proprietary ties goodbye if you want (and without the loss of HTML5 support and standards).
My work here is dung.
Even supporting CISPA.
Read your own links. They haven't "supported the bill", they've "been supportive of finding the right language for the bill". As in, trying to fix it.
Nearly so. You can opt out if you find the checkbox hidden in a dark room in Alpha Centaury behind a warning of beware the leopard.
But they don't force people to actualy use it.
Rethinking email
And Google knows when you wipe your arse, what you did it with, and how much you paid the undocumented nanny, while you were distracted from child-rearing, by the arse-wiping task.
They are willing to sell this to bidders. Don't worry! It's only in the "Aggregate". ;-)
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
it weren't designed primarily as an advertising medium that optimises the browser as a vehicle for tracking users.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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
they pay makers of Angry Birds to have Chrome-only HTML5 version of their game
make websites that purposely only work with Chrome
There is no such thing as "Chrome-only HTML5" - those sites are just HTML5, that will work with Chrome. The sites will also run on other browsers if they support HTML5; it's hardly Google's fault if other browsers do not support HTML5, is it?
They game and spam other search engines [zdnet.com] like Bing too.
Interesting article! Did you bother to read it? In fact, it's the complete opposite of trying to game and spam search engines:
Google has demoted its Chrome home page in results for a search using the keyword "browser" following an effort to have bloggers promote the Google browser that backfired. Now, there is no Chrome ad at the top of the results or link to the Chrome page anywhere on the first page of results on Google. It's ranked in position 50, according to Danny Sullivan of SearchEngineLand, which first reported this news.
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."
Mozilla: the company that dropped Linux support on their latest work.
Mod me down, my New Earth Global Warmingist friends!
The Netscape monopoly was overthrown by Microsoft being willing to lose great deals of money and depending on your outlook being willing to leverage another monopoly.
The IE monopoly might very well have lasted a lot longer with concerted effort and government support.
I'm not sure how those examples lead to sanguine confidence that technological lock in is no bid deal.
Do these statistics include the default browser on Android devices in the "Chrome" group? Otherwise I'm extremely surprised by them. I can't believe that there's more than a person installing Chrome for each one that uses a PC without knowing what a "browser" is (and therefore is an IE user).
there were two eclipses yesterday.
insensitive clod overlords obligatory xkcd car analogy russian reversals whoosh pedant fanbois ftfy in 3...2...1..PROFIT
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
Chrome has now "sold out", and may only be used "ironically".
The current "hip" browser is now Lynx in an xterm window set to use Helvetica (it's "vintage"). Please adjust your usage accordingly.
BTW both those companies are good examples of how no monopoly lasts forever.
This argument always grates with me, as if the fact that no monopoly (or anything else in existence) lasts forever somehow makes it okay. Firstly, it can still last a *damn* long time and hold things back for a significant part of one's lifetime. Secondly, in a lot of these cases, one monopoly can be (and frequently is) replaced by another soon after- something that is often touched upon or even accepted by those making that argument, yet with the assumption that this is somehow okay and significantly better than a single, long-lived monopoly.
Well, it's not. The fact that a monopoly might eventually fall when one is old and grey, only to be replaced with another monopoly (yay!) is a piss-poor substitute for a proper balanced and free market.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
- Toolbar for what? Just to take up space and give me more shit to click?
- AdBlock works perfectly fine in Chrome for me. I don't know where this shit keeps coming from. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb
- Extensions work fine for me. Not sure what you're driving at on this point.
- Don't have a problem with Google Updater. Does it not work on your system or does it consume too many resources?
- Memory usage across all chrome processes is about the same as Firefox for the same tabs. Sometimes a little more or less. It's inconsequential on my modern computer with 8 GB of RAM.
Chrome is faster, more stable, doesn't require admin rights to update it (that's a big one if you ask me), doesn't have clutter all over the screen.
Why tags? How about Chrome Native Client the equivallent to ActiveX?
Do these numbers include or exclude Chromium? Btw, congratulations, Google!
So. If I make something really fucking cool that people all want then I suck?
Or am I evil?
Am I screwing over the market?
Being a monopoly is not a bad thing. Abusing monopoly powers is.
Why is it so hard to only have politicians for a few years, then have them go away?
It also helps that MS ties its browser to its own operating systems. As tablets and smart phones are used more and more to access the Internet and with so many of those devices running non MS operating systems, Internet Explorer market share will continue to fall. Four short years ago Windows had 95% market share. For 2012 it is at 85%.
The real danger for MS is that as more and more people become familiar with other operating systems like iOS and android they will eventually become more comfortable with the idea of a non-MS pc. If I were MS I would segregate my products and let each compete on its own on any OS. Even for businesses, there is a move to web apps and making sure they work on iOS and android so there is becoming less and less need for Windows (there are still a lot of businesses that need Windows but the trend is clear).
There is no such thing as "HTML5"
FTFY. It is a work in progress. Nothing called "HTML5" has been agreed upon by all parties.
those sites are just HTML5, that will work with Chrome
Because Google paid to have them work with Chrome. And since HTML5 isn't a standard, other browsers don't act exactly the same as Chrome, so it won't work quite the same. Not that it couldn't, if someone paid to have it developed for the other browser.
The sites will also run on other browsers if they support HTML5; it's hardly Google's fault if other browsers do not support HTML5, is it?
It's hardly other browsers' fault if Google decides to make Chrome slightly different, since there's no standard for HTML5 yet. Other browsers will support HTML5 once HTML5 actually exists. Right now it's a mish-mash of features that everyone calls "HTML5" but aren't standard across-the-board.
> 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".
- Don't have a problem with Google Updater. Does it not work on your system or does it consume too many resources?
Google Updater runs as a service, that has no visible setting to disable, calls home and install whatever is flagged as an update with the default settings Google wants. You are giving Google full administrator access to a computer and if some other company ever though of doing that, there would be uproar.
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!
> those sites are just HTML5,
No, those sites are HTML5 plus some browser-specific additions, some of which are Chrome-only, some of which are WebKit-only, some of which are IE-only, some of which are Gecko-only, some of which are Firefox-only, etc.
> The sites will also run on other browsers if they
> support HTML5
Oh, really? Please try running http://getcrackin.angrybirds.com/ in a non-WebKit browser. The page relies on sniffing for a -webkit CSS property in a way that relies on a bug in WebKit's CSSOM implementation, and if that bug is not present of if that prefixed property is not supported, will just show you a "This game can only be played on Chrome" message and a "Download Chrome" button instead of just letting you play the damn game.
Of course if you change the source of your browser to duplicate the CSSOM bug and pretend to have support for that -webkit property, the game does work (especially well if you also add support for yet another non-standard CSS property, actually).
> it's hardly Google's fault if other browsers do not
> support HTML5
It's Google's fault if they push the idea that "Chrome" and "HTML5" are the same thing. It leads to sites like the one linked above and comments like yours....
Insofar as one can talk about "Google" as a monolithic entity anyway. Which is not very much, as evidenced by the quote you give. There are a number of distinct parts of Google that have pretty different goals (e.g. the people doing marketing and bundling deals for Chrome are pretty scummy, the Youtube folks want to build DRM support into HTML, the actual Chrome developers are pretty reasonable for the most part and not exactly always happy with the actions of other parts of Google).
Why tags? How about Chrome Native Client the equivallent to ActiveX?
Native Client is equivalent to ActiveX in the same way that Google's evil is equivalent to Microsoft's; only occasionally and mostly by accident.
I think Native Client is a bit of a misguided experiment. I worry that a sandbox implemented directly on so many different physical processors will have great difficulty being secure. However, it's not that they aren't aware of these worries and aren't trying to take them into account.
Every time that someone tries to say that "Microsoft is not as evil as they used to be" remember that they keep trying to add features from the above ActiveX list into their new ARM based Windows. Neither Apple nor Google will ever be as sneakily anti-customer, anti-consumer and anti-humanity as Microsoft is. Not even if their management specifically sets out to be.
=~ s,(.*),<sarcasm>$1</sarcasm>,g if any_point_you_wish();
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.
Monopolies are not anything other than good. The only times a monopoly is bad is when...
The problem with saying something so ludicrously OTT like "monopolies are not anything other than good" is that you then sound like you're contradicting yourself in your next sentence. "Monopolies are generally good except when..." would have sounded more level, but would not have let you express your apparent love of monopolies(!)
Other than those cases the ability for a monopoly to exists comes only from its ability to server its market extremely well.
That's exceptionally naive. What about monopolies formed from companies intentionally buying out their competition (which doesn't even *have* to be done via "abusive practices")?
There is nearly a monopoly in the search industry. Because Google did so well for so long. Now Microsoft is spending massively to become better. This makes Google need to step up their own system to keep on top. This is good for us. Which ever way you go you get served better.
And what happens in situations where it would cost a massive amount of money to enter a market, and it still wouldn't be worth it because the monopolistic market leader was so far ahead and likely to remain there due to the network effect and/or economies of scale?
Facebook is bordering on this, Google+ has not proven to be a success so far despite probably being the most likely to topple them. Are Facebook being abusive in order to maintain their position?
If not, does this then make it desirable that I have no real choice if I wish to use a social network (the whole point being to use the one that everyone else uses) despite Facebook's laughably bad-faith approach to privacy?
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Installs Google Updater
You havent installed Firefox 12, or looked at their blueprints, have you?
Heres a hint, the mozilla folks see the Updater and its ability to do less-than-frustrating updates as a good thing, and are working on (and have already released) an updater service for Firefox.
Of course, it can be uninstalled....but then, so can google updater.
I might also add, since we're taking potshots at browsers...
Firefox:
- Most frustrating upgrade experience for users in existence. No MSIs, no update service, randomly begs for admin rights, cripples extensions on upgrade... (though all of that sans the MSIs is in the works for a fix)
- Much slower than Chrome
- Tab performance leaves much to be desired
- Stock HTML inspection isnt really comparable to Chromes inspector
Hes talking about the update service I presume, which is retarded since Linux has built in mechanisms to keep Firefox current and doesnt need a dedicated daemon to do so.
And all the rants above about Chrome and the rest of the Chromium based browsers is missing one thing...there is a REASON why FF usage has been dropping like a stone, and that is the devs at FF have taken a 'fuck you, we're going this way!" attitude that is running off their users!
This is one thing I give credit to all the different Chromium based browsers for because there have been VERY few UI changes and the ones that have happened have been fairly subtle. the FF devs seem to get a bug up their ass and totally crap all over the UI without a care in the world as to what the users think. Hell look at these mockups of the next UI by Mozilla and they might as well say "We ONLY want Windows 8 users! If you aren't into Metro UI then piss off" and is it ANY wonder that Chrome and its ilk have blown away FF?
I used FF before it was even called FF and the Moz Suite before that but it has been obvious at least to me that somewhere between V4 and V7 that they quit giving a fuck what the users thought and became nothing but devs scratching itches. The rise of Chrome is a classic case of users voting with their feet as if the FF devs had just held a damned poll and ASKED WHAT WE WANTED then frankly they wouldn't have seen their users nosedive as its pretty damned clear that like me most users do not want to go where they are heading.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
You actually aren't helping it be understood well.
This is true only for astoundingly large values of "one".
A "trust" is not a business with a monopoly, but a particular form of combination of businesses (whether or not it forms a monopoly.) And the Sherman Anti-Trust Act (15 USC Sec. 1-7) itself (and, a fortiori, US antitrust law which includes but is not limited to the Sherman Act) makes illegal more than just leveraging an existing monopoly to monopolize another area of business. Particularly, the Sherman Act:
You can reasonably argue that Sec. 1 and Sec. 3(a) are the same "act", and that Sec. 2 and Sec. 3(b) are the same "act", which gets you two illegal acts under the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. But you can't reasonably argue that there is only one illegal act created by the Sherman Act.
Also, the Sherman Act isn't the whole of US Antitrust Law, which also includes the Clayton Act (15 USC 12-27, 29 USC 52-53) and other provisions.
The Sherman Act does not actually specify (or limit) the remedies for violation, aside from the criminal fines, or even expressly make final equitable relief available (preliminary injunctions are specifically referred to in the Sherman Act.) The Clayton Act does expressly provide (and regulate) some equitable remedies available for violations of Antitrust laws (including the Sherman Act.)
Should they not promote their own products on their own pages? Should Apple include a link to Dell in its search results?
Yeah yeah, Google's a search engine used to find information on other sites, fuck off. That argument holds no weight and is complete bullshit. When I go to Dell's support site, I am looking for support results, but still get offers on other Dell products, same with Microsoft, same with Ubuntu, same with any other fucking company.
Google is under no obligation to hide their other products. Now, if they were spoofing the search results and spamming Chrome links in the results any time anyone searched for internet browser I'd agree with you. But they're not, they're putting a sparkly ad on their front page, and one ad in the Ads section on the main page. Big, fucking deal.
Keep on knockin'
https://robbiecrash.me
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)
Don't worry, I'm sure Mozilla are working on getting these features into Firefox as we speak!
Sniffing for WebKit doesn't make it Chrome-only.
By the way, there is a MAJOR reason why usage of Internet Explorer is falling: it lacks automatic spell check. I've read a lot of web browser users have switched to Firefox or Chrome in Windows XP/Vista/7 because IE 8.0 (Windows XP) and IE 9.0 (Vista/7) lack the ability to check spelling.
However, IE 10.0 for Windows 7 and 8 does include spell-checking for the first time, and that may dissuade a good number of users from using alternatives. And unlike IE 8.0 and 9.0, IE 10.0 is WAY more HTML 5.0 compliant, too.
What does it make it, for you? WebKit-only?
Note that it sniffs for WebKit and if it doesn't find it tells the user to go download Chrome.
A brand new, fresh install of Windows of any OS variation going to google.com will see a "get chrome" button.
The user will be using Internet Explorer because it was installed when Windows was. The home page will default to a Microsoft site like MSN or Bing then the user will have to navigate to Google (by actually typing something in), click on the Chrome is great button, download it and run it after accepting a warning that files from the internet my be dangerous. It is hard to argue Google has some kind of unfair advantage here. If people are actually clicking on what amounts to another ad it shows that they like Google.
More rambling by me To go even further the Internet Explorer icon doesn't get removed. Changing the default browser doesn't have much of an effect since most people are likely to get online by open the browser directly. Hmmm, I wonder how many people download Chrome and use it because it defaults to opening on Google's homepage. Given that most people don't know how to change their homepage I could see people opening Chrome just because they think it is a link straight to Google search and with IE they have to type it in each time.
So to prevent that, grab the number from:
Okay good idea, but here's the problem. If you're trying to make an alternative product, you want it to be easy to find yes? Otherwise you're making something that only geeks would use. Isn't the point of making something to distribute it and gain recognition for it?
Om, nomnomnom...
actually the chromium builds are all located here: http://chromium-build.appspot.com/p/chromium/console but i think it is too technical for average users to know how to use it and d/l stuff from there...Maybe that's what Google wants you to go back to d/l chrome instead?
> 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
What's wrong with Scriptno? https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/oiigbmnaadbkfbmpbfijlflahbdbdgdf
Semantics is the gravity of abstraction