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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?
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...
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.
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
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.
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
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.
They stopped sending cakes to Mozilla when they switched to the fast release model for Firefox, once they realized that they were spending a million a quarter on cakes because of a Firefox version coming out every time someone sneezed.
I believe the same would hold for Chrome as well.
This space for rent.
it weren't designed primarily as an advertising medium that optimises the browser as a vehicle for tracking users.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
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.
Slashdot should have a "level of evil" monitor for major tech companies.
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?
Now who is the most frequent visitor to a small or obscure site? The webmaster!
Hence, most of the StatCounter stats are from the webmaster demography.
That seems like a pretty major jump to make without any evidence. The only time I visit a site I've built is when someone reports a problem. The site owner can update their own content, they don't need me with my fancy Opera to do that.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
> 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.
Those stats are cooked using "geo-weighting":
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/faq.aspx#Country
You might want to this blog, which explains it better:
http://encosia.com/cooking-the-books-is-hard-and-doesnt-help-anyone/
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.
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.
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!
> 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