Top web browsers 2019: Chrome seesaws yet again

[Karlston]

Top web browsers 2019: Chrome seesaws yet again

Google's Chrome browser gave up some of its recent gains in October, but those losses did little to erode its commanding position among browsers.

Thinkstock

 

Chrome last month continued its seesaw in user share, throwing away most of the gains it had made the month prior while remaining fully in charge of the browser market.

 

According to data published today by California analytics vendor Net Applications, Chrome's share for October dropped by 1.1 percentage points to 67.4%. It was the fourth straight time that Chrome shed some of its share the month following an increase of one point or more. In September, Chrome had recorded a boost of 1.3 points.

 

The up-down has not always resulted in a net gain for each months' pairings, and when increases have outweighed losses of the month previous, the upside has been small. That's why over the course of the past 12 months, Chrome has climbed by just one percentage point.

 

Yet the difference between Chrome, the browser leader, and the next in line - Microsoft's Double-mint twins of Internet Explorer (IE) and Edge - was 54.9 points, nearer the high end of the 12-month range between 51.7 and 56.5. That metric shows that Chrome's position is solid. Very solid, in fact.

 

Computerworld now forecasts that Chrome will return to 68% shortly (within three months at the most) and crack 70% by June. Even if its seesaw keeps at it.

Firefox slips

One of the unanswered questions in Browser Land is whether Mozilla's Firefox can survive. Can the browser, which kicked off renewed competition in the space - when it launched in 2004, Microsoft's IE had eradicated all rivals - keep its head above the proverbial water, say, above the very-minor-browser marker of 5%?

 

Good question.

 

Firefox lost one-tenth of a percentage point during October, ending the month at 8.6%. Although that wasn't Firefox's nadir of the past 12 months, it was the third-lowest number during that period and the sixth-lowest overall (or at least since the browser crawled out of the single digits in early 2006).

 

It's almost painful to watch Firefox struggle to sustain its share, much less grow it. In October, the browser's user share was below the median for the past 12 months (9.1%) and significantly under the median for the 12-month span before that (November 2017-October 2018, 10.2%).

 

Although Mozilla continues to stress Firefox's privacy chops - the latest upgrade added tools that block social media networks' trackers - that has not resonated enough with potential users to bring large numbers to the browser.

 

By Net Applications' data, Firefox's near future looks weak, but not necessarily bleak. Using the browser's average movement over the last 12 months, Firefox should remain above 8% for the next year, dipping below that only in November 2020. But if the past six months are a better clue, Firefox is in trouble: That forecast would put the browser under 8% as soon as January, under 7% by June and below 5% as soon as December 2020.

 

(The difference in the two predictions? The six-month average contains three months of large, more-than-half-a-point losses, which dominated the total. Those three months were diluted in the 12-month average.)

How long will Microsoft maintain IE?

Microsoft's recovery from September's all-time browser low wasn't much of a come-back, but it was better than nothing. In October, the Redmond, Wash. company's browsers snatched back some of the share they lost the month before, adding four-tenths of a percentage point to up its share balance to almost 12.5%.

 

The firm's total was, as always, composed of two different browsers, IE and Edge. And the increase was neatly split between the pair, each adding about two-tenths of a percentage point to the kitty. IE climbed to 6.4%, while Edge edged up to 6.1%.

 

Windows 10's share of all operating systems climbed at almost the same rate, so Edge simply kept its share of Windows 10's browsers at the same 11.2% of September. That mark, remember, was the lowest of the year so far, but not a record low. (The latter would be the 10.9% in September 2018.)

 

Meanwhile, IE's increase translated into a slight boost in its share of all Windows browsers, ending October up two-tenths of a point to 7.3%. That IE's portion of all Windows browsers has fallen by about a fourth - a year-ago, the number was 10.6% - is proof of its fast fade among customers.

 

Within months, Microsoft will finalize its "full-Chromium" Edge, which will feature an integrated IE mode that replicates that browser for the corporate users who still need it - notably IE's ActiveX controls - to run aged web apps and obsolescing intranet sites. At some point after the new IE's debut, Microsoft will forcibly replace the old Edge on Windows 10 PCs (and likely push it onto the Windows 7 systems being serviced by the for-a-free Extended Support Release (ESR) after that OS's public retirement) with the new.

 

Computerworld has speculated that Microsoft will eventually purge IE from Windows machines and tell the few customers then still needing the browser to instead rely only on the mode inside Edge. That forecast has been driven by IE's quickly-declining share. A year from now, going by its performance over the past 12 months, IE will be run by less than 3.5% of all Windows users, just not enough to warrant a separate application.

 

Elsewhere in Net Applications' data, Apple's Safari gained half a percentage point for the second consecutive month, climbing to 4.8%, and Opera Software's browser stayed dropped a tad to 1.3%. Safari's increase came in the face of a dip in macOS, which lost about six-tenths of a percentage point in October. That drop in macOS - expected as it was because September's nearly-two percentage point leap was clearly not realistic - contributed to pushing Safari's share of Apple's operating system to 43.9%, the highest it's been since March 2018.

 

Net Applications calculates user share by detecting the agent strings of the browsers people use to reach the websites of Net Applications' clients. The firm tallies visitor sessions to measure browser user activity.

 

 

Source: Top web browsers 2019: Chrome seesaws yet again (Computerworld - Gregg Keizer)

[Ryrynz]

Firefox not going up as predicted. Nearing death in it's current form. Chromium Edge should eat at it nicely when released.

[Sylence]

All hopes to Microsoft new Edge browser to end this lunacy of Chrome's monopoly 

[steven36]

12 hours ago, Ryrynz said:

Firefox not going up as predicted. Nearing death in it's current form. Chromium Edge should eat at it nicely when released.

If Microsoft adopts manifest v3  like there daddy Google it want be and  option for some people  maybe more people might wake up and use a browser  not made by company that is as untrustworthy as the NSA   only  way M$ will be able  to make a power grab is not adopt every thing Chrome  does and since there using Chromium witch is made by Google it would be a lot work to fork it to be much more than another Google Chrome clone, After all that's why Firefox lost so many users was they kept copying  Google. But since Apple  was 1st to impose this in there browser i look for all the Big tech companies to follow suit  Google is  already  testing it  and millions of people  that uses adblockers going be mad when ads start getting by when they get rid of V2 .

 

I'm not fanboy of no browser i dont like using any of them because  most  are all  are full of telemetry and Google spyware .   Choosing Microsoft for Google is just choosing  a different  demon . Google is the King of Data harvesting  and Microsoft  wants to be , both are ad companies just Bing  is not used very much like Google yet.  Do Microsoft stop making ads because Google and Facebook make more money than them at it ? No !  Did Opera stop making browsers  because they have a tiny marketshare?  No !

 

So what makes you think Firefox would stop making theirs? They get enough donations to keep making it if they dont make it they want get any.    I  have to use something to browse the web so i use open source browsers only.  At lest i can look at the code and see what there doing to it.  Google , Microsoft and other closed source browsers do it for profit . Open source  browsers like Firefox do it for donations also they take money from search engine providers for search and other services  that means if they stop making it someone could fork it  but it would hard to do what Mozilla does .

 

There more like Chromium because there open source  , comparing  them to  Google Chrome  is like comparing GNU Linux to Android Linux  or Windows . Do they stop making GNU Linux because of the small user base on desktop?  No way they ever would because they get enough donations to keep making it  and many big companies build on open source  like Google builds on it  and browsers do too. So if Firefox ever folds  they  should of not been open source to begin with because they was just in it for the money.  If they close that may give someone the incentive to code  a new privacy  based browser not based on Gecko or   Chromium since no one else will stand up to the plate  because $$$ signs  are all in there way or they dont know how to code so they use someone eles code.

[Karlston]

10 hours ago, steven36 said:

So what makes you think Firefox would stop making theirs? They get enough donations to keep making it if they dont make it they want get any.

 

Yep, and given the browser market is measured in billions of devices, even a small percentage like 5% of billions is still a huge number.