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Microsoft Browser Usage Drops 50% As Chrome Soars (networkworld.com)
An anonymous reader quotes Network World's report about new statistics from analytics vendor Net Applications:
From March 2015 to February 2017, the use of Microsoft's IE and Edge on Windows personal computers plummeted. Two years ago, the browsers were run by 62% of Windows PC owners; last month, the figure had fallen by more than half, to just 27%. Simultaneous with the decline of IE has been the rise of Chrome. The user share of Google's browser -- its share of all browsers on all operating systems -- more than doubled in the last two years, jumping from 25% in March 2015 to 59.5% last month. Along the way, Chrome supplanted IE to become the world's most-used browser...
In the last 24 months, Mozilla's Firefox -- the other major browser alternative to Chrome for macOS users -- has barely budged, losing just two-tenths of a percentage point in user share. [And] in March 2015, an estimated 69% of all Mac owners used Safari to go online. But by last month, that number had dropped to 56%, a drop of 13 percentage points -- representing a decline of nearly a fifth of the share of two years prior.
In the last 24 months, Mozilla's Firefox -- the other major browser alternative to Chrome for macOS users -- has barely budged, losing just two-tenths of a percentage point in user share. [And] in March 2015, an estimated 69% of all Mac owners used Safari to go online. But by last month, that number had dropped to 56%, a drop of 13 percentage points -- representing a decline of nearly a fifth of the share of two years prior.
Actually, they used their quasi-monopoly on search to push their browser. Anytime you visit Google with a non-Chrome browser it tries to push Chrome on you.
In years past to use some web based software supplied by vendor you HAD to use IE or it wouldn't work.
Since Google chose to split their code base off from WebKit, my fear is we'll start seeing this with Chrome if it becomes too ubiquitous.
I understand that the stated reason for doing this was to drive development of web standards forward... but, back in the day, Microsoft used similar language. It's not like anyone ever says "we're doing everything we can to force you to remain within our control".
#DeleteChrome
I decided to RTFA. The article is actually about the 13% decline in Safari's user share on Mac - the IE/Edge plummet is just mentioned as a small side note. But the submitter spun it to be about MS's browser.
Interestingly, the article says we can't know for certain what the users who've abandoned Safari have switched to... which seems odd. Sure, some Slashdotters may switch user agent strings... but it's hard to argue that average users do. So it should be a simple matter to determine if Chrome's Mac user base has increased commensurately.
#DeleteChrome
Although Edge supports extensions, and Chrome extensions can be easily ported, Microsoft still hasn't fully opened submissions to their extension gallery. At the moment you have to be invited to submit, and there are currently only 23 listed.
What's left? Chrome.
I recently switched to Pale Moon and I gotta say, I like it a lot. No memory leaks and the few key add-ons I need are there (NoScipt and Adblock).
Just cruising through this digital world at 33 1/3 rpm...