Google Chrome Becomes World's No. 1 Browser 449
redletterdave writes "Just six months after Google Chrome eclipsed Mozilla's Firefox to become the world's second most popular Web browser, Chrome finally surpassed Microsoft's Internet Explorer on Sunday to become the most-used Web browser in the world, according to Statcounter. Since May 2011, Internet Explorer's global market share has been steadily decreasing from 43.9 percent to 31.4 percent of all worldwide users. In that time, Chrome has climbed from below 20 percent to nearly 32 percent of the market share. Yet, while Chrome is now the No. 1 browser in the world, it still lags behind Internet Explorer here in the U.S., but that will soon change. Chrome currently has 27.1 percent of the U.S. market share, compared to Internet Explorer's 30.9 percent, but IE is seeing significant drop-offs in usage while Chrome continues to rise."
Yay? (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure what to think. I've wanted Microsoft to lose its dominance ever since it eclipsed Netscape browser in 1999, but to replace one evil company that abuses it users, with another evil company that spies on people, is like a pyrrhic victory.
Re:Superior browser (Score:4, Insightful)
Let's see:
-The toolbar can't be customized
-No real AdBlock
-Extensions are glorified userscripts
-Installs Google Updater
-Memory usage goes through the roof with a lot of tabs opened (higher than Firefox could ever hope it to go)
Yeah...
Chrome is not open source (Score:5, Insightful)
Some of, but not all of, Chrome is open-source. You really want that transparency in a web browser these days. Use Chromium [chromium.org] instead.
good (Score:3, Insightful)
Still mainly a Safari (Mac) man myself, but I'm happy to see anything knock IE off its perch.
Re:Superior browser (Score:5, Insightful)
Except for noscript. There's nothing even close to noscript. The existing attempts to implement something like noscript on chrome are just awful beyond belief. I don't give a damn if chrome's JS engine is safer, I don't want the annoyance of JS-powered ads. Nor do I want the annoyance of having it globally turned off and being cumbersome to re-enable.
Re:No wonder Chrome is gaining users (Score:5, Insightful)
>>>tags that only Chrome understands, I wish they would stop doing that and stick to ratified standard.
Netscape/Mozilla did it when they were dominant. Microsoft did it too. Now it's google's turn.
BTW both those companies are good examples of how no monopoly lasts forever. New upstarts come-along and end the monopoly.
Yes Yay, Celebrate the Competition (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure what to think. I've wanted Microsoft to lose its dominance ever since it eclipsed Netscape browser in 1999, but to replace one evil company that abuses it users, with another evil company that spies on people, is like a pyrrhic victory.
My logic is to celebrate the contenders even if it's just more of the same corporations. Am I the only web developer that noticed that Internet Exploder started getting passably decent as Firefox & Chrome were breathing down their necks? I welcome any sort of race when before it was just the aborted full frontal lobotomy that is IE6 as a candidate.
Besides, roll your own chromium [chromium.org] and kiss any privacy raping proprietary ties goodbye if you want (and without the loss of HTML5 support and standards).
I would like Chrome a lot better if (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Do not go gentle into that good night (Score:3, Insightful)
Mozilla: the company that dropped Linux support on their latest work.
Re:But what are the weekday numbers like? (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:No wonder Chrome is gaining users (Score:4, Insightful)
The Netscape monopoly was overthrown by Microsoft being willing to lose great deals of money and depending on your outlook being willing to leverage another monopoly.
The IE monopoly might very well have lasted a lot longer with concerted effort and government support.
I'm not sure how those examples lead to sanguine confidence that technological lock in is no bid deal.
Re:Chromium, (Score:3, Insightful)
I tell friends the same, but they don't listen. They don't seem to care that Google is monitoring their travels across the web and building a profile on them.
Re:Yay? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Yes Yay, Celebrate the Competition (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No wonder Chrome is gaining users (Score:5, Insightful)
BTW both those companies are good examples of how no monopoly lasts forever.
This argument always grates with me, as if the fact that no monopoly (or anything else in existence) lasts forever somehow makes it okay. Firstly, it can still last a *damn* long time and hold things back for a significant part of one's lifetime. Secondly, in a lot of these cases, one monopoly can be (and frequently is) replaced by another soon after- something that is often touched upon or even accepted by those making that argument, yet with the assumption that this is somehow okay and significantly better than a single, long-lived monopoly.
Well, it's not. The fact that a monopoly might eventually fall when one is old and grey, only to be replaced with another monopoly (yay!) is a piss-poor substitute for a proper balanced and free market.
Re:Superior browser (Score:5, Insightful)
- Toolbar for what? Just to take up space and give me more shit to click?
- AdBlock works perfectly fine in Chrome for me. I don't know where this shit keeps coming from. https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/cfhdojbkjhnklbpkdaibdccddilifddb
- Extensions work fine for me. Not sure what you're driving at on this point.
- Don't have a problem with Google Updater. Does it not work on your system or does it consume too many resources?
- Memory usage across all chrome processes is about the same as Firefox for the same tabs. Sometimes a little more or less. It's inconsequential on my modern computer with 8 GB of RAM.
Chrome is faster, more stable, doesn't require admin rights to update it (that's a big one if you ask me), doesn't have clutter all over the screen.
Re:Yay? (Score:3, Insightful)
Slashdot should have a "level of evil" monitor for major tech companies.
Re:Well deserved (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people want a car, not a mobility toolkit.
For 95% of what I do, that's great--i.e., browsing.
Of course, there's Firefox with FasterFox, Web Developer, ScreenGrab, and some others installed for the 5%.
Re:Yay? (Score:2, Insightful)
Or slashdot should grow up and realize things aren't as simple as their comic books.
Re:But what are the weekday numbers like? (Score:4, Insightful)
Stats companies can't break out their stats?
Of course they can, but the first taste is free and for publicity. If you want details, they want to get paid. Seems to be a working business model to me.
Re:No wonder Chrome is gaining users (Score:5, Insightful)
So. If I make something really fucking cool that people all want then I suck?
Or am I evil?
Am I screwing over the market?
Being a monopoly is not a bad thing. Abusing monopoly powers is.
Re:Well deserved (Score:2, Insightful)
Great! An automotive strawman, to extend my television metaphor beyond the point of application. :-)
Given the the explicit choice, most people don't want a car that reports their exact activity to police, advertisers and insurance companies, 7/24.
Many would resort to "tooling" for their cars, in the effort to disable this.
Radar detector? Reflective licence-plate shield? Yanking the seatbelt chime?
Every day occurrence.
Re:Yes Yay, Celebrate the Competition (Score:0, Insightful)
Fuck everyone who wants to use existing websites without getting all religious about what technology they use.
Fixed that for you.
Re:Chromium, (Score:4, Insightful)
I tell friends the same, but they don't listen. They don't seem to care that Google is monitoring their travels across the web and building a profile on them.
Or it could be because people looking for Chromium give up after they can't find it on the first page of their site. And the first link points right back to Chrome.
Re:Superior browser (Score:2, Insightful)
- Don't have a problem with Google Updater. Does it not work on your system or does it consume too many resources?
Google Updater runs as a service, that has no visible setting to disable, calls home and install whatever is flagged as an update with the default settings Google wants. You are giving Google full administrator access to a computer and if some other company ever though of doing that, there would be uproar.
Re:No wonder Chrome is gaining users (Score:5, Insightful)
> those sites are just HTML5,
No, those sites are HTML5 plus some browser-specific additions, some of which are Chrome-only, some of which are WebKit-only, some of which are IE-only, some of which are Gecko-only, some of which are Firefox-only, etc.
> The sites will also run on other browsers if they
> support HTML5
Oh, really? Please try running http://getcrackin.angrybirds.com/ [angrybirds.com] in a non-WebKit browser. The page relies on sniffing for a -webkit CSS property in a way that relies on a bug in WebKit's CSSOM implementation, and if that bug is not present of if that prefixed property is not supported, will just show you a "This game can only be played on Chrome" message and a "Download Chrome" button instead of just letting you play the damn game.
Of course if you change the source of your browser to duplicate the CSSOM bug and pretend to have support for that -webkit property, the game does work (especially well if you also add support for yet another non-standard CSS property, actually).
> it's hardly Google's fault if other browsers do not
> support HTML5
It's Google's fault if they push the idea that "Chrome" and "HTML5" are the same thing. It leads to sites like the one linked above and comments like yours....
Insofar as one can talk about "Google" as a monolithic entity anyway. Which is not very much, as evidenced by the quote you give. There are a number of distinct parts of Google that have pretty different goals (e.g. the people doing marketing and bundling deals for Chrome are pretty scummy, the Youtube folks want to build DRM support into HTML, the actual Chrome developers are pretty reasonable for the most part and not exactly always happy with the actions of other parts of Google).
Re:But what are the weekday numbers like? (Score:0, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:No wonder Chrome is gaining users (Score:5, Insightful)
Should they not promote their own products on their own pages? Should Apple include a link to Dell in its search results?
Yeah yeah, Google's a search engine used to find information on other sites, fuck off. That argument holds no weight and is complete bullshit. When I go to Dell's support site, I am looking for support results, but still get offers on other Dell products, same with Microsoft, same with Ubuntu, same with any other fucking company.
Google is under no obligation to hide their other products. Now, if they were spoofing the search results and spamming Chrome links in the results any time anyone searched for internet browser I'd agree with you. But they're not, they're putting a sparkly ad on their front page, and one ad in the Ads section on the main page. Big, fucking deal.
Re:Chromium, (Score:4, Insightful)
I tell friends the same, but they don't listen. They don't seem to care that Google is monitoring their travels across the web and building a profile on them.
...so that they can show them ads they might be interested in. (oh how sinister!).
Has anyone got evidence of any other activity done with this "profile"?
The only arguments I've heard that carry any weight is the "what if someone hacked google" or "law enforcement getting their hands on it without a warrant" - but these would be a concern for many things we use every day, not just Google.
For me, the decision has always been to either live in a cave or just accept that there's a (very very small) risk and just enjoy what everyone else enjoys. The benefit far outweighs any risk IMO. I suspect most people feel the same way (rather than being completely ignorant as many on here seem to assume).
Chromium still wants you to "sign in" anyway - so isn't that the same thing?
Re:False (Score:4, Insightful)
You think it's a mandatorily-enabled setting, do you?
Every default setting is mandatory for 99% of users for the simple fact that they don't know they what it is or how to change it.
Re:Chromium, (Score:4, Insightful)
It doesn't require building, but after nearly an hour of searching their website I still couldn't find a direct link to this:
It cost me all of 5 seconds. What are you trying to accomplish here? I definitely have the feeling you guys are trying to create the impression that Google is trying to hide the Chromium builds, or something.
- Go to google
- Type "download chromium"
- Click first link
- Again, click the first prominently displayed link, which is in a bigger font, and printed bold