
IE8 falls below 25% market share, Firefox 15 passes 10% mark, Chrome loses users - dsr12
http://thenextweb.com/apps/2012/10/01/internet-explorer-8-falls-25-market-share-firefox-15-passes-10-mark-chrome-loses-users
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thurn
The wikipedia article on browser share does a good job of illustrating the
fact that nobody really has any idea what's going on:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table)

At least we can conclude Chrome is probably somewhere between 19% and 35%.

~~~
notatoad
Everybody knows what's going on. All you need to do to see the most relevant
and accurate browser stats is to open up your own analytics panel.

global browser stats are virtually useless. the only stats that matter are the
stats that correspond to your audience. depending on location, interest, age,
market, or any myriad other factors, your chrome usage could vary by a lot
more than 19-35%.

~~~
janzer
Yes, most definitely this. For instance small niche site I run mostly dealing
with females 30-60 years of age, Chrome has 17%, Safari 18%, Firefox 22% and
IE 36%.

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IanDrake
I can see why Chrome is loosing users. They're really close to loosing me now
too. The rapid updates have had some strange quality control issues and being
one version behind on Flash can be a pain.

~~~
zachalexander
I stopped using Chrome because I was never super excited about depending on
Google for yet another crucial service, and Firefox seems to have gotten
better lately (perhaps the competition has invigorated them).

I know that probably sounds paranoid, but at the end of the day, I would just
rather rely on a nonprofit organization or OSS project for anything important,
rather than a for-profit company... _as long as_ the quality is comparable.

~~~
Periodic
If you use Chromium then you'll be using an open-source browser. Chrome gets
the bulk of its source code from Chromium, but there are some parts they can't
include in the open-source distribution due to licensing restrictions.

However, that's a compromise, and it would be much nicer if it were open-
source from the start.

~~~
adlwalrus
I don't think there's a need to discuss it as some kind of frightening black
box that nobody's too sure about, either. As far as is known, I believe Chrome
- Chromium == Branding, MP3 codecs, Pepperflash, Foxit PDF reading libs. With
flash, they have some kind of special arrangement with Adobe; with the other
three, it seems like it amounts to licensing bullshit that's keeping their
hands tied.

There used to be that RLZ usage tracking thingy, but IIRC it got taken out.
I'm sure there's other stuff like auto-update and usage statistics-gathering
components added to the Chrome build as well.

If I missed anything, please do point it out.

By the way, my goal isn't to warm people up to the proprietary Chrome build.
My point is more to make people feel less like they're missing out by ditching
it for the freer Chromium.

It definitely has to be acknowledged that from a security perspective, it must
be assumed that Chrome contains back doors and "innocently neglected" security
vulnerabilities for big brother in all his various incarnations.

So use Chromium, damnit!

~~~
justinschuh
>It definitely has to be acknowledged that from a security perspective, it
must be assumed that Chrome contains back doors and "innocently neglected"
security vulnerabilities for big brother in all his various incarnations.

What?

~~~
zachalexander
I'm guessing they mean closed-source software should be presumed compromised.

~~~
justinschuh
Then that's tinfoil hattery and doesn't really seem like it adds to the
discussion.

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mtgx
Oh not Net Marketshare stats again...At least they are not adding iOS Safari
market share anymore and then saying how Safari market share grew 200% in one
month or something. Their stats are still misleading as hell, though. There's
no way Chrome still has only 18% market share, which is even lower than
Firefox.

------
kbd
I'd like to know how much the IE numbers would fall if they excluded China.
Unfortunately, I'd need to pay money to get that data from their source.

[http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-
share.aspx?qpri...](http://www.netmarketshare.com/browser-market-
share.aspx?qprid=0&qpcustomd=0&qpaf=-001%09101%09CN%0D)

~~~
Empro
Yep, China is a huge driver for IE6. Microsoft has the data you want:
<http://www.ie6countdown.com/>

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pbiggar
I thought it might be interesting to include our numbers, since they surprised
me. We (<https://circleci.com>) make tools for web developers, so this is very
much for early-adopters:

Chrome: 58%

Safari: 21%

Firefox: 9%

Android: 7.5%

Everyone else, including IE: < 0.5%

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leeoniya
here's what we're seeing past 2 weeks (ecommerce site in the DIY/contractor
home improvement sector):

ie9 - 23.7%

ff - 17.0%

ch - 15.0%

ie8 - 14.8%

ipad - 10.6%

sf - 8.5%

ie7 - 6.4%

ie6 - 2.4%

and - 0.8%

op - 0.5%

iphone - 0.2%

ie10 - 0.1%

*iphone and android phone stats are way off because we redirect to a dedicated mobile site for small screen sizes.

------
giblfiz
Am I the only one horribly confused by the math in these charts?

E.G. the second chart has FF at 20.08% and then has a breakout where they show
FF15 at ~11%, FF14 at ~3.2%, FF13 at ~0.7%, and FF12 at ~1% Those add up to
~16% by my math... That leaves around 4% missing, I'm assuming in an "other"
category, but I feel like leaving off "other" when it's your second largest
grouping is bad presentation.

Anyone else have a less confused way of reading these graphs?

~~~
Empro
There are other, older Firefox versions that add up to the remainder. The same
goes for the other browsers.

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cynwoody
According to StatCounter, over the last three months, the standings are Chrome
(33.87%), IE (32.53%), Firefox (22.99%), Safari (7.4%), Opera (1.66%), and the
rest (1.55%).

[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-
monthly-201207-201209-...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-
monthly-201207-201209-bar)

~~~
mbrubeck
Note that StatCounter counts page views, while most other reports count unique
visitors. Both are useful, but they can't be compared directly. The
StatCounter numbers reflect which browsers have users that do more (or less)
browsing than others.

------
CognitiveLens
There is a huge difference between losing users and losing market share,
particularly in an industry characterized by steady overall growth.

Is there any evidence that Chrome has actually lost users, or has it simply
not added as many as some competing browsers?

------
mindstab
These stats and graphs are at least a bit misleading.

For the Firefox cross section they show

10.91 + 3.20 + 0.72 + 0.99 = 20.08 ?? It is in fact 15.82

Which explains my first question: Where is Firefox 3.6? I cannot believe ie6
is still "so big" and Firefox 3.6 has vanished. Which it hasn't. It clearly
has ~ 4.26% or a bit less.

Kinda misleading info graphic

~~~
mbrubeck
While it's a different data set, StatCounter's numbers show Firefox 3.6
accounting for 0.86% of page views last month:
[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combine...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version_partially_combined-
ww-monthly-201209-201209-bar)

<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Template:Firefox_usage_share> has a further
breakdown of the Firefox numbers from StatCounter for September.

------
lostlogin
Am I missing something? Safari is the big winner according the article with a
gain of 0.16%, but IE6 gained 0.3%. Am I reading this wrong? Surely IE6 would
be the big winner in this (flawed, as reading above comments suggests) study.

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jackmoore
Analytics for a site I run (mainly dealing with web-dev) has Chrome usage
growing at a steady rate. For the past 6 months, Chrome has gained about 1%
market share a month (out of ~160,000 visits a month).

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nroman
These pie charts are bad. You shouldn't have the same browser switch colors as
you go through the charts. IE starts as purple then is blue; Firefox makes it
from blue to purple to red.

