Chrome beats IE for a weekend Fresh from knocking off Microsoft's Internet Explorer as the web's most-used browser for a single day in March, Google's Chrome browser has now claimed more users than Redmond's HTML-cruncher for a whole weekend. Data gathered by StatCounter shows Chrome has enjoyed a day of dominance on most weekends since its March …
Funny how IE and Chrome have such a weekly cycle opposite each other, where as FF/Safari/Opera shows very little variation.
Why would corporate locked-down users all choose much the *same* non-IE browser for home use, and not a balance closer to the other browser's respective shares?
> Why would corporate locked-down users all choose much the *same* non-IE browser for home use, and not a balance closer to the other browser's respective shares?
It's not like they stop being brainless zombies over the weekend is it..
Every time you hit Google.com with IE it tells you to download Chrome, so that's what such people do.
Are you lot all unemployed or, more probably, unemployable? Almost all firms consisting of more than a man or woman and a dog have software and security standards. If they use MS software, as most do, the workers are not allowed to use anything except IE, often an older version that is known to support even the oldest web applications and internal web URLs.
If any of you worked in the real world and knew what you are on about, you would know this.
Being rude about people with real jobs, that you do not understand, makes you look stupid, drone-like.
> Why would corporate locked-down users all choose much the *same* non-IE browser for home use, and not a balance closer to the other browser's respective shares?
Probably not the case. Its probable that PC usage drops at the weekend. Most android devices have chrome-lite installed and phone & tablet usage make up the bulk of the usage at the weekend. They'll have the same absolute numbers during the week, but proportionally less when the corporate desktops are online.
I'm not sure what meaning we are supposed to draw from this. Chrome is included in android like IE is on the windows desktop. These are different markets so they aren't really competing, the swinging stats show that. Neither browser is likely to have been particularly chosen or favoured by the the user.
No change to our methodology! Stats for 8th May - today - simply aren't final yet. Stats for today will continue to evolve throughout the day and can't be finalised until the day is over. (Days are based on UTC)
Look at the graph up to 7th May to avoid confusion:
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-daily-20120401-20120507
The IE and Chrome stats look like mirror images of each other.
It looks as contrived as the figures are massaged in Google's favour.
What is it about web browsers that there has to be this "we've got more users than you/we're more secure/we're faster, nah-nah- nah-nah-nah" playground posturing?
Apart from encouraging their fanboy base, all it does, in my opinion, is make the browser creators look stupid.
Web browsers are a tool not a portal to The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything.
Sadly, though, it's not limited to web browsers. You get the same thing for operating systems, games consoles, mobile phone OS/manufacturer and many other things as well.
The saddest thing is that the truth is every single one of these things has flaws, and we all just pick the ones with the flaws we can live with, I don't understand why we feel the need to defend these choices as if they are religions.
"... I don't understand why we feel the need to defend these choices as if they are religions."
Because most people here see their choices in OS/browser/anything as reflecting how canny they are. If you find a fault with anything they've chosen you aren't hailing their wisdom and giving them the validation they crave. So you get a lot of childishness that make the forums here look like they're overrun with annoying 13-year olds. (Apologies to unannoying 13-year olds.)
"Web browsers are a tool not a portal to The Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything."
Isn't the web where you find the Ultimate Answer to Life, the Universe and Everything? In any case, I thinks it's been clearly established that the Ultimate Question is actually the problem.
It looks like most people use IE at work and Chrome at home, but M$ aren't helping themselves here by deciding things like "IE9 is not available for XP". People are more likely just to use another browser than switch OS. On the subject of IE9 I tried to download it today for my Win7 machine, only to be redirected to an adtmt.com site - which I block (as do many people/organisations I know) - so I just went 'meh' and went back to Chrome (SRIron) and FF. It seems M$ are putting as many blocks in the way as they can think of to stop people using their 'latest and greatest' browser - something that will probably come back to haunt them.
For the record - I have several machines (ubuntu, xp, win7) and use most browsers (FF, SRIron, IE8, Opera, Safari [not so much]) - none have IE9 (see above reasons). As Kaiser Soze said - it is just a tool - who cares which one (or ones in my case) you use.
Funny, I thought XP was supported until 2014?
Also note that the latest stable version of Opera for Windows has the minimum requirements of "Windows 2000 on a Pentium II, 128 MB of RAM, 20 MB of free disk space"
Funny how other browsers can work on XP, but not MS' latest?
Its probably due in some way to the number of software downloads that come with an "Install Chrome" box already helpfully selected. Ive had more than a few calls about this from people who are so used to just clicking through that they missed it and ended up with an unwanted browser.
Have no respect for companies that do that.. if its so good - let word of mouth build your user-base.
Chrome has been installed to my PC without permission at least three times in the last year, each time during installation of something else I actually wanted. I have manually removed it each time and told Google to f*** off in the but-why-don't-you-want-our-lovely-browser uninstaller feedback form - Software that behaves like this is malware.
The average normal pc user is not into browser preferences, javascript benchmarks or monopoly politics, they just try to go along with whatever the infernal machine presents them with. I bet a lot of Chrome's usage figures are down to "normal" people just sighing and accepting the different-looking browser that's been plonked in front of them.
(big smile because I'm one of the Opera-using weirdos.)
The reality is that most of the main players behave in the same way. That's certainly not to condone it - such options should be opt-in not opt-out - but to single out Google is certainly unfair. I've had to help elderly neighbours "fix their internet" after they installed a Microsoft product and it changed their default homepage from Google to Bing. Although most people would find that easy to rectify, it should not be underestimated how many people simply don't understand what has happened, let alone how to fix it.
As for your second point, Chrome is actually a very good browser. It has the best security record, a clean and effective UI, the best performance, the best standards support, excellent extensions / app support and it was the first browser to properly handle updates. It has earned its position as the soon-to-be most used browser.
".....it was the first browser to properly handle updates."
Hmm, not sure about that. My experience is it'll sit there, all out of date like, in perpetuity until you hit "help/about", at which point it'll update itself without asking.
A worst of both worlds approach in my book.
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