4 ms·

Trend implies Chrome to overtake IE in browser share in one year.

32 points by jamieforrest 15y ago

Piskvor 15y ago
Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/605/ http://xkcd.com/605/ "As you can see, by late next month you'll have over four dozen husbands. Better get bulk rate on that wedding cake." IMNSHO, the adoption of IE9 (on new computers with Win7 preinstalled, perhaps?) might make a significant dent in that projection. I've seen a very similar graph (starring Firefox) a few years back; and then IE came back from the dead with version 8.
- jamieforrest 15y ago
  Yeah, and there's always someone in April who's on pace to hit 80 home runs for the season. That said, I think the trend toward Chrome, and webkit browsers in general, is undeniable.
  - chalst 15y ago
    Linear extrapolation in general is unwise, but with market share it is particularly foolish. I'd bet the opposite, that the gap between the two browsers takes longer than a year to vanish.
    - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
      In South America, where these stats show Chrome in the lead, the growth seemed to be accelerating up to and beyond the crossover point (the same in the few individual countries where they're leading). What about marketshare particularly should make this unusual or unexpected? I'd assume some kind of tipping point effect as it becomes "normal" not to run IE and/or to run Chrome that could lead to such acceleration since the barriers to adoption are so low.
      - rhplus 15y ago
        Perhaps there's a distribution deal or popular website in South America that requires Chrome to function best (Orkut?). Or perhaps, as you said, it's just a network effect.
- lloeki 15y ago
  No extrapolation here[0]. Fx is dogfighting with IE, all the while Cr is coming increasingly closer. [0] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-200809-201107 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-200809-201107
  - kablamo 15y ago
    Interesting. Firefox is about equal to IE in Europe. While in Germany, Firefox usage is way ahead of IE: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE-monthly-200809-201107 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE-monthly-200809-201107 In antarctica everyone is using safari.
- chc 15y ago
  Ordinarily I downvote XKCD links on Hacker News, but in this particular case, it really does a perfect job of explaining what's wrong with the article.
ZeroGravitas 15y ago
Chrome 15 is right now in the process of claiming the most used version from IE 8. But like the combined version share, what you can use is often more about the people holding you back on IE 6,7,8 than the ones pushing you forward.
tpatke 15y ago
Who cares? Whatever browser is the market leader doesn't matter because you will still need to support IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari for the foreseeable future. Nobody has ever made a (significant) profit from a browser. In fact, Microsoft lost billions for their efforts (see U.S. vs. MSFT). Can someone please explain to me why this matters?
- k33n 15y ago
  If Chrome is the market leader, you have a viable argument for not supporting IE at all. Or at least making it a low priority.
  - jlind 15y ago
    It really depends on the target market, regardless. Plenty of people will be quick to tell you how many enterprise companies are still stuck with IE6. And most of them are willing to write fat checks to maintain that status quo.
- macavity23 15y ago
  In terms of affecting what devs need to do, it doesn't matter. However, if it happens (and it's a big if), it would certainly be noteworthy, because it will cement html standards-compliance. As you say, you need to support IE, Chrome, FF and Safari - but (at least for IE < 8) this has always meant supporting the standard and then tweaking it to make it work in IE. I've never had significant differences in webpage functionality between chrome, FF and safari (YMMV). IE 9 is MUCH better at standards compliance - but this is purely because of MS's losses in marketshare. If you don't see this as a significant thing, then I'm guessing you're too young to have been coding web pages when IE had a 90%+ market share. You kids have it easy. :-)
- melling 15y ago
  A large enough market share for Chrome means that developers can target more of the features in modern browsers. For example, companies can write WebGL games knowing that the majority of installed browsers support it. Google can add new features to Chrome and since everyone gets the automatic update, and Firefox will soon follow, the feature becomes mainstream.
mzarate06 15y ago
The graph the title links to is a little dated, it only cites stats up to July 2011. Here's a more up to date graph citing stats up to October 2011: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200809-201110 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200809-201110 The curves are even more revealing.
- zobzu 15y ago
  yeah that's too bad others already lost that war even if IE, FF, Opera, etc became 2x better than Chrome overnight it wouldn't change a thing. The machine' rolling and advertised on 99% of the most visited pages, bundled with most software with default opt-in. In 5 years from now we'll probably start saying how "maybe its not a good thing for ANY company to have 90%+ market share in something as important as the browser" and how "Yeah well Google didn't play fair, but that' ok cause we hated MS, and no one cared much about brand-fanboism for Opera or Firefox"
swombat 15y ago
And within 2 years it will be used by more than 100% of people worldwide! As my maths teacher used to say, "even in the privacy of your own home, you should not extrapolate."
Hoff 15y ago
Looks to be browser fragmentation. "Other" (which is massively increased) and IE9 are the only increasing entries in this plot: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200809-201110 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200809... While what's in that "other" plot isn't listed, the Chrome and Firefox version schemes and their associated plethora of smaller and more frequent releases have played havoc with the classic version-plot scheme.
- ootachi 15y ago
  I don't think it's fragmentation. It's Chrome on track to achieve market dominance.

32 points by jamieforrest 15y ago

Obligatory XKCD: http://xkcd.com/605/ http://xkcd.com/605/ "As you can see, by late next month you'll have over four dozen husbands. Better get bulk rate on that wedding cake." IMNSHO, the adoption of IE9 (on new computers with Win7 preinstalled, perhaps?) might make a significant dent in that projection. I've seen a very similar graph (starring Firefox) a few years back; and then IE came back from the dead with version 8.

jamieforrest 15y ago
Yeah, and there's always someone in April who's on pace to hit 80 home runs for the season. That said, I think the trend toward Chrome, and webkit browsers in general, is undeniable.
- chalst 15y ago
  Linear extrapolation in general is unwise, but with market share it is particularly foolish. I'd bet the opposite, that the gap between the two browsers takes longer than a year to vanish.
  - ZeroGravitas 15y ago
    In South America, where these stats show Chrome in the lead, the growth seemed to be accelerating up to and beyond the crossover point (the same in the few individual countries where they're leading). What about marketshare particularly should make this unusual or unexpected? I'd assume some kind of tipping point effect as it becomes "normal" not to run IE and/or to run Chrome that could lead to such acceleration since the barriers to adoption are so low.
    - rhplus 15y ago
      Perhaps there's a distribution deal or popular website in South America that requires Chrome to function best (Orkut?). Or perhaps, as you said, it's just a network effect.
lloeki 15y ago
No extrapolation here[0]. Fx is dogfighting with IE, all the while Cr is coming increasingly closer. [0] http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-200809-201107 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-200809-201107
- kablamo 15y ago
  Interesting. Firefox is about equal to IE in Europe. While in Germany, Firefox usage is way ahead of IE: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE-monthly-200809-201107 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-DE-monthly-200809-201107 In antarctica everyone is using safari.
chc 15y ago
Ordinarily I downvote XKCD links on Hacker News, but in this particular case, it really does a perfect job of explaining what's wrong with the article.

ZeroGravitas 15y ago

Chrome 15 is right now in the process of claiming the most used version from IE 8. But like the combined version share, what you can use is often more about the people holding you back on IE 6,7,8 than the ones pushing you forward.

tpatke 15y ago

Who cares? Whatever browser is the market leader doesn't matter because you will still need to support IE, Chrome, Firefox and Safari for the foreseeable future. Nobody has ever made a (significant) profit from a browser. In fact, Microsoft lost billions for their efforts (see U.S. vs. MSFT). Can someone please explain to me why this matters?

k33n 15y ago
If Chrome is the market leader, you have a viable argument for not supporting IE at all. Or at least making it a low priority.
- jlind 15y ago
  It really depends on the target market, regardless. Plenty of people will be quick to tell you how many enterprise companies are still stuck with IE6. And most of them are willing to write fat checks to maintain that status quo.
macavity23 15y ago
In terms of affecting what devs need to do, it doesn't matter. However, if it happens (and it's a big if), it would certainly be noteworthy, because it will cement html standards-compliance. As you say, you need to support IE, Chrome, FF and Safari - but (at least for IE < 8) this has always meant supporting the standard and then tweaking it to make it work in IE. I've never had significant differences in webpage functionality between chrome, FF and safari (YMMV). IE 9 is MUCH better at standards compliance - but this is purely because of MS's losses in marketshare. If you don't see this as a significant thing, then I'm guessing you're too young to have been coding web pages when IE had a 90%+ market share. You kids have it easy. :-)
melling 15y ago
A large enough market share for Chrome means that developers can target more of the features in modern browsers. For example, companies can write WebGL games knowing that the majority of installed browsers support it. Google can add new features to Chrome and since everyone gets the automatic update, and Firefox will soon follow, the feature becomes mainstream.

mzarate06 15y ago

The graph the title links to is a little dated, it only cites stats up to July 2011. Here's a more up to date graph citing stats up to October 2011: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200809-201110 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-monthly-200809-201110 The curves are even more revealing.

zobzu 15y ago
yeah that's too bad others already lost that war even if IE, FF, Opera, etc became 2x better than Chrome overnight it wouldn't change a thing. The machine' rolling and advertised on 99% of the most visited pages, bundled with most software with default opt-in. In 5 years from now we'll probably start saying how "maybe its not a good thing for ANY company to have 90%+ market share in something as important as the browser" and how "Yeah well Google didn't play fair, but that' ok cause we hated MS, and no one cared much about brand-fanboism for Opera or Firefox"

swombat 15y ago

And within 2 years it will be used by more than 100% of people worldwide! As my maths teacher used to say, "even in the privacy of your own home, you should not extrapolate."

Hoff 15y ago

Looks to be browser fragmentation. "Other" (which is massively increased) and IE9 are the only increasing entries in this plot: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200809-201110 http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200809... While what's in that "other" plot isn't listed, the Chrome and Firefox version schemes and their associated plethora of smaller and more frequent releases have played havoc with the classic version-plot scheme.

ootachi 15y ago
I don't think it's fragmentation. It's Chrome on track to achieve market dominance.