Chrome beats IE market share for one day | Hacker News Reader

Chrome beats IE market share for one day

theregister.co.uk

128 pointsr700070 comments

Chrome beats IE market share. It showed that over the weekend Chrome is the most used browser, while on a weekday, people go back to work and use IE. This has two implications: 1) Companies are still locked into some solutions like OWA and sharepoint because of which users still use IE at work. 2) Users have started distinguishing between browsers and at home they prefer using Chrome.

For companies with most of their clients using their own personal computers (like for us), we could expect a fair share of Chrome over IE and hence the following: 1) Our QA should have a major focus on testing with these browsers. 2) Architecture needs to focus on this stat. as a guiding principle while deciding future architecture.

Another interesting statistics is the second screenshot with the Mobile Operating systems. 1) The highest share of internet browsers still run a Nokia Symbian phone. Most likely these are traffic from developing countries, where monetizing from these clients is extremely difficult. 2) iPhone and Android are tied and very close.

So focusing only on iPhone could be a mistake. We need to open up to focusing on Android just as much.

Thought it would be worth mentioning, newer versions of OWA (14.2.247.0, at my workplace, the latest and greatest MS Exchange) explicitly support Chrome, but there is some silverlight in there. This is using the full featured interface, not the crippled "light" version. Firefox too.

SharePoint is cross-browser, at least as of SharePoint 2010. I don't believe any functions require IE.

Disclaimer: I work for an MS partner, while I don't admin SharePoint our company does plenty of SharePoint work and our clients are happy.

You need IE for some of its feature such as Datasheet View, multiple file upload, etc.

They don't show up in Chrome. But that doesn't mean you can use Chrome. Just less productive.

Thanks for the clarification - the SP platform is still perfectly usable in non-IE browsers, although as you say a few nice things aren't available.

Surely you jest!

> Companies are still locked into some solutions like OWA and sharepoint because of which users still use IE at work.

My hunch is that a lot of companies are locked into legacy internal web applications that were optimized for IE6 and look like crap in a modern browser.

Even worse is a handful of web apps we use at work are coded specifically for Firefox. Firefox 3.6. They don't work in IE, Chrome, or newer Firefox versions.

Then we have some other ones that only support IE 6 and 7. My laptop only has 1GB of RAM. Yeah...

1GB of RAM on a work computer? I'd flat out refuse to do anything until they fork out a whopping £30 to quadruple that.

Sorry, I've edited this post. The original felt like an off topic rant.

Long story short, we're moving to BYOD soon, and until then I'm using a backup laptop from years ago since I'm pretty low on the food chain here.

From experience, our organization use OWA (outlook web access). The only way we can change password for my email id is on OWA and that works only on IE!

Oh, those poor enterprise developers, such as myself. Everyone can talk all they want about the real world, but it's astounding how big corporations still have their battered employees using IE6.

And I have to develop to that, while all you folks get to build for WebKit. Not fair!

Anyways, I feel like those percentages don't tell a good story. Many of us are still locked into supporting IE6.

Any luck with Chrome Frame? I've pushed that fairly successfully at previous clients. FUD aside (from MS mainly), it's really a great solution I think for anyone forced to deal with legacy IE6 installs.

http://code.google.com/chrome/chromeframe/

> It showed that over the weekend Chrome is the most used browser, while on a weekday, people go back to work and use IE. This has two implications: 1) Companies are still locked into some solutions like OWA and sharepoint because of which users still use IE at work. 2) Users have started distinguishing between browsers and at home they prefer using Chrome.

I think you're overlooking a third possibility: a large percentage of those using IE during the weekdays are people that just use the "default" Windows browser while at work. While at home, they just don't use computers or get online, or at least not near as much as they do while at work.

I wonder if this may be the more likely cause.

good point. Mostly administrative staff.

I think of interest to web startups would be the aspect of which browser is being used by those people who are willing to buy products based on the internet and those do not tend to be people who use IE. I am excluding buying things like ebay, amazon etc.

If you consider buying internet based things, like basecamp for e.g., you could see that this population would mostly use chrome, firefox or safari. This is purely my intuition, mainly because if people care about using an internet based product, they would want the product looks good, works well and is fast on their browsers and they will thus be using one of the better browsers.

It's great to see (from the peaks in usage of Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Opera on weekends) that people are choosing more progressive browsers over IE for home use. It'd also be neat to see the breakdown of IE versions in this data too.

Microsoft sure do have their work cut out for them!

You could interpolate from the chart that shows distribution by browser versions up to February 2012. Chrome's auto-update feature is staggeringly efficient.

    IE 8.0         18.86
    IE 9.0         12.08
    IE 7.0          3.32
    IE 6.0          1.48

    Chrome 16.0    13.39
    Chrome 15.0     0.35
    Chrome 14.0     0.35
    Chrome 12.0     0.27
    Chrome 13.0     0.25

EDIT: removed the Firefox and "Other" numbers as their sum is nowhere close to the aggregated numbers in the browser monthly charts [2]. StatCounter must be counting recent versions of Chrome and Firefox as "Other" in data set [1].

Source:

[1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-201102... (from the CSV file)

[2] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-201102-201203

No, people are choosing Chrome over IE for home use. The trend is clear; Chrome is likely to achieve a crushingly dominant market share in a couple of years, or sooner.

people chose what internet said to take internet = google.com and it tells them to do that

Yes, the trend you're referring to (Chrome becoming dominant) is clear, but it's the other pattern (the weekly cycles of troughs for IE, and the coinciding peaks for all other browsers) that I was referring to.

> The trend is clear; Chrome is likely to achieve a crushingly dominant market share in a couple of years

Assuming the trend will continue until Chrome becomes dominant. Firefox's didn't.

> It'd also be neat to see the breakdown of IE versions in this data too.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-daily-20120221...

The older versions of IE all dip (including IE6), But IE9 rises.

As much as I like Chrome, the increase in Chrome's share also means more people will be using Google by default.. and their search dominance scares me. Consumer web startups can literally die overnight if Google penalizes them(google "TeachStreet"), or if their Adwords account got banned for some unknown reason.

No it doesn't. This is screen that greets new users of Chrome: http://www.google.com/help/hc/images/chrome/chrome_95346_sea...

Isn't Google's dominance in the search engine business pretty well established at this point? Is there a sizable group of people that, upon using Chrome, will be using Google search more often?

When you first install Google Chrome, you're presented with the choice of search engine.

I'm pretty sure 99% choose Google not because they are already using Chrome, but because they probably trust or know Google more than Bing or Yahoo.

From my experience, IE users will usually either ignore the Bing search field, type "google.com" in and search manually, or change the search provider to Google anyway.

I would also speculate that a very large portion of Chrome users has no idea that the address bar is also a search field. They probably type in "google.com" manually every time.

If Bing, Yahoo or anyone else provides a more compelling search experience, these users will switch.

Random story: I've used Chrome since the day it was publicly released and am fully aware that the address bar does more than just accept urls - in fact, it's called the omnibox for a great reason. But I still type in "google.com" for 99% of my searches (probably 100+ times a day). The reason is that I like the Google homepage. The white space allows me to clear my thoughts without being distracted by whatever would be on my screen otherwise, and the search box is perfectly positioned in the center of my screen. Weird, I know, but I like it.

Interesting, I actually use Bing (or at least go there once a day) mainly to see a new picture every day. It's often high quality nice shots from random places, so I feel like I'm learning about a new place every time... makes me dream :/

This is one reason I don't mind that the only built-in option for search on Windows Phone is Bing. While I believe I get better results from Google (though that may be bias on my part), when I hit the search button it pops up a nice picture. Many times the picture is relevant to a holiday or special event that occurred on that day, and there are call-outs you can press to see quick facts (today's is about Yamuna River pollution and the Taj Mahal).

It's a good example of TheCoreh's point that it's all about providing a more compelling experience. If I was given the option when I first turned on my phone, I likely would have put in Google just out of habit. Today, I probably would not. Probably.

Perhaps, but that's mostly because people prefer Google. When you install Chrome it pops up asking what search engine you would like to use. What should Google do differently? Microsoft hides the default search provider in the initial setup behind a "choose custom settings" button.

http://nyacomputing.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/chrome-se...

http://static.arstechnica.com/ie8_search.png

Wow. The difference in the two images speak volumes.

I may be mistaken but, having happened to install Chrome several times recently, I'm pretty sur that they even randomize the order of the entries so as not to favor any one position. Can anyone confirm/disconfirm?

The Google-Yahoo-Bing order appears to be fixed. That being said, the MSIE search provider install process is much more complex.

Some would say the middle choice would be the most obvious to people, if they were to choose without knowing too much about each one of them.

Also, I have the impression that a few microsoft products (MSN, live etc) will automatically change other browser's search engine to Bing. My girlfriend told me her "google changed" after installing MSN.

But maybe it was something else, as she's doesn't exactly knows what she's doing. Can anyone confirm that?

I believe there is often a check box asking if you want to change you default search engine to Bing, and its checked by default, so yes she might be right.

This happens with a lot of software, unfortunately. On the side, I do computer repair (and charge for it). I'd say about 30% of my calls are "my Google changed to Ask!" after installing FoxIt or Digsby etc.

I was hoping that charging people money would lead them to finding their own solutions for trivial problems, but instead it has just padded my beer fund. C'est la vie.

Actually, it's much worse. Have you ever tried installing google as a search provider in IE? It's almost impossible.

I'm a software engineer, and it took me a good 10 minutes to find the damn setting. I haven't used IE in a few years but had to fire it up to so some UI testing.

Gosh this definitely screams monopoly abuse to me.

Speaking of monopoly abuse... google.com tells me to download Chrome to make the Internet faster.

I understand where your coming from, but IMO there is a world of difference between a call to action and making things worse to leverage your market dominance.

Can you honestly think of any reason for this screen not to just show other options that's good for users? http://static.arstechnica.com/ie8_search.png

As if Google search wasn't already used by most people? Google has like 90% market share globally. That was the case even when IE had 70% market share, and maybe even earlier.

Google can't realistically push more people to use Google by default. Google search is a monopoly.

I believe it is fair to state, however, that one of the reasons that Chrome exists is that Google wants Google to be synonymous with the Web in the minds of consumers. When your browser is Google and your search engine is Google, the web to you is Google. This will dovetail quite nicely with all the other places they're trying to expand to once they manage to establish a dominant browser market share.

This will only get worse as Google progressively decides to plussify Chrome.

Out of all of Google's products, Chrome is the one that worries me the most. Using Chrome means that you just upped Google's reach on you by many fold, they now are running code directly tied to your machine and not within the constraints of a web page or app.

Are they invading your device privacy through Chrome? I dunno, probably not yet, but they can, and how long until they decide to? Given their history, specially their recent history, I don't plan on giving them the chance to do so.

It's funny how just a few years ago Google could seemingly do no wrong. The more I see of life, the more I agree with Stallman's fundamentalist perspective that all software should be free and open. It would prevent these abuses as anyone could just setup a search engine or web based document editor if they didn't like the way their provider was conducting business.

The fact that Chrome added incognito window is a good sign, the fact that there is still no flash block is a bad one IMO. Honestly, I think gmail and search are probably more dangerous when it comes to privacy. People can track the information Chrome sends back to Google, but you have no idea what happens once your data is on their servers.

You can set Chrome to block all plugins. There's a context menu item to selectively run the plugin, and a white-list, as well.

Nice.

Still, I've recently switched back to FF as my primary, for other reasons.

Cool, thanks!

They're adding 'click-to-play' as an option for plugins like flash in the default browser settings (no extension required) in version 18. It's allowed people to turn on the radio button using about:flags for more than a year.

Once enabled, go to wrench menu > Settings > Under the Bonnet > Advanced Settings > Privacy > Content Settings > Plug-ins

Yeah, I agree. In fact, I've recently switched back to FF as my primary browser.

The thing that pushed me over the edge was the way chrome insists I log in to my google account.

Granted, it doesn't force you to log in, but the version I recently installed on my Ubuntu based netbook kept popping up a dialog at launch, nagging me to do so. The options on the dialog were to log in or wait until later (no option for never).

I just looked now, and it appears that if I go in and manually disconnect my google account, it no longer bugs me. Hmm ... I could swear I tried that before switching back to FF.

12 years ago I suggested that IE would lose its crown to a web browser developed by a web site using an open source cross platform rendering engine developed by Apple.

And everyone said I was nuts.

If it's open source, it's not developed by apple......

WebKit is open source and is developed by Apple and other companies such as KDE, Google, Nokia, Samsung and others.

KDE is not a company and WebKit originated as a fork from KHTML, KDE's HTML rendering engine used in Konqueror. Too much credit is often ascribed to Apple for appropriating the engine on to a popular piece of software (OS X).

They did applied polish to it though and also built a new Javascript engine. I don't know who contributed what, but today's WebKit is a lot better than what KHTML was before being forked. I was once a KDE user and the first thing I did after a fresh install was to replace Konqueror.

But yes, truth be told, the KDE developers that worked on KHTML deserve a lot of credit.

You are not doing Apple justice. Next to WebKit, which is the base for Chrome and Safari, they also open sourced Darwin, which is the base for iOS and MacOS X.

Didn't they legally have to opensource webkit? It's a derivative of KHTML which is under the LGPL.

I'll give Apple credit for Darwin though.

Well, Apple could have chosen to develop something new from scratch instead. Most software companies at the time (10 years ago) would have not even considered building on top of an open-source project.

That said you should also not give too much credit to Apple. I think that Darwin was build on top of FOSS is merely because it was developed by NEXT, which was a startup and needed to save cost. The original MacOS was closed source after all.

What is up with people giving Apple credit for everything in this discussion? Darwin is composed of the Mach 3 microkernel, parts of BSD and NeXTSTEP. In other words, the vast majority of the work that has gone into it is not Apple's. It's merely a BSD-style distribution.

In my opinion, successfully marketing a seamlessly up-to-date browser is the 3rd greatest thing Google has done for the world (behind search and gmail)

Internet Explorer: the employees browser of duress

Do you want the overhead of testing your internal web application on two browsers or one?

I'd rather test my web app in a browser with modern development tools (Chrome, Safari, IE 9, Firefox with Firebug).

I'm not so sure. If half of the value of the app you are developing is that it will still work 5 years after your consulting gig with no intervention, then it's hard to fault someone for choosing IE.

Maybe in the early-aughts. Me, I'd be putting my chips on a Webkit future.

Maybe you've had different experiences, but I've had very few problems with forward compatibility in all of the major browsers (IE/FF/Chrome), and I don't know why that would change going forward. Actually, I'd go so far as to say that if you develop your apps to work cross-browser, they're more likely to work in future versions of IE than if you specifically target your dev at a single version of IE. Also, just because I do 90% of my dev work where there are good tools, doesn't mean that I can't or don't test in IE 8- (depending on the target audience).

That doesn't make any sense. Forward compatibility is not an issue at all with modern browsers, and you're not obliged to update either.

and you're not obliged to update either.

With chrome (and now firefox?) you kind of are obliged to update... Right? Due to their update scheme I've at least gotten the impression that they won't fix security issues in older versions, but I could be wrong.

Firefox has a little middle ground where you can use specific versions outside of the fast release cycle and still get security updates. At least that's the plan. https://wiki.mozilla.org/Enterprise/Firefox/ExtendedSupport:... You don't get the 10 years of support that MSFT might provide for (some) versions of IE, but it's not like you have to upgrade every 6 weeks either. Also, because Firefox is open source, they're hoping that someone else will pick up the slack and continue to support older versions.

I haven't heard of any similar program from Chrome.

Having something that will work 5 years after your consulting gig is not a problem - avoid browser specific features and try to stick to the HTML spec as close as you can.

How many people choose Chrome? I bought a Lenovo laptop recently and Google Chrome was pre-installed as the default browser. And although the desktop shortcut icon was the familiar one, it was renamed "Internet Browser."

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