Google Chrome has 20% global market share | Hacker News Reader

Google Chrome has 20% global market share

thenextweb.com

76 pointsjoejohnson71 comments

Isn't the bigger news here that IE has dropped below 50% market share (dramatically) for the first time in over a decade? It's dominance is kind of over.

The IE team need to implement what Firefox & Chrome (to some effects) does. Firefox & Chrome constantly bug you when theres new update - if you keep ignoring Firefox's it starts asking you to update before it even opens.

Why is this important?

Well a lot of people still use IE6 & have finally upgraded to IE7 however, we're on IE9 now with IE10 in test drive mode. These users aren't tech savvy individuals etc who think to 'upgrade' to the latest version, so when they hear about Firefox/Chrome etc - they compare it to their current browser IE6/7 etc and decide that IE sucks so they switch over despite the fact that IE hs considerably improved recently.

Disclosure: I'm a Firefox User.

That's not quite correct.

Firefox constantly bugs you to upgrade and it's annoying because it does it when it starts up. Why is it starting up? Because I want to use it. Not the right time to upgrade.

Chrome just automatically updates itself, which is a MUCH better user experience (IMHO).

As for IE6/7 users, I would say they're largely using it at work where they have no choice.

I agree, I really like the automatic updating that Chrome uses.

I think that both Firefox and IE will eventually change to that model also. It gets out security patches more quickly, ensures that most everyone is using the latest renderer, has the latest features, and best of all doesn't nag me about updates.

There are definitely disadvantages to automatic updates, but for me personally I find the advantages too tempting to go back.

I believe starting with Fx5 the updater will now automatically apply updates as Chrome does.

sigh - the end users of the application I'm working on use 70%-90% IE depending on the platform. I wish this would change, but I doubt it as IE still is a major player in the enterprise market.

I guess I'm luckily in that at my work, WebKit (Safari+Chrome) represents 60% of the visitors, with the rest being split among Firefox (20%) and IE (10%, which we don't even bother testing for)

I can't tell numbers but our perception is the same. From these people, who are educated enough to pay for our service? Haha

Anyway, it works ie7 upwards (tested), but they are getting hard corners and anybody cares.

Very odd, what sector has a majority of Safari/Chrome users? Even general public (non-enterprise) wouldn't skew like that.

Anything aimed at technologists (e.g. this website), or any site aimed at Apple users/developers.

Anything tablet-centric?

My QrCode app (60% from France) 10% IE 30% Chrome/Safari 60% FireFox

iPhone camera app with hosted pages for twitter sharing

The great thing about IE being now a minority browser is that web developers can now say "Oh you want IE6/7/8 support? Oh, that's a minority browser that doesn't support recent things, we can't do that/will charge lots more/etc."

Which means we can finally change from text/html to application/xhtml+xml. This way IE8 and earlier users will get a download message, and you won't have to worry about polyglot/Appendix C anymore.

Minority? Sure, if compared to every other browser. But in that respect, surely every browser is a minority browser?

No, IE/IE6 used to be a majority browser. It used to have 80%+ of the browser share. You could not refuse it. Now, you can.

I think the phrase you're looking for is "plurality browser".

"The Enterprise" operates at a glacial pace and has been holding back innovation on the web. "The Enterprise" is the reason why 10% of Internet users are still using IE6. I'm glad Mozilla is ignoring the Enterprise.

Target a different market, or at least charge significantly more so you can afford to hire somebody else to do it.

I don't understand Google's game here. I thought Mozilla was being showered with cash from Google? If Google is now betting on Chrome, are they going to continue supporting Mozilla? Mozilla is a pretty small-budgeted non-profit and I think they rely heavily on Google's support.

My understanding is that the money that Google forks over to Mozilla is simply to keep Google as the browser's default search engine, not to sustain Firefox as a competing browser. If Google ceased that "funding", I'm sure some other search engine would step up to the plate.

(Note: I've got no sources for this; just a cursory understanding.)

MS has tried and will try again to pry this spot from Google for their own engine Bing.

I would bet that Google wouldn't let this happen unless Chrome superceded Firefox's market share by a very significant margin -- but then again, the asking bid price for the default search engine is probably directly proportional to Firefox's market share, so at that point, why wouldn't Google hang on to the privilege (it wouldn't cost much).

Does Opera have a default search engine?

Yes, Opera has a default search engine. In fact Opera is very good at monetizing that, they basically get all search engines to bid for it.

With much smaller market share than Firefox, Opera still makes a lot of money from the default search engine.

The money Google pays Mozilla is a split of the ad revenue. Google keeps renewing the contract because it's profitable for Google! They also don't want 25% of the web switching to use a different default search provider.

I know a lot of people in the Green Party here in Germany who deliberately use Firefox because they deem it to be the most politically correct browser. My impression is that a lot of them neither realize that Firefox is indeed primarily sponsored by Google (which they consider evil), nor that Chrome/Chromium is open source, just as Firefox. They prefer Firefox for touchy-feely, not technical reasons.

So there's a market niche for a browser which comes from a sort-of neutral entity, and I think Google recognizes that and that's why they continue to pour money into Mozilla. Mozilla looks like a neutral entity, dedicated to the good, while in fact it's almost a wholly-owned subsidiary of Google.

There's a little bit of truth to it. As far as I know, Mozilla is not actually directed to do anything by Google in exchange for the money. I'm sure if they had too many missteps that Google would begin reducing their funding, but in general they don't have profit as a driving factor in development and Chrome still does.

For example, it took a very long time for any really effective adblock extension available in Chrome, and (this has likely been fixed) for a while even when it blocked ads it actually still loaded them so the ad producers couldn't tell difference.

It was because of technical limitations in the capabilities of chrome extensions. Considering adblock plus has nearly double the #2 most used firefox extensions, and nearly 6x the number of users as the #3 most use firefox extension, it seems like the design for extensions should almost be done specifically with enabling adblock in mind.

I'm no conspiracy theorist and I use chrome, but it seems to me that at least in the above case, Google put their bottom line as an advertising company above what the users wanted or what made the best browser experience. Not that it is too much of a bad thing, but I think saying that Google has the same kind of control over the direction of Firefox is silly.

I'm sure you could find plenty of charities that are nearly entirely funded by Microsoft's Charity branch or something, and I'm sure those charities don't go around badmouthing Microsoft but they don't exactly take orders from them either.

I don't think you understand their motives. Yes Mozilla takes money from Google, it does not make Mozilla Google does it? Mozilla has no share holders, no one to report to, and certainly they do not report to Google. Google pays Mozilla for the default Google search page index and if no one would load that page anymore then Mozilla would get no money.

Do you think Google also own every single adsense user then?

Chromium (NOT CHROME) is open source, but it does not fight for freedom or general public interest. It fights for bringing Google even more control and user base. In fact Chrome woulnd't even exist if it wasn't for Mozilla.

THAT is the reason why they still use Firefox. If Firefox globally falls behind 20% global market share, Mozilla won't have much weight when doing things such as forbidding h264 support, pushing true open standards, etc.

Until and unless I see clear signs of Mozilla behaving at Google's behest, I'm not going to worry.

Google wants strong competition in spaces where they don't make money (in fact this is how all well-run corporations operate)... so throwing some pocket change at one of their "competitors" in the browser space is very good for their business (it keeps other competitors like Microsoft busy).

Google even mentioned (I remember this from 2003 or so) they want competition in their profitable areas (search) since being a monopoly is a) soul-damaging and b) invites government regulation.

Chrome is closed source.

Wow, people from the Green Party really consider Google evil? I wonder what they would say, were Google not to invest in renewable energy, and in reducing energy consumption * ... I can see how some people might be concerned about privacy, but there are many more companies I would consider evil before Google.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Energy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google.org#Renewable_energy

http://www.google.com/green/

*: reducing their energy expenditure is obviously not entirely altruistic. Powering data centers is costly. But still...

Good point. A lot of Green activists also abhor Apple even though Apple's hardware products are best of breed with regards to avoiding eco-hazardous materials (BFRs, arsenic in glass, etc). Their views are obviously not entirely rational. :-)

The enemy of my enemy is my friend. Google would rather prop up Mozilla (all the while making money--it's a split of AdWords money IIRC) than allow Microsoft to gain in search and/or browser market share.

Google pays for the right to be the default homepage & search engine. They aren't paying to support Mozilla they are also doing it, to prevent other SE's (BING) from holding this right - Chrome is a way to reduce this cost as well as, a few other things for Google.

Keep Microsoft and Apple on their toes? The enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Google (nominally) have several mutually aligned interests with Mozilla, namely the Open Web.

> I don't understand Google's game here. I thought Mozilla was being showered with cash from Google? If Google is now betting on Chrome, are they going to continue supporting Mozilla?

The game isn't browsers. Google makes no money from Chrome.

Google makes a ton of money from online ads. For that, it doesn't need to have the top browser. Having a great browser is very useful, but winning the browser war would be self-defeating.

Compare to Microsoft, which also makes no money from IE. But Microsoft actually does want to win the browser war, since marginalizing other browsers is good for Windows (like opposing anything cross-platform is).

Google's game is to make money. Not supporting Mozilla, while Mozilla is useful to it, would be counterproductive. Stopping to support Mozilla would help Chrome's marketshare, but hurt Google's income. I expect Google to continue to do the rational thing here as it always has.

My impression is that Google wants web browsers to be better in general. When people have a fast powerful browser, they're more willing to use rich web apps, and they spend more time online, both of which benefit Google. The primary purpose of chrome is to drive innovation in browsers, and to mitigate the downside risk of some company controlling the whole market and shutting Google out entirely.

The less any one company controls the direction of the Internet, the better off Google is. Firefox fights Internet hegemony just as well as Chrome does.

So the real question is: What did Chrome do differently than Firefox to gain market share that fast?

well for one: advertising on the google home page.

This is why Google+ will surely get a huge audience.

Did what Firefox did to IE? They treated Firefox as a slow, bloated, antiquated browser; a browser too in your face with too many security holes.

In other words they built a better browser, and had the powerhouse that is Google behind it for marketing.

Massive advertising campaigns online and offline.

It's fast.

Oh, and it pop-up blocks, adblocks, and flashblocks.

Periodically I'll get curious about seeing something in Firefox, but before it can load I'll get so bored I kill the process.

There's a new kind of popup that's been eluding all browsers (Chrome, Fx, Safari, IE, etc), i don't know the technical details, but you can watch it visiting ThePirateBay for instance with a couple of clicks at most: it's there.

How do they do it? I don't know, but no actual browser can block it. I'd guess they tie the click as a real user action to trigger the popup or something similar...

Because it is tied to your clicks, most popup injections now happen when you focus on a search-like field or click something, this is not an automated popup that the browser can block, the browser does believe you wanted to open that extra window.

Supposedly this Firefox extension can help defeat them.

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/adblock-plus-...

It's fast.

It does not take ages to start especially.

The question was what Chrome does differently to Firefox. Firefox had adblocking before Chrome ever existed.

IMO Chrome:

- Feels faster

- Looks a bit better

Firefox, on the other hand:

- Has better extensions

- Has a better URL bar search function

I actually use Chrome nowadays. It turns out that the speed and looks of the UI are important enough that I can put up with less polished extensions and a slightly inferior URL bar.

I wish Google would make their URL bar better though. Surely it can't be that hard to match in the middle of URLs rather than just matching from the beginning? :/

Can I add to this that I really don't like Chrome's tab handling in comparison? I'll regularly have 10+ tabs per window open. Firefox? No problem, they scroll and there's a pop-down menu to let me see what they all are at a glance. Chrome does neither of these, squashing my tab bar into unreadable oblivion.

I'd also rate Firefox's bookmark and history functions as in another league compared to Chrome's rather basic offering, but neither of them are dealbreakers for me. Large tab group handling is, and Chrome just doesn't do it.

* - Has a better URL bar search function *

For me, it's the opposite. Chrome's search bar does what I want predictably (run a Google search) where the awesome bar sends me all sorts of crazy places. It's that feature alone that keeps me on chrome.

I guess it depends on what you want to do. The Firefox awesome bar does a better job at guessing what bookmarked or historical site you want.

For instance, if I type in "y" or "yc" in Firefox, then it correctly guesses that I probably want "news.ycombinator.com", because it's a site I often visit and one of the very few with "y" or "yc" in the domain name.

Chrome, on the other hand, seems to only match from the start of bookmarked URLs. So "y" doesn't match, and nor does "yc". Instead it advises me to do a Google search. On the other hand, if I type "n", then it does guess that I want "news.ycombinator.com" (or "news.bbc.co.uk").

In Firefox 4, the default address bar search changed to a regular Google search, rather than the "browse by name" behavior used in Firefox 3.6 which would sometimes do a search and sometimes go straight to the top result [1]. It should be much more predictable now.

[1]: http://kb.mozillazine.org/Firefox_:_Tips_:_Location_Bar_Sear...

When Chrome came out it was (or felt?) ridiculously faster than anything else on the market - I could open Chrome and go to a page faster than I could open another browser.

One process per tab. Firefox constantly stalls up on me while a background tab halts it. Rather infuriating.

Google has spent a ton to increase Chrome's market share - both on adertising, and on bundling it with other products. The Skype installer downloads Chrome and installs its as the default browser—but only if the current default browser is IE. There's a choice to opt out, but the installer's standard action for IE users is to install Chrome as the new default browser.

I imagine the Skype installer deal will change once Microsoft takes over, but Chrome is also bundled in the installers for other popular software like Avast Antivirus and (I think) some of Adobe's products. That sort of deal means a lot of people will get Chrome without actively seeking it out.

Google's annual revenue is 300 times more than Mozilla's annual revenue. Even Google's net profit is 100 times more than Mozilla's entire revenue. And while Google does have many more products than just a browser, their huge cash flow gives them the flexibility to spend for browser marketshare in ways that are just not an option for Mozilla.

----

Sources (I also have first-hand reports from friends who've had Chrome installed by Skype):

http://news.idg.no/cw/art.cfm?id=67785482-1A64-67EA-E4A686A8....

https://blog.avast.com/2009/12/03/avast-and-google-chrome/

[Disclosure: I work for Mozilla, but I speak for myself.]

For me like the original incantations of Firefox, aka. Phoenix, Chrome has the following "features". Fast, unobtrusive (no bookmarks bar, "Your browsing an insecure site", blah blah blah, nor million popups), and you just type stuff into the address bar and it knows what to do. I'm sure as market share increases it will regain bloat in the same way that FF did. And yet another developer will think, I know let's get rid of all those annoying popups.

I downloaded FF 5 the other day, 27 megs, I remember when it was ~2MB.

I really wonder the same thing. I saw my friends computers and they have Chrome installed. They are not tech savvy, and some of them don't know what it is. I don't know how it did install, but it did. I think it might be the install button in the Google Search home page, bundling with other apps (like Skype)...

I'm sold on Google Chrome, but it's frustrating that some sites aren't available on Chrome and I'm forced to used Firefox and Safari from time to time. Does that qualify me as a user of all three, thereby inflating the statistics?

What sites aren't available on Google Chrome?

Just the ones that you rarely have to deal with, but you do have to deal with. Like your insurer's site, your bank's, if you're in college and you have to take tests online, that too.

Bank sites are just terrible in general. Why is my least secure password always on a bank site? Shouldn't they have the highest requirements as far as security goes?

Is is possible to spoof the user agent and fool the server into thinking you user Firefox?

Some of those places just hard-code the possible choices of compatible browsers, and that list is 5+ years old. Once in a while I still see sites that advertise their support for Netscape.

Yeah, occasionally educational software (like taking a test online or something) will render incorrectly in Chrome. I don't know why this is, but some old web apps use hacks that are not standards compliant.

FAFSA, which every college student who wants financial aid must fill out.

(FWIW, they support Chrome through something like version 9, but nothing newer...)

My bank didn't use to work properly but even they got around to fix that.

And my bank sucks.

Silicon Valley Bank

ADP Payroll

Time Warner Cable -> Bill Pay will not allow the site to load in Chrome. Then again, infrastructure operator interests are not generally aligned with Google's (an open web and TV over IP).

On a related note, it doesn't look as if there is a good user agent switcher in the Chrome Web Store (https://chrome.google.com/webstore/search?hl=en-US&q=use...). Does anyone know if the extension API can modify Chrome HTTP headers? Firefox has a pretty good add-on: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/user-agent-sw...

UPDATE: Upon further inspection, looks like this experimental API does the trick: http://code.google.com/chrome/extensions/dev/experimental.we...

I occasionally get this, most recently I think with conEdison. The solution is a plugin to pretend to be different browsers.

Statcounter has tended to estimate Chrome's share higher than other sources.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com