Google Chrome more popular than Safari

http://gizmodo.com/5426989/chrome-beats-safari

by richardburton • 17 years ago

54 62 17 years ago

tcskeptic• 17 years ago

The single feature preventing me from using Safari on Windows as my default browser is an option to open new tabs instead of new windows without some sort of "special" click. My annoyance lvel over this missing feature is becoming unreasonable.

blehn• 17 years ago

the following terminal command will change Safari's default behavior to open all "new window" links in new tabs

   defaults write com.apple.Safari TargetedClicksCreateTabs -bool true

EDIT: as slig kindly pointed out, this tip won't help Windows users.

slig2• 17 years ago

Nice tip, but he says that the problem is on Windows.

mahmud3• 17 years ago

It doesn't hurt that Google has been pushing chrome via ads like crack.

kingkawn• 17 years ago

or that its faster than all other browsers in my experience.

mahmud3• 17 years ago

Which one is the bigger population that can statically accommodate this growth? the set of people who consciously shop for browsers with faster Javascript VMs and faster startup times, or the set of people who click on Google ads? Specially authoritative looking ones?

Let's be real.

Dauntless• 17 years ago

I bet the Youtube link on all pages that promote Google Crome helped it more then all the ads for Safari for example.

DrJokepu• 17 years ago

Yes I was surprised to see a Chrome ad at Tottenham Court Road station on the London Underground the other day.

SandB0x• 17 years ago

On Monday the entire cover of Metro (big London/UK free commuter paper) was a four side Chrome ad. It attempted to explain open source, javascript performance and the independent tabs. Not exactly normal advertising material. And today I saw a Youtube ad on the side of a bus...

3pt14159• 17 years ago

Market share doesn't matter. What matters is person-hours of internet usage. Chrome users are on the internet for hours every day. It's part of their job. IE users are on the computer maybe once a day at the end of the day to check their Hotmail accounts. Since I'm online much more, I'm worth much more to Google, because as I search in the address bar I come across many Google ads from my Google search results. Some of which I click on.

PanMan• 17 years ago

But you might be way less likely to click on ads, because you had more training in ignoring them, than those IE users.

protothomas• 17 years ago

By that reasoning alone though IE users would be more valuable to Google than Chrome users. I think ultimately it boils down to controlling the user's means of access, probably with more long-term aims in mind, in which case it could be argued that it is raw market share that matters after all.

willwagner• 17 years ago

What panman said in spades. The person-hours you spend on the internet can have an influence but it's a much smaller factor on ad click rates then other demographics like age, gender, educational level, etc. No disrespect to people who sew, but you compare ad click rates on a sewing blog vs a javascript blog with the same traffic and I'd wager the sewing blog has a much higher click rate.

And as such, I'd highly doubt, at least until Chrome actively courts hardware manufacturers, that Chrome Ad click rates compare to IE. IE is the default web browser for many computers and ad clickers are more likely just to use the default web browser that comes installed on their system (the whole addon toolbar business is based on the fact that users won't (or don't know how to) switch their default search engine back once it's installed).

brown9-2• 17 years ago

Chrome users are on the internet for hours every day. It's part of their job. IE users are on the computer maybe once a day at the end of the day to check their Hotmail accounts.

Is there any factual basis for this type of claim?

I would imagine there are a large segment of IE users who are also on the internet for hours every day and are locked into using IE by their corporate IT departmnet.

slig2• 17 years ago

I can't see why anyone would stick with safari giving that Chrome runs the same rendering engine, a faster JS engine and extensions.

Maciek416• 17 years ago

I suspect that Apple doesn't necessarily care to have the largest browser market share on Windows.

If they did, Safari on Windows would look and feel more like a Windows application. As it stands, it's a very opinionated application, with foreign-looking scrollbars, text antialiasing that works differently from ClearType (they may have changed this by now, I haven't looked), etc. Comparing market shares between these browsers with the assumption that they have the same goals might be a bit off.

[edit]: I've also noticed a lot of people I know living over in the Windows world seem to harbor an uncontrolled hate-on for iTunes and Quicktime. Since these are often associated with the installation of Safari, that probably doesn't help Apple's position. Does Chrome come with any "unwanted" extras?

TheBranca18• 17 years ago

Well iTunes especially has been a resource hog on Windows in my experience. Between the ipodservicehelper.exe and the itunes.exe itself taking a lot of memory I think there is room for improvement there.

elblanco2• 17 years ago

> I've also noticed a lot of people I know living over in the Windows world seem to harbor an uncontrolled hate-on for iTunes and Quicktime.

It's because Apple's software runs like garbage on Windows boxes. They eat up resources, install unnecessary stuff, run useless background apps that east up memory, take over bindings between file types and better applications (really, quicktime? I really don't want you to become the embedded player for .mpg files in all of my browsers, so I'm stuck with a 1"x1" postage stamp on my 26" monitor and no full-screen option).

On Macs, the software is sublime. On PCs they simply suck.

Those specific pieces of software alone kept me away from Macs for years because the PC ports were so terrible.

panic4• 17 years ago

Safari's Javascript engine runs faster than Chrome's on the Mac. I'm not sure what went wrong in the Windows port.

boundlessdreamz• 17 years ago

Not true. At best they are equal. Most of the times chrome bests safari. http://www.manu-j.com/blog/chrome-vs-firefox-vs-safari-vs-we...

vaporstun2• 17 years ago

I don't know why everyone is downvoting this, it's true as of 12/9/09. On SunSpider, Safari edges out Chrome by about 12%.

source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9142004/Safari_edges_...

Now of course on Windows there is no contest, Chrome is faster, but on Mac Safari is slightly faster.

ugh2• 17 years ago

Scrolling is broken. The difference is minimal, but Chrome doesn't scroll the same as native OS X apps. It's the same with Firefox (only worse).

I scroll all the time. So it should better work perfectly. With Chrome, it doesn't. Switching between my feedreader and Chrome made my fingers hurt.

(This is, by the way, something many OS X apps get wrong. All of MS Office, iTunes and so on.)

MikeCapone• 17 years ago

The crappy scrolling on the Mac is what keeps me away from Firefox. I've tried extensions to fix it, but nothing worked. It's still laggy and slow and just doesn't feel as solid as on Safari.

nailer3• 17 years ago

What's the prob specifically? That the speed is different?

scorxn• 17 years ago

Assuming you mean on a Mac... I stick with Safari because it's fast enough, more mature than Chrome, evolved specifically for this platform, and updates and behaves according to OS conventions. Slightly better JS performance doesn't compel me to ignore those benefits, install another app, migrate my bookmarks and settings, and (presumably) learn new keyboard shortcuts.

pkulak• 17 years ago

Well, right now on the Mac, Safari has a lot going for it. Like, bookmark managing and extensions like AdBlock. But, I love Chrome tabs and how it is able to maximize real estate, and I hate the constant Safari beachballing, so I use Chrome. One day Chrome on the Mac will get what's missing, plus bookmark syncing (which I don't know if Safari will ever get).

elblanco2• 17 years ago

Safari still "works" better on the Mac than the Chrome dev builds. Little things, like where you save a file work better in Safari.

Plus Safari is very close to Chrome's performance on a Mac, at least insomuch that anyone wouldn't notice.

Frazzydee• 17 years ago

Not since Safari 4, IMO. Ever since I upgraded it became very laggy (especially when opening/closing tabs), and does not have the same solid & nimble feel that Chrome has.

That being said, although Chrome performs the core browser functions better than safari, it's still rough around the edges.

socratees• 17 years ago

Given the rate at which Chrome is revolutionizing browser related technologies, I even think Chrome might overtake Firefox in market share very shortly.

spoiledtechie• 17 years ago

I love my Firefox. I don't think I could give it up for anything. The thing that sells me the most on FF is the extensions. I also build extensions and I don't really want to ever rewrite my FF extensions. It would totally suck...

electromagnetic• 17 years ago

Chrome's market share is a considerable jump to say it was released little over a year ago. I never saw this kind of growth for Firefox until the paid ads started appearing everywhere.

Chrome has attained in its first year the same average market growth of Firefox (roughly 4.5%) that it attained in 5 years with paid referral programs and advertisements everywhere. I wonder what growth Chrome will attain when it hits the rapid phase of its growth.

Also to consider is Microsoft is shipping Windows 7 in Europe with IE, Firefox, Chrome and another IIRC.

blakerc• 17 years ago

I would be surprised if this happened. In the last year, Firefox added 3.51 points to its market share while Chrome added 2.82 (Net Applications).

Additionally, Firefox grew its users base by 40% in the last year--adding nearly 100 million users.

jonknee2• 17 years ago

Chrome is the new FireFox--the quickly moving upstart. A great thing as FireFox is quickly losing its shine.

swannodette• 17 years ago

Honestly I hope Chrome is the new IE. If it chips away at Safari or Firefox marketshare, that's no win for anyone- those are already damn good browsers.

Personally, thus far, I've yet to see anything in Chrome that would make me jump ship (and I've been trying it for a while). I can do serious development with Firefox and I can have minimalist browsing with Safari.

pavs3• 17 years ago

The only reason I switched from Firefox because its a memory hog, the longer you use it the slower it gets and eventually crashes - If it was once in a while I could live with that but it happens too frequently. Also installing extensions on Firefox can effect the browser performance, so the more extensions you use more often your browser will crash and slower it will get. Every time there is a extension upgrade you need to go through 2-3 steps and restart browser to install them.

With Chrome, I have 23 extensions installed at the moment, it performs as good as having no extension installed. I can't even imagine having 23 extensions on Firefox. All the extensions updates are done on the back ground, install it and forget about it. I had some browser crashes on the early chrome builds but since the last 8 months I didnt have a single browser crash and I am using dev channel.

IMO chrome is head over heels better than Firefox (this coming from a former Firefox fan boy) and you need to use it more than 5 minutes to really appreciate it.

nailer3• 17 years ago

Google hopes Chrome will be the new explorer.exe (the shell, not the filemanager).

houseabsolute• 17 years ago

Presumably it's a win for the people who prefer Chrome to the other browsers, yes? Or is your assumption that those people are coerced somehow and that their preferences don't enter into it?

nailer3• 17 years ago

The sad thing is, Safari is the new Firefox - once fast, now incredibly slow in its 3.0 and 4.0 incarnations. Here on a MBP Chrome is demonstrably faster.

jonknee2• 17 years ago

So is Firefox the new IE? Safari still smokes Firefox.

symesc• 17 years ago

I've been a Mactard for years and a big fan of Safari, but Chrome has become my default browser on my Mac.

Chrome became the default on my PC at work as soon as I could get it installed a year ago.

The beauty of Chrome is its speed and elegance. Omnibox for searches, the behaviour of tabs (remembering which tab spawned the subsequent one), and the ability to use icons only for the bookmarks bar are three things that Safari doesn't do.

The addition of extensions for the PC have cemented its position there, and when those services are added to the Mac version life gets better.

Firefox does most of this, of course, but it looks and feels bloated and old on both platforms.

I will forever love Firefox for freeing us from Microsoft's IE tyranny, but Chrome is truly firing on all 8 cylinders these days, pun intended.

vaporstun2• 17 years ago

I've tried using Chrome as my default browser on Mac many times, but always end up going back to Safari. Chrome just isn't ready yet.

It has no bookmark manager, so when you have more bookmarks than space on the toolbar, there is literally no way to move them around short of deleting enough so that they all fit on the toolbar then moving them around. I ran into this when I wanted to add a new one to my toolbar and it was not possible. There is no way to rearrange them in the menu.

The scrolling in Chrome annoys me by being all herky jerky.

Lack of bookmark synching in Chrome is annoying. I have a desktop at work and a laptop for home use and it's so nice having my bookmarks sync up with Safari without any intervention.

Chrome on Mac is the first browser I've used where if I scroll down a page, go to a link on that page, then hit my back button it doesn't go back to where I was before. I have to scroll down the page again manually.

I'm a 1Password user and they do not have a version of their plugin that works for Chrome.

Chrome also does not make use of the standard OS X Keychain. So I have to put all of my passwords in again manually. Huge pain.

Some of these things can supposedly be remedied by using the latest version of Chromium which has extensions enabled and installing random extensions, but that is a workaround for a browser that's not ready yet.

Until it is possible to rearrange my bookmarks, sync them, use 1Password, scroll smoothly, and not have to scroll every time I hit the back button, I'll stick with Safari. Chrome has great potential, but is still not to the point where it can serve as a valid replacement for me. When I'm using Windows, it's my default for sure, but on Mac Chrome isn't ready yet.

mikepurvis• 17 years ago

"The scrolling in Chrome annoys me by being all herky jerky."

Call me shallow, but that's the biggest blocker for me.

sailormoon• 17 years ago

Great! I like how safari looks but Apple's refusal to allow third party extensions has always soured me on the program and meant I never really seriously adopted it over FF. I just cannot live without ABP.

Chrome's a great browser and with the extensions has become the best browser on Windows IMO. Mac doesn't support extensions yet but they are presumably coming, and when they do it'll be the best browser on Mac, too, unless FF pulls something out of their hat ..

cstejerean• 17 years ago

What do you mean by 'Apple's refusal to allow third party extensions'? For example, I'm using Click to Flash for in Safari at the moment.

panic4• 17 years ago

Click to Flash isn't really an extension. Your browser sees it, like Flash, as a plug-in that can handle certain content. But instead of actually presenting that content, it draws a gradient and some text until you click on it (at which point it hands control off to the actual Flash plug-in).

Real browser extensions allow you to do a lot more than this.

rajat• 17 years ago

I've switched to Chrome primarily because my MB Pro is a little short of memory (should upgrade soon), and Chrome seems to use a lot less real memory (as reported by activity manager) than Safari does. Safari seems to get upto 300 Mbytes pretty quickly, while Chrome stays around 60 Mbytes. My personal experience is that that seems to keep the system from bogging down periodically. Once I upgrade the memory, we'll see.

One potential problem for Chrome, at least for the type of users we see here, is any potential issue with adblockers. Wasn't there some news items about Google possibly being less than thrilled with such extensions (understandably)? I know quite a few people for whom a good adblocking solution is essential, and they stick with Firefox exclusively.

bradbeattie• 17 years ago

Either way, it's a win for WebKit.

city41• 17 years ago

Which was made what it is today with heavy contributions from Apple. Man, that's gotta sting a little bit :)

fauigerzigerk• 17 years ago

I'm staying with Firefox for the time being even though Chrome maximises screen real estate and scrolls better (larger increments). The reason is the Tab Hunter extension.

One of the biggest issues I have is finding my tabs, and Tab Hunter is ideal for that purpose.

Pistos2• 17 years ago

Chrome just doesn't do it for me [yet]. I'm sticking with Opera for the foreseeable future. For me, "great speed + few features" doesn't beat "adequate speed + great features".

Google Chrome more popular than Safari

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