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Google Says There Are Now 2 Billion Active Chrome Installs (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: Google is hosting its Chrome Dev Summit today. There hasn't been a lot of news out of the event, but one number that stood out in today's keynote by Chrome Engineering VP Darin Fisher was that there are now 2 billion Chrome installs in active use across desktop and mobile. This is the first time Google has shared this number. Sadly, Google didn't announce any new user numbers for Chrome today. The latest stat for active Chrome users remains at 1 billion -- a number Google shared in April. While this number is surely higher today than it was six months ago, the company decided to focus on the number of active browser install today. "I wanted to make this point that there are a lot of Chrome browsers out there," Fisher said. "What's exciting about this to you all is that when you think about building for the web, there' a lot of browsers out there that implement the latest web standards -- that implement the latest and greatest web features." The report also notes that Google has a total of seven products with more than a billion users: Gmail, Android, Chrome, Maps, Search, YouTube and Google Play Store.
Of course there are. Chrome is the new above-board "virus" being shoved on everyone as unwanted bundle-ware along with anything they download, then making itself the default browser (worked so great for IE, right?). Then once it's on there, it arrogantly thinks that "OH I HEAR YOU WANT TO RUN CHROME, OK I'M GOING TO TAKE OVER YOUR COMPUTER ALL TO MYSELF", spawns a dozen processes or so and proceeds to suck up all available RAM and CPU. This is not platform specific (we're seeing it on Macs and Windows) and as a result people are switching back to Firefox because they're tired of the horrible performance and Chrome taking over the whole computer (hey Google, computers are meant to multitask).
I personally have never had a good taste about Chrome but I'm seeing tons of previous Chrome fanboys coming to the Firefox side now. *shrug*
they're also obviously counting every single platform from mobile, to tablets to desktops and laptops. and every install on every platform that has communicated with google servers since some arbitrary cut-off date.. since chrome installs services that constantly talk to google's servers, that's pretty much every single install that exists on a working device, regardless of whether or not its actually used, and regardless of HOW that software got installed in the first place (remember that google uses spyware like distribution tactics, among other things)..
Billion as in the same order of magnitude as the human population on Earth.
Inheritance is the sincerest form of nepotism.
I wonder how many unique users of Chrome though? Google can likely have a fairy good idea of that by the nagging you get to log into it when installing it.
I'm personally responsible for about 16 instances of Chrome across various devices, virtual machines, etc. in my house. Others may not have quite so many instances, but I'd guess that most users have at least two instances of it (computer, phone).
That's what I think they have to, and also, by active, do they mean people who took the trouble of explicitly downloading them to their laptop or iPhone, as opposed to getting them preloaded on an Android phone or tablet? I think the 2 billion is the summation of all devices, not 2 billion people.
How do they know that Chrome has 2 billion active installs? Is it because Chrome always phones home?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
YUP! I have it installed on every machine I work on, yet use it on none except for extreme situations. Same goes for IE and Firefox. None are default. None get daily usage, only there for testing purposes and debugging things. My daily driver? Opera, AKA Chromium Stable.
Quick quiz: which one of the following billion user apps has an incredibly stupid name?
When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a thumb.
The one and only reason that Google can claim this is because every Android device comes with Chrome installed and you can't remove it. Sure, you can install Firefox or some other browser instead, but even if you never ever use Chrome, it will still be there, wasting bandwidth on updates that will never get used. And, even if you select another browser as your default, you'll still get asked which browser to use every time you click on a link in an email, with Chrome selected instead of whatever you've picked as your default. (And, the checkbox to make it the default will also be checked.)
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Although this is really a SFW* factoid they gave, it is refreshing to see that they are apparently only counting installs that actually get used. I know some companies claim any system that may have had their product installed on it (even if that product got removed and replaced with something else right away) as part of their numbers.
* SFW = So Freakin' What (or So Fuckin' What, if you are not afraid of the fuck word)
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Chrome has come installed on every Android device I've owned, 3 of which are still in active use. The devices, that is. As for the *active* Chrome installations--if that means "actually used for browsing the Web"--make that 2 billion minus 3, please.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Spasibo, Vladimir!
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
You mean websites don't really need to know my battery level?
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
If you like Chrome use Chromium instead. At least you can turn off the spyware misfeatures.
It is not feasible to stop Chrome from calling home. It intentionally sends data to Google's main website URL to prevent anyone from trying.
I thought 'active' meant the browser had to be separately downloaded i.e. applicable only to Windows and iOS
Yess !! I am totally agreed with it.