5 ms·

Chrome hits 17-month low, Windows 8 still only creeping upward

22 points by jor-el 14y ago

csulok 14y ago
on arstechnica.com. it's highest everywhere else.
- niggler 14y ago
  ... including microsoft.com?
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  I'm assuming you mean Chrome has the highest desktop market share overall. That jibes with the browser stats for my own websites. On mobile, Safari reigns supreme. And as more people browse the web on mobile devices, WebKit based browsers continue to grab market share from Internet Explorer.
justinschuh 14y ago
I've never been able to make sense of Net Market Share's numbers or why they're so wildly divergent from nearly every other source. Just take a look at the big ones listed on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum... The other stats sources consistently align in a pretty narrow range of around 2%-7% for any given browser. But Net Market Share consistently shows Chrome as more than 10% lower, and IE more than 20% above what every other stats provider is seeing. The only thing I can figure is that their sample base is just too narrow to avoid what seems to clearly be a severe systemic bias.
- xutopia 14y ago
  I just started a conversation on Twitter with the author. https://twitter.com/garyharan/status/307905674279518208 https://twitter.com/garyharan/status/307905674279518208
  - nixarn 14y ago
    Yeah, weird stats. I checked some other sources: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp … (IE 14%, Chrome 48%) http://gs.statcounter.com/ http://gs.statcounter.com/ (IE 29%, Chrome 37%) My own website with 10k+ daily visitors has IE 14% and 35% Chrome
  - mythz 14y ago
    Our tech site (servicestack.net) last month stats: - Chrome 59% - Firefox 18% - IE 8.7%
- anonymfus 14y ago
  They weight results against number of internet users in different countries according to CIA, most of others don't weight. Major source of difference is China, just select China on StatCounter and see.
- cooldeal 14y ago
  I believe this explains it: One big difference is that NetMarketShare tries to measure unique clients, while StatCounter measures web page hits. Since the power users browse (probably a magnitude of order) more web pages than the normal users, Chrome and Firefox is overrepresented in power users who browse a ton. Toothpaste marketshare analogy. It's possible that 70% of people use Colgate and 30% use Crest, but Colgate sales by volume are only 40% vs. 60% for Crest, since Crest users tend to brush more daily and use more of the toothpaste when they do for some reason. Or a car analogy: Toyota sells 40% of cars and Honda only 30%, but 60% of miles driven on roads are by Honda cars since they use it more. Which has a higher marketshare?
  - xutopia 14y ago
    So from what I gather NetMarketShare measures number of users more closely than does StatCounter. Statcounter OTOH measures how much traffic use there really is.
  - afsina 14y ago
    I believe NetMarketShare data is 'sponsored'.. http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#net-apps http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#net-apps
    - recoiledsnake 14y ago
      What on that page makes you believe so?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
buster 14y ago
Most interesting is the adoption rate at the bottom. Seems like IE users virtually never upgrade, wtf?! At one point IE6 share even grew, how is that!?
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
I'm missing the most important graph: combined mobile & desktop browser market share. Mobile phones, tablets and PMPs (like the iPod touch) increasingly replace desktop computers and notebooks for browsing the web. According to Statcounter [1], 14% of all web traffic in the US comes from mobile clients. Compare that to 8% a year a go and 3% three years a go. In Africa [2], mobile already makes up 18% of web clients. Granted, Statcounter is just one source, but I think it shows the trend quite well. [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-US-monthly-200812-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-US-monthly-2008... [2] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-af-monthly-200812-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-af-monthly-2008...
danmaz74 14y ago
After years of the highest satisfaction with Chrome on Windows, lately I've been experiencing many annoying crashes. This is also true for some people I know. For myself, it might depend on the fact that I'm using more extensions now, but that isn't true, for example, for my father. I don't want to imply anything, but this reminds me of when I switched from Netscape Navigator to IE back in the day, not because IE was "better" (AFAIR IE was an exact copy of Navigator, just with a big "e" instead of a big "N" in the upper right corner) but because Navigator was becoming more and more unstable.
- rm999 14y ago
  I've found Chrome (and all browsers in this day and age, for that matter) to be quite stable, and I haven't heard complaints from others. Before switching browsers (which can be pretty inconvenient) it may be worth debugging if this is an issue with your system in general rather than the browser. Have you and your father tried the advice on this page? http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=142063 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
  - danmaz74 14y ago
    I didn't; thank you for your suggestion, I'll check those suggestions out the next time I'm on Windows.
- Samuel_Michon 14y ago
  Periodically clearing the browsing data, AppData and %TEMP folders does the trick for me. In my experience, that's not Chrome specific; all web browsers get bogged down over time. In the same vein, it's good to do a clean install of your OS once a year.
  - danmaz74 14y ago
    I stopped periodically reinstalling my OS since windows 2k... and wouldn't like to start again :)
meaty 14y ago
I'm not surprised. I know no one who has upgraded to windows 8. I got 5 free copies with my MSDN sub and one got claimed before I deleted the VM. Considering I work for a Microsoft partner with 180 staff, we have one windows 8 machine and its an RT Surface used by QA. We have 4 VMs for testing as well which never visit the www at all. We have more Macs in the office! Chrome I find to be slightly obtuse and buggy. Constant tab crashes and hangs and I'm really not sure its that fast. Friends seem to have the same opinion. One complaint I hear is that people are constantly prompted to sign into chrome. We're pretty much all back on Firefox and IE. Meh.

22 points by jor-el 14y ago

csulok 14y ago

on arstechnica.com. it's highest everywhere else.

niggler 14y ago
... including microsoft.com?
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
I'm assuming you mean Chrome has the highest desktop market share overall. That jibes with the browser stats for my own websites. On mobile, Safari reigns supreme. And as more people browse the web on mobile devices, WebKit based browsers continue to grab market share from Internet Explorer.

justinschuh 14y ago

I've never been able to make sense of Net Market Share's numbers or why they're so wildly divergent from nearly every other source. Just take a look at the big ones listed on Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Summary_table http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Usage_share_of_web_browsers#Sum... The other stats sources consistently align in a pretty narrow range of around 2%-7% for any given browser. But Net Market Share consistently shows Chrome as more than 10% lower, and IE more than 20% above what every other stats provider is seeing. The only thing I can figure is that their sample base is just too narrow to avoid what seems to clearly be a severe systemic bias.

xutopia 14y ago
I just started a conversation on Twitter with the author. https://twitter.com/garyharan/status/307905674279518208 https://twitter.com/garyharan/status/307905674279518208
- nixarn 14y ago
  Yeah, weird stats. I checked some other sources: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp … (IE 14%, Chrome 48%) http://gs.statcounter.com/ http://gs.statcounter.com/ (IE 29%, Chrome 37%) My own website with 10k+ daily visitors has IE 14% and 35% Chrome
- mythz 14y ago
  Our tech site (servicestack.net) last month stats: - Chrome 59% - Firefox 18% - IE 8.7%
anonymfus 14y ago
They weight results against number of internet users in different countries according to CIA, most of others don't weight. Major source of difference is China, just select China on StatCounter and see.
cooldeal 14y ago
I believe this explains it: One big difference is that NetMarketShare tries to measure unique clients, while StatCounter measures web page hits. Since the power users browse (probably a magnitude of order) more web pages than the normal users, Chrome and Firefox is overrepresented in power users who browse a ton. Toothpaste marketshare analogy. It's possible that 70% of people use Colgate and 30% use Crest, but Colgate sales by volume are only 40% vs. 60% for Crest, since Crest users tend to brush more daily and use more of the toothpaste when they do for some reason. Or a car analogy: Toyota sells 40% of cars and Honda only 30%, but 60% of miles driven on roads are by Honda cars since they use it more. Which has a higher marketshare?
- xutopia 14y ago
  So from what I gather NetMarketShare measures number of users more closely than does StatCounter. Statcounter OTOH measures how much traffic use there really is.
- afsina 14y ago
  I believe NetMarketShare data is 'sponsored'.. http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#net-apps http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#net-apps
  - recoiledsnake 14y ago
    What on that page makes you believe so?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

buster 14y ago

Most interesting is the adoption rate at the bottom. Seems like IE users virtually never upgrade, wtf?! At one point IE6 share even grew, how is that!?

Samuel_Michon 14y ago

I'm missing the most important graph: combined mobile & desktop browser market share. Mobile phones, tablets and PMPs (like the iPod touch) increasingly replace desktop computers and notebooks for browsing the web. According to Statcounter [1], 14% of all web traffic in the US comes from mobile clients. Compare that to 8% a year a go and 3% three years a go. In Africa [2], mobile already makes up 18% of web clients. Granted, Statcounter is just one source, but I think it shows the trend quite well. [1] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-US-monthly-200812-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-US-monthly-2008... [2] http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-af-monthly-200812-201303 http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_vs_desktop-af-monthly-2008...

danmaz74 14y ago

After years of the highest satisfaction with Chrome on Windows, lately I've been experiencing many annoying crashes. This is also true for some people I know. For myself, it might depend on the fact that I'm using more extensions now, but that isn't true, for example, for my father. I don't want to imply anything, but this reminds me of when I switched from Netscape Navigator to IE back in the day, not because IE was "better" (AFAIR IE was an exact copy of Navigator, just with a big "e" instead of a big "N" in the upper right corner) but because Navigator was becoming more and more unstable.

rm999 14y ago
I've found Chrome (and all browsers in this day and age, for that matter) to be quite stable, and I haven't heard complaints from others. Before switching browsers (which can be pretty inconvenient) it may be worth debugging if this is an issue with your system in general rather than the browser. Have you and your father tried the advice on this page? http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=142063 http://support.google.com/chrome/bin/answer.py?hl=en&ans...
- danmaz74 14y ago
  I didn't; thank you for your suggestion, I'll check those suggestions out the next time I'm on Windows.
Samuel_Michon 14y ago
Periodically clearing the browsing data, AppData and %TEMP folders does the trick for me. In my experience, that's not Chrome specific; all web browsers get bogged down over time. In the same vein, it's good to do a clean install of your OS once a year.
- danmaz74 14y ago
  I stopped periodically reinstalling my OS since windows 2k... and wouldn't like to start again :)

meaty 14y ago

I'm not surprised. I know no one who has upgraded to windows 8. I got 5 free copies with my MSDN sub and one got claimed before I deleted the VM. Considering I work for a Microsoft partner with 180 staff, we have one windows 8 machine and its an RT Surface used by QA. We have 4 VMs for testing as well which never visit the www at all. We have more Macs in the office! Chrome I find to be slightly obtuse and buggy. Constant tab crashes and hangs and I'm really not sure its that fast. Friends seem to have the same opinion. One complaint I hear is that people are constantly prompted to sign into chrome. We're pretty much all back on Firefox and IE. Meh.