Chrome has been increasing its market share had over fist since its release in 2008.
Google's Chrome has overtaken Firefox to become the UK's second most popular web browser.
The latest figures from web statistics firm
Statscounter, show that Chrome has doubled in popularity in the UK just the last 12 months, from 11 per cent, to 22 per cent between July 2010 and July 2011.
July saw the crossover between it and Mozilla's Firefox, which has been gradually losing out to Chrome over the same period, dropping from 25 per cent, to 22 per cent.
Internet Explorer remains by far the most popular web browser, however, over the same period, it lost nearly 10 per cent market share. It fell from just under 55 per cent to 46 per cent - still holding more market share than Chrome and Firefox combined.
Safari has also seen a small gain of around two percent since July last year, while Opera dropped half a per cent to less than one per cent.
Worldwide, according to the same data, Chrome also continues its march up the ladder, although it needs to gain nearly six per cent market share before it overtakes Firefox.
Which browser do you use? Have you switched recently? What do you make of the latest versions of Firefox, Chrome and IE? Let us know in the
forum.
90 Comments
Discuss in the forums ReplyNew workplace uses firefox. Its liberating.
The jump from FF to Chrome isn't the paradigm shift that Firebird was from IE5/IE6. And there is comfort in familiarity.
Chrome is great, not had one issue on any machine I have/use.
so that i can use it the same way i use it back in 2005.
It's not so much that IT departments are unaware of other & better browsers, it's a case of compatability and support. There are a lot of corporate applications out there which only officially support IE (though they may work on other browsers, if they're not supported then management isn't interested in rolling them out).
As a system admin, I have locked down installations of Chrome and Firefox because users insisted on installing them themselves (Chrome and firefox install to the users profile and therefore doesn't require admin rights) and using them to access the intranet and web applications. When they discovered they didn't work I simply advised them to use IE (with which the applications do work), when they refused to comply I locked it down. Having such calls clog up a helpdesk is just inefficent. Also a lot group policy application rollouts, such as adobe flash, only update it for IE. Firefox/chrome requires a seperate installation which is too much support work.
My point being, from an IT support point of view, IE is the only real choice for a lot of companies. At home I use and love Chrome, I find it a lot easier to use and I do believe there is a noticable difference in speed. Until other browsers become better supported in a corporate environment, IE will still be the winner for work.
Used to use firefox, found it started crashing etc more and more, tried chrome, found it a bit meh, tried opera, not looked back.
Try and all shall be revealed.
TSB
Sent from my GT-I9000 using Tapatalk
I would have switched to Chrome ages ago, but it just doesn't work with a couple of pages that I need to use.
Does this exclude people who've had to set "user_agent" so they can use online banking, etc. that only allows IE?
Went of FF around 4 when it started being slow.
There was also the issue of our IT folks pushing software patches daily to downgrade Firefox 4 back to whatever previous version I was using.
In work we still have to use IE though -.-
Because it's nice and it works
HAHA seriously? Some people really should not be allowed anywhere near computers.
Basically I don't like how Chrome installs on your C drive, you have no choice, then caches multiple gigabytes of data to it. Pissed me off no end when I had a smaller SSD.
It just seems to get smoother/more intuitive each time there's an update for me.
http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/09/google-chromes-about-pages.html
birds of a feather.. installed ff 5 recently, it looks just like chrome
Wasn't overly impressed with Chrome to be honest.
Chrome Frame is always an option in that situation..
Been using Chrome since the earliest betas, and before that Opera!
FireFox main issue is RAM use each tab uses a lot of RAM depending on site , opera handles them a lot better , I have 40+ open and it hovers around 1.2gb use,ch
Dont misunderstand me though, IE9 is hardly ever used! Though it is used more than Firefox.....
Joking, I have used Chrome for the past two tears now (IE previously) and love it.
You can always use MKLink to get round silly things like that. Best thing I've stumbled upon since I got an SSD
as someone has already pointed out, there are operational reasons for blocking non IE browsers.
IE9 is a good browser, as for compatibility with some web pages, it has compatibility mode for such instances.
browser choice is down to individual preferences, no one browser is perfect.
- no print preview
- no work offline
- no turn off update (especially v12, GoogleUpdate.exe starts with your OS, can't block it nor prevent it loading, even after uninstall google update folder & content still exist)
- no NoSquint equivalent, NoSquint segment page zoom individually, eg. If i zoom up bit-tech.com to 120% all pages / tab from bit-tech.com is 120%, while others tabs i open eg. cnn.com is not effected. Default 100% 120% 144% too big a jump & affect all pages.
- Download speed indicator also not honest, speed shown are always higher than what they actually is. Firefox get it right though, maybe its the snapshot period they take.
- no Firebug equivalent, "Inspect Element" not enough details.
- no Noscript equivalent, extensions like adblock prevents signing into websites even after removing it.
this
I do love the speed of chrome but I'm just so used to firefox that I don't want to change ...yet
I do have all the browsers installed, though (ie,chrome,firefox, opera)
Can't say I really miss Firefox much, but I generally keep a clean OS and a clean browser, so I didn't have that many FF add ons to miss. If you are a FF addon whore, switching may be more difficult.
I tried putting Chrome on my work pc, but sadly none of my clients web sites and applications will work on Chrome (half don't actually work on FF either, but I use IE Tab to view them from within FF)
Really? is there any need for that?
IE9 is an excellent browser. I use Chrome myself.
PS
Also related; interesting browser upgrade paths:
http://arstechnica.com/web/news/2011/08/july-browser-stats-windows-xp-loses-its-majority-share-of-web-users.ars
In Firefox more users with 3.6 than 4.0. No idea why.
Found it started crashing for a while, but doesn't any longer, tis running perfectly
Every single UI change starting with the settings moving in the top left hand corner to the latest speed-dial. I dislike every single one of them. Especially the latest one which removed the dropdown box in the URL bar by default. Easily fixed after 10 mins in the forums.
Also flash used to crash it constantly on some sites, like PC gamer but that has long been cured.
Erm...5.1, ackheloi. :)
And people that don't use IE are gullible.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-14389430
:)
Why would that be, then?
Btw the silly study above should have been "Stupid people use IE" rather than "IE Users are stupid" if you read the article.
Oh and at work we are on IE6 which is dire, but it's a big institution and they don't change their desktop builds that often. Can't imagine a place liek this ever moving off IE as they have thousands of internal web apps to retest for any release and need the browser to be supported for several years which firefox won't do.
Internet Explorer IQ report was a hoax
Old news was reported yesterday at 12:13 on this thread.