

Chrome hits 17-month low, Windows 8 still only creeping upward - jor-el
http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/chrome-hits-17-month-low-windows-8-still-only-creeping-upward/

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justinschuh
I've never been able to make sense of Net Market Share's numbers or why
they're so wildly divergent from nearly every other source. Just take a look
at the big ones listed on Wikipedia:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table)

The other stats sources consistently align in a pretty narrow range of around
2%-7% for any given browser. But Net Market Share consistently shows Chrome as
more than 10% lower, and IE more than 20% above what every other stats
provider is seeing. The only thing I can figure is that their sample base is
just too narrow to avoid what seems to clearly be a severe systemic bias.

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xutopia
I just started a conversation on Twitter with the author.

<https://twitter.com/garyharan/status/307905674279518208>

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nixarn
Yeah, weird stats. I checked some other sources:

<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp> … (IE 14%, Chrome 48%)

<http://gs.statcounter.com/> (IE 29%, Chrome 37%)

My own website with 10k+ daily visitors has IE 14% and 35% Chrome

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danmaz74
After years of the highest satisfaction with Chrome on Windows, lately I've
been experiencing many annoying crashes. This is also true for some people I
know.

For myself, it might depend on the fact that I'm using more extensions now,
but that isn't true, for example, for my father.

I don't want to imply anything, but this reminds me of when I switched from
Netscape Navigator to IE back in the day, not because IE was "better" (AFAIR
IE was an exact copy of Navigator, just with a big "e" instead of a big "N" in
the upper right corner) but because Navigator was becoming more and more
unstable.

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rm999
I've found Chrome (and all browsers in this day and age, for that matter) to
be quite stable, and I haven't heard complaints from others. Before switching
browsers (which can be pretty inconvenient) it may be worth debugging if this
is an issue with your system in general rather than the browser.

Have you and your father tried the advice on this page?
[http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...](http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=142063)

~~~
danmaz74
I didn't; thank you for your suggestion, I'll check those suggestions out the
next time I'm on Windows.

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meaty
I'm not surprised.

I know no one who has upgraded to windows 8. I got 5 free copies with my MSDN
sub and one got claimed before I deleted the VM. Considering I work for a
Microsoft partner with 180 staff, we have one windows 8 machine and its an RT
Surface used by QA. We have 4 VMs for testing as well which never visit the
www at all. We have more Macs in the office!

Chrome I find to be slightly obtuse and buggy. Constant tab crashes and hangs
and I'm really not sure its that fast. Friends seem to have the same opinion.
One complaint I hear is that people are constantly prompted to sign into
chrome. We're pretty much all back on Firefox and IE.

Meh.

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Samuel_Michon
I'm missing the most important graph: combined mobile & desktop browser market
share.

Mobile phones, tablets and PMPs (like the iPod touch) increasingly replace
desktop computers and notebooks for browsing the web.

According to Statcounter [1], 14% of all web traffic in the US comes from
mobile clients. Compare that to 8% a year a go and 3% three years a go. In
Africa [2], mobile already makes up 18% of web clients.

Granted, Statcounter is just one source, but I think it shows the trend quite
well.

[1] [http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-US-
monthly-2008...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-US-
monthly-200812-201303)

[2] [http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-af-
monthly-2008...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-af-
monthly-200812-201303)

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buster
Most interesting is the adoption rate at the bottom. Seems like IE users
virtually never upgrade, wtf?! At one point IE6 share even grew, how is that!?

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csulok
on arstechnica.com.

it's highest everywhere else.

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Samuel_Michon
I'm assuming you mean Chrome has the highest desktop market share overall.
That jibes with the browser stats for my own websites. On mobile, Safari
reigns supreme. And as more people browse the web on mobile devices, WebKit
based browsers continue to grab market share from Internet Explorer.

