Want to read Slashdot from your mobile device? Point it at m.slashdot.org and keep reading!

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Chrome Internet Explorer IT

Chrome Is the Third Double-Digit Browser 299

Posted by timothy from the every-day-it-seems-more-normal dept.
An anonymous reader writes "Google's Chrome has taken the 10% market share hurdle, according to Net Applications and is past 15%, according to StatCounter. It is interesting to see that IE is declining at an accelerating pace and IE9 Beta cannot, despite the massive marketing campaign, dent Chrome's growth, while Firefox is holding on to what it has. It almost seems as if IE9 will not be able to turn around the decline of IE."
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.

Chrome Is the Third Double-Digit Browser More

Chrome Is the Third Double-Digit Browser

Comments Filter:

  • Wasn't on purpose (Score:5, Funny)

    by MrEricSir ( 398214 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @09:49PM (#35075452) Homepage

    Studies also show that due to the icon, most Chrome users thought they were downloading a Pokemon application.

  • Seeing, as it is, that I am using Chrome on the mobile appliance I carry around, both Chrome and FFox (ffox being the main) on my notebooks and I have no IE as default browser on the two Windows devices that i still have for business reasons.

  • It deserves so much better than 10%!!!

  • I use Chrome and still come across some sites which have really stupid browser support. The site will support Firefox and Internet Explorer but somehow manages to not support Chrome and doesn't function at all (eg. Microsoft Online Services Admin Centre). It is also annoying when sites use Browser detection and say they only support IE, Firefox or Safari. Stupid!

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Generally speaking, any site that uses browser detection and refuses to support an unknown browser (or specifically refuses Chrome) will not be visited by me. I can understand using browser detection to refuse to support IE6, or perhaps even IE7. Afterall, those two browsers often require work-arounds to display standards-compliant content. But the default assumption should be the a browser is compliant unless it is otherwise known not to be. If you've coded your site in such a way that it can only work

    • What is truly pathetic is the government and university websites that still don't support chrome. Nothing like completing 4 hours of forms just for the last page to flip a shit and say "YOUR NOT ON I E YOU BASTARD" and have to repeat it in a shitty ass browser while freaking out about virii.

      • I have never once filled out a form like that where they didn't clearly specify supported platforms at the beginning, and I've filled out a lot. You reap what you sow, man.

        • Re:Browser support by sites (Score:4, Interesting)

          by ifiwereasculptor ( 1870574 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @01:57AM (#35077060)

          It happens. An airline company had to access my banking account and it only worked in IE. I struggled a little to understand what was going on, since all that I got was a "problem connecting to the banking services - please retry", then called support and the bastards politely told me to fuck off like this:

          -Hi, I'm trying to pay for my ticket and can't. I've tried using Firefox and Chrome.
          -You must use IE.
          -Yeah... I actually don't use Windows. Is there some other way?
          -Click Start, then IE.
          -I'm telling you I can't. Are you telling me there isn't any way that I can buy from you guys if I don't also buy a Windows license that costs more than the plane ticket I'm trying to purchase?
          -Is there anything else I can help you with?

          Then people ask how a reasonable, sane person turns into RMS. Dealing with this sort of crap on a daily basis.

  • And no doubt MS is getting worried about this. I wonder what part of Bing's success is due to it being the default search in IE. If IE loses share then their ability to push Bing also slides.

    It's interesting to note that according to Net Applications stats IE may drop to under 50% market share sometime in the middle of this year.

  • IE9 beta? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by shutdown -p now ( 807394 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @10:06PM (#35075588) Journal

    Why would a beta of the browser stop the transition? It's clearly aimed at web developers and designers for testing, not at general populace. That's also where all the marketing is at. Actual users only see IE8 (if that!), and Chrome, of course, soundly beats it.

    The only way to see if IE9 can turn the tide is to wait until it gets released (and rolled out to Windows Update, at least as optional update).

    If you really want to compare the numbers, how about Chrome beta/dev installs vs IE9 installs?

    • IE9 will only work on 40% of Computers

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Idbar ( 1034346 )
      Well, for starters... Because IE9 is not chrome. But at this pace, I'd say that IE10 is just Chrome in disguise... Those guys in Redmond are brilliant!

  • As a web developer, (Score:5, Insightful)

    by unity100 ( 970058 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @10:09PM (#35075622) Homepage Journal
    im thanking my lucky stars, heavens, whatever god/deities that are present out there, for this day.

    even as of this VERY moment, i am having to battle with standard incompliance of various ie versions (including next ones) and the different 'interpretations' they have of the same fucking pages than other browsers.

    really ... gimme a break ...

    • I would be thankful *IF* chrome actually fixed THEIR noncompliance bugs that they have been sitting on for years.

      • professionally, and business-wise, a noncompliant bug that does not appear on client side, is a bug that client does not worry about, even if s/he knows about it.

  • I switched back to Firefox from Chrome. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Jackie_Chan_Fan ( 730745 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @10:13PM (#35075652)

    I switched back to Firefox from Chrome.

    Chrome is nice, a bit under featured, poor ad blocking (although it has gotten better its still slower and not as good as firefox.

    In general, Firefox is faster than chrome all around. Even on older hardware, Firefox scrolls better than Chrome.

    Firefox's bookmark manager is much nicer. I loved how chrome syncs your bookmarks but now that FireFox has it built in as well, I'm plenty happy.

    Firefox has better color management. Chrome nice but... It still has that slight sluggish feeling about how it renders pages.

    The new Firefox betas are looking and performing very well, so well that I switched back from chrome.

    • Re:I switched back to Firefox from Chrome. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by mTor ( 18585 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @10:53PM (#35076028)

      I too prefer Firefox because I don't trust Google. Chrome sends so much data to Google (every keystroke that you type into OmniBar) and I prefer not to give Google any of my data. Firefox has no such issues.

      Issue with Chrome's ad blocking is that ad blocking in Chrome works by DOM modification and all the ads are downloaded before they're hidden. That also means that all the ad companies have your IP and browser fingerprint as well and that also means that you waste bandwidth downloading ads. Firefox, again, has no such issues because it filters actual requests.

      • To be fair though, Chrome's ad-block extensions do actually block ads from downloading now. For a while they just hid the ads from the viewer. However I still tend to find ad-block faster in firefox. I find that ad-block shows down chrome.

        There is just something about webkit that doesnt scroll very well either. I cant tell what that is, but safari is guilty of the same problem. Firefox has a very nice scroll/render, where as chrome seems more choppy... although not horrible, just not as nice as firefox.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by afidel ( 530433 )
        Actually Chrome has allowed addons to block ads pre-download since the fall. I too was unaware of this but having been informed I tried it out again and I have to say it is FAST now that it doesn't have to deal with DOM manipulation to block ads. The fact that it sync's plugins is very sweet for maintaining the same browsing experience between computers.

    • I switched back to Chrome from Firefox after trying Chrome a while ago. I really like the security features of Chrome, built-in secure pdf reader, sandboxed flash, etc. Flash ships with the browser and auto-updates itself. Its nice when things just work. The inspect elements feature is great for working with CSS. The extensions market for Chrome has exploded lately and IETab just works. I'm not even sure which IETab to use in Firefox, the last time I tried it it became nagware. Chrome is crazy fast too.

      • Chrome is a very nice browser with plenty to offer design wise. I'm a fan, but I do find Firefox to be faster on new and old hardware. It scrolls and renders pages a lot smoother than Chrome has ever done.

        Chrome loads pages fast, but in terms of cpu performance, Firefox seems to perform better.

        It's interesting, I'm comparing them right now, so that I'm pretty accurate in my statements, and I find chrome likes to chug a bit when scrolling back and forth fast... Firefox is smooth as smooth gets. For example C

      • I switched back to Firefox from Chrome after trying to be happy with Chrome for quite some time. I really like how Chrome is snappier on lightweight hardware and I still use it in such conditions, but ad blocking is seriously inadequate and so is script protection, to say nothing of cookie management. Chrome has mediocre support for User Scripts and some scripts can't be made to work on it because of certain things which I believe aren't in Webkit. I've definitely had Flash not work in Chrome and work OK in

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by seifried ( 12921 )
      Uhhh... I find that hard to believe. For anything with large tables, Chrome clobbers Firefox. For anything with JavaScript Chrome really clobbers Firefox. and so on. I run them side by side (quad core, 8 gigs ram, 120 gig SSD) and chrome starts faster, loads pages faster, and is a heck of a lot more stable (one bad app/PDF/etc. and firefox grinds to a halt, all tabs, with chrome you lose only a single tab since they are each a separate process). The only reason I haven't switched to Chrome 100% is because

      • Believe it. :) There's no reason for me to make it up.

        You're right Chrome is very fast to load as a program. Same here, Quad core 8 gigs, except, 6TB Sata raids, no SSD, GTX 470, 30inch monitor... at 2560x1600. Thats a lot of pixels to scroll nice and smooth. Firefox 4 scrolls better with less cpu usage, and thats even with smooth scroll turned off in Firefox.

        No idea why that is, but thats how it is. I've always found webkit to scroll a little chunkier than firefox, be it chrome or safari.

        Chrome's page load

    • I will give Firefox another try then. Lately Chrome has been getting slower and slower, even after I clear my downloads and history. The more features they add, the bigger the hit I have noticed. I do not care about any of the new 'Apps'. I never cared for many of the 'extensions' except some basic ad-blocking. Its getting bloated and I want something that performs better.

      One thing that still confuses me. When I launch one Chrome window, I have about 3 or 4 chrome.exe applications running. Yet if

      • This. I have the version pinned to 5.0.342.7 beta in Ubuntu. I think that was a good version. They're adding more and more cruft in Chromium (which I haven't pinned), and also taking stuff away which was useful (the Go button, the separate Page and Application menus).

        I'm doubtful about the integrated Flash or PDF reader.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by msobkow ( 48369 )

      Firefox is my default browser, but I go to one website that has some sort of video banner ad that throws Firefox into fits. I use Chrome to view that one website, because it correctly renders the video instead of freaking out. So kudos to Google for a technically superior implementation of video handling..

    • I switched back to Firefox from Chrome.

      Chrome is nice, a bit under featured, poor ad blocking (although it has gotten better its still slower and not as good as firefox.

      In general, Firefox is faster than chrome all around. Even on older hardware, Firefox scrolls better than Chrome.

      Same here. On older hardware, Chrome is incredibly slow (even with Flashblock + ABP) compared to Firefox... not to mention it uses exactly as much RAM (lower RAM usage was the main reason I was contemplating switching away from Firefox). So slow, in fact, that a lot of Flash video stutters in Chrome while being smooth in Firefox...

      Any ideas why?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Omestes ( 471991 )

      The new Firefox betas are looking and performing very well, so well that I switched back from chrome.

      The betas are part of the reason I switched to Chrome/ium. All of the the betas have been dog slow, ugly, and buggy as hell (at least on my computer). In the beginning it was the requisite extension churn, but now that most of my extensions are supported it still is slower than hell and extremely buggy. And ugly, did I forget to mention ugly? Mozilla forgot what made Firefox nice, it was light and simple

  • I've tried Chrome, FF, and IE... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by unitron ( 5733 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @10:26PM (#35075782) Homepage Journal

    ...and this new version of Slashdot looks horrible in all of them, and doesn't work as well as the previous version in any of them.

    • Err? (Score:2)

      by cartman ( 18204 )

      IMO this version of slashdot is vastly better than the last one. I'm surprised that you liked slash 2.0 which (IMO) was far worse than any other version.

      • At least in the last version I could search my own comment history. Now that's broken. And when I try to revisit comments to look at replies, I have to expand everything from zero. That's fun. And most of the comment children are hidden even if they are at a threshold to be abbreviated unless you expand all the comment parents. So I've changed the full threshold to 2. Sorry, version 3 sucks ass. 2 might have been slow and buggy, but it didn't completely inconvenience me by design. 3 does.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by unitron ( 5733 )

        Didn't say I liked it. I just dislike it less than the new version.

  • According to the charts, IE declined 10 points in 2009. has been stable in 2010, and is showing a blip which may or may not be a trend.

    Firefox has been suck a 20-something percent for 2 years.

    Chrome has been growing for until spring of 2010, when it took a nosedive to low even negative growth. This correlates to IE market loss, so it is reasonable to suggest that chrome users are abandoning IE. The numbers also suggest that users are unsatisfied with Chrome.

    The growth numbers also suggest that Saf

    • Re:Realistic analysis of he daa (Score:5, Interesting)

      by tecker ( 793737 ) on Tuesday February 01, 2011 @11:05PM (#35076106) Homepage

      This correlates to IE market loss, so it is reasonable to suggest that chrome users are abandoning IE.

      The simple fact could be that Chrome does not require administrator privileges to install. Users at offices where we are not given admin rights can install Chrome over IE and use it without slogging through a helpdesk ticket for something IT deems unnecessary. This may account for the growth we see as users are looking for more freedom and the bells and whistles a more modern browser with the ability to install extensions without needing better permissions.

      Perhaps we are seeing a leveling out as those who want a different browser are finally being exhausted and entering a "long tail phase".

      • My sister switched because at work, her draconian IT wouldn't give her admin privs and she needed to get away from IE (seriously if an IT dept isn't pre-installing a non-IE browser, they're just doing their users a disservice)... not even an exemption or "I'll install it for you".

        So she installed Chrome and is quite happy with it on her work laptop. I have no idea if she's switched from Firefox on her home Mac, but she spends most of computer time at work anyway...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by jamienk ( 62492 )

      Your analysis seems messed-up to me. I assume you are referring to this chart http://www.conceivablytech.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/browser2.jpg [conceivablytech.com] Chrome's rate of growth might have slowed a bit, but it still grew by what looks like 10%. IE has had negative growth pretty consistently. Safari's growth rate seems to be much lower than Chrome's. Since your understanding of the data seems so far off the mark, I doubt your conclusions are accurate.

    • From this is seems likely that MS can kill Chrome simply by delivering a competitive browser, without the tricks and subterfuge used to kill Navigator.

      I think you underestimate the effort that has gone into the open-source project Webkit (the engine for Chrome and Safari) and the corresponding javascript engines (Chrome V8, Safari Nitro).

      Microsoft has sat on it's laurels for years, ignoring and impeding web standards and reaping monopoly rents on Windows and Office. Now that they can't hold back the innovation, they've got a whole lot of catch-up to do.

  • chrome nearly hit the Double-Digit mark by the end of 2009.. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp/ [w3schools.com]

  • Netscape Navigator had to have had double digit market share. Not to mention NCSA Mosaic. Probably a couple of the early text only browsers had doubt digit share too. At best Chrome is the fifth probably less than that even to reach double digit share. And yes I realize the headline was probably meant to apply only to current browsers. It's fun to be literal :D

  • Every time I read about browser wars, it reminds me of the domestic cars in the 60s/70s .. leading into the 90s and new millenia. More and more, domestic cars lose ground to better made, better driven imports -- and we as consumers see the benefit. All that was really required was a little competition, and education.. domestics will get better slightly, then hit bankruptcy, then come out of bankruptcy with a viable product. If we transpose that onto the browser wars, MS will have a decent product in abo

  • The question is what happens after 2011 (Score:3)

    by Kjella ( 173770 ) on Wednesday February 02, 2011 @01:25PM (#35080830) Homepage

    Quoting WP:

    A footnote in Mozilla's 2006 financial report states "Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006, however Google renewed the contract until November 2008 and has now renewed the contract through 2011.[8] Approximately 85% of Mozillaâ(TM)s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract."

    The financial FAQ [mozilla.org] dated November 18, 2010 says:

    What is the status of the organization's contract with Google?

    We have had a productive relationship with Google since 2004 and that relationship remains healthy. To date, we have renewed our contract three times, in 2005, 2006 and 2008. The current version extends through 2011.

    So through 2011 Mozilla has a very good deal. But then Google didn't have a browser of their own and desperately needed Mozilla to break the IE monopoly. I suspect that these negotiations will go quite differently. I'm sure the deal will be extended but I doubt the terms will be anywhere near as favorable as they have been. Google has seen how easily they can now push their own browser into the market, they don't "need" Firefox that much anymore. And from a strict business point of view, where would they go? Bing? Yeah, I'm sure the open source community would love Microsoft as their default search engine. Not to mention that currently Chrome has targeted the IE holdouts. If they go their separate ways, Google will do their best to win Firefox users too. I'd put good money on the browser market looking completely changed in 2-3 years.

Slashdot Top Deals

THEGODDESSOFTHENETHASTWISTINGFINGERSANDHERVOICEISLIKEAJAVELININTHENIGHTDUDE

Close