Is Anyone Using Chrome?

The news that Google (GOOG) is turning its Chrome browser into a full blown linux-based operating system for netbooks has the tech industry buzzing. There's so much to like about this story; Google vs Microsoft (MSFT), Google vs Apple (AAPL), the rise of netbooks, the browser as an OS, freeconomics at work in the OS market, etc, etc.

I'm not going to add much to the discussion, particularly almost a full day after the news hit and literally hundreds of blog posts later. But I did enjoy Fake Steve Jobs' rant even though it was tongue in cheek. Fake Steve lists eight reasons why Chrome OS is "no big deal" including this one:

Point four: You also may not have noticed, but nobody uses Chrome. I mean think about it. Do you know anyone who uses Chrome? Really? And you know why nobody uses Chrome? Because Chrome is shit. Just utter, utter shit. I mean they've got all these big brains at Google and you'd think they could make a decent fucking browser. Jesus, the freetards at Mozilla can do it. But not Google. Nope. They gave it their big best effort and what did they come up with? Chrome. It's a joke.

Well that got me thinking if I knew anyone who uses Chrome, and I immediately thought of this community here at AVC. Well guess what, 9% of you all use Chrome. Chrome comes in fourth in this community after Firefox at roughly 50%, IE and Safari basically tied at 18%, and Chrome almost gets double digits. Here's the exact numbers for the past 30 days (click to enlarge):

Of course these numbers come from Google Analytics, but I trust Google not to mess around with this stuff.

What's even more interesting is to go back just three years and look at what the browser market share in this community was.

IE had 63%
Firefox had 28%
Safari had 6%

So in just three years, this community's use of IE has gone from 63% to 18%, Firefox has gone from 28% to almost 50%, and Safari has tripled from 6% to 18%.

So Chrome may be under 10% right now, but in three years, it could easily be the leading browser in this community. Browsers apparently don't command that much loyalty and switching costs are low. That said, I'm not moving to Chrome unless I can take my Firefox extensions with me.

Comments

[Steven Hansen:]

i try to do most of my work with safari as it is very fast, but it has issues with the java engine i could not resolve.

my backup is firefox which acts like a dependable sure-footed workhorse.

chrome has serious compatibility problems with many sites. i am not sure why they have not embedded some kind of emulator. the difficulties are so frequent that i cannot use this browser.

Jul 09 02:03 AM

[jmmx:]

One might ask: Why does Safari exist?

I believe there are three main reasons:

1- To be certain that the Mac has a stable browser that will adhere to open standards.

2- To provide MS Win users with the Apple quality experience.

3- To be certain that the MS Win platform has a browser that will adhere to open standards so that Apple's Web apps (i.e. MobileMe) will function properly.

One of the major purposes of Safari is to make sure that MS cannot undercut access to MobileMe by its age old practice of subverting open standards. This is important not only for the iPhone access, but as a way to bring the Mac experience to the long time MSWin users.

IMHO

Jul 09 02:13 AM

[GoochyPuppy:]

I have to agree that I am addicted to certain Firefox extensions.

That said, there are still too many websites which are dependent on Explorer specifics (i.e., fail to render properly in Firefox) -- but at least I have IE Tab extension for those.

Finally, Firefox has a pretty major memory leak and garbage collection issues which nobody can pin down. Perhaps it is one or some of the extensions or maybe better with v3.5. My PC is no wimp, but stuttering every few minutes on garbage collection is ludicrous!

Jul 09 04:52 AM

[FloridaBoy2:]

"Of course these numbers come from Google Analytics, but I trust Google not to mess around with this stuff."

I don't trust anything 'free' from Google. They are huge data miners and I don't want them digging in my PC.

Jul 09 05:26 AM

[creative image:]

I like to read your comments, but take the back alley street talk out, find a dictionary if you cant come up with the correct words.

Jul 09 07:35 AM

[Dor Kalev:]

Hi,
Nice piece!
I have been using Firefox for a long long while and switch to Safari 3 and then Safari 4 and stayed with it. It is fast and reliable and I use it both on my Mac and PC computers.
As to the Google Analytics stats showing in this article, they are really not a clear representation of the market.

In SeekingAlpha we see more than 50% IE users and have a little more than 3% of Chrome users.

3% is A LOT for a browser that young!

Jul 09 08:02 AM

[Carousel:]

I can't use Chrome for two reasons:

1) No right-click, View/Selection Source, which is extremely handy for looking at HTML
2) The "Find Text" functionality doesn't look inside "textarea"s

For a reputed "developer's browser", these are major omissions.

Jul 09 08:47 AM

[John Slater:]

It's a generational thing. My daughter uses Chrome. I use Firefox because i'm used to it and it works. Basically I've used it since 1994 when it was called Netscape so why change?

Interestingly we maintain a website aimed at interior designers - not your most technologically advanced community. Results there are:

IE 70.23%
Firefox 16.12%
Safari 10.68%
Chrome 1.24%
Opera .35%

Jul 09 09:29 AM

[Chris S:]

Chrome, as much as I love it, is still stuck in the realm of techies and early adopters. Browsers might have low cost of switching, but most people don't really care what browser they use, even if they know which one they are using at all.

Feels like half the people I work with still use IE6. And they don't care, because as far as they can tell, it gets the job done.

Jul 09 10:54 AM

[appDev:]

Carousel must be a plant, sent by one of the 2 Big M's (Mozilla or Microsoft). Right click on a page in Chrome, and there's either "View Frame Source" or "View Page Source", plus "Inspect Element" which gives not only source, but css and javascript for that particular element, and for the whole page.

Also, I just did a find on text inside a text area. Not only that, but Chrome lets you resize text areas so you see more of your composition at once, regardless of what the UI-challenged web site coders did.

I use Chrome as my main browser, and I love the ability to kill Flash whenver it runs amok, without affecting anything else.

How do I know Chrome is good enough for the average user? I switched my wife to it after she kept complaining how cumbersome and slow IE was. All browser-related complaints have stopped (now if only I could stop being slow and cumbersome).

Jul 09 02:57 PM