Chrome Overtakes Firefox Globally for First Time

http://gs.statcounter.com/press/chrome-overtakes-firefox-globally-for-first-time

by themichael • 15 years ago

174 110 15 years ago

gs.statcounter.com

tbassetto2• 15 years ago

Sadly, Microsoft's Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead. IE10 seems to be quite solid, but it will be available only for Windows 7 and 8 (and not before mid-2012).

melling• 15 years ago

IE8 will be around for years because XP can't get an IE9/10 upgrade. It looks like combined IE6 & IE7 are around 6.5% in North America. IE6 is around 1%. Being able to stop supporting IE6/IE7 is still huge. Yesterday I noticed that this map app no longer supports IE7.

http://map.itoworld.com/road-casualties-usa

"Sorry, you are running an old version of Internet Explorer which is not supported. For more information please visit here "

Link: http://map.itoworld.com/ie-error.html

thisisblurry• 15 years ago

Google has also dropped support for IE7 as of August this year (for apps at least): http://gmailblog.blogspot.com/2011/06/our-plans-to-support-m...

AndrewDucker2• 15 years ago

Despite loving Firefox I see this as a good thing. Firefox has always been the hobbyist/technical person's browser. Chrome is a slick experience aimed at the end-user.

Personally, I'll be using Firefox with its fantastic tweakability and addons, but anything which causes there to be multiple major browsers is good, because it means people have more incentive to create standards and stick to them.

gcp3• 15 years ago

Firefox has always been the hobbyist/technical person's browser. Chrome is a slick experience aimed at the end-user.

I'm not sure. I think it's the opposite. Most end-users won't really know or care what browser they are using, but they do care what their hobbyist/technical friends/colleagues/kids use, because those are "the experts" so they know what's best.

Chrome had very significant uptake among those, and one of the reasons for the very steep growth in its market-share is that this "trickles down" to lesser experienced users. It's also the biggest problem for Firefox, because it gained its market-share in exactly the same manner.

And for the users that were impervious to this, bundling deals like with Skype and Flash are also obvious big wins over IE and Firefox.

I'd be curious what features of Chrome make you believe its a more slick experience for the end user as compared to Firefox.

AndrewDucker2• 15 years ago

Mostly the lack of options, and the way the updates don't get in your way.

Firefox gives you a lot more power, but everything you can do in it beyond the basics gives you the possibility of things going wrong.

So you can install Tabmix Plus, but that gives you a wall of tab options that can leave you wondering how to find things. You can install NoScript, and be left wondering why half of your web pages don't work any more.

When it comes to "plain Firefox with nothing installed" and "plain Chrome, with nothing installed" I suspect they're about as easy to use.

zhwang• 15 years ago

But it's also because Google has been making use of its massive amount of ad space to push Chrome, and on top of that taken out ads in actual physical locations too.

cpeterso• 15 years ago

When the Flash installer bundles Chrome, is the user's default browser reset to Chrome? Assuming Chrome auto-imported all their bookmarks from IE or Firefox, some Chrome users might not even know they are using a different browser.

http://www.salsitasoft.com/blog/2011/09/23/wonder-how-chrome...

w1ntermute• 15 years ago

Putting aside the layman for the moment, has anyone else found Chrome particularly annoying to use as a power user? There are so many issues, such as the uncustomizable download bar (can't even have it autohide!), the inability to fine-tune history/cache/etc. deletion, inabilility to set filetype-specific download settings, and so on.

And Firefox isn't that slow in its latest incarnations.

JohnTHaller2• 15 years ago

Of course. Chrome isn't really good for power users due to the less-powerful extension setups (can't even do true ad blocking). And it's of much less interest to companies due to the per-user installation setup and not being self-contained (it relies on the host OS for encryption, proxy handling, etc).

justinschuh2• 15 years ago

Chrome has had a system installer for years: http://www.google.com/support/chrome/bin/answer.py?answer=11...

I'm also not sure what you mean by "not being self-contained." Chrome relies on OS subsystems where appropriate because it simplifies management and provides a consistent user experience--that's why we use the OS certificate store and proxy configuration settings. We've also seen quite a bit of enterprise uptake because Chrome is the only browser that provides full centralized management on all supported platforms (via Windows group policy, Puppet, etc.).

jonknee• 15 years ago

> And it's of much less interest to companies due to the per-user installation setup and not being self-contained (it relies on the host OS for encryption, proxy handling, etc).

I don't run an IT department, but the self-updating browser seems like a pretty good win. Doubly so when it's very secure.

nyellin2• 15 years ago

Yes, I switched back to Firefox for Pentadactyl, a complete vim-like environment in the browser. I tried all of the vim extensions for Chrome, but Chrome just doesn't expose enough (any) internal APIs to implement Pentadactyl.

Chrome extensions are limited to modifying the current page and displaying an extension icon. They can't modify the browser itself. (Although no extension system will ever compete with Emacs for fully modifying the host application, Firefox does a decent job.)

127• 15 years ago

Unfortunately for me, I have thousands of bookmarks and for some reason that makes Pentadactyl awfully slow. I don't know what to do, as I start Firefox simply opening a website will take twenty seconds before Pentadactyl lets me type. Chrome is always very smooth experience. Pentadactyl is not. I'd use Pentadactyl if it actually worked right. I'm not happy with its performance.

danneu2• 15 years ago

Incredible add-on.

This article inspired me to try Opera again. But now 10 seconds spent in the Pentadactyl quick-start guide have made it clear that I'll be back on Firefox after being a dedicated Chrome user for at least four years.

sek• 15 years ago

I don't know what you mean with power user? I am a web developer and satisfied with the developer tools.

I also surf a lot more than the average user and i use the default Chrome settings. Middle click and Tabs are everything i need.

What you are talking about, doesn't sound like a lot. I don't download much and everything get's straight to my download folder. But you are right about this one, not very customizable. Is there no api for an extension?

bvi• 15 years ago

The sole reason I stick to Firefox as my primary browser (despite Chrome appearing to hog less memory) is because of the TabMixPlus extension (which allows multiple layers of tabs). I frequently have >10 tabs - and at times, 25+ tabs - open, and Chrome is terrible when it comes to tab management.

pkamb2• 15 years ago

Are you kidding? Chrome is awesome when it comes to tab management. I love that they allow little slivers of tabs, rather than degrading to a clunky arrow button setup when you have too many open.

Plus after closing a tab, the "tabs don't resize until you move the mouse away" thing. And tabs living in the titlebar, so they get Fitts' Law infinite width targets in full screen. So good.

kristopolous• 15 years ago

try Tree style tab (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/tree-style-ta...) ... it's pretty awesome: http://qaa.ath.cx/manytabs.png

masklinn• 15 years ago

> Putting aside the layman for the moment, has anyone else found Chrome particularly annoying to use as a power user?

As a power user I don't know (I don't even consider it), but as a developer I see my colleagues struggling with Chrome's over-aggressive cache every day, and it truly boggle's my mind that Google's developers, with their roots in the web, still provide no way for chrome to be sane cache-wise. The bloody thing caches more aggressively than Internet Explorer, getting it to release cached files is an exercise in frustration and you can not trust that it's done so without checking the actual code it's downloaded in the devtools.

davydka• 15 years ago

If you click the gear in the bottom right corner of web inspector, there's an option to disable the cache.

pasbesoin2• 15 years ago

Reminds me of my frustration some months back with its caching of favicons -- amongst other things. Wasted a bit of time troubleshooting my configuration before figuring out that Chrome was simply refusing to flush the favicon from its cache.

magicalist• 15 years ago

hold shift when you refresh to do a hard refresh.

timeuser• 15 years ago

Yeah, I used Chrome for a while and have switched back to Firefox. The latest versions of Firefox are much faster, Chrome seems to have lost the speed advantage it had for a bit. Chrome didn't seem to have any better memory usage either. Given that Firefox is much more customizable and has more extensions it's clearly the best browsing experience for me now.

keenerd• 15 years ago

As a power user, I really appreciate Chromium's command line arguments. --user-agent is vastly simpler than anything else. I don't use Chromium myself, but it does get pulled out whenever someone needs a "legacy" browser.

jxi• 15 years ago

It's true that Firefox is much more extensible and has way better extensions. Like you, I also hate the download manager in Chrome. However, the single feature that makes me try to use Chrome above anything is it's sync features. They are just too good. Sync happens instantly (in my eyes at least) no matter how many computer I'm using Chrome on, and that's just perfect for my workflow. Also, incognito is much more easy to use than Firefox's version..

indygreg2• 15 years ago

Firefox's Sync synchronizes more frequently now than it did a few releases ago. If it doesn't synchronize fast enough for you, power users can always open about:config and fuddle with the services.sync preferences. services.sync.syncInterval is the one controlling the default interval (in milliseconds).

While I'm writing this, I should also point out that browser sync is a great example of how Mozilla and Google take a different approach to solving the same problem. Firefox's sync encrypts all data locally using a cryptographically secure randomly-generated key then uploads it to Mozilla's servers. Chrome's sync, by contrast, only encrypts passwords locally by default, leaving bits like your browsing history unencrypted on Google's servers. Chrome does have an option to encrypt everything, but you have to enable it in the preferences. (Firefox has no option to disable client-side encryption.) Even when you enable client-side encryption in Chrome, your data is encrypted with your Google password. This is less secure than Mozilla's approach because 1) your password likely isn't sufficiently complex or random 2) Google sees your password periodically (e.g. when you log in to Google services), meaning they possess the key to unlock your data. With Firefox Sync, Mozilla never sees your private key, so there is no way for them to see your data. Ever.

Google's business model means they have an inherent interest in your synced/private data. Mozilla has no such interest in it. Therefore, Mozilla locks the door and throws away the key.

JohnTHaller2• 15 years ago

No, it doesn't. Net application's stats, which are much more realistic, are here: http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qpri...

IE 53% Firefox 22% Chrome 18% Safari 5% Opera 2%

Gustomaximus• 15 years ago

I looked into Net Apps vs Statcounter a couple of years back and found the opposite to be true. From my notes (so may be a little out of date on figures):

--------- Stats Counter: Stats are based on aggregate data collected by StatCounter on a sample exceeding 4 billion pageviews per month collected from across the StatCounter network of more than 3 million websites. Stats are updated and made available every 4 hours, however are subject to quality assurance testing and revision for 7 days from publication.

Net Applications: Accumulates data from 160 million monthly visitors to its network of hosted websites that collect statistics. The average traffic for a HitsLink customer is just over 1000 page views per day ------

On sample size Net Apps are not nearly as good nor do they have many foreign market users to give a true global picture. It was not until 2010 that Net apps weighted by country population figures which skewed their results heavily to the US market share. And it has been alleged their stats are for sale.

patrickaljord• 15 years ago

Net application's stats are not realistic at all, they are very US-centric. So if you compare them with statcounter stats for the US, you'll notice they are pretty similar http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-US-monthly-201011-201111

IE: 50% Firefox: 20% Chrome: 17%

Another good source are wikipedia stats which are pretty global too and closer to statcounter than netmarket, here are the stats for October 2011:

http://stats.wikimedia.org/archive/squid_reports/2011-10/Squ...

xxiao• 15 years ago

firefox/mozilla was essentially 'funded' by google search(the search bar built-in)? wish it the best, as firebug is my favorite.

gcp3• 15 years ago

Firebug is gradually being phased out in favor of built-in developer tools (which is nice, because Firebug is one of the things making Firefox slow). There's been lots of blogging about those lately, just check out a Nightly/Aurora Firefox build.

zobzu2• 15 years ago

its mainly funded by the startup homepage in fact which goes to firefox customized google search

amurmann• 15 years ago

"Microsoft's Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63%."

"In the US Internet Explorer continues to perform strongly and is maintaining market share at 50.66%"

I am very surprised to see that IE is so much stronger in the US. I always thought IE was strong in Asia and that that lead to its high market share. Does anyone have a theory as to why IE is stronger in the US than in the rest of the world?

VikingCoder• 15 years ago

It's interesting, if you look at the Worldwide numbers, Chrome seems to be on a steady progression. But if you look at North America or USA, you see that both Firefox and Chrome had a fairly significant dip in the last set of numbers, while IE had a fairly significant uptick.

bzbarsky• 15 years ago

Yeah, market share numbers are completely different by country. Compare Germany and South Korea, say.

sanderson1• 15 years ago

I too am a Chrome convert and loved FireFox in its day (mainly because of its development tools), but its rampant memory leaks drove me away. While Chrome's dev tools aren't quite as robust as FireFox's, they're getting there very very quickly.

On a side note, I'm tired of having to design and develop around IE. All versions have the promise of adhering to modern web standards, but with each release, they tend to fall short of those promises.

tbassetto2• 15 years ago

May I suggest you to delete your Firefox profile folder (http://kb.mozillazine.org/Profile_folder_-_Firefox) and give it another try? They have corrected tons of problems, really.

IE10 is pretty solid, but you're right, we'll have to develop and design for older versions for a long time.

hack_edu• 15 years ago

What's lacking in Chrome's dev tools compared to Firefox? Are we talking native dev tools, or including Firebug and etc in the Firefox camp. Its been my experience that all these valuable extensions get performance hits more and more as Firefox has begun to frown lately, further adding to the decline in quality UX.

The fact that Chrome developer tools are built-in and seamlessly integrated is what makes it my primary.

chimeracoder• 15 years ago

Back when I used Windows, the memory leaks in Firefox were one of the main reasons I switched to Chrome on the day it came out and never looked back.

I'm not sure if that's still a problem, or if that's a problem on other platforms, but now I use Chromium on Linux and I've never had any major issues. (Except sometimes when Flash is involved, but this is Hacker News).

Yhippa• 15 years ago

Not only that but making sure your work is backwards compatible with older versions of IE is no fun.

NanoWar• 15 years ago

When Chrome introduced plug-ins like Adblock, I started to consider switching. Now I'm on Chromium. And it's good.

DanielRibeiro2• 15 years ago

And I remember back then when firefox was not even 1.0, and was replacing the horrible browsing experience on Linux on Konqueror, with a delightful one (with tabs!).

I am glad to see how far we've come.

MikeCapone• 15 years ago

I actually liked Konqueror, but it might have been a later version than what you had.

guard-of-terra• 15 years ago

Konqueror did a lot of things right which still aren't by any other browser.

E.g. it had okayish system integration while other browsers have it awful. It displayed site favicons in task panel, instead of boasting its own. It was a birthplace of webkit.

DanielRibeiro2• 15 years ago

Probably. At the time, the university machines had 256 Ram (it was before Gmail), and konqueror managed to hog a lot of its memory. Firefox would ocupy 30 MB Ram with 5 tabs, so it made things a lot smoother.

joebadmo• 15 years ago

I work at a federal agency and our browsers just got updated a couple of weeks ago from IE6 to IE8. While I'd kill for either Chrome or FF, I have to say: I never thought I'd be so happy about IE8.

salmanapk• 15 years ago

Install Chrome Frame ;)

soapdog2• 15 years ago

I use firefox because I believe in the work of Mozilla foundation. Chrome, IE, Safari are all company products and those companies objective are tuned to increasing their stock value. Yes, they make very good products but Mozilla makes a good philosophy and I trust them to value privacy, quality and open source. Firefox might be slower than chrome and not that beautiful but it is made with a mindset that is similar to mine.

This may sound too political for a software choice decision but hey, I LIKE MOZILLA FOUNDATION and their products.

roc• 15 years ago

Same here. Particularly since Chrome's stripped-down approach has given way to bundled cruft and the competition has pushed Mozilla to improve dramatically.

So I'm glad Chrome exists and I hope it continues to do so, but they're not moving in a direction that remotely interests me.

canes1234563• 15 years ago

I assume you never buy anything from a company. It pointless to try to prop up products despite it being worse. Open source project will not success in the long run unless it is better. Firefox being better at protecting privacy is a reason to use it, but thinking Mozilla values privacy because it is a non profit is not a great reason.

timwiseman• 15 years ago

I assume you never buy anything from a company

You can certainly do business with companies, while showing preference for an organization that shares your values whenever such an organization exists.

but thinking Mozilla values privacy because it is a non profit is not a great reason.

I think it is more that some people (including me) think Mozilla values privacy because they flat out say they do and then they have a consistent track record of supporting privacy. The fact they are non-profit does make it slightly easier to take their statements at face value, but it is their track record that really demonstrates it.

soapdog2• 15 years ago

Of course I buy things from companies. I just say that corporate agenda from Google (selling ads), Apple (selling an aesthetically and technological experience) and Microsoft (simply money) is different than the Mozilla foundation objective which is the betterment of the Web. Mozilla does not value privacy because it is a non-profit but because it is an extremely open non-profit, you can have access to all the code, meeting notes, decisions and thus know for sure where it is going. Firefox might not be fashionable anymore and the cool kids might be on chrome but it still the product that value my values, and that is enough.

cjoh2• 15 years ago

Values are a feature of a product just like any other. Of course a product can compete on values.

theshadow• 15 years ago

"but thinking Mozilla values privacy because it is a non profit is not a great reason."

Mozilla's entire business model isn't based around getting to know you or you habits better. Google has an inherent and fundamental financial interest in being able to follow what you do browsing day to day.

woogley• 15 years ago

85% of Mozilla's revenue comes from Google.

http://techcrunch.com/2008/08/28/mozilla-extends-lucrative-d...

gcp3• 15 years ago

Your point being? From your own post:

“We develop our product and technical direction as part of an open process unrelated to the search relationship with Google. We talk to Google about the parts of the product that offer Google services (i.e., the Firefox Start Page) and the services they provide, like anti-phishing. Otherwise Google does not have any special relationship to Mozilla project activities.”

eyeareque• 15 years ago

Sure, in 2008. But what about now?

shmerl2• 15 years ago

Agreed. On the other hand, popularity of Chrome helps Mozilla not to relax and to push forward.

zabraxias• 15 years ago

I have to agree with this since Mozilla is an organization that defends users' rights on the web. Firefox is just as fast or faster than Chrome in certain testing so try it out without heavy addons (like firebug) and try it with a fresh profile.

In any case competition is good. I don't think we'd benefit from a purely trident or webkit or gecko world.

akavlie• 15 years ago

The problem is, it's pretty useless without Firebug compared to Chrome, at least for me -- much of my browser use is for web development. (this may change with the built-in debug tools set for Firefox 10.0 -- let us hope)

I'm also a bit perturbed by the fact that Mozilla has always touted extensions as a key feature of Firefox... only to say you should disable them all if you want good performance.

icebraining• 15 years ago

Same here. It's also a big reason why I use Debian.

bodegajed• 15 years ago

> Firefox might be slower than chrome

Firefox 8.0.1 is really fast now it's 8.0.1 that's the best update they have done.

jaequery2• 15 years ago

there is one big factor why i use chrome over firefox. and that is the auto-complete as i type in things in the address bar. once i got used to that on chrome, i can never get back to firefox, no matter how much they have improved elsewhere. hope this serves as some good feedback to mozilla devs.

webwanderings4• 15 years ago

auto-complete is there in Firefox, it is just not there by default.

jaequery2• 15 years ago

good, then question is, will they ever make it by default?

lftl• 15 years ago

Funny, the url bar is the biggest reason I want to go back to Firefox. Chrome is frustratingly bad at completing URLs from my history. I can only assume that it's somewhat intentional since Google wants you to search rather than navigate directly, but it's the single biggest pain point in Chrome for me.

webwanderings4• 15 years ago

For my use, I measured my memory usage on both Firefox and Chrome (with whatever little number of tabs I keep open daily), and I found that the memory usage on both Firefox and Chrome is exactly the same. So I don't bother with Google and rely on Mozilla.

miles_matthias2• 15 years ago

Does anyone else find Firefox hideous from an aesthetic perspective? I believe in the work Mozilla does, but I can't use Firefox without being distracted by it. Chrome is gorgeous and gets out of my way, allowing me to focus on what I'm doing. I did see some Firefox beta sketches a while back on HN, and they looked similar to Chrome, so hopefully they go that way.

jakeonthemove3• 15 years ago

Are you using XP or Mac OS? Cause Firefox looks pretty nice with Aero on Vista and 7 - a lot like Chrome, actually...

miles_matthias2• 15 years ago

Mac OS X. Interesting.

wvenable2• 15 years ago

Chrome and Firefox take up almost exactly the same amount of vertical space on my system. Except for some minor differences, their UI is almost identical.

zpao• 15 years ago

I'm curious what you find "hideous". 3.6 -> 4 was a pretty big overhaul, but I think it looks pretty good. I customize a bit (small buttons, get rid of the search box & home button) and I may be baised.

I'll say that Firefox isn't perfect and there are quirks & oddities with bits of the interface. I'm sure there are bugs for most of them though.

(note: I work at Mozilla on Firefox, so while I'd normally be curious, I'm invested in fixing problems!)

jakeonthemove3• 15 years ago

Mozilla needs to do more marketing - I seem more ads/posts for Chrome these days, compared to a few years ago when almost every site (that I visited) had a banner saying "Switch to Firefox for a better Web" or smth like that.

Both browsers are good, however I use Firefox since I have all the add-ons I need, and the awesome Awesome Bar, which lets me access my favorite sites or sites I visited recently with a few keystrokes or keywords (I remember a word or two in the URL/title and I can always go back).

I had no luck finding something like that for Chrome, and that's my biggest annoyance - every time I have to bookmark a site (which I always forget), or I have to search for it again through Google. I type a damn keyword and it searches instead of showing me the URL... I have a suspicion that is on purpose, since it leads me to Google.com :-)...

starwed• 15 years ago

Unsurprisingly, google has a slightly higher marketing budget than mozilla... :P

drivebyacct2• 15 years ago

All of the talk about giving Firefox a try again... please, someone set up a sane package (PPA?) for Firefox that includes the proper Ubuntu font packages, that will allow me to test the dev releases on my machine. I love Chrome because I get dev builds every other day from their PPA and it just works. I've never had a similar experience when trying to use anything except the distro provided copies of Firefox.

hsivonen2• 15 years ago

The Firefox PPA that corresponds to the Chrome dev channel is https://launchpad.net/~ubuntu-mozilla-daily/+archive/firefox...

shmerl2• 15 years ago

I like Firefox for extreme customizability. Nothing matches that and Chrome is nowhere close to it.

linuxhansl2• 15 years ago

Why?

Every time I read news like this I go back and actually measure rendering times for the pages I frequent together with overall memory consumption.

Every time Firefox comes out on top, but yet somebody everybody thinks it is faster and consumes less memory.

(And I am still using Firefox 3.6.*, and Chromium 14)

Maybe I'm different in my browsing habits, but I find that hard to believe.

hsivonen2• 15 years ago

Firefox has improved a lot since Firefox 3.6. Firefox 3.6 was released on 2010-01-21. Firefox 8.0 was released on 2011-11-08. (Chrome 14 was released on 2011-09-16.)

I suggest comparing the latest Firefox (8) with the latest Chrome (15).

(Disclosure: I get paid for working on the engine of Firefox.)

linuxhansl2• 15 years ago

Oops, rereading my post... it was highly ambiguous.

What I meant to say is that in all tests on web sites that I frequent Firefox 3.6 is better (both in terms of speed and memory) than Chromium 14 (which is why I do not understand that everybody says it's faster).

rewiter2011• 15 years ago

free paid pr spam, i don't believe or trust this site.

lazugod• 15 years ago

Why not? Statcounter would have the right information to make this finding.

jpdelatorre• 15 years ago

I love Chrome since I don't have to install external flash player plugin which is kinda annoying. Chrome has a built-in flash player. You don't have to update flash and restart all your browser.

senthilnayagam• 15 years ago

Netscape was pioneer but lost steam later with version wars. Firefox came much later to Mozilla which gave hopes, but performance and memory leaks caused it to never be dominant browser, and it too got into version number war and is loosing.

Webkit has won on smartphone browser war(arm), same is being repeated on Desktop

mhartl• 15 years ago

The Awesomebar keeps me using Firefox. Is there an equivalent for Chrome?

ccanassa• 15 years ago

Chrome has already overtake even IE in South America: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-sa-monthly-201011-201111

Chrome Overtakes Firefox Globally for First Time

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