A disheartening chart from Ars Technica, if you’re a Firefox booster: That gentle downward slope indicates Firefox might never reach 25 per cent marketshare. Why? Because companies with money care about browsers now. Or, in a word: Chrome.
Chrome is the only browser that gained marketshare from January to February, bouncing 0.41 per cent to 5.61 per cent. Even the release of Firefox 3.6 in the last two months didn’t help, with Firefox sliding 0.18 per cent (second to IE’s 0.6 percentage point drop, which you’d assume would be sending users to alternative browsers, like Firefox).
Here’s one difference between Firefox and Chrome, in a nutshell: Banners on two of the biggest, most trusted websites on the internet. Chrome’s by Google. It’s fast! It’s nice! Switch to it!
But you know what? It is faster and nicer than Firefox. The heyday of Firefox, when it was hands down the best was when nobody with money cared about browsers that worked, that made the internet a better place. So guys on a shoestring could out-innovate and slaughter the incumbent tyrant. Now companies with resources – Google – can iterate new versions and features just plain faster. Not to mention, advertise the crap out of its browser.
Part of me really hopes that Firefox does hit 25 per cent, just as symbolic “fuck you” to old browser regime. But the other part me thinks Chrome might do it first, even if that’s a ways away. [Ars]
scott white
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 11:04 AMGo CHROME!!! I feel dirty because its made by google (f-off buzz), but its just so light and fast and shiny.
Wilson Cheng
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 2:17 PMI used to be in the almost 25% of firefox user. But Google Chrome is so much faster. Now it became even better with extensions!
Kurt
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 4:01 PMI reckon the Firefox market share will jump up again when 4.0 is released but until then I think ill stick with Chrome. A 4.0 themed Firefox is good but just doesn’t feel authentic enough. The sooner it arrives the better.
Ian
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 4:09 PMI still use Firefox and will continue to do so until another browser has the same caliber of web-development based extensions that Firefox offers.
However, when that day occurs, the memory hog that is Firefox will be delegated ‘testing browser’.
Cheers
Robbie Spencer
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 4:38 PMAs soon as there is a way to turn off browser history by default without having to open a incognito window, I will switch to Chrome permanently. Currently I am switching between the two a bit. My Firefox is getting Chromified the best it can be though. I can’t live without an omnibar now that I’m used to it, it just seems so pointless to the search box and url box separated.
Gregory Opera
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 7:07 PMUntil recently, I’ve always been an Opera user (pretty much since the beginning too, when it was first made available to the public), but I’m fed-up with countless Web sites not working or not working properly when using Opera…
For a while there I was using “Flock” (a browser that is based on Firefox, and HEAVILY customized for social networking services, WebMail, blogging, online multimedia and other, related services), however I wasn’t using social networking enough to warrant using it (the wife still uses Flock and refuses to use anything else, including Chrome!).
Then I gave in and FINALLY tried Chrome – one word, WOW!
Not only does it have a minimalistic interface (which in turn shows more of a Web page) and support for extensions, but it is fast, REALLY, REALLY fast!
I still have Opera installed (sometimes I login to the same site with multiple user names, and therefore require multiple browsers) and whilst it still has some great features (such as Opera Link, also available on “mobile” versions of Opera), it simply can’t compete with Chrome on speed, in fact it doesn’t even come close!
If they give Opera’s interface an overhaul, get the speed up par, make the browser work with more Web sites and/or release a BlackBerry OS-specific version, then I’ll probably switch back… But until then, I’m sticking with Chrome.
Pinball
Tuesday, March 2, 2010 at 7:31 PMDoes it matter if Firefox never reaches 25 percent? It’s still achieved it’s goal, it’s opened people’s eyes. The general population now understands that Internet Explorer isn’t the internet, that there are alternatives that are better, and isn’t that a good thing?