Chrome lures significant new browser usage

[nsane.forums]

Chrome gained 0.75 percentage points of global browser usage share in November.

November was a good month for Google's browser ambitions as Chrome won over a sizable new fraction of Web usage.

Chrome usage rose from 8.5 percent of worldwide Web usage in October to 9.3 percent in November, according to statistics released today by Net Applications, whose analytics software monitors Web traffic extensively.

Chrome claimed most of that share from Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which dropped in overall usage from 59.2 percent to 58.3 percent. Chrome's gains means Google has an easier time pursuing its agenda--adding new features for Web programmers, modifying Net communication protocols to make them faster, and generally trying to make the Internet a place where people spend more of their lives.

Third-place Firefox was essentially flat yet again at 22.8 percent, while Safari crept upward from 5.4 percent to 5.6 percent and Opera slipped from 2.3 percent to 2.2 percent.

Microsoft, though has plenty of silver lining: its ancient Internet Explorer 6 is gradually fading from use, and the newer IE8 grew in usage from October to November nearly as much as Chrome overall did. (IE9, a more radical upgrade, remains in beta testing.)

"One of our main missions here on the IE team at Microsoft is to get people off of IE6 and onto a later version of IE as fast as humanly possible," Roger Capriotti, director of Internet Explorer product marketing, said in the blog post. "In the last six months, IE6 usage is now declining faster among enterprises than it is among worldwide consumers. We believe this reflects how organizations are recognizing the need to migrate to a modern browser."

Corporations' software changes can be gated by conservative administrators, upgrade expenses, and dependence on a particular browser. Thus their lingering usage of IE6 has been a particular challenge for Microsoft and developers eager not to spend long hours trying to craft modern Web sites for the old browser.

Net Applications said China remains a major holdout for IE6, where 45.2 percent of people use it. That compares with 14.6 percent worldwide.

Microsoft is happy to point to signs of IE6's fading usage.

View: Original Article

[DKT27]

There will be a time when Chrome will overtake everyone. And even I'll be using it. But not so soon, not so soon. :sneaky:

[Night Owl]

No browser is perfect (or almost perfect). That's why I switch between them all the time.

This message brought to you by Minefield. :)

[mara-]

I agree, no browser is perfect. I'm back with Firefox again :D, after using Chrome. Chrome is really great and fast, but it's missing some basic functions (Go button, prompt when closing more then 1 tab, drop-down list...) and I find that ridiculous. And, I did something to improve general speed of Firefox. I installed software which creates drive in RAM, so I installed Firefox on that RAM disk and moved my profile there. Firefox is more responsive now, and it starts faster.

Cheers ;)

[*dcs18]

I find myself using just 2 browsers regularly - Chrome and Firefox. The 2 mainstream add-ons for Chrome, AdBlock and NotScripts are not as advanced as the respective add-ons AdBlock Plus and NoScript built for the Firefox counterpart. This is one area that Google needs to focus on if it would seriously like to beat the Mozilla offering.

ps:-

Without add-ons, Firefox get belted by almost every browser except . . . . . . . . . . . . Internet explorer. :D

[DKT27]

It will take atleast couple of years before Chrome can beat Mozilla in what it's best at. I know Chrome is real fast, but lacks browsing experience, great addons and is still not come of age like. It has f*cked up html many times I've used to post frontpage updates. -_-

[*dcs18]

@ mara- and DKT27

I'm pleased to read your comments - observations which are quite in keeping with the browsing ways of a :pirate: