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Christmas comes early for Chrome

by Alistair Lowe on 16 December 2011, 10:40

Tags: Google (NASDAQ:GOOG)

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Earlier this month, we reported that Chrome had overtaken Firefox to become the second most used browser, holding a total of 25.69 per cent of the global market. Internet Explorer was still top-dog with 40.63 per cent of the market, a 14.94 per cent gap. Since this report, trends have continued, seeing Chrome increase its market-share by 1.25 per cent and Internet Explorer lose a share of 1.98 per cent, closing the gap to 11.71 per cent in a but a single month.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

More recently, browser version breakdowns have become available for the November period, showing that towards the end of the month, Google's Chrome 15 browser had overtaken Microsoft's Internet Explorer 8 as the most popular single browser version, meaning there are more people in the world running Chrome 15 than any other browser version from any other firm.

Microsoft IE 8 vs Google Chrome 15

Holding the number one spot is great Christmas PR for the browser, though stopping a moment to consider the reason for Chrome 15 holding top-spot whilst Chrome as a whole remains significantly in second place reminds us of some of the core differences between the two competing browsers. Internet Explorer has a large business base and can be found in many firms, Government departments and Schools, these entities are often slow to update as they have to consider the management and security concerns involved when upgrading software; though Windows Automatic Update will deliver the latest Internet Explorer, many chose to turn this off, causing fragmentation across Internet Explorer versions. Chrome on the other-hand attracts less static users, in a situation where upgrading is less of a concern; Chrome is capable of updating itself in the background and so updates the vast majority of users to the latest stable release rather passively.

Perhaps then, the news of Chrome 15 taking top-spot is less significant than it would suggest, though closing the gap between Chrome and IE by a further 3.23 per cent in a single month may be cause enough for Christmas celebration for the Google team. These new figures are also a good reminder of the problems caused by Internet Explorer fragmentation in moving internet standards forwards and in reducing the burden on web designers to support old technology; Chrome has shown that it is possible to move a much higher percentage of users to later versions, perhaps Microsoft should be out taking some notes for everyone's sake.



HEXUS Forums :: 7 Comments

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“Internet Explorer has a large business base and can be found in many firms, Government departments and Schools, these entities are often slow to update as they have to consider the management and security concerns involved when upgrading software”

This is so true. My work place finally upgraded to 8 from 6 a couple of months ago. 9 Will take even longer as we're not moving from XP any time soon! Kind of scary really as this makes you very vulnerable to exploits.

Edit: Thankfully we can use a proper browser for outside websites! (Chrome 15 in my case)
Someone at Microsoft must have noticed too: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16214912
cheesemp
“Internet Explorer has a large business base and can be found in many firms, Government departments and Schools, these entities are often slow to update as they have to consider the management and security concerns involved when upgrading software”

This is so true. My work place finally upgraded to 8 from 6 a couple of months ago. 9 Will take even longer as we're not moving from XP any time soon! Kind of scary really as this makes you very vulnerable to exploits.

Edit: Thankfully we can use a proper browser for outside websites! (Chrome 15 in my case)

At least they've made the first moves, and 6 to 8 is a much bigger step than 8 to 9. We might move on from IE6 when we get rid of the remaining W2k machines :(
There is no need for Chrome, Chrome Frame for IE makes it up for it! Absolutely love the product and Chrome rendering ending combines with webconfig changes on IIS works great!
We now officially use Chrome at work since we started using Google Docs more - IE simply was too sluggish with javascript for our users to accept working with big documents. Once you get used to its quirks there is no going back. So far at least no support issues other than a few old VB-only or NTLM-auth intranet sites.