Chrome Browser Seems Destined to be World’s Most Popular

[HappinessNow]

Article published today: May 4, 2011

New figures show that Internet Explorer has slipped to only a 55% worldwide market share — but the bigger, hidden news is that Chrome may eventually become the most-used browser in the world.
Computerworld reports that the latest figures from Net Applications show that in April IE dropped eight-tenths of a percentage, to 55.1%, a new low for IE.

This is merely a continuation of the browser’s long, slow, steady decline. The news wasn’t good for Firefox, either, whose market share fell two-tenths of a percentage point to 21.6%. Firefox has been steadily declining as well.
But Safari and Chrome were both up in April. Safari was up five-tenths of a point to 7.2%, and Chrome was up four-tenths of a percentage point, to 11.9%.

What’s the common denominator here? Mobile. Safari is the default browser for iOS, and Chrome is the default for Android. (Actually, the Android browser isn’t exactly precise Google code, but it’s close enough, and syncs with the computer versions of Chrome, for example.)
Mobile Internet use will eventually dwarf computer use. The New York Times reports, for example, that:


“Google says mobile searches are growing as quickly as Web searches were at the same stage in the company’s early days, and they are up sixfold in the last two years.”

Android will clearly dominate the mobile market, and has already begun to do so. One more piece of evidence: A recent Nielsen survey shows that 50% of those who recently bought a smartphone bought an Android one, versus 25% for iOS, and 7% for Windows Phone 7 and Windows mobile. And only 7% of those who plan to buy a smartphone will opt for Windows Phone 7.
With Chrome gaining market share on PCs and Macs, and IE and Firefox losing market share, and with Chrome eventually dominating mobile browsing, one day Chrome will likely become the world’s most popular browser. It may not come soon, but expect it to arrive eventually.http://goo.gl/atpcv

[sdowney717]

And only 7% of those who plan to buy a smartphone will opt for Windows Phone 7.

MS business plan should sue Android to either stop the innovation, get monetary awards from nuisance patent trolling or increase market share for windows phone 7 by litigation intimidation.
Unless MS bears its weight and money on this, the handheld market is going to keep propelling Apple and Android and Windows is going to be a minor bit player.

[Lucradia]

MS business plan should sue Android to either stop the innovation, get monetary awards from nuisance patent trolling or increase market share for windows phone 7 by litigation intimidation.
Unless MS bears its weight and money on this, the handheld market is going to keep propelling Apple and Android and Windows is going to be a minor bit player.

Windows 8 will be on tablets next year though :V

[_outlawed_]

And we still have yet to know what Google exactly did to Chrome to make it "superior" to Firefox.

I'd rather trust open source Firefox over closed source Chrome, in which case Google is known for their rather...invasive and unsettling privacy concerns.

I know that might sound hypocritical to some of you, considering I use Windows 7 and Ubuntu both, but from a vantage point I'd rather trust Microsoft over Google.

I'm going to keep using Firefox until it ceases to exist, but we will most likely all be dead before then so...

[HappinessNow]

Windows 8 will be on tablets next year though :V...but will anybody want to buy a Windows 8 tablet over the iPad or the army of Android tablets to be released this year or even the Chrome OS tablets in development?

[HappinessNow]

And we still have yet to know what Google exactly did to Chrome to make it "superior" to Firefox.


I don't think the article ever said that Chrome was superior to Firefox only that it is growing in use faster then Firefox while:


Firefox has been steadily declining...


along with IE of course.

oh, and if you are paranoid about privacy concerns then don't ever go online, believe me your internet provider has more of a tendency to "keep an eye on you".

[3Miro]

Replacing IE with Chrome would be a small improvement, but only a small one. Chrome is still closed and there is no reason for a closed browser. Both Firefox and Chromium are open and I don't see any advantage of Chrome over Chromium (Chrome is a bit faster than FF, although not that much faster than FF 4).

[Fedz]

I got an update yesterday or day before for Chromium (not Chrome) to version 11.0.696.57 (82915) from version 10.0.648.205 (81283) & I've noticed it's way faster.

Btw: Strongly dislike FF & (Google) Chrome, more the latter than the former :)

[TeoBigusGeekus]

Turns out 11.10 might have chromium as default instead of ff.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTM5NA

[NCLI]

Turns out 11.10 might have chromium as default instead of ff.
http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=OTM5NA
There will definitely be a discussion, but there will also be a Thunderbird vs. Evolution discussion, which we've had for years now :p

I'm not saying it won't happen, just that the fact that it will be discussed doesn't mean much other than that someone thought it should be taken up for debate.

[RiceMonster]

Wouldn't eight tenths of a percent be within the margin of error? Just saying.

[aguafina]

Windos Tablet or phone does not sound cool, that's why they're doing so dreadfully bad,
when people buy a PC they get what is given to them and that's Windows, given the choice they want something cool and go for Apple or Android.
The Apple shop in London is jam packed all day every day.

[Fedz]

Windos Tablet or phone does not sound cool, that's why they're doing so dreadfully bad,
when people buy a PC they get what is given to them and that's Windows, given the choice they want something cool and go for Apple or Android.
The Apple shop in London is jam packed all day every day.
Isn't Nokia (mobile/cellular) going Windows way! Yikes!

Shame really cos Symbian I love so bang goes my Nokia choice when my 18 month contract is up for renew this August, I'll have to go Android - dislike Apple products lol

[madmax75]

Isn't Nokia (mobile/cellular) going Windows way! Yikes!

Shame really cos Symbian I love so bang goes my Nokia choice when my 18 month contract is up for renew this August, I'll have to go Android - dislike Apple products lol

+1.

Yeah, my present Nokia phone will most probably be my last Nokia phone. It is sad that they didn't go with Android. Which I will be doing sometime at the end of this year or early next year.

[BrokenKingpin]

And we still have yet to know what Google exactly did to Chrome to make it "superior" to Firefox.

I'd rather trust open source Firefox over closed source Chrome, in which case Google is known for their rather...invasive and unsettling privacy concerns.

They made a better browser, plain an simple. Firefox has gotten pretty bad over the last couple years (FF4 seems to be turning things around though).

Chromium is open source, so you could use that over Chrom to avoid the Google privacy issues.

[NormanFLinux]

I think that is partly due to the fact every one is waiting for Google Chrome OS... which is the Google browser as part of a "cloud computing" experience.

[HappinessNow]

I think that is partly due to the fact every one is waiting for Google Chrome OS... which is the Google browser as part of a "cloud computing" experience.?

[speedwell68]

Personally I much prefer the Firefox experience over that of Chrome or Chromium. It seems to me that people are confusing faster with better. When people compare browsers they always seem to mention speed first, whereas in fact the first consideration should be usability. FF4 is only fractionally slower than the Chromium based browsers, but is much more usuable.

[speedwell68]

Thunderbird for the win!

+1.

I think that if the Ubuntu developers want it to hit the mainstream in a big way they should be giving priority to cross platform applications that user who are migrating from Windows might already be familiar with. Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, VLC and so on.

[dniMretsaM]

I've used Chromium, and I have to say it's nowhere near as good as Firefox. Chrome is missing a lot of good add-ons that FF has (DownThemAll for instance). It's also missing a lot of small things that FF has (like the option to set images as your background). Sure it's a bit faster, but the fact that FF has more features/add-ons (and Firefox 4 is much faster than 3.6 so there is less of a gap in speed) will definitely keep me on Firefox.

[ZarathustraDK]

+1.

I think that if the Ubuntu developers want it to hit the mainstream in a big way they should be giving priority to cross platform applications that user who are migrating from Windows might already be familiar with. Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, VLC and so on.

^This

Take the best of the breed and make it look like it belong. There has been way too much Gnome-bundled software over the years, chosen only because it integrates well with GTK-themes.

I wish we had a sub-forum for each standard-application-type. There is a sea of valuable info, polls and feedback in all those X vs Y-threads, they just tend to quickly get jumbled up and forgotten in the café.

[speedwell68]

^This

Take the best of the breed and make it look like it belong. There has been way too much Gnome-bundled software over the years, chosen only because it integrates well with GTK-themes.

This. Frankly I have never used Evolution and I am never likely to. When I converted to Ubuntu full time, in 2006, I was pleased to see that I could import my Firefox and Thunderbird profiles directly from Windows and carry on where I left off, it this kind of seemless transition that people want. Personally I have nver used Gwibber either, I use Tweetdeck. I know that Tweetdeck is a proprietary app, but I can use it cross platform on my Ubuntu box at home, my Ubuntu netbook on the move, a smartphone and on my Windows desktop at work.

New users aren't going to know what Chromium is.

[aguafina]

+1.

I think that if the Ubuntu developers want it to hit the mainstream in a big way they should be giving priority to cross platform applications that user who are migrating from Windows might already be familiar with. Firefox, Thunderbird, GIMP, VLC and so on.


None of them apps are Windowscentric but rather 3rd party apps that people may opt for.

[Fedz]

It's just taken me an age & loads of web searching just to change default search engine in Firefox with my own search engine - that's a disaster :rolleyes:

[speedwell68]

None of them apps are Windowscentric but rather 3rd party apps that people may opt for.

Exactly they are cross platform. They are famous brand names that people know. There is a guy I work with that was having problems with his wife's laptop, an old HP with a single core Celeron and 1GB of memory, it was running slow and crashing a lot. He has lost the recovery discs and was going to buy a new laptop. One installation of Lucid later and the thing is performing like new. He is quite computer savvy and was already using apps like Firefox, Thunderbird and VLC. His wife was as worried as hell that she wouldn't be able to use it as she didn't know any Linux programs, but her fears were baseless as I simply migrated her Thunderbird and FF profiles across from the old Windows install.

By all means give people the option to try Linux only apps and make them aware of them, but if a distro is going to make it into the mainstream one of the main priorities is making sure it is well marketed and this will be made easier promoting already well known open source apps.

[Fedz]

+1 to the above.

I was already using open source windows software on Windows when I moved to Ubuntu so to me everything is exactly the same except ... easier tbh
Same everything plus with that everything ported without a problem.

Chromium (same extensions, theme, bookmarks), Abiword, VLC, Gimp, Truecrypt, Filezilla, GnupG ... even adobe air, Silverlight is Moonlight, same contacts in email, RSS feeds, Usenet newsgroups ... list goes on & on :)

[el_koraco]

FF 6.0 nightly is blazing fast.

[ilovelinux33467]

FF 6.0 nightly is blazing fast.

I just downloaded the nightly and am testing it and yes it does seem extremely fast :D

[el_koraco]

Improvements in Jägermonkey. Seems they're finaly on the right track.

[TacticalApe]

I use firfox and chrome. I switch off randomly.