
After A Four Year Run, Firefox Is No Longer The Top Browser On TechCrunch - abraham
http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/30/top-browsers/
======
fleitz
What got me hooked on chrome was the unified address bar that just worked, and
tabs on top (and the close button stays in the right place when you close half
a dozen tabs), basically it just took up less space, firefox feels like IE
with way too much clutter and a prompt to ask you if you really meant to do
whatever, yes I really want my browser to close, update etc.

Chrome just does whatever it feels like and I'm ok with that as it makes
decent choices. It's really not the end of the world if a dozen tabs close,
especially if you can just reopen them with a click.

The difference between chrome and firefox is usability. I always feel like I'm
fighting firefox to do what I want.

~~~
SeanDav
I feel almost diametrically opposite :) I find the Chrome interface so simple
as to be almost brain dead. Chrome's handling of tabs and sessions is much
worse than Firefox. As a power user of browsers I just feel Firefox is streets
ahead of Chrome. I honestly cannot think of a single thing I prefer about
Chrome. The only reasons I have it installed is just to see what the fuss is
all about and as an alternative to Firefox if I have display or other problems
in 1 browser.

~~~
fleitz
Interesting, I'll give you sessions hands down, but tabs? I'm really
interested to know what I'm missing in FF.

I think FF4 may get me to switch back as there are a few extensions I miss,
oh, and the in page search sucks compared to firefox. Nothing like pressing /
to search, maybe I should install Vimium.

~~~
Raphael
With many tabs, they shrink so small they lose the text and favicon.
Eventually they stop shrinking and new tabs are not displayed, and clicking
the new tab button just activates the tab under it.

~~~
zcid
Use Tree Style Tabs for a week and I guarantee you will never go back to top
style tabs. I have about 40 tabs open right now and it feels completely
organized (I am obsessive about minimizing clutter).

------
joshes
I'm a fan of Chrome, but let's remember the demographic here before we get out
of hand:

Techcrunch, and similar websites and blogs, cater to the technologically savvy
elite. The people visiting websites like Techcrunch are very much in tune with
the latest software and the latest tech trends and movements.

Websites that do not cater to this demographic paint a very different story,
ie. Wikimedia in October 2010:

IE - 44.72%; Firefox - 29.67%; Chrome - 9.71%; Safari - 5.57%; Opera - 3.48%;
Mobile Browser - 4.70%;

Source:
[http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Wikimedia...](http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/30/Wikimedia_web_browser_usage_share_2010_10.png)

On a website visited by a much wider swath of the Internet citizenry, IE still
dominates. Hopefully, and I believe quite likely, Firefox and Chrome will
become the definitive standard for sites like this in the not-so-distant
future.

~~~
listic
Statistics for the whole of Russia in October 2010:

IE - 32.0%; Firefox - 26.3; Chrome - 7.3%; Safari - 0.8%; Opera - 23.9%; Opera
Mini - 8.5%.

This is from liveinternet.ru, the most popular site tracker (visitor counter)
in Russia.
[http://www.liveinternet.ru/stat/ru/browsers.html?period=mont...](http://www.liveinternet.ru/stat/ru/browsers.html?period=month)

~~~
heyitsnick
Do you know why Opera is doing so well in Russia?

~~~
Hovertruck
AFAIK, Opera is one of the most popular browsers throughout all of Eastern
Europe (I think it's #1 in Ukraine).

From what I know, a large part of this is that back in the day, internet
connections in those regions were so slow that Opera's feature set (which at
the time was far and away better than other options) made browsing a much
better experience. It aggressively cached content, allowed easy access to
disabling images, didn't automatically reload pages while navigating back
through history, etc.

------
old-gregg
Just FYI, Chrome drains your laptop battery, on Linux at least - just play
with powertop and see for yourself. Not sure why it causes so many CPU
wakeups, but I get about 30 minutes less 3:30 vs 4hr if I'm surfing in Chrome
vs Firefox.

~~~
est
I presume that's a trade off for fast javascript?

~~~
natmaster
Yet Firefox 4 is faster in both Sunspider and Kraken. (And V8 if you discount
silly things like raytracing and process scheduling- why would anyone do those
in javascript?)

~~~
nuclear_eclipse
Yet Chrome is still far faster if you have a multi-core system and are
actually running more than one tab. FF4 can be as fast as it wants in
processing Javascript, but it still can't _scale_ that performance like Chrome
can.

~~~
aerique
Actually, after initially starting it up and liking the speed, I found that
Chrome quickly approached Firefox like performance levels once I started using
more and more tabs.

------
thezilch
Chrome gets installed and set as the default browser for all friends and
family, if for no other reason, because it has four killer advantages: * Auto-
updates itself -- no prompts for those less tech-savvy or wanting to just use
the web RIGHT NOW * Auto-updates Flash * Natively supports PDF reading -- I
make sure Adobe Reader never gets a chance to take another's life

Oh yeah, it's damn fast at startup, browsing, and shutdown -- is my Firefox
STILL closing?

All of the above has the added bonus of nudging other browsers along, which I
believe is a big part of Google's intent. I don't think they necessarily care
to be the monolith that was IE4-6. Rather, Google has shown they simply want
everyone browsing, using ANY browser and ANY connection (Google wants to
install fiber in a large metro as a blueprint / demonstration for others to
follow), so long as you are browsing as fast as possible. I give a lot of
credit to Google for lighting the fire under the FF4 and IE9 (and Safari)
teams.

------
wh-uws
Killer app for chrome for me is that one tab crashing doesn't take the whole
browser with it. So I do most of my surfing with it.

Also helps with memory consumption because its per tab so I can easily regain
more killing tabs as opposed to killing tabs and then reloading the browser.

I really miss the awesome bar though (got really used to having all of my
history show up from typing a few characters) so I still use beta / minefield
branch for some surfing and do most development in the stable firefox so that
I can use the bulk of plugins that help with web dev

~~~
Qz
History in the awesome bar is pretty sweet. There's a bunch of sites that I've
been too lazy to bookmark just because I can type one or two letters into the
bar and go right to it (and no they're not porn, just normal webpages).

------
ahalam
The reason I recommend Chrome to all my non-techie friends is due to its
automatic upgrades. I can be reasonably sure that my friend would be using a
modern secure browser at all times.

~~~
gkanai
Firefox has had automatic (prompt-required) updates since 1.0.

~~~
Splines
Granted, but the way Chrome updates itself in the background is magical.

~~~
WalterGR
...for some definition of magical.

Every time Chrome auto-updates itself, I notice it because it exposes some new
"fit and finish" bug.

The update to Chrome 7, for example, broke the Bookmark Manager if you have
your font size increased - e.g. due to eyesight issues. The update to
7.0.517.44 (or maybe an earlier version? I have no idea) changed the word
boundaries used when selecting text using the keyboard.

It's frustrating.

------
nikcub
Chrome did to Firefox what Firefox originally did to Netscape. I feel that
Mozilla are missing what made Firefox a success originally - keeping it light,
clean, extensible and default feature that block the crud on the web.

Chrome on Windows and Mac is simply a lot faster and feels lighter than
Firefox. I have managed to switch almost all of my non-tech friends from
Firefox or IE to Chrome - and they have gone on to refer their non-tech
friends to Chrome.

The impression that I get from non-tech people is that after installing it the
immediate reaction is that Chrome is a lot cleaner and faster. I expect based
on my anecdotal evidence that we will see the Chrome market share rise amongst
non-tech users in the next 6-12 months.

------
cookiecaper
I've been using Chrome as my primary browser for almost two years now, but the
Firefox 4 nightlies are really getting impressive and it's starting to become
a viable alternative to me. The Omnibar extension, superior font rendering,
and tabs-on-top address a lot of the common usability complaints and Firefox's
JS performance is finally on-par, and in some cases much better (especially
where graphics are intense), than Chrome/V8's.

Chrome still has much more pliable tabs, but things are finally looking up
again for Firefox, and it's about time.

~~~
seltzered
Fully agree, and now that FF4beta7 fixed some of it's font issues, I'm
switching back to it from Chrome. Here's why:

1) Panorama (a.k.a. tab candy). I can finally organize my tabs into little
projects.

2) Much less restricted extension support. There a number of extensions that
just aren't possible on chrome.

3) I hate the chrome start page, while helpful I find it usually leads me to
distracting sites _Cough_ HN _Cough_ instead of the reason I opened the
browser instead. I call it Google's "Keep browsing" tactic. More annoying It
always comes up on new tab/new window, even if you have the default home page
set otherwise.

------
CamT
Oddly enough, I decided earlier today to move back to Firefox as my go-to
browser after using Chrome for about a year. Vimperator is just too good.

~~~
BCM43
There has been a fork due to developer squabbles. The new one, with quite a
few new features, is here: <http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/index>

This explains the squabble:
<http://dactyl.sourceforge.net/pentadactyl/faq#faq-fork>

~~~
xiongchiamiov
I started using Pentadactyl when I switched to Firefox nightlies, and I must
say I like it. I can't place my finger on anything in particular, but it
feels... better. And faster.

------
tomjen3
Everybody seems to miss the biggest part of the story. 15 percent of readers
use internet explorer.

~~~
sage_joch
Maybe people at work who are forced to use it?

~~~
mfukar
I'm pretty sure we could come up with all sorts of rationalizations.

------
jackvalentine
That graph just strikes me as a really healthy browser ecosystem. If only the
rest of the web's traffic reflected that.

------
ZeroGravitas
In Europe (according to these stats at least) Firefox has just caught up with
IE at 39% each (though personally I feel including the 3% still on IE6 is
cheating in their favour).

<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-200912-201011>

And IE fell below 50% globally a few months ago.

<http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200912-201011>

Generally I feel the not-IE percentage is a much more important figure than
how the rest breaks down and it would appear from this stat source that Chrome
is stealing more from IE than from Firefox, so it's all good.

------
mise
The reason I returned to Firefox from Chrome was the privacy stuff, such as
everything you type in the address bar is sent back, and they probably each
site you visit (to protect you from fishing, etc.).

Has any of this improved, or do you just put up with it?

~~~
stanleydrew
Some of us actually prefer that functionality. I "put up" with it because I
find it useful.

------
jawee
Out of curiousity.. I often hear Safari being grouped with the iOS browsers,
but is there any reason the default Android browser isn't counted there, since
it's UA-String includes Mobile Safari as well.

Incidently, I'm on Android now, but Opera ;)

------
Hari_Seldon
What's interesting to me is that 48% are using a webkit browser

------
sigzero
Chrome doesn't (or didn't) quite work right on OSX. Whenever I copied an image
off a page and pasted it into mail there was a broken image.

------
Kafka
I have a programming, computer security, and cryptography blog and it seems
that that crowd either doesn't have, or runs another browser, Macs as often as
the TechCrunch crowd.

Firefox 27,725 45.15%

Chrome 16,856 27.45%

Internet Explorer 6,191 10.08%

Safari 6,085 9.91%

Opera 2,165 3.53%

Mozilla Compatible Agent 1,395 2.27%

Mozilla 418 0.68%

Konqueror 185 0.30%

Opera Mini 126 0.21%

SeaMonkey 107 0.17%

OS:

Windows 35,928 58.51%

Linux 10,855 17.68%

Macintosh 10,709 17.44%

iPhone 1,726 2.81%

Android 926 1.51%

iPad 625 1.02%

not set 181 0.29%

iPod 159 0.26%

FreeBSD 88 0.14%

SunOS 69 0.11%

17% Mac users (even more if you count iPhone, iPad, & iPod) but still only 10%
Safari.

------
EliRivers
It must be about time for TechCrunch to hyperbolically declare the death of
Firefox, then.

------
axod
"If you’re wondering how Apple’s web browser is so high on the list, remember
that it’s the browser used on every iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch now. These
devices boost Safari’s numbers by well over 10 percentage points. And if
mobile traffic keeps growing the way it is, there’s a chance (just a chance)
that Safari could even eclipse Chrome and Firefox as the top browser viewing
TechCrunch. Since August, Safari has grown by two percentage points, while
Chrome has gained just one."

It's sort of irritating they say that, but don't cite any figures to back it
up. What % of users view techcrunch from an iPhone/iPad/mobile etc?

------
NathanKP
The statistics from Techcrunch match the browser stats from my blog pretty
well, except that Safari has a slighter larger percentage, because many
visitors come to my blog for an iPhone app programming tutorial I wrote a
while back.

However, the stats from Techcrunch and my blog are both skewed relative to the
rest of the internet. The people visiting such sites are more likely to be
running Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Other non tech sites will see a much
higher percentage of IE users.

------
ry0ohki
I really didn't want to like Chrome. I was like "Come on Google, do we really
need another browser? You're just going all Microsoft and trying to dominate
every market". But then they kept improving it. It's so darn fast compared to
Firefox which had really became a bloat monster. I still use Firefox for
testing/web developing because of it's huge library of extensions, but Chrome
is the daily surfer just for the speed factor.

------
djhworld
Chrome is fast, that's what appeals to me. Opening the browser is a dream.

Firefox is comparatively slow to load and feels sluggish on most machines I've
used (Linux/MacOSX)

------
rayvega
I use both but Chrome is certainly my primary browser. On any clean install of
Ubuntu I immediately download and install Chrome while treating the default OS
browser, Firefox, with a status of second class citizen.

This was precisely how it was for me years ago on Windows but with Firefox in
the Chrome role and the default OS browser, IE, in the now Firefox role.

------
mike-cardwell
I stuck with Firefox because of the large amount of useful extensions. I have
noticed that Chrome is a lot faster though. I'm gonna stick with Firefox until
I see how Firefox 4 plays out. If Firefox 4 isn't significantly faster, I'll
be switching over to Chrome.

~~~
xiongchiamiov
Firefox 4 feels a lot faster to me, but try it for yourself:
<http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/beta/> . RCs should be coming early next
year, if you'd rather wait for a bit more stability.

------
linuxhansl
I tried Chrome (well Chromium) a few months back. I found that apart from
startup and (very) Javascript heavy sites most pages actually render slower in
Chromium as compared to Firefox (3.5 and 3.6).

------
jim_h
Does Chrome have a good adblock plugin or firebug equiv yet?

~~~
ImJasonH
Chrome has a Firebug equilvalent baked in: Developer Tools
<http://www.chromium.org/devtools>

And an AdBlock extension (though I don't use it):
[https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepj...](https://chrome.google.com/extensions/detail/gighmmpiobklfepjocnamgkkbiglidom)

------
ez77
Was IE the top browser before this four-year run?

------
Subskii
IE9 appears to have missed the game entirely.

------
zbrock
Was anyone else's first though "people still use Firefox?"

~~~
codexon
Chrome's proxy plug-ins still suck. Last time I checked, Chrome still leaks
DNS requests.

Adblock is also gimped because of the browser API, making it impossible to
block ads before they load, slowing your internet connection and sometimes
making ads flash momentarily before disappearing.

~~~
drivebyacct2
What? Chrome uses the built in OS level proxies... so blame your OS.
Additionally, Firefox out of box leaks DNS queries. Ever tired to use
tor/.onion in a default firefox setup? Doesn't work because by default,
firefox doesn't subject its DNS queries to the proxy...

~~~
codexon
But in Firefox that's easy to fix.

Just type about:config, set network.proxy.socks_remote_dns = true.

~~~
drivebyacct2
And in Chrome it's automatic and it uses the system level proxy system so DNS
queries are automatically included. I didn't say it was hard in Firefox, but
it was simply false criticism and it was too easy to turn it around on
Firefox.

------
protez
I was a former avid mania of Firefox. I once installed hundreds of extensions
and kept waiting for their updating progress whenever I launched the browser.
Even when Google released Chrome, I didn't consider the possibility of switch
due to the "godsendy extensibility" of Firefox. However, Firefox got slower,
slower, slower and its memory leak drove me almost crazy. I reduced the number
of active extensions to my essential set under ten, but it always ended up
consuming more than 1GB of memory in few hours. So, I switched to Chrome and
became its maniac user. I'm not that sure, why I am writing this boring story,
but I settled down to Conkeror and w3m now. I don't launch Chrome. When it
comes to the choice of browser, it's more about ease of customization and
user-interface, not about speed anymore to me.

------
seldo
I love Chrome, but the one big -- and really nasty -- surprise for me was that
it has IE-style (i.e. invisible, exploitable, in the wild) security
vulnerabilities.

I've used Firefox since the very earliest betas and it has never, ever been
exploited to infect my machine. Sure, it's had big holes, but I've never seen
them widely deployed in the wild. I ran without antivirus software from 2003,
because it just wasn't necessary.

Chrome, on the other hand, has been clearly and unambiguously the only
possible vector for three separate, massive viral infections on my machine in
the last 6 months, infections severe enough to take out my entire OS and
require a reinstall[1]. Sure, in two cases they were viruses delivered by ad
networks on sites that I probably shouldn't have been visiting -- but one was
just a rogue ad hit while browsing Twitpic. Now I run Antivirus software
again, and every couple of weeks a compromised ad network -- even on quite
reputable sites -- will trigger an alert and automatic cleaning. For some
sites I switch back to Firefox.

Chrome's amazing performance has to come from somewhere, and my impression is
that that boost comes because it runs "closer to the metal", i.e. fewer layers
of virtual machines and sandboxes. But that design decision has drawbacks, and
one of them seems to be security.

[1] Infection details: Chrome running on Windows XP (first two times) and
Windows 7 (final time). I didn't do forensics on the actual vector, but all
three times rogue Java applications started up and then installed additional
infections, which appeared within seconds of the first attack, making it hard
to say which virus was the first to break in.

~~~
mootothemax
Surely, given your description and timeframes, the most likely vector is
Flash, not Chrome?

~~~
nodata
Does Chrome bundle Flash and handle updates itself? Would be interested to
compare the lag if that were true.

~~~
thezilch
Chrome, itself, bundles and releases updated, Flash builds. The latest
vulnerability-fix release of Flash was released to Chrome users before even
Adobe made it public for download, for other [browser] flavors.

