With the latest browser market share statistics now available, it is becoming apparent that the infamous ‘browser war’ is all but over. Market share as at the end of October shows Chrome achieving a new milestone, breaching 30% for the first time, while Firefox’s market share creeps ever closer toward a disastrous single digit:
Comparing Firefox and Chrome’s market share from November 2013 to today shows an overall massive 23% swing in favor of Chrome during the past 2 years – bearing in mind that, in a market place involving millions of users, even a single percentage point represents significant numbers.
Internet Explorer still leads the pack, largely due to the fact that it has always been built into Windows and therefore readily available, but I wonder for how much longer?
With Internet Explorer virtually “hidden” in Windows 10, it’s obvious that Microsoft is keen on phasing out the old browser in favor of its new “Edge” browser. However, I doubt Edge will ever achieve the same level of market penetration as Internet Explorer has enjoyed for so long.
With Microsoft’s earlier promise of extensions availability now on hold until at least the middle of next year, plus Cortana’s limited availability, Edge certainly hasn’t started well. One would have thought that “missing the boat” so many times during the past few years might have impacted on Microsoft’s thinking but, alas, the Edge extensions fiasco and limited accessibility to Cortana, prove otherwise.
It all sounds very much like another victory for Google to me, with Chrome set to become the dominant browser of choice. What do you think?
I have to wonder what makes Chrome so popular? I have three browsers in W10 Edge,Firefox, and IE, Firefox is used more than any of them, simply because everything works. Live on Firefox.
The rapid growth of chrome is due to mobile! Goog rules mobile market!
Each mobile born comes with chrome, just like Msft ruled the desktop market in the past.
But SORRY, I LOVE FIREFOX ONLY!
Plus, Google making Chrome work on most of their services better, making it harder for the competition. Firefox has had issues with the YouTube layout several times, but it didn’t have issues in Chrome, so obvious.
Plus, I would see many people just on Chrome because many programs offer it, same reason I removed avast! and decided to use another antivirus. Also, because it’s Google, and so many people are enamored with it that they would use Chrome.
So many problems being spread about Firefox, and I wasn’t happy with Australis, that’s why I use Palemoon.(Okay, I like Australis but I don’t like how it disallowed me the ability to move the Reload/Stop from the URL bar, and Classic Theme Restorer doesn’t move them, either. I would like customization my way, that was the goal of Firefox)
For some reason, even after Firefox improves on their rendering engine, Chrome’s engine miraculously speeds-up, maybe some insight going on, but we know that Firefox answers to Google in some form.(You would think that Yahoo!’s partnership is the new thing, but even Yahoo! is going to allow Google search tech; it’s proposed but don’t care enough to see if it’s already applied.)
The statistics quoted and shown in this article pertain to DESKTOP usage only. Mobile/tablet browser market share statistics are maintained completely separately – as of 31st October, NetMarketShare shows Safari at 41.13% and Chrome at 36.84%.
In a desperate attempt to grab some of it’s market share back Firefox has finally come out with a 64 bit browser, after snubbing it’s nose at it for years they finally realized 64 bit is the way of the future …… a little too late if you ask me.
I wonder how long it’ll take them to grapple with 128 bit …… if they last that long.
The 64-bit browser has been out for years, maybe even 2005(Or prior), they just didn’t feel like it’s ready.
I’m sure Chrome’s 64-bit should still be an issue, here or there.
Waterfox which is part of Firefox does offer the 64 bit version and I’ve been using it for some time now, Mindblower!
Yes, so does my Palemoon, and it, too, has been around for so long.
Let’s see:
Palemoon, Waterfox, Lawlietfox, PCXFirefox, Ayakawa Firefox, Unofficial Firefox 64-bit, HTGuard Firefox, tete009 Firefox, and so on.
I mainly use my Windows laptops, and tend to leave my browsers open (for various reasons). I put a premium on battery life, so I won’t even consider using Chrome until Google (or MS) fixes the system clock-tick issue.
The good news: after five years Google has finally taken the issue internal – so maybe soon?
I really don’t understand why Chrome seems to be so popular. Sure there was a period when IE and Firefox were beginning to bloat and get slower though my recent experiences tell this has shifted somewhat. For me now Chrome is the one that crashes more often. I do seriously put all three through their paces but find I keep coming back to Firefox. Web browsing has improved so much over the years that it now takes quite a significant browsing incident to make an impression sufficient to change the browser.
More self diagnosis and self healing but we like to told what has been healed and how to avoid things happening agaiin. IE rarely tells you anything and Chrome may say it has fixed a problem but usually it doesnt give much explanation. Something all three need to recognise, and tackle, is the way that people people use (or want use) them – in short to adapt more readily to our browsing styles.
I love Firefox also. I help the seniors here in Florida and I always recommend Firefox.
That’s highly admirable, much respect to you.
admirable*
Megaman commented on Daves Computer Tips:
admirable*
If you’re inclined to use Chrome, I highly recommend SRWare Iron, which is also a free browser. It’s underlying code is the same as the open-source Chromium from which Google Chrome was developed—but without all the baggage and surreptitious Google monitoring and following inherent in Google Chrome. If you’re at all concerned about privacy and not having Google watch everything you do on-line, I recommend SR Ware Iron. It’s clean, loads very fast, and generally performs better on my four computers (three laptops and a desktop) than either Mozilla or Chrome. And IE? Fuggeddaboudit!
I used SRWare Iron as the first Chromium alternative when Chrome was 2 years old, but it still was a pain to use, due to the RAM-hogging going on. Then again, nothing was customizable like on Firefox/Palemoon(Or whatever Gecko-alternative you guys use), so back to Palemoon I went.
Another one is Dragon by Comodo; sure, they are falling behind in the development, but they learned from it and are back on track, they also work against privacy. You also have Epic Browser, SuperBird, and so many others that are security/non-tracking-orientated.
SRWare made Iron for ad-profit, so they aren’t saints, really.
Let’s see, from Dec ’14 to Oct ’15 Internet Explorer lost 8.25% and Chrome gained 8.47% market share. Firefox lost .63% and yet the title of the article says that “Chrome & Firefox’s Market Shares Zooming, But in Opposite Directions”. Chrome’s may be “zooming” up having gained all that Internet Explorer lost, but it’s complete exaggeration to claim Firefox is “zooming” down when it lost less than 2/3 of 1 percent all year. Or maybe the author and I have a different idea of what the word “zooming” means?
Sarcasm noted.
I included the screenshot purely to highlight market share as it stands today, assuming that anyone who has any insight into the history of desktop browser market share would be well aware that Firefox once enjoyed a much larger slice of the market. For example; in November 2013 Firefox’s market share was 18.54%, Chrome’s was 15.44%. If that’s not a huge turnaround I don’t know what is.
My bad for making assumptions – I’ve now added that information into the article to help clarify the situation for people such as yourself who obviously aren’t familiar with the history.
#1 = Firefox. Best add-ons, best layout.
#2 = Chromium for the occasional flash videos that FF refuses to play for whatever reason.
They’re all I use.
Google Chrome is ugly & too minimalistic. Also not a fan of seeing a browser monopoly.
IE has always been terrible & Edge is hideous/crashes. Great job M$.
Imho
When I try to watch a stream on hitbox.tv, my weak laptop can’t handle Palemoon nor a Chromium alternative, even Maxthon.(Flash is heavy. I block Flash and no lag, but I can’t watch the stream)
Edge is bloated and can’t handle Flash-heavy hitbox, either, and it does crash.
The only way to enjoy the heavy Flash player is by using IE11, yet it hasn’t crashed on me, not sure what happened on your end.
The hitbox team, just like what Twitch is currently doing, play Flash under an HTML5 wrapper, so it doesn’t help since Flash is still running.
A many-years fan of Firefox, this year I switched to Palemoon and have not been back to firefox since. got so tired of losing features and just hated the australis version of Firefox that I tried several other browsers. found Palemoon to be stable, fast, and with a forum of developers and fans that were knowledgable, pleasant and quick to help….unlike IE or Firefox. all the addons I enjoyed in Firefox are working smoothly in Palemoon…never a freeze or hangup….Palemoon has my vote for sure.
Once I found out Firefox was going the way of Chrome for addons, I decided to try Palemoon. I was very happy with it until I found that I could not fully use my online banking. I could log in ok, but I could not use the bill paying part, which is how I pay almost all of my bills. A short search yielded a help page for Palemoon about this kind of problem. It took me a few minutes, but now Palemoon is working for the bill pay.
Palemoon is not supposed to stop allowing the kind of addons Firefox currently supports, so I have made it my default browser. I would never use Chrome, although I have tried SRWare Iron. I just liked the layout and use of Firefox better.
I have as many problems with Chrome as I do with IE, they are just different, and seem to occur randomly on different computers.
Edge is just another example of MS shooting itself in the foot (or maybe the stomach?). They COULD have just installed it as a new version of IE with improvements in security, new features, etc. I doubt that most of us would ever have realized that it was something different, because it doesn’t look that different.
But instead they just had to call it something else, and alert us to the fact that it is new. What they don’t get is that many of us (Most?) don’t trust them worth a darn, and are suspicious of anything they call new, after the many fiascoes, notably Win 8.
I unfortunately had to buy a new laptop, and ended up with Win 10. I hate it. All the things I like about Win 7 are either gone or don’t work properly. And I DON’T WANT to have to go to an app store just find things that should already be in Windows!