
 Google Chrome’s amazing growth spurt. The top web browser by June 2012? - DanielRibeiro
http://royal.pingdom.com/2011/07/01/google-chrome-growth-top-web-browser-june-2012/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+RoyalPingdom+(Royal+Pingdom)
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xdissent
I use Safari. Strangely, it's like the better tempered half-brother of Chrome
and doesn't come with a Flash plugin I can't uninstall. Oh and it doesn't
claim to have adoption statistics that are as dubious as the Enron financial
statements.

~~~
csulok
you could use chromium for the same effect. also, you can disable the built-in
flash plugin.

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batiudrami
Ah extrapolation by mean difference. My favourite part is the assumption that
growth will continue to accelerate as market share increases, when firstly,
that doesn't make any sense, and secondly, we have data from Firefox's growth
showing that the opposite happens.

~~~
GeneralWaste
Yes I must admit as soon as I saw their graphs this sprung to mind.
<http://xkcd.com/605/>

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cageface
Of course that kind of extrapolation is mostly just wishful thinking, but
Google's success in this market _is_ impressive. IMO they've raised the
quality bar for all the other browsers in a very short time.

~~~
MikeCapone
Indeed. Even the comic book that they released to explain the innovations of
Chrome was a great idea to make people understand and care more about this
important piece of software.

~~~
invisiblefunnel
For those who haven't seen it:
<http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/index.html>

------
xdissent
statistical trolling. EVERYONE knows the IE browser share takes 5 years to
budge. Great projections, but it just means Chrome _might_ be eating Firefox's
lunch for a minute.

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arnorhs
I'm as big of a Chrome fanboy as anyone else, but that chart is wrong in so
many ways.

Just to give an example: the end points of the chart show the browsers at
roughly 22%, 34% and 54% -- around 110% market share..

ok, maybe they're actually predicting the total growth of internet users to
grow 110% in a couple of years, but you can still do a percentage
calculation...

Also, like te_chris mentioned, IE is getting better and I doubt we see such
fast changes. But hopefully IE goes below 40% even 35% sooner than later

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te_chris
This article seems to forget that 1. IE is getting better, as much as we all
hate to admit it, 2. IE is still the default browser of the world's most
popular operating system, 3. People are lazy and, as IE keeps getting
better/faster, are going to be even more happy to just settle and get on with
browsing the web - not argue over which browser is better.

~~~
cryptoz
> IE is still the default browser of the world's most popular operating system

While true if you look at current hardware numbers, I think your statement is
misleading and incorrect. More people today purchased a computer running a
Google OS than a Microsoft OS. I know that Windows is "the world's most
popular operating system" by total installation numbers, but it is _not_ the
most purchased today.

I'm not sure what is, but I'd bet Android is "the world's most popular
operating system" if you measure it by today's sales.

~~~
kayoone
sources ? i highly doubt that.

~~~
Joeri
In its first 18 months windows 7 sold about 650.000 licenses a day. According
to Andy Rubin there are currently around 500.000 android activations a day.
Since not all windows licenses that are sold are actually used, and the number
of licenses sold is probably declining, while the number of android
activations is increasing, I'd say it's fair to say that they're roughly as
popular, and android will probably overtake windows some time this year.

Sources:
[http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive...](http://windowsteamblog.com/windows/b/bloggingwindows/archive/2011/04/22/windows-7-at-18-months.aspx)
<https://twitter.com/#!/Arubin/status/85660213478309888>

~~~
mattmanser
I think you're kinda right but the force of your statement:

 _More people today purchased a computer running a Google OS than a Microsoft
OS._

Isn't backed up by your source, there's a lot of hand waving going on there.

Also remember that phones have a much shorter life cycle than computers.

Edit: And remember that safari isn't on those graphs, you're talking about
computers and smart phones, the article doesn't seem to be.

------
clhodapp
I'm fairly sure that the percentages in the second chart add up to about
110...

~~~
mbrubeck
One of the many reasons this sort of simple extrapolation of current trends
makes no sense in the long run.

~~~
clhodapp
Actually, their prediction for Chrome in particular looks kind of polynomial.
To be fair it _does_ look a little polynomial on the left side of the
prediction line, too, but as you point out, using this kind of extrapolation
on percentages is ridiculous in any case.

------
3dFlatLander
For as popular as chrome is, I feel like the browser market is going to become
bifurcated between "normal users" and developers. Chrome is speedy, stable,
and I recommend it to everyone since I'm the computer guy in my circle. But
Firefox is still my development browser, and I don't see that changing any
time soon.

~~~
peregrine
What makes Firefox superior as a development browser? The Chrome Developer
tools are, IMO far better then firebug...

~~~
mun2mun
Firebug with

Firecookie <http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/firecookie/>

Firequery <http://firequery.binaryage.com/>

Firepicker <http://thedarkone.github.com/firepicker/>

Jsonview <http://jsonview.com/>

Colorzilla <http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/>

~~~
masklinn
> Firecookie <http://www.softwareishard.com/blog/firecookie/>

Built into the Webkit Developer Tools

> Firequery <http://firequery.binaryage.com/>

jQuery objects visualisation (in console and inspector) are in the Developer
Tools, rest is not (though the injection is a bookmarklet/browser extension
away)

> Firepicker <http://thedarkone.github.com/firepicker/>

Missing indeed, Opera's Dragonfly has a color picker but the webkit devtools
don't.

> Jsonview <http://jsonview.com/>

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chklaanhfefbnpoihc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/chklaanhfefbnpoihckbnefhakgolnmc)

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ddngkjbldiejbheifc...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/ddngkjbldiejbheifcmnfmmfiniimbbg)

<https://github.com/rfletcher/safari-json-formatter>

> Colorzilla <http://www.colorzilla.com/firefox/>

[https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hmdcmlfkchdmnmnmhe...](https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/hmdcmlfkchdmnmnmheododdhjedfccka)
?

~~~
mun2mun
Well for cookies chrome only shows the value, gives less control than
firecookie. Other extensions seems 'hacky' solutions, doesn't feel integrated,
some time slow. Also for css editing like add style, increasing/decreasing css
rule value firebug is still better than chrome inspector (chrome still does
not support increasing/decreasing in metrics tab). But javascript debugging
experience is better in chrome. Chrome has good profiler, can add XHR
breakpoint, listen for various event listener.

On an unrelated note I can't live without tree style tabs(On average I have
30+ open tabs, which is unmanageable in chrome, hangs some time) and
vimperator. All in all I still prefer firefox.

------
zitterbewegung
I think it will level out eventually IMHO mostly because the other two
probably will have users that really don't want to switch.

~~~
Steko
I think it will level out because:

(1) the quality of Firefox and IE have shot up over the last year in response
to Chrome.

(2) Chrome's users are the most fickle and thus the most susceptible to new
(or old) competition.

~~~
Drakeman
I can relate to number one, but what's your evidence for number two?

~~~
Estragon
Just an anecdote, but I have been using chrome for the last six months because
everything else was slow as a dog on my Mum's MacBook Pro, and chrome was
super-fast. But the lack of decent keyboard link navigation is driving me
crazy, and may drive me back to firefox soon.

~~~
ams6110
Interesting, I've found Chrome to be slightly faster than Safari on my
MacBook, but also much more prone to stalls and complete catatonia than
Safari.

------
cft
I am looking at Google Analytics of a site popular with US teens that has >12M
monthly uniques:

1\. Firefox 32.40% 2\. Chrome 31.63% 3\. IE 30.20% (last 30 days)

------
bmurphy
Argh. Same crap as with all the population predictions. Everybody always
assumes the graph is exponential. It is not. It always levels off. The real
trick is predicting where/when that will happen.

------
orijing
[http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/110701-c...](http://royal.pingdom.com/wp-
content/uploads/2011/07/110701-chrome-prediction.png)

Is that the predicted market share "growth" as the chart claims, or the
predicted market share? I think they were trying to get at the latter, but if
that's the case, by Dec 2012 (according to their projections), Chrome will
have 55% share, IE 35%, and Firefox 22% or so. That adds up to be more than
100%...

So it can't be projected market share, right?

------
robryan
Depends how effective they are at converting people that don't really care.
Pretty much everyone that really spends any time at all thinking about
browsers and their differences would have already tried chrome.

I think they will continue to make inroads into IE with word of mouth
recommendations and user frustration, a lot of the Firefox crowd though would
be pretty happy with it and unlikely to change.

~~~
MikeCapone
I've installed Chrome on at least 4 people's computers and they are still
using it. If you win over the geeks, you get a lot of other 'dependent'
people.

Business usage will be harder, though... Maybe if Chromebooks really take off.

------
flocial
One thing to note is that when you think mobile, WebKit (Chrome, Safari,
Android, iPhone) is already a dominant force. We don't know what our primary
web browsing device might be 10 years from now and IE is trapped in PCs (yes
I'm ignoring Win Mobile phones). Kind of interesting that IE and Firefox
actually share Mosaic heritage.

~~~
masklinn
> One thing to note is that when you think mobile, WebKit (Chrome, Safari,
> Android, iPhone) is already a dominant force.

Warning: there is no webkit[0] especially not on mobile[1].

While not completely true, it's important to remember three things about
webkit:

1\. The core engine progresses fast, and actual browser implementations fork
the core, two webkit browsers may have very different capabilities and bugs
due to the precise trunk revision they were forked from

2\. Webkit relies on a number of abstract interfaces which are implemented
differently on each port, depending on the quality of the port and the
underlying platform's capabilities two webkits on two different platforms (or
toolkits) may behave very differently

3\. Webkit is an HTML/CSS rendering engine, javascript engines are built
separately, which means (again) two webkit browsers may have very different
behaviors and capabilities as far as JS and DOM go, and provide completely
different sets of APIs.

[0] [http://ariya.blogspot.com/2011/06/your-webkit-port-is-
specia...](http://ariya.blogspot.com/2011/06/your-webkit-port-is-special-just-
like.html)

[1] <http://www.quirksmode.org/webkit_mobile.html>

------
urlwolf
I, as mostly everyone else, was not paying attention to Opera. I rely on
shortcuts, so pentadactyl and FF seemed the only way to go. Well, I have to
say Opera with vimperopera is better. The shift-arrow navigation is a killer
feature.

M2, the mail client, actually makes me open gmail much less...

------
becomevocal
Especially with the newer web apps coming out, Chrome 'just works'. Even
though I personally use Firefox most of the time, I am telling others to use
Chrome more over time. I know they'll always be able to see the web the way (I
think) they should.

~~~
ootachi
Firefox is automatically updated these days just like Chrome is, so there
isn't much of a difference between the two in this regard anymore.

~~~
csulok
automatic update is only for security updates. major updates still do popups
for users to install

------
staunch
Installing Chrome as default browser on my mother's computer felt a lot like
when I set Google.com as her home page in 1998. And I did it for very similar
reasons. Chrome is the fast/lightweight/awesome version of what already
existed.

------
dotcoma
So, by the end of 2012, Chrome (56%), IE (35%) and Firefox (22%) together will
have over 110% of the market? ;-)

------
fleitz
So by 2013 it should have captured 100% of the market and by 2013 130%?

------
georgieporgie
...and yet I still can't ctrl-tab to my last active tab.

