According to internet stats firm StatCounter, Chrome’s grown in use by 50 per cent — and is on track to take the silver medal by December. StatCounter is just one company among many that do the exact same thing, so these figures aren’t ironclad. But the trend definitely is — IE languishes, and Firefox hasn’t done much to excite us in a while. Chrome, on the other hand, at least has Google beating its drum; a luxury afforded by, you know, being owned by megarich Google. The long term trend here — emphasis on long — is the gradual decline of IE. Eventually, I’d expect Firefox and Chrome to take the number one and two spots. It’s just a matter of when, and who’ll be the new king. [ComputerWorld]
olearymo
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:08 AMaw :( I still love you Firefox!
Mike
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 1:54 PM*Posted from Chrome
:D nah but seriously. I’m posting this using Chrome.
dale
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:19 AMnah, firefox really struggles to impress me these days.
havent used it on the home laptop for a year
Norgan
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:25 AMi tried Chrome for a few weeks and still went back to Firefox. I was originally against netscape but Firefox wtill offers the most complete and flexible browsing experience.
MotorMouth
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:28 AMI can’t believe anyone would ditch Firefox for Chrome. I’ve tried Chrome a couple of times but it just doesn’t cut it at all. You simply can’t beat a good Firefox set-up with a few choice add-ons. Here’s my ideal Firefox –
– NASA Night Launch theme
– FireFTP (the “killer” add-on)
– TabMixPlus
– Download Statusbar
Set yourself up with that lot and no other browser can come close.
maddogeco
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:30 AMAd block plus is a pretty good one too especially on on 3g connection. don’t bother downloading those horrid flash ads if your not going to click here to win an iphone
Althalus
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:34 AMTabMixPlus is great! I love having my tabs down the bottom rather than up top, once Chrome lets you do that then I’ll switch.
DuckofHope
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:47 AMPretty much this. I use chrome allot, it’s a pretty solid browser, but I still prefer Firefox, as far as IE goes… it’s still kicking?
Steve
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 11:07 AMFirefox is still much more bloated than Chrome though. In any case I fetch chromium and compile it myself ^_^
MotorMouth
Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 9:06 AMIn what way? More importantly, why does it matter in 2011 when most new PCs ship with 4Gb of RAM and terabyte HDDs? To me, that kind of thinking belongs to last century. Even netbooks have more than enough grunt for that to be irrelevant. I stopped looking at memory usage and CPU loads at least a decade ago and I’m sure I use my PC for much more intensive things than you.
Richard
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 12:17 PMIf I need FTP I’ll just grab a standalone application. Also Chromes taskbar icon functions as a visual download status tool.
I ditched Firefox after several years of using it and Mozilla Browser before that when the browser would frequently become unresponsive for up to half a minute during use. It’s quite possible that this was due to a bad extension or Flash, I don’t know but nor do I care since by then both MS and Google had coded their respective products to run each tab as its own task so that such things wouldn’t take out the browser.
I’m sure my issues are resolved now, but I have no real need to go back either. TBH Firefox’s development for a while there was to slow, they’ve improved their processes now but I was gone before they sorted themselves out.
MotorMouth
Saturday, October 1, 2011 at 9:10 AM“If I need FTP I’ll just grab a standalone application.”
Why bother when you can have it running in it’s own tab in your browser, giving you feedback as you work? I actually own a license for WS-FTP but I haven’t bothered with it since Fire-FTP appeared, simply because the latter is so much more convenient.
Hesh
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 12:27 PMOnly time i find FF better than chrome is when it comes to web development.
Firefox has serious memory issues. open up 20 tabs and watch your ram gets drained. Start closing tabs until theres 2-3 left, ram useage havent dropped at all.
or open 10 tabs and let FF ideal and over a hour or so the ram will clime over to a 1gb.
-99% extensions for FF as also on chrome
-chrome starts faster
Steve
Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 3:26 PMFF will begin to lag beyond a dozen tabs open even with 4GB+ and ad-blockers. And if your main advantage for FF are plug-ins, you realise that just about everything is also available on Chrome? Combine this with the seamless transition due to official Google Web Apps and Chrome begins to pull ahead.
I went from Firefox > Opera because of how bloated FF was becoming, but eventually to Chrome because there were some occasions (rare) that Opera wasn’t supported in the site’s entirety which bugged me.
maddogeco
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:28 AMFire fox sync is amazing. going from one device to another have have all my tabs still there is great. i have 22 tabs open and im im not using that much ram. Also Google scares me so i dont use chrome
Barry
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:35 AMI enjoy IE and Firefox. Tried Chrome but found it sending out too much information that I wasn’t asked for it to do. I know more broswers are doing this but if you are, please tell me before I install it so I have a clear understanding.
RobbyM
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:37 AMThe reason more people have Chrome on their computers is it’s ability to be “accidently” installed with other apps..
For example – do an update on Adobe Flash or Shockwave and what tries to install itself – unless you pay attention and untick it – Chrome.
So a person who doesn’t really know any better finds themselves with Chrome and IE on their computer and usually ends up using Chrome.
EckyThump
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:53 AMFirefox isn’t going anywhere any time soon! The competition will give it a kick in the pants and force it to be more innovative. That’s a good thing, and I’m quite happy to stay with it and hang on for the ride! #]
adrian
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 10:53 AMFirefox is so slow and clunky still. It has a lot of space wasters and also options that are in strange places, I used Firefox before Chrome came out but since then I’ve only used Chrome just cause it gets out of the way and it’s fast.
cleverclogs
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 11:06 AMChrome weasels its way in to every computer by coming attached to anything you might want to install – Skype for one, which is surprising that they’re still bundling… maybe they’ll bundle ie9/10 soon enough.
I’ve found Chrome to completely rape the system’s defaults, so much so that when uninstalling, many file associations that Chrome stole are not reset.
EckyThump
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 11:15 AMYou make a good point! Are those statistics of people actually using it, or just downloaded it? I have it installed as a second sign in browser, but I don’t actually use it for surfing! #}
Richard
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 9:42 PMIt’d be use given the stats are from StatCounter
Jackson
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 11:12 AMFirefox will always hold a special place in the hearts of those who insist on customizing their browser. The fact is though, most people don’t need to or have the time to. Most people flip between multiple devices and computers, so investing in a customisable set-up is not so practical. The people that do customise do not represent 22% marketshare. Chrome is reliable and lightening fast and gets the job done, ironically without the “chrome”.
Chris
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 11:41 AMFirefox lost me at 4. Crashed on my work PC everynight. What so annoying reopening my facebook tabs every morning. :p
Corteks
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 11:49 AMPeople use IE? On the odd occasions I’ve had to use it I’m amazed at just how incredibly bad it is o.0
Still using Firefox here & lovin’ it. Last time I gave Chrome a go it was still pretty new and was kinda lacking in… well everything. I guess it must be a lot more impressive now?
Steve
Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 3:27 PMPeople use IE because it’s bundled with Windows and for many, they simply use what came with their computer. It’s usually the same demographic that open their box and use it straight up, with all the manufacturer bloatware still installed.
Ozoneocean
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 12:12 PMChrome is even attached as an opt-out extra on flash updates.- face it; Google is going for the same idiot, unthinking market that IE currently has.
Apple tried that with Safari by attaching it virus-like to updates of Quicktime and itunes, but much like those two programs it was so crap it just never got momentum.
Steve
Sunday, October 2, 2011 at 3:31 PMAs long as Chrome gets its foot in the door and people give it a go, they’ll probably switch from IE.
As for Safari, those Apple programs run like ass on Windows, and they stopped packaging in Quicktime/Safari with iTunes when enough people were getting pissed.
PiMan
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 12:58 PMAfter having Tired issues, I made the switch back to Opera a little while back, use it across different devices and loving it. And no, not trying to be hipster here :P
Dave
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 1:04 PMUsing Firefox 8 Alpha and it’s very fast & stable.
stevjosco
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 2:14 PMIf these monthly Firefox updates are going to keep on breaking my extensions then I will be making Chrome my default browser (never IE).
Lance
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 2:41 PMI’ve been using FF for years and don’t see my self changing anytime soon I’ve tried chrome and opera and they didn’t seem to work right and were much slower then FF but then again with FF I’ve changed the setting on a few things in the configuration thingy that are meant to make it faster and can’t complain
keestu
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 2:45 PMI am with chrome….It took me time to move from firefox but just like chris…firefox lost me at version 4….The crap simply kept on crashing….and its not like chrome was not crashing at all…But at the end of the day its gmail sync that made the beautiful touch….But chrome needs to fix the resource hogging that it does…which is simply unacceptable…I don’t intend to switch back to IE or firefox either way…But unfortunately many websites are not compatible with chrome and add-on bullshit in firefox gets reset and checked again and again for every damn update…Chrome is chrome…Extensions work and “Click to play” is more than enough + developer tools…But chrome SUCKS big time in H/w acceleration compared to IE9 i.e.
Lillee
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 3:12 PMDownloaded Chrome this week and I am never going back!
Anti
Friday, September 30, 2011 at 5:27 PMI’m sticking with my Firefox. I love having addons, and it has had a few dud releases, but it never takes long for a fix. I’ve tried Chrome, and while I don’t dislike it, there is absolutely nothing it has exclusively that I want.
Ash
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 9:47 AMThey’ve been saying that IE is in decline for ages. I would have suspected that IE would have been dead by now, but its maintained a fighting lead, especially since its managed to compete with the competition rather than lag behind. Good on em. While Im a Firefox person myself (even though being an Android/Google person), I’d hate to see IE become a dead browser (I still dont see it happening anytime soon) for the sake of competition and innovation.
Steve
Tuesday, October 4, 2011 at 3:05 PMIE is still present in business hence the market share