New number 2 in Browser battle

robinbredin

robinbredin

robinbredin

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According to this article in WSJ.com, Chrome is now ahead of Firefox.

What's especially interesting, if you check the accompanying graphic, is the share of the browser "market" that IE is losing.:eek:
 
I don't think it's really that surprising!

Point being:

1: Chrome is bundle installed with a LOT of software these days, to not install it is a custom install or opt out affair, it even sets itself as the default browser. Firefox is not bundled with any installer packages, it must be downloaded by people and installed manually so average Joe installing software xyz will only be exposed to Chrome and will see it's by the mighty Google and go and use it and like it because it's so simple and quick.

2: IE Share has been falling for a number of years now regardless of MS' efforts to bring it back on top.

3: Chrome's version number far exceeds that of Firefox so again. average Joe who does not know anything beyond "this has a higher version therefore it must be newer" will install it over anything else.

4: This is why (even if they don't admit it as such) Mozilla are speeding up rapid releases now to be in line with the immediate competition.
 
mrk said:
I don't think it's really that surprising!

Point being:

1: Chrome is bundle installed with a LOT of software these days, to not install it is a custom install or opt out affair, it even sets itself as the default browser. Firefox is not bundled with any installer packages, it must be downloaded by people and installed manually so average Joe installing software xyz will only be exposed to Chrome and will see it's by the mighty Google and go and use it and like it because it's so simple and quick.

2: IE Share has been falling for a number of years now regardless of MS' efforts to bring it back on top.

3: Chrome's version number far exceeds that of Firefox so again. average Joe who does not know anything beyond "this has a higher version therefore it must be newer" will install it over anything else.

4: This is why (even if they don't admit it as such) Mozilla are speeding up rapid releases now to be in line with the immediate competition.
Click to expand...

+1

On a side note, now that the google/firefox search sponsorship has finally ended what is going to happen to Mozilla? There is talk of a Bing sponsership deal....

The article I read a few days ago, said something lik 85% of Mozilla's revenue came from the search deal with Google.

Big Firefox fan here by the way.
 
so what other browsers are getting bigger?
because it says IE lost 16% in last 2 years ,FF lost 7% but chrome only growm by 4.7% in the same time

i`ll still be using IE as i actually like it lol, have tried the others but in the end i always go back to IE as it just works on every site i go too
and i cant say that about FF or chrome there is always some little hick up somewhere
 
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Nice continually updated wikipedia article here.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers

ShakenNstirred said:
so what other browsers are getting bigger?
because it says IE lost 16% in last 2 years ,FF lost 7% but chrome only growm by 4.7% in the same time
Click to expand...

I don;t know if the WSJ article says that, but that is incorrect.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#StatCounter_.28July_2008_to_present.29

For global desktop browsers, numbers by StatCounter are:

November 2011 40.68% 25.49% 25.25% 5.92% 1.8%
December 2009 55.72% 5.45% 31.97% 3.48% 2.06%
November 2009 56.57% 4.66% 32.21% 3.67% 2.02%

for IE, Chrome, Firefox, Safari and Opera respectively.
 
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That's a fairly obvious trend tbh, as soon as MS were forced to put that browser option in (by Opera and Mozilla funnily enough...) you knew that all their marketshares would decrease and Chrome would make large gains. In reality most people think google is the internet, the more geeky have heard of Opera and Firefox and may use them, but in general people would choose google as it's a much better known brand than the other two. That alongside the installation of chrome on a lot of new machines as standard has caused this.

I said it at the time and I'll say it again. Opera and FFs insistance on that browser choice window was a shot in the foot... :p
 
I'd say a good chunk of users on ocuk use Chrome. It is a good browser, was much better than Firefox 3. Never tried anything else since.

However, I do keep Firefox 2.0.0.20 for some very picky sites.
 
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about 7 years ago i moved from IE to opera and used that for about three years, i stopped using it because it was getting VERY slow to open, like 5-10 seconds.

so i moved to firefox, and over time that got bloated and slow and so i got rig and moved to chrome

ive been using chrome for about 18 months and so far it is as snappy as it was on day 1 - very happy with it :)
 
I loved chrome and hated FF before V4, the speed difference was night and day for me, however ever since FF 4, the difference is really so small now regarding start up speed and loading speed so I just use the best browser for everything else, which IMO really is FF now;

- Much better addon support
- the user styles work properly for it, with chrome half the page wouldn't be skinned properly
- Chrome loads text based pages quicker, however FF loads image intensive pages much quicker (both with cache cleared and full)
- FF is much smoother when scrolling especially in the high res screen shot thread
- Prefer the rendering of FF, FF renders the whole page as opposed to chrome rendering it as it loads it, so wee bits are loaded where as other bits aren't
- and in general can just customize it more to my liking for FF
- the text looks smoother and I find is easier to read than on chrome (can probably change that in chrome though)
 
Until a year or so ago, I was a fanatical defender of Firefox. I loved the speed, the range of add-ons and the sheer level of customisability it gave me.

Like many other users, I've now switched from Firefox to Chrome. Compared to Chrome, Firefox is a bloated, laggy, overcomplicated product.

  • It uses memory and doesn't give it back when you close tabs. I was tired of restarting the browser every day because it had eaten up so much memory that it was starting to affect the performance of the program.
  • The UI is laggy. The UI in Chrome stays fluid however much stuff is going on in your tabs, because it runs in a separate process. Mozilla doesn't seem to have made much demonstrable progress towards this despite years of trying, and it's a very noticable difference between Firefox and Chrome/IE.
  • The UI just isn't very nice. The new default theme looks like they hired someone to produce a low-quality knock-off of Chrome. It's like comparing one of those fake Chinese iPhones to the real thing. And they persist with having a separate search box, which even Microsoft has given up on.

I still sometimes miss Firefox, particularly add-ons like DownThemAll, and I still use it for web development. But for me, its advantages just aren't a good enough reason to tolerate the memory bloat and the lag any more. Plus Chrome's integration with Google's instant search, etc., is really useful.

The difference between Firefox and Chrome is that Chrome is a browser built from the ground up to handle the demands of today's internet and today's internet users. Firefox has evolved incrementally from a time when websites were much simpler and has tried far too hard to maintain backwards compatibility with add-ons, etc. I suspect the end result is lots of redundant/inefficient code and a codebase which is really time-consuming to work on - the last thing you need when your manpower is pretty limited compared to the likes of Google and MS.

I really can't see Firefox surviving the next few years other than among a small enthusiast crowd. The product isn't of a high enough technical quality to compete with Chrome, and Mozilla doesn't have the money to revamp it or even to market it. Much like the smartphone market, the browser market is now a war between three superpowers - Google, Microsoft and Apple. There's no way a small organisation like Mozilla can compete.
 
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I don't get why people say firefox is bloated and complicated, could understand before V4, but now? :confused:

Chrome is easier in terms of its UI and to work your way around, but FF doesn't require rocket science to use or setup, same options and all just located in different places :p

True that it doesn't give any memory back when tabs are closed, however even with 2 to 20 tabs open, FF for me uses no more than 450MB max and this is with 7 add ons installed and 5 user styles installed. Chrome actually uses the same or more memory as/than FF for me with the same amount of tabs opened and I only have like 4 addons installed and 2 user styles installed for chrome.

And my FF runs all day, the only time I close it is when I am turning my PC off, never had any problems with it becoming slow or using loads of RAM.

Chromes UI is smoother overall without a doubt but for actual web browsing, unfortunately that isn't the case for me.

This is FF were talking about here :p, you can customize it to whatever way you want, I use stratiform add on and IMO looks much better than the ugly stock look:

2rhw6dz.png


You can even get a chrome theme as well, which is pretty much identical.

Does FF not have instant search as well and the fancy combined address bar with the search bar and if not I am pretty sure there is an addon for that combination just like chrome, think MRK has it installed.

Also I can type in the address bar and it still acts as a google search bar when I hit enter.

Chrome will work much better on lower end rigs than firefox, but on pretty mid-high end PCs now a days, it really shouldn't be an issue.


And lastly, I couldn't disagree with your last comment any more, if anything FF is moving forward very quickly regarding features and performance now (yes it may not be as popular as chrome etc. but as explained by mrk, we know the real reason as to why that is), if it had still been the same with previous versions before V4, then diff... yes, in fact it would be out of the market by now.

Also on a lot of tech sites, FF is the number one browser of choice i.e. it is the top browser according to toms hardware here:

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/firefox-7-web-browser,3037.html
 
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Yeah I find no difference in speed between the latest FF and the latest Chrome (I'm on dev channel releases). There is no lag in either and FF wins by default for having more powerful extensions and customisation.

Chrome STILL has no separator line in bookmarks manage which is long overdue. My favs are organised in folders and in those folders they are segmented in groups based on type of subgrouping and having no divider lines is a pain.
 
You don't find any speed difference in Chrome and Firefox? Regardless of nightlies or dev releases, that's surely a lie!

One more reason why Chrome is growing fast is because it has those TV ads too. I'm sure when the average Joe sees those, he/she would be very interested.

One of the Firebug devs is working on Chrome now, so lots of web developers like me currently using Firefox will probably switch over to Chrome soon enough.
 
I used to use ff for years but I don't miss it, I used to hate the memory leak issues and it wasn't very stable. I like the way chrome syncs with other computers, I like the way it's so quick and stable and all the extensions I need are now available.

All my family members use it now too, and they seem to get on with it well, it's been a long time since I ran into compatibility problems except with sharepoint and some other Microsoft based sites.
 
I have only just removed the dev version of Chrome as I still prefer to use Firefox. I really could not tell any differences in speed between Chrome and FF when using either of them.

However for me it is more of functionality (and a little aesthetics) that I'm concerned about and FF has always had the extensions I want for my browsing needs. Chrome simply doesn't have the extensions that I have become used to over the years of using FF.

I used to use Opera as well but it still annoys me that there are certain site rendering issues which have been there for a long time, regardless of how many times I have reported them. But even without those I would be in the same situation with Opera as I was with Chrome - nice and all that but I want my extensions back.

So for the vast majority of my browsing I use FF and the odd time I will use IE9.
 
Locke said:
You don't find any speed difference in Chrome and Firefox? Regardless of nightlies or dev releases, that's surely a lie!
Click to expand...

Both FF and Chrome on my machine run at the same lightning speed, why would they differ in speed? If you're not convinced then I can post a video of my monitor running both browsers side by side after a cold boot...

From cold boot they load just as fast and they also load webpages just as quickly as well. I have an SSD so I would expect nothing less.

I DO work faster in Firefox though, there are extensions like BBCode, ReHost and FireFTP etc which make uploading and managing right click events so much quicker that I can get through a session in FF ~30% quicker.

If you've not got a decent machine then I can understand why people find Chrome so fast compared to Firefox.
 
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One huge feature that is missing from Chrome for me, is the option to delete all browser history upon close of browser. (It has the options underneath the bonnet, but it doesnt work!)

Chrome simply cant do it, so its not the browser for me.

Plus I prefer the Firefox UI to Chome.
 
opethdisciple said:
One huge feature that is missing from Chrome for me, is the option to delete all browser history upon close of browser. (It has the options underneath the bonnet, but it doesnt work!)

Chrome simply cant do it, so its not the browser for me.

Plus I prefer the Firefox UI to Chome.
Click to expand...

just use incognito mode for pr0n :p
 
I don't find any memory leaks or issues now on aurora, seems they might have finally gotten hold of that, plus I prefer FF's rendering, and Chrome is so slow compared to FF for me sometimes, it just hangs on a page load and takes ages....

Each to their own, and I like both though....
 
I'm using Chrome as it seemed to handle flash better than Firefox, Firefox could bring my whole PC to a standstill having a few few tabs open with flash on them. Chrome handles it a little better. Cannot wait for HTML5 :)
 
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