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Chrome Now Accounts For 55% of All Web Browsing (hothardware.com) 113

Posted by EditorDavid from the cutting-Edge dept.
Google's Chrome browser "now accounts for more than half of all desktop browser usage and has nearly double the market share of Edge and Internet Explorer combined," reports Hot Hardware: Market research firm Net Applications has Chrome sitting pretty with a 54.99% share of the desktop browser market, up from 31.12% at this moment a year ago, while Internet Explorer and Edge combine for 28.39 percent and Firefox stuck at around 11%. Even more interesting is that when Windows 10 launched to the public at the end of July 2015, Chrome had a 27.82% share of the market while IE still dominated the landscape with a 54% share. Now the script has flipped.
Just six months ago, the same research firm reported Chrome with a 41.66%, share barely beating Microsoft's 41.35%.
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Chrome Now Accounts For 55% of All Web Browsing More

Chrome Now Accounts For 55% of All Web Browsing

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  • What's a good Windows browser for people who don't want Google/Microsoft spying on them?

    • How does Chrome spy on you? I keep hearing this but so far no one can point to packet logs showing such behavior. I dumped Firefox years ago when they started adding features for shits and giggles instead of improving things like speed or reliability.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kohath ( 38547 )

        I don't know. I'm asking. Maybe the answer is "Chrome". It would be good to know. I'm getting tired of Firefox.

        • Most of us jumped form Firefox to Pale Moon. I highly recommend it.

          • Palemoon is just an outdated Firefox build without the Australis interface.

            • While Pale Moon is based on the Firefox code-base, it had made its own path now and could better be described these days as a classic Firefox experience with bleeding-edge security under the hood.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Mitreya ( 579078 )

      What's a good Windows browser for people who don't want Google/Microsoft spying on them?

      I think the answer is in the question. I don't know that you can avoid spying from Microsoft being on Windows...

      • Sure you can, though if you're on Windows 10 you may have other things to worry about. On older versions, you can disable or remove all the dubious phone-home behaviours, or just install something like Spybot Anti-Beacon and let it turn everything off for you, and then Microsoft will be none the wiser whichever browser (including IE) you choose to use.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      What's a good Windows browser for people who don't want Google/Microsoft spying on them?

      Use FireFox or Palemoon to at least not relinquish all the control to big corporations.

    • Re:Windows browser? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by xeoron ( 639412 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @03:13PM (#53224299) Homepage
      Vivaldi formed by the former founder of Opera web browser. Uses the Chrome's Blink rendering engine and supports Chrome Extensions. Vivaldi website [vivaldi.com]
    • You could use Opera.
    • If you don't want Microsoft spying on you and you're a Windows user, you've already lost the game.

    • Sigh

      Firefox I guess. The good news is with electrosys it has caught up to 2009 IE 8 and Chrome 1.0 in terms of security by using lowrights in c:\users\%appdata and threading per process which is nice if you have more than 1 cpu core which is everyone but grandma here in 2016.

      But it is too little too late for me personally to use Firefox again, but try it as the newer versions supposed to be caught up.

    • Chromium. It's Chrome without Google.

  • wser today.

    They are so obviously and completely designed to maximize the number of search queries made by accident, or by luring users into this. I've gone to great lengths to remove ALL fucking "smart prediction" bullshit and "search fields" and all of that, but they keep resetting the settings, or invent new BS, or remove existing about:config preferences, etc. I don't wanna deal with all this fucking BS all the time.

    Chrome... Firefox... Edge... they are all the same. And the only "alternatives" are like

  • IE is a better browser. I can't believe I wrote that but Edge is crash and misses things like favorites. Has MS added it yet?

    I always put X-UA-Compatible in Css to force edge to use IE so I do not have to work around bugs.

    So my guess is those who think the blue E for internet out of habit upgraded to 10 they found a web which was broken and switched

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 )

      Edge is yet another brand we have to test UI's with. There are two Microsoft browsers now, and they both suck. (Insert my usual rant about fat-client-version-hell.)

      • Just put that tag I listed above.

        Eventually I will start to use Edge html 5.1 features, but for now it's too cutting edge and changing and a small percentage.

        But users hate it. IE got Ok by version 9 for Joe Six pack and Ok by IE 10 for developers. Not great but it did it's job. Edge gives me subscription errors with AdBlock and crashes when I loaded it. It feels alpha quality and made for phones. Not pcs. IE 11 is still part of 10. I replaced edge and put an IE icon on the taskbar to test things.

        X-UA-Compa

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by antdude ( 79039 )

      Yeah, I hate Edge. I'd rather use IE11.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

      I always put X-UA-Compatible in Css to force edge to use IE so I do not have to work around bugs.

      What CSS works in IE11 (and presumably Chrome, Firefox, Safari, etc) but does not work in Edge?

  • complacency and feedback (Score:3)

    by Gravis Zero ( 934156 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @03:05PM (#53224251)

    Chome's dominance is not surprising. The number one way to lose users is to complacently enjoy the lead you have over your competitors and ignore user feedback. Microsoft and Mozilla are both experts are ignoring user feedback and both enjoyed large leads while they diverted resources. Chrome can also be defeated by a competitor that offers something better that they don't want to or refuse to provide. Frankly, I would like to see a fork of Chromium that focuses on privacy, ad blocking and script blocking (I don't like random scripts running on my machine). These are things Google wouldn't want to provide, so this could be how Chrome slips back to a 5% user share.

    • Frankly, I would like to see a fork of Chromium that focuses on privacy, ad blocking and script blocking (I don't like random scripts running on my machine). These are things Google wouldn't want to provide, so this could be how Chrome slips back to a 5% user share.

      There are numerous forks of Chromium focusing on privacy already. I'm surprised you've never heard of any of them. They don't get used very much because they aren't as helpful or featurful as the real Chrome and most people just want to browse the web quickly and securely which Chrome does very well.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jez9999 ( 618189 )

        Care to name a few? I wouldn't mind using one of them it is was decently maintained. Google has been getting pretty arrogant lately. Oh, it would be really nice if the fork allowed disabling the per-tab close buttons, which Google refuses to do in Chrome.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Clived ( 106409 )

      Well I for one am so pissed off by Google dropping support for Chrome on 32 bit Linux computers. I use Chromium but its not as good as Chrome as there is way better video support (especially embedded video support) on Chrome. As a result, I find myself using FF more these days

      My two bits

  • I don't know about the rest of slashdot readers, but from my point of view, Chrome is a great browser for apathetic users who don't have very sophisticated expectations in terms of extensibility and privacy features. With Firefox you have a much richer selection of add-ons and other niceties like, for instance, the ability to synchronize your data to your own server, rather than being entirely dependent on someone's so-called "cloud". Whereas Mozilla remains committed to a decentralized web, Google has ma

    • What should you do if you love **Chromium**, but hate the spyware Google created around it in Chrome ?
      Look for a well supported Chromium-based browser: I tried **Iridium Browser** (https://iridiumbrowser.de).
      They claim adherence to German data protection standards, as well as having an reproducible and audible build process.
      There might be other Chromium-based browsers, too, but with that one I'm quite happy for some months now....
    • Is it my imagination or is Chrome starting to get really unstable? It stops responding to keystrokes or mouse clicks for about 15 seconds at a time, and some websites make the fan spin so fast that other people in the room complain about the noise. I usually have to restart it once an hour. It's starting to feel like Netscape 1.0.

    • I don't know about the rest of slashdot readers, but from my point of view, Chrome is a great browser for apathetic users who don't have very sophisticated expectations in terms of extensibility and privacy features. With Firefox you have a much richer selection of add-ons and other niceties like, for instance, the ability to synchronize your data to your own server, rather than being entirely dependent on someone's so-called "cloud". Whereas Mozilla remains committed to a decentralized web, Google has managed to progressively blur the lines between browser and web property.

      I suppose Chrome is not as horrific as whatever Facebook might come up with if they ever decided to make a browser, but that's not saying much for Chrome. I'm a user of many Google products, but when it comes to browsers I'll be sticking with the content-neutral product that prioritizes my freedom and privacy - Firefox!

      Well everyone is different.

      To me I want a fast browser that is secure and takes advantage of my hardware and syncs up everything with all platforms. Chrome is it! Both modern IE and Chrome use threading per tab which means under Windows it uses c"\users\%appdata\lowrights. It is sandboxed at the kernel level! It also means my i7 can utilize all my cores with both browsers by MS and Google.

      Firefox keeps getting hacked as a result and I do not want to run workarounds for this architectural limit with sandboxi

  • Am I the Only One Not Okay With This? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by rsmith-mac ( 639075 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @03:29PM (#53224365)

    Quick check: am I the only person not okay with Chrome overtaking the browser market?

    Though I am greatly appreciative of breaking up the homoogenous (and semi-proprietary) web that IE left us with, I'm afraid we've replaced one devil with an even greater devil. Now the most widely used browser is developed by a company whose very existence is dependent on user profiling and advertising sales.

    Google borders on being anti-user these days. The web they create is technically advanced, but it's also one that's been optimized to deliver ads, to strip control from users in the name of simplicity and to support Google's revenue stream. It gives Google an incredible amount of power - more than anyone else ever before - as they have laid the groundwork to see exactly what their customers are doing on the Web. That's a power I fear they're not capable of wielding wisely anymore.

    At least MS just wanted to sell you a copy of Windows every few years; Google wants to sell you each and every day to the highest bidder.

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
    • Joke's on them. I adblock the shit out of everything (want to feed me ads? Pay for my and my employer's internet connections), and thanks to being the victim of student loan fraud dropping my credit from 800 to an unrecoverable (short of paying for some other asshole's college) 450, I pay cash on the spot for everything, lowest cost, and generally grey-market.

    • The day Chrome prevents ad-blocking is the day they lose their dominant market share. Personally I'm very pleased with the new devil, because this devil is cross-platform and well-maintained. The problem with MSIE's dominance was that it didn't work on Linux and it was for a long time basically abandonware holding back progress and making web developers waste tons of time.

  • no thanks (Score:4, Insightful)

    by markdavis ( 642305 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @04:02PM (#53224487)

    Chrome:

    * Closed Source: Check!
    * Closed Development: Check!
    * Google Spyware: Check!
    * Most Restricted UI: Check!

    Edge/IE are even worse because they only run on MS-Windows. No thanks, I will continue to use Firefox. Open source, open development, most addons. That doesn't mean Firefox doesn't have its issues... the biggest of which is TRYING TO TURN INTO CHROME!

    • Closed source and closed development? Did we forget about Chromium, which is in Debian?

      • >Closed source and closed development? Did we forget about Chromium, which is in Debian?

        Nope. Didn't forget about it at all. For one, we are talking about Chrome, not Chromium. Chrome is closed on both fronts. Chromium is open source, but that is not what people are using- I would guess the ratio is about 99+% Chrome and less than 1% Chromium as far as installations go. And just because Chrome is based on Chromium, that doesn't mean it is using that code. Google puts whatever they like in Chrome an

    • * Google Spyware: Check!

      Any reference?

      • >"Any reference?"

        I will admit I am yelling "fire" without seeing the flames. My bad, and I should probably tone it down.

        Here is an example of what can happen: http://arstechnica.com/securit... [arstechnica.com] It shows just how easy it can be for them to insert something that can be abused.

        The real danger is that with a binary-only, closed-source browser like Chrome, there is really no easy way know what it is doing behind-the-scenes or what backdoors it might have for them or governments. It is probably harder to pr

        • Of course it's indeed very easy in a proprietary non open source program to inject whatever code they want. On the other hand, Google, while profiling ad nauseam, base their business on users trust. If someone comes to reveal that Google is spying directly from Chrome (i.e. the browser sends information to Google even though the page visited is not related to them), especially from an "Incognito" tab, that would be a top scandal that surely will break most people trust in the company.

  • Or pretend to be Chrome? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I wonder how many browsers pretend to be Chrome for one reason or another? My Firefox browser identifies as Chrome to get it to work properly with Netflix. My Qupzilla browser IDs as Chrome to avoid compatibility issues. Just about every browser I use or set up for people ID themselves as Chrome because otherwise people see an endless stream of "We recommend you update your browser" nag messages.

  • SImple reason its not firefox: group policy (Score:4, Insightful)

    by n3r0.m4dski11z ( 447312 ) on Sunday November 06, 2016 @04:46PM (#53224695) Homepage Journal

    I would love to make firefox the default browser in my company. However mozilla has zero interest in that. While chrome provides MSI's and group policy templates to tie the whole thing together, enforce custom settings, etc.

    Firefox how to deploy faq: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Deplo... [mozilla.org] (note the two most important links are broken and defunct)

    google how to deploy faq: https://support.google.com/chr... [google.com] (and many other webpages, but you dont even need instructions because its teh same as every other well designed software package from a major corporation)

    Its been like this for literally years. Mozilla simply does not care about centralized policy management or deployment.

    Firefox is the best web browser by far and much more stable, and less ram hungry than chrome, so its sad for me. Until i can push out adblock and firefox with a customized home page in 30 minutes to 200 workstations its not going to be standard on my network.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eWarz ( 610883 )
      Firefox tends to be buggy. I have run both chrome and Firefox for long periods of time without closing either/or on the same system...Firefox either blows up (crashes, FF windows stop rendering, or it just stops working) or eventually just quits for no reason at all. I've had the same chrome session running nonstop for a while now. Longest stretch of time was 5 months. The only time I restart it is for an update. I've never had it crash or blow up. I was one of the earliest users of Firefox as well...

    • I would love to make firefox the default browser in my company. However mozilla has zero interest in that.

      It is clear that Microsoft has some sort of plant inside of Mozilla. How else could Mozilla be so utterly stupid after people like me lifted them up and got Firefox installed on US Government computers as well as within numerous other organizations. Going directly against what your users want (UI)? Changing add-on behaviour so that noscript is as useless on Firefox as it is on Chrome? Violating the base concepts that the browser was built on (lean and mean) Whatever. This goose is cooked. Stick a fork in it

  • I strictly reserve it for things that don't work in Firefox. BTW, if anyone knows how you can directly open a link in Chrome from Firefox I'd be very interested to hear it. By directly I mean not copy-pasting the url.

  • ...and search engines to be search engines, and both to know that neither is the other, and when I'm typing something on the screen I expect it to remain on that part of the screen and not jump somewhere else.

    And I'd really like to be able to right-click on a link and have an "Open with..." option that offers my choice of all the browsers I have installed, and I'd like to be able to highlight and right click and be offered my choice of search engines.

  • Given how common mobile internet access is nowadays, it seems funny to place such an artificial restriction on this discussion. Does expanding it to include mobile access ruin the narrative somehow? It doesn't seem like it should...

  • Even more interesting is that when Windows 10 launched to the public at the end of July 2015, Chrome had a 27.82% share of the market while IE still dominated the landscape with a 54% share. Now the script has flipped.

    That's not interesting.

    People hate Edge's interface, much like they hate any other Metro-esque vague UX Microsoft has shat out lately.
    When people installed Windows 10 (I say that like they had a choice, haha), they suddenly found the familiar blue "e" on the taskbar did not open their familiar Internet Explorer. Rather then use Edge they went looking for a replacement. Chrome has the world's most popular search engine marketing it every chance it gets, so it's what people will end up with.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by eWarz ( 610883 )
      I wouldn't necessarily agree with that. I don't use Edge, but I do use Windows 10. The reasons I use chrome are simple: 1) Your browser history, bookmarks, passwords, etc. get saved. (and I don't care about the privacy implications), 2) Add-on support wasn't in Edge for the longest time (no ad-block, etc.) 3) Edge STILL isn't 100% standards compliant (took 2 weeks to work around an Edge/IE issue while working on a project recently) 4) Edge is just ugly in general, and doesn't seem to work all that well
  • Enter a new monoculture. Will Google behave less evilly that Microsoft did in its time?

  • Browsers can be frustrating. In my experience, _all_ of them have _some_ issues. Currently I use Firefox for "light" browsing and Chrome for media browsing, because I feel that both lack in some areas.

    Firefox:
    + Ideologically I'd like to use Firefox only instead of MS browsers and Chrome.
    + Separate search bar instead of an omnibar.
    + Tab opening and closing behaviour (always closing to the next-to-the-right tab is nice).
    + Most accurate URL suggestions based on bookmarks and history.
    + browser.tabs.loadD

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