Browser Wars: Chrome Hits 17-Month Low

CommanderFrank

Cat Can't Scratch It
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Actually there was a browser war at one time, but it looks more and more like there is a clear and consistent winner month after month. Internet Explorer has seen a slow and steady rise along with second place Firefox while the once up-and-coming Chrome has continued to fall over the same period.

Internet Explorer was up 0.68 points to 55.82 percent. Firefox was back up above 20 percent, growing 0.18 points to 20.12 percent. Chrome was down sharply, losing a surprising 1.21 (giga) points, for a share of 16.27 percent.
 
Just coming from my perspective, I think Chrome is down because even tho I think it's the best, it's always the same. Nothing ever changes with it looks wise. Firefox you can drastically change the appearance and really customize it. So I think that's why more people will use it even tho its not quite as good as Chrome.

I know a lot of people couldn't care less about looks and stuff like that but I do and it's why I never use the same browser for longer than a month or two. I get tired of staring at the same UI so I'll break out Firefox or even Opera (but it's so buggy I can't use it for long). So maybe that same old same old is what's hurting Chrome to an extent.

IE has its huge advantage as we all know because it's pre installed on everybody's copy of Windows. Plus with IE10's release, a lot of people are trying it. It's currently my browser of choice right now.
 
IE10 rocks. It has some rendering issues but that's because sites are programing for Webkit not industry standards.
 
I haven't seen any rendering issues yet. It seems to be displaying everything properly at least as far as my untrained eye can tell.
 
Eh I suppose it just comes down to preference. I still largely use chrome due to speed. Though I find myself using Firefox more again. Most of my beefs with Firefox have been resolved though it still had some issue. I use ie for work things that won't work right in anything else and it is still as shit as ever. No idea what people are talking about on it improving. UI still sucks, still renders half the websites I use badly, doesn't block ads and scripts worth a shit and lastly still doesn't sync across all my devices. If you like it, well good for you. I just don't understand why.
 
Eh I suppose it just comes down to preference. I still largely use chrome due to speed. Though I find myself using Firefox more again. Most of my beefs with Firefox have been resolved though it still had some issue. I use ie for work things that won't work right in anything else and it is still as shit as ever. No idea what people are talking about on it improving. UI still sucks, still renders half the websites I use badly, doesn't block ads and scripts worth a shit and lastly still doesn't sync across all my devices. If you like it, well good for you. I just don't understand why.

I like it because I see no rendering problems. Im not saying theyre not out there, but all the websites I use show up just fine.

The UI seems just fine to me. Nice big tabs, plenty of options under the Settings icon. Don't see what else Id need.

I don't do ad-block because I let MSE handle security and with my 50MB/s internet connection, ads aren't slowing down anything. And I admit to feeling guilty about it. Yeah, Im a sap. :(

Now the sync I can understand. I like that Chrome will sync with Chrome on my Note 2 and it comes in handy but it's not a deal breaker for me. Besides, there isn't an IE browser for Android, at least not on Android mobile phones.

And the two things I like better about IE10 is not only does it FINALLY have a spell checker but it has a little auto correct too. Its not abusive and correcting everything but just the obvious ones and it does save a few keystrokes. Plus the little eyeball on the password boxes that lets you see what you typed is a very welcome feature. Im a sloppy typer and almost always have to type in my passwords 2 or 3 times LOL!

Im sure it wont be long til Chrome and Firefox surpass IE10 just like when IE9 came out. It was a great browser and I used it for a good long while til Chrome started really pulling ahead again. But until then, I think IE10 is very solid.
 
I like it because I see no rendering problems. Im not saying theyre not out there, but all the websites I use show up just fine.

The UI seems just fine to me. Nice big tabs, plenty of options under the Settings icon. Don't see what else Id need.

I don't do ad-block because I let MSE handle security and with my 50MB/s internet connection, ads aren't slowing down anything. And I admit to feeling guilty about it. Yeah, Im a sap. :(

Now the sync I can understand. I like that Chrome will sync with Chrome on my Note 2 and it comes in handy but it's not a deal breaker for me. Besides, there isn't an IE browser for Android, at least not on Android mobile phones.

And the two things I like better about IE10 is not only does it FINALLY have a spell checker but it has a little auto correct too. Its not abusive and correcting everything but just the obvious ones and it does save a few keystrokes. Plus the little eyeball on the password boxes that lets you see what you typed is a very welcome feature. Im a sloppy typer and almost always have to type in my passwords 2 or 3 times LOL!

Im sure it wont be long til Chrome and Firefox surpass IE10 just like when IE9 came out. It was a great browser and I used it for a good long while til Chrome started really pulling ahead again. But until then, I think IE10 is very solid.

Like I said..preference. I utterly hate the tabs in IE.

I will say that on Ad-block you are setting yourself up for disaster. MSE is Good, but it is only good against already known threats (like like any other good AV). I like most disable ABP on sites we support like this one, but in general it stays running and isn't about internet speed. New threats that AVs haven't accounted for and don't protect against do tend to come through infected ads. I simply don't like rolling the dice.

Yea I agree it is about time IE got spell check..I mean ffs, FF and chrome have had that how long now?
 
meh -- Chrome for life. I like that they don't change it drastically every 3 months.

It works great just like it is, simple, clean, efficient, and most importantly FAST.

I suppose even trend of people being ADD about their browser is making it's way to the surface. The fact that people are never satisfied with something that works perfectly.

I don't know how the browser war numbers are generated - but it could be for the large majority they don't even understand what firefox or chrome is, they just use whatever their computer has built into it, or autoupdates to. As more people are forced to either upgrade their machines to 7 or 8, or find their aging pc is FORCED to update to view a banking site or something essential, of course they are just going to go the easy route and update to IE10.

Chrome does everything I want it to, and the integration into google is even better since everything I have runs droid (car tablet included)

20130227102905.jpg
 
meh -- Chrome for life. I like that they don't change it drastically every 3 months.

It works great just like it is, simple, clean, efficient, and most importantly FAST.

I suppose even trend of people being ADD about their browser is making it's way to the surface. The fact that people are never satisfied with something that works perfectly.

I don't know how the browser war numbers are generated - but it could be for the large majority they don't even understand what firefox or chrome is, they just use whatever their computer has built into it, or autoupdates to. As more people are forced to either upgrade their machines to 7 or 8, or find their aging pc is FORCED to update to view a banking site or something essential, of course they are just going to go the easy route and update to IE10.

Chrome does everything I want it to, and the integration into google is even better since everything I have runs droid (car tablet included)

20130227102905.jpg

You like Chrome, I like Firefox, but one thing is for certain: we both like Warp Brothers. :D
 
All of the current browsers are very good, thats the biggest thing. For a long while Chrome was head and shoulders above everything else.

Firefox has fixed its memory issues, and Microsoft just rewrote everything (in a very good way) since IE9.

I still use chrome out of habit, but have no issues using the others anymore.
 
I still think Chrome is the best when you get right down to the nuts and bolts of it. When youre talking features and things like that, then you can make an argument that IE10 or Firefox or whatever could be better but in terms of just working better, smoother and faster, Chrome is it.
 
IE10 rocks. It has some rendering issues but that's because sites are programing for Webkit not industry standards.

Microsoft, when it comes to web development, has never followed industry standards in the past. They always said they would. They always failed to deliver.

Webkit developers have been extremely good about following W3C and the standards they create.
 
People still use chrome in 2013? Damn lol I thought it went away with the dodo birds.
 
The only reason Im still using Chrome is for the Google Voice extension which no other browser seems to have their own version of.
 
I prefer Firefox's customization over any other browser. Plus it has some really great plug-ins like noscript. But when it comes right down to it, I use Chrome because it loads pages much faster than either Firefox or IE.

If Mozilla can ever improve the speed of Firefox, I'll be right back there in a flash.
 
I used to use Firefox, but the more version goes the worst of a train wreck it is. I use Chrome because it's clean and fast
 
IE- Clunky and disorganized UI. Plain out POS.
Firefox- bloated and slow.
Chrome- clean and fast, doesnt need to change to be more gooder.
 
I have Chrome set as default only because it loads up fast and I don't generally stay for long on links that I get in emails, IMs etc. My primary browser is, and always has been, Opera. I tried switching many MANY times, things just don't work out. Something is always missing.

I use Adfender so that pretty much accounts for the benefits of ABP. But I feel bad that Opera is so underrated.
 
Firefox- bloated and slow.

Not sure if you've used it in the last 6 months or not but that just isn't the case. For me I like sticking away from Google or Microsoft and use Firefox and a on rare occasion Iron (because Chrome minus Google's over arching tentacles). It's not that I am completely against either company I'd just rather support someone else. As for Opera I just have never liked their browsers for some reason.
 
My biggest problem with IE is that I don't like being told that I can't upgrade my browser due to marketing reasons. I have older computers that don't make sense to upgrade past XP, and thus, will never see anything past IE8. I work on a fair number of Vista computers, which are limited to IE9, but when fixed up and running nicely they aren't really far enough away from the Windows 7 experience to justify the price of the upgrade (I keep things legit when it comes to my customers). There is no reason for Vista users to be stuck on IE9 when the core OS is the same as Windows 7 and Windows 8.

In comparison, you can install the latest version of Firefox and Chrome on XP, and of course Vista, just fine.

Hell, I have a few ancient Windows 2000 boxes that I support. Microsoft won't even let you install anything beyond IE6 on Windows 2000, and won't even let you upgrade to IE6 from the stock IE5 anymore if you are doing a re-install unless you download the offline install files from a 3rd party source.

In comparison, Firefox works on Windows 2000 up until version 14 or so, only very recently having dropped support. Can't recall if I tried chrome, but doubt it would fail as bad as being stuck with IE6.

I don't have a problem with Chrome but I hesitate to "put all of my eggs in one basket" so to speak. I already use an Android phone and plenty of google services, and we all have seen that Google does not hesitate to use any and all information that they have access to for their own purposes, whether you like it or not. Using a Google browser is a bit much. I also resent the constant chrome popups when using Google on other browsers - might actually be the thing that convinces me to start using Bing.

Firefox is my browser of choice because it's features seem to be the most influenced by people who actually care about creating the best browsing experience possible, rather than using their browser as a tool to facilitate a broader corporate agenda.
 
I'm lazy and use multiple systems (personal laptop + desktop, work laptop + desktop, iPad, GS3, HP touchpad) and not overly paranoid so I've bought into the Google ;) Having all my bookmarks/favorites instantly available by loading up Chrome (signed into google) on all these devices is what keeps me using it. Not to mention, it just seems faster on my windows boxes than IE.

Now, I haven't really looked into it, but if IE/Firefox has the same capabilities for syncing favorites and browsing open tabs on my other devices to open them on the system I'm currently using... then I might move away. Until then, Chrome works great for me with the IE tab extensions for those few work sites that require IE (sharepoint for example).
 
There's no one good option anymore since Firefox screwed the pooch after 3.6. Chrome is nice, but I'm not a fan of the UI and I'm not a fan of it's lack of options.
 
There's no one good option anymore since Firefox screwed the pooch after 3.6.

How exactly did Firefox screw up? I've been using Firefox since the 1.x days. Other than the memory leak issues with the 2.x versions I've never had a problem with it, and I usually have 6-10 addons installed.

I've always felt Chrome's popularity was a bit of a fluke. Google spent a lot of money hyping it up. It didn't seem any faster than Firefox on my slow machines where I would actually like a performance boost and Firefox has a huge addon library.
 
The only thing noticeably faster about Chrome IMO is the menu pops and less delay minimizing etc. Firefox has a built in delay on menu pop ups to improve navigability of the browser menus, which in turn compared to Chrome make people think that FF is "bloated and slow". The both render pages virtually identically. FF has more privacy options because it's not trying to monitor what you're doing and sell you something, like Google does with their adds and store.

IE is used by people who really don't care or just want to use what's already on the computer.
Chrome is used by hipsters (when they're not staring at their phone).
Firefox is used by enthusiast.
 
Always used ie. Ive never like chrome at all. Firefox is ok but still prefer ie. As for the guy who says ie has popups all over lol. I get the fewest from it. Download the no tracking apps for it. I only use ff on unbuntu and it is good but ie is better. Every pc I work on has chrome on it and the user has no idea how it got there and say they click on it or ie to surf the web but chrome just showed up one day lol. We all know how it got there. After showing them how it can get installed when not paying attention they usually want it off and want to use ie.
 
The only thing noticeably faster about Chrome IMO is the menu pops and less delay minimizing etc. Firefox has a built in delay on menu pop ups to improve navigability of the browser menus, which in turn compared to Chrome make people think that FF is "bloated and slow". The both render pages virtually identically. FF has more privacy options because it's not trying to monitor what you're doing and sell you something, like Google does with their adds and store.

IE is used by people who really don't care or just want to use what's already on the computer.
Chrome is used by hipsters (when they're not staring at their phone).
Firefox is used by enthusiast.

Is there a way to turn the delay off?
 
I'm lazy and use multiple systems (personal laptop + desktop, work laptop + desktop, iPad, GS3, HP touchpad) and not overly paranoid so I've bought into the Google ;) Having all my bookmarks/favorites instantly available by loading up Chrome (signed into google) on all these devices is what keeps me using it. Not to mention, it just seems faster on my windows boxes than IE.
Yes. My particular favorite feature is finding something I want to download to my Nexus while browsing on the PC, grabbing the tablet, and my current PC tabs are automatically available without any extra step.

I tried Firefox for Android but didn't like it and Dolphin doesn't have any cross-platform advantages. On my PCs - which are provided by my company and run XP - I'm stuck with 8 as my IE option...and that's not really an option.
 
Chrome is simple and fast, google owns it, and the android phone i use. I don't live on the internet i just need it to work.
 
Yes. My particular favorite feature is finding something I want to download to my Nexus while browsing on the PC, grabbing the tablet, and my current PC tabs are automatically available without any extra step.

I use Firefox on my desktop and on my Android phone, syncs bookmarks and tabs just fine. Firefox for Android worked fine even on my old Droid 2, though I have a Note II now and it works even better.
 

Well simple reason is that StatCounter calculates its statistics differently than NetMarketShare. Since you didn't bother reading NetMarketShare's methodology, I will post it here for your benefit :p

Source: http://netmarketshare.com/faq.aspx#Country
What is country level weighting, and why do you do it?
The Net Market Share data is weighted by country. We compare our traffic to the CIA Internet Traffic by Country table, and weight our data accordingly. For example, if our global data shows that Brazil represents 2% of our traffic, and the CIA table shows Brazil to represent 4% of global Internet traffic, we will count each unique visitor from Brazil twice. This is done to balance out our global data. All regions have differing markets, and if our traffic were concentrated in one or more regions, our global data would be inappropriately affected by those regions. Country level weighting removes any bias by region.

What is a daily unique visitor, and why do you count those instead of pageviews?
Net Market Share data is an aggregation the traffic of all of our HitsLink clients, but instead of counting pageviews we count daily unique visitors. A daily unique visitor is counted only once per day per website we track, regardless of the number of pageviews the visitor has. While this may seem to greatly reduce our sample size from the billions of monthly pageviews we process to only the daily unique visitors, we do so to provide a more accurate picture of market share showing the number of users of a technology instead of the number of clicks. Counting unique visitors also renders bots designed to influence market share harmless. Counting pageviews for market share reports would be susceptible to bot attacks and inexplicable jumps in market share that don't represent the true nature of the market.

In comparison, here is StatCounter's methodology:
http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#methodology

Whether you agree or disagree on the different methodologies is another discussion entirely.
 
I use Firefox on my desktop and on my Android phone, syncs bookmarks and tabs just fine. Firefox for Android worked fine even on my old Droid 2, though I have a Note II now and it works even better.

WTF am I doing wrong then? I tried the FF Droid browser on my Thunderbolt and it was riddled with bugs. The text box would never work right when posting on forums for example. I thought it was the phone but when I got this Note 2, I tried it again and it still doesn't work right?
 
WTF am I doing wrong then? I tried the FF Droid browser on my Thunderbolt and it was riddled with bugs. The text box would never work right when posting on forums for example. I thought it was the phone but when I got this Note 2, I tried it again and it still doesn't work right?

Firefox on Android is incredibly slow and crash prone on any Android device I own. My Thunderbolt, Galaxy Nexus, Droid RAZR, Galaxy Tab 10.1 all have issues with mobile Firefox.

The desktop version of Firefox isn't so bad anymore. I'm not a fan on the interface now but that's just me. My wife still uses Firefox though and getting her to use anything else won't happen.

For the record I use Chrome, all Chrome, and nothing but Chrome.
 
I wouldn't mind Chrome so much if it had more options for plugins and stuff (and some UI customization)

I, for one (and I know a lot of people that agree with me), won't use a browser that combines the search and address bars into one. Atleast give users the option. There are times that having them seperate is very convenient. There is absolutely no upside to combining them unless the little space/break in the address bar bugs you
 
Firefox ftmfw. That's all. No corporate monster running it. Fast, very customizable, no reason to leave.
 
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