Chrome spends a week at the top of the browser charts Google's Chrome browser has overtaken Internet Explorer to become the world's most popular browser. According to StatCounter's Global Stats, which calculates browser popularity on the basis of 15 billion page views a month from people all over the world with tracking code installed on over three million websites, Chrome just …
More than a few.
My impression is that unless you're someone with an opinion, who's decided that you want to stick with your browser of choice, you end up getting Chrome installed and defaulted by accident.
If you're the person with Chrome, you either don't know or care what browser you're using, or you don't know what a browser is.
Alternatively you accepted the installation willingly, assuming that Chrome's going to be better becuse it's 'new' and it recommended itself.
It is also pretty underhand how they promote it on the Google homepage (which is most users' start page) with a claim similar to "want your internetz faster? download this thing that you don't understand!!"
So therefore most installations are there simply because the novice users click on this link. There are no other adverts on the page. Who doesn't want their web browsing to be faster? These are of course the same people who don't twig as to an obvious phishing e-mail or fall for the 'tune up your PC' malware scams.
Of course the installation sets itself as the default browser. Most people don't even notice the difference and wouldn't be able to change back it if they wanted to. Google are therefore no better than the organised crims trying to steal identities and bank accounts.
Then there are the 'techies' who use Chrome because they think it is cool. They don't care about the worrying privacy implications of Google.
My office is full of them, and I have to supervise and help them develop web apps . When something they are working on isn't behaving properly, I go over and have a look. Maybe Chrome isn't rendering it properly (Firefox invariably works fine). They don't have suitable developer tools installed. It doesn't have anywhere near the level of openness and extensibility that Firefox has.
It's basically not suitable for the job.
Being encouraged to download an applications is so much better than being illegally forced to purchase it. No. IE is not free. Not when you pay for it.
Just because Microsoft does not disclose the price you pay does not mean it is free. At least that is not what Microsoft tells stockholders. They are told the price is part of the unearned income Microsoft collects from customers. And the law says it is not free either. When you buy a bag of stuff, some of the price is allocated to each of the items in the bag.
If you're the person with IE you are a fool and an idiot. And you do not even know it.
And your opinion does not count either. Not on here. Not anywhere. You just do not count.
It's usage though, not installations — StatCounter is one of those that collects usage data through web page accesses. So people aren't merely installing Chrome, they're installing it and using it.
However they've done it, I say congratulations to Google. The market is now divided enough to make the standards successful, which aids innovation. Can you imagine the smartphones having done as well if rendering everything like IE6 was still the consumer expectation?
sometimes there's not a lot of difference, especially when the install automatically changes it to the default. My mother would be one of those. Absolutely no idea what she's using, and doesn't care either, as long as it gets her to her games.
Personally, I can't stand the damn thing. FF is my main, but I use Opera and IE depending on what I need.
With my last Avast AV update, Chrome got installed and set as default without asking. Whenever the Avast popup gives me a link, the link opens in Chrome, even though it's not my default browser.
I suspect a lot of the recent boost in popularity of Chrome is down to this one piece of software. The fact that it's particularly popular in poorer countries where people aren't likely to allow inertia to keep them paying for a Norton or MacAfee license is quite telling....
I had not one but two 'opportunities' to install Chrome, once when updating and a second time in a pop-up window after reboot. Rather surprised at Avast doing that.
However it seems that if you've already got Chrome it appears to mess up your install and profile, Maybe this is an initiative funded by Mozilla, Microsoft, and Opera.
Nah ... everyone knows the even numbers are duffers. You just wait for Win9 SP1. By then, all the beta testing the mugs who used Win8 will have been taken into account, and the even more gullible early adopter sheep who dived into Win9 at launch will have tested that for them too, as is the windows tradition.
Only Windows 8 is not Windows 8 it's Windows 7 and Windows 7 should have been Windows 6.1. It's the increments that are the good ones.
3.0 - Crap
3.11 - Good
95 - Crap
98 - Good
2000 - Crap
XP - Good
Vista - Crap
7 - Good
In each iteration they make something different then refine it for a cosmetic re release. "8" will be terrible but followed up a couple of years later with a rerelease that will have most of the bugs fixed and a few GUI changes to make it look like a new OS.
I think you have confused Win2000 and WinME... So to recap in the interest of completeness, my personal opinion :
- Windows 1 (LOL DOSShell) - Crap
- Windows 2 - Good (it's new, it's got to be good :) )
- 3.0 - Crap
- 3.1 + 3.11 - Good
- NT 3.11 - Good
- NT 3.51 - Good
- 95 - Crap (but 95SE - Good)
- NT 4 - Good
- 98 - Crap (but 98SE - Good)
- 2000 - Good
- ME - Crap
- XP - Good
- 2003 Server - Crap (Sorry, I found it to be flakey around the edges...)
- Vista - Hardware dependant:
a. "Compatible with Vista" & Homebuilt : Crap
b. "Designed for Vista" : Good
- 2008 Server - Good
- 7 - Good
I agree with you. On 3 HP laptops, the one "Works with" became an absolute dog performance wise. The same on newish cheap homebuilts who just upgraded from XP and had no problems before and were more than content with the performance. Most people went back.
On the other 2 laptops ("Designed for" and a couple of high end assembled machines with not cheap parts, built several months after the Vista release), Vista runs great and has done for several years, and the progressive upgrades have made things better.
In many ways Windows Vista was a great step forward but it was hampered, hamstrung to many, in three important ways:
* Windows Presentation Foundation used for the GUI is a memory hog and when it was released only the best specced hardware (>=2 GB RAM, 4 if possible) were suitable. Many people who
upgraded instantly regretted it and companies baulked at the costs and forced XP to live longer. A couple of years later and machines were being released that were beefy enough for it which is probably why you have a good combination that you're happy with. I still know quite a few people with XP based systems still chugging along acceptably with less than 1 GB RAM.
* UAC - technically a much better approach to security but terrible usability so that users often felt obliged to press the "don't ask me about this again" button
* many legacy apps would no longer run. Even though the reason for this were okay - the new system needed new APIs to be safer and more stable - it was still another reason to think twice about spending money on a new OS, the new hardware necessary to run it and new apps to replace those that would no longer work. And, if you did spend the money, your new computer didn't really seem much faster unless you really needed all the 64-bit goodness. Even then, the hard break between 32-bit and 64-bit made getting good drivers a very hit and miss affair.
In addition the sheer variety of flavours of Vista (Ultimate, Spectacular, Home, Trailer Trash, etc.) confused the market in a way eerily reminiscent of OS/2 and in stark contrast to the Church of the One Fruit. This turned out to be even more important because, as companies simply refused to buy Vista, consumers became even more important to sales.
Windows 7 addressed many of the problems well and is a stable and usable system with considerable attention to detail. And I say this as someone who primarily uses a Mac.
If you're gonna do a list, do it right.
Windows 1.0 - Such a complete piece of crap it made Windows Bob look good.
Windows 2.0 - Passable, but still mostly crap. Only use it if there isn't a DOS alternative.
Windows 3.0 - Decent. Handled most DOS programs without trouble.
Windows 3.10 - ??? I've hear of it, never seen it.
Windows 3.11 for Workgroups - What's with the name? Basically 3.0, but with added bits to support Novell.
Windows 95A - Utter crap. More install disks OS/2 when it came out, so there was no way to finish an install. And if by some miracle you do manage to make it through all the disks, god help you with the IRQ and address issues.
Windows NT 3.5 - Sorry you moved to slow and missed it.
Windows 95B - On CD, what a lifesaver. Reasonably solid until Intel broke it with the new chipset. Fortunately the internets eventually dispersed information about how to work around that snafu.
Windows NT 4.0 - Yo, gamer, move away from the OS. Rock solid stable. Unless you want to install Lotus Notes. God help you if you want to install Lotus Notes. Really, rat poison would be quicker and far less painful.
Windows 95C - Stable, but most folks don't recall it. I think it was the IE 4 release.
Windows 95D - Stable.
Windows 98 - Stable. Not actually a lot different the 95D except... Hmm, is somebody suing MS about that IE add on that came tacked on the end of the 95 B-D installs?
Windows 98SE - Amazingly still stable. Added a bit for larger HD support.
Windows 98ME - Puke, Vomit, Hurl! Who tried to rework this shit from the 1.0 disks?
Windows 2000 - Stable, but god help you if you are trying to upgrade and existing system. Backup your data and do a clean install. Merges Gamers into the NT fold. And you best make sure your drivers are certified. God help you if they aren't.
Windows XP - Stable, plus the drivers work. Finally.
Windows XP SP2 - What's a firewall? Otherwise just like XP.
Windows Vista - Puke, Vomit, Hurl! Cough! Gak! Who tried to rework this shit from the NT 2.0 code?
Windows 7 - Okay, so you finally got the drivers working. How come 64-bit is still for shit? Haven't you guys been working on that code fork since XP?
So as you can see, there isn't any infallible pattern to what releases are good.
I use Iron too, been using it since the very first versions and I love it. It seems to leak memory significantly less than both Firefox and Seamonkey when I leave it open for days with a handful or windows each having 10+ tabs.
It feels so good to have all the niceties of Chrome without Google spying on me (well, spying a bit less since I use Gmail and I have an Android phone and tablet).
Long life Iron, keep up the good work our German friends at SRware. I hope they will continue maintaining it.
Beer, because Iron is German-built.
I assume the weekend pulsing has been smoothed out of that graph. For a while Chrome consistently overtook IE at weekends, as people used their own machines where they have a choice, then IE goes ahead in the week when people at work use their IS mandated setup.
Was there any reason except bloat for the graph to be a flash animation?
Not sure about that. quite a few people (myself included) drop the default browser in Android for something with more functionality. My HTC Desire's default browser had no tabs, I tried firefox on Android briefly but was not impressed, and run Dolphin now. There may be better browsers out there for Android, but I rather like Dolphin, so won't change now.
It's interesting that different countries have different usages of browsers:
USA ~38% IE 24% Chrome 23% FF
China ~73% IE 13% Chrome FF non-existant!
India ~43% Chrome 35% FF 15% IE
(UK ~37% IE 29% Chrome 20% FF)
No surprise that there's not much tack up for Chrome in China but Google must have been quite aggressively marketing in India to beat down IE to such a low %.
It seems Indians don't like IE much :)
Since when did "Asian and South American" usage equate to "the world's most popular browser"?
I wonder what the stats would be if Firefox, Opera, IE et al stooped down to Googles level and paid software developers to put a tick box in their software saying "Install (insert name of non-Google browser) and set as default browser"?
Yes they do, I don't have a problem with that (I've always used Opera for the save my tabs feature so I can simply close it and come back to it later, same feature Lotus Notes has that I want Outlook to have (Now I am going to get more thumbs down DAMN!)).
Some family members seem to think they have to click yes to everything that pops up, I've got no idea how to untrain it as its simply read the message, if you didn't ask for it click no or cancel. I don't lock everything down because its their own machine not mine, the only thing i do insist on is anti virus.
Chrome took over my Mac and began uploading/downloading many megabytes of unknown data. I added rules to the firewall to get it to stop contacting chrome.google.com, support.google.com, and client.google.com - but, Chrome would find a away to get past the firewall. It also trashed all my bookmarks.
Ya know... Firefox 12 isn't bad. Good-bye Google!
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
