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Chrome Passes 25% Market Share, IE and Firefox Slip

An anonymous reader writes: In April 2015, we saw the naming of Microsoft Edge, the release of Chrome 42, and the first full month of Firefox 37 availability. Now we're learning that Google's browser has finally passed the 25 percent market share mark. Hit the link for some probably unnecessarily fine-grained statistics on recent browser trends. Have your browser habits shifted recently? Which browsers do you use most often?

18 of 240 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Chrome - the web browser that's added as bloatw by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Unlike all the others? The most infamous such case was that of Microsoft and Internet Explorer.

                          http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U....
                         

  2. bad statistics by geoskd · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Why is it that when I look at wikipedia , they show all the various counters more or less in agreement, except netapplications which vastly overcounts IE and undercounts Chrome, android and safari? Why is it that of all the various counters netapplications is the one most often quoted, even though they appear to be using a bad methodology.

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    1. Re:bad statistics by benjymouse · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Why is it that when I look at wikipedia , they show all the various counters more or less in agreement, except netapplications which vastly overcounts IE and undercounts Chrome, android and safari?

      Maybe because Net Applications is the only counter that tries to correct for known skewed sampling. Net Applications uses CIA internet usage data (how much of the population in each country has access to the Internet) to estimate absolute numbers for each country based on the measures distribution and the "Internet" population number. Net Applications is perfectly honest and upfront about this.

      The other counters just report whatever stats has been collected. They also are perfectly honest and upfront about this.

      Both correcting and not correcting may leave errors. Be your own judge.

      But there's a perfectly good explanation as to *why* the numbers seem not to agree: They do not even claim to illustrate the same thing. Net Applications tries to create a number for "true" global distribution (and risk errors), the others do not even claim to compute such a number. In theory you could take the numbers from, say statcounter, by country and extrapolate the absolute number per country, sum them up by browser and calculate a number similar to net app. Could be interesting to see.

      Also, be aware that there is also great popential for skewed demographics between the counters, not to mention the fact that Net Applications tries to measure unique visitors (discarding repeat visitors within a month) while most of the others just report page impressions. If for instance users of Chrome are more active on the 'net than users of IE, chrome would have a bigger share of page impressions than they would of unique visitors. There is no "right" in this: It all depends on the question you ask: If the Q is "which browser is the most popular?" you would look at unique visitors. If the Q is "which browser is used the most?" you would look at page impressions.

      Why is it that of all the various counters netapplications is the one most often quoted, even though they appear to be using a bad methodology.

      Maybe because they use the *least bad* methodology. The others do not even *pretend* to estimate global usage. They may report what *they* see of usage globally, but none of them claim to know how many users there are in each contry.

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    2. Re:bad statistics by Solandri · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Maybe because Net Applications is the only counter that tries to correct for known skewed sampling.

      They have to correct for skewed sampling because their sample size is so small, especially for non-U.S. sites. Of the big metrics sites:

      StatCounter monitors over 3 million sites (reports page hits)
      W3Counter monitors over 70,000 sites (reports unique visitors per month)
      Net Applications monitors over 40,000 sites (reports unique visitors per month)

      Net Applications is the only one which reports IE still in the lead. Which given the sample sizes I think more calls into question their correcting algorithms than it does StatCounter's sample.

  3. Re:Whichever one . . . by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Informative

    That'd be FF with a slug of extensions like noscript, adblock, ghostery, refcontrol, betterprivacy, maybe some others.

    It's your best bet right now. Not sure if it's still true, but not too long ago the adblock extensions for Chrome would still download the ads, just not display them, which is useless as it still lets the tracking companies see everywhere you go.

  4. Android by AndyCanfield · · Score: 4, Informative

    I used to test compatability between Chrome, Opera, Firefox, and Internet Explorer, as a desktop browser. But now we have one PC and two phones and a tablet, and Chrome is native on all the mobile devices. That's where Firefox is losing to Chrome. Personally I installed Firefox on my Android Tablet, but Chrome still lurks in the background.

    1. Re:Android by Bing+Tsher+E · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I would never use the native browser on Android. That's like just giving up to Google entirely on privacy. I almost always use Firefox and I NEVER log into any Google services on Firefox/Android.

      Just cuz my phone resides in the company town doesn't mean I have to be totally locked in.

  5. Firefox - the new UI is killing marketshare by QuietLagoon · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Firefox's market share has been dropping ever since the new UI was introduced.

    .
    One would think that the Mozilla developers would take their heads out of their collective arse and look at the reality --- the new UI is little more than a Chrome clone, and a poor one at that. If people wanted the new UI, they'd move to the better implementation of it, i.e., Chrome.

    Oh wait, they are moving to Chrome....

  6. Re:Chrome - the web browser that's added as bloatw by narcc · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I've seen it included with CCleaner and Avast. It's a plague.

  7. Re: Chrome - the web browser that's added as bloat by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Most nerds have 2 parents

  8. sudo apt-get install chromium-browser by tepples · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Chromium (which IS open source) apparently has build issues and isn't even in the normal Fedora repos.

    Fedora's fault. In Xubuntu, a Debian derivative, all I have to do is sudo apt-get install chromium-browser.

    And the memory footprint of all browsers is crazy now.

    Is this the fault of the browser or of the sites you visit? Back when sites weren't as image- and script-heavy, like Better MF Website, a graphical browser could actually fit on a 16 MB machine. Nowadays sites are covered with carousels full of high-DPI photos, plus developers think they still need jQuery and all its bloat just to get the site out the door faster.

    I also don't appreciate them throwing unnecessary crap into the browser like the web developer stuff

    Browser developers distribute the debugger with all copies of the browser to keep sites from intentionally detecting a debugger's presence and stopping working if one is found. If everyone has a debugger, the site operator can't block people who want to tinker, learn, and make a site more usable without blocking everyone.

  9. Re:Chrome - the web browser that's added as bloatw by wonkey_monkey · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Seriously, that many people still use IE?!

    Why wouldn't they? It's right there, on their computer, the moment they buy it.

    Forgive them, for they know not what else they can install.

    --
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  10. Chrome is the new IE by Espectr0 · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Some pages only load on it, because startups often require features that are only available on it. The new whatsapp for web comes to mind, at first it was available only for chrome.

    Computer manufacturers often bundle chrome preinstalled.
    In my country Venezuela few people went to download firefox, but venezuelans love google search, so you see ads to upgrade from your old IE 8 to chrome.

    Here are my website's stats (insurance company):
    Chrome (55.31%)
    Firefox (21.87%)
    Internet Explorer (19.00%)

    OS:
    Windows (89.72%)
    Android (4.80%)
    Macintosh (2.57%)
    iOS (1.54%)
    Linux (0.54%)

    Windows versions:
    7 (60.97%)
    XP (29.26%)
    8.1 (6.15%)
    8 (2.33%)

  11. Re:Chrome - the web browser that's added as bloatw by Dog-Cow · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Forgive them for being pragmatic instead of dogmatic. Forgive them for using a perfectly good browser that's preinstalled instead of wading into some obscure nerd-war against Microsoft. In other words, forgive them for being normal people.

  12. Re:Chrome - the web browser that's added as bloatw by Antique+Geekmeister · · Score: 5, Insightful

    It's also often a corporate standard, especially for companies and their clients with older, Windows specific software tools. And many proxies are configured to lie about the web client they are proxying for, in order to provide access to upstream websites which demand IE. There are many examples, such as:

            http://unix.stackexchange.com/...

  13. Re:Chrome - the web browser that's added as bloatw by tompaulco · · Score: 4, Interesting

    the browserchoice bullshit in europe expired at the end of last year... so all non-microsoft browsers, like firefox, lost that free exposure... so no os default like windows, no pay-for-installs distribution like chrome, means firefox falls. not surprising

    So from a capitalist perspective, Firefox is the number one browser, because Firefox is the most frequently chosen browser for people who on purpose install a particular browser.

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  14. Re:Firefox by tompaulco · · Score: 5, Funny

    CSS defines 1px not as a hardware pixel but as 1/2688 of the distance from the eye to the display

    I just tested this on my system and it didn't work. I backed off from the display about 5 feet and the font did not change at all.

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    If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
  15. Re:I would use any browser that offers the followi by tompaulco · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Adblock Edge, Ghostery, HTTPS Everywhere, NoScript.

    That's all I want, and to not have the interface shift around every version.

    And a menu bar on the top, please.

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    If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.