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.

Comments

Well duh

[sremick]

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*

Re:Well duh

[kosmosik]

> Chrome is the new above-board "virus" being shoved on everyone as unwanted
> bundle-ware along with anything they download,

Hardly everyones. I haven't seen any Chrome bundled with apps on Mac nor Linux, maybe it is a Windows thing but nah... And hardly anything. To be hones last time I've seen Chrome bundled with installer was AFAIR with Avast Antivirus on Windows and it is probably a good thing to include Chrome with AV on Windows since it is way more secure than IE.

> [Chrome performance compared to Fx]

Wow! First time I see somebody complaining about Chrome performance as compared to Fx. For me Fx is a cow by YMMV. Usual complaint about Chrome is Google data policy about users...

Another inflated claim

[techno-vampire]

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.)

Re:Another inflated claim

[swillden]

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.

You can disable it. The original factory-installed version will still be sitting on your read-only data partition, but Android will act as if it doesn't exist. Settings -> Apps -> Chrome -> Disable. You'll get a warning that disabling it may break other apps, but if you have another browser installed, and some app does get broken by Chrome being missing, that app is buggy and you should complain to the app vendor. The whole idea of "intents" is to allow apps to depend on one another without being tightly coupled.

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

If you disable it, it will never be updated.

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.)

Umm, no. Your OEM messed something up if after you've set a different default it continues offering Chrome. And in any case, it can't be offered if you disabled it.

Also, Google is claiming *active* installs, meaning they're measuring installs that actually do get used, so none of what you said actually has any bearing on the article.

Of course, Chrome undoubtedly gets a boost on mobile by already being there, just as IE does on Windows. In both cases lots and lots of users never bother getting anything else. This is probably more true on Android than on Windows these days just because IE was so bad for so long that a lot of users got trained that the first thing you do on a new Windows machine is download Chrome and delete the IE icon. Since Chrome is actually a pretty decent browser on Android, that hasn't happened.