Google's Chrome Declining In Popularity 489
holy_calamity writes "After launching in a blaze of publicity that even warmed Slashdot, Google's browser grabbed a 3% share of the market, but has been slipping ever since, and now accounts for 1.5%. Google has also stopped promoting the browser on its search page. Assuming they wanted it to grab a significant share of the browser market, have they dropped the ball, or is this part of the plan?" On Slashdot, Chrome is still the #4 browser (after FF, IE, and Safari) but it was ahead of Safari for a few days, hitting almost 10% of our traffic.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Interesting)
and no-script. Does it run on FreeBSD yet?
Beta browser fails to grow after initial hype (Score:5, Interesting)
Come on is this a surprise? I've downloaded Chrome, I've used it for a little bit of time and then gone back to Firefox as its got the plug-ins and other bits that I use everyday. When Chrome becomes a full product and has the plug-ins that I need then I'd consider switching, but for now its just something I'll fire up when testing my web code and then use that open window for some browsing because I'm too lazy to switch to another window.
Hell personally I'm shocked they beat 1% of people, I'm stunned that 1% of people cared enough to download a new browser.
Re:I thought it was in beta (Score:5, Interesting)
Still using it. Don't need ad blocking (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well regardless of the specifics, I would expect lots of people had the same sort of experience that I did. I downloaded it, installed it, and tried it out for a while. It was pretty good, and I had no serious problems, but it didn't take long for me to think, "meh, whatever" and go back to what I was using.
To be completely honest, I tend to use the default pre-installed browser on my OS, because I really don't care much about the browser as long as it's doing its job. The only exception is that I use Firefox on Windows, because I don't really think of IE as "doing its job" well enough. Ad-blocking is nice, but as long as the ads aren't too intrusive, I don't tend to think too much about it.
Was in the 3%, not in the 1.5% (Score:0, Interesting)
Absolutely love Chrome's UI design and how it's centered around the idea of using new tabs for everything. That fits in perfectly with how I use browsers myself. Love the hell out of the new tab page and wish other browsers would do the same thing. Love the stability and ability for pieces to crash without taking out the whole thing. Love the fact that they stuck with keyboard shortcuts I've already got in muscle memory and didn't reinvent everything just to be different.
Hate the absence of my Firefox extensions, particularly Adblock and Greasemonkey. So I switched back.
Give me ad blocking functionality, even without extensions in general, and I would probably stick with Chrome.
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
Loyal Users (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
1) GMail looked better in Firefox (oddly enough, I should say)
2) Facebook didn't work well on Chrome
3) And the straw that broke the camel's back was that I didn't manage to make Chrome work well with RSS.
Personally, I expected more from Google.
No Opera? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Interesting)
My reasons for not switching full time (Score:5, Interesting)
*No Linux version yet - can't use it at home on Ubuntu without sloppy hacks
*No find-as-you-type - I didn't realize how much I used this in FF until it's not there
*No AdBlock Plus - I determined this to be my only real must-have FF extension. There are a few others I really really like, but I can get away without them for the most part.
*Lack of extensions in general.
On top of those, I think it's a novel new browser, has some good things, but there's a lack of transparency, too. At least with Firefox, I can view their Bugzilla, check out progress on Mozillazine, and feel like I'm seeing some progress and idea of where things are and where they are going. So Google has said they'll support addons and extensions. It's open source so people can hack it if they want. Well....where are they on supporting extensions? Where's the community building on the source? When is the estimated release of a more final version rather than something that really seems more like a technology preview demo?
That said, I'm having problems with the Minefield pre beta (FF 3.1) today, and am actually thinking of trying Chrome as my default for the day to see how I fare. Crazy.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Interesting)
I use the IE tab plugin for Firefox... there's almost never any need for me to start IE, even to test pages in it.
I couldn't install it on 2 out of 3 machines (Score:3, Interesting)
Google Gears stood in the way of successful installation.
FOSS Bitches! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I know why... (Score:1, Interesting)
any reason why you think a company would like you to use their free software to block their source of revenue?
Re:No Opera? (Score:1, Interesting)
That is surprising, and it's not matching what I see on other sites I have statistics for. There's probably a high concentration of Googlephiles on /., though. /. tag interface is broken in Opera 9.5; I guess they're not even testing on Opera anymore. :(
Stuff like the new
Oh, and obligatory Opera evangelizing: We shout because we care, and we want all of you to have as good a browsing experience as we are having. Really, even without adblock, our browser loads pages faster with ads than yours does without.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Interesting)
For me, the issue was No native Linux version. Yes, there's the Linux version provided by the CrossOver guys, and that's great. I've used it a few times. But it takes forever to launch, and is generally a little slow. A native application would be better.
I'll look at Chrome again when there's a native version for Linux.
Re:It's not that it's a bad browser.... (Score:1, Interesting)
Same here, though it's mostly to access different Gmail accounts. But like many others, I find that AdBlock Plus is the killer app for Firefox. Privoxy doesn't quite cut it. I was really impressed by Opera's seamless integration of a BitTorrent client last time I tried it. I hope stuff like that will speed up the adoption of BitTorrent for distributing large files, and finally put an end to all those shitty "registration required, now wait in line" sites that have been around and supported by major game companies for *far* too long. Just put up a tracker and one decent seed, then let the magic of BT create mirrors.
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
You aren't starting the full browser, just the engine. There's a difference.
For kicks and grins, I just fired up IE and let the homepage load. It shows 25MB memory usage. I then opened a new tab and loaded the same page with IE tab. Firefox's memory usage increased by less than 5MB.
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
Well I know a lot of former Netscape users jumped directly to Firefox. It already had a built-in audience of loyal fans who wanted to avoid Microsoft at any cost.
I'm not using Google's Chrome because I hate change.
I don't see a reason to learn a new program when the one I have works.
I'd still be using Netscape if the browser was still alive.
My Chrome Review (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure you even undestand what's happening. (Down)Loading javascript is the primary time consumption in showing a page (read: YSlow), not the engine that parses it. The number of pages where parsing javascript is more than 2 miliseconds is probably analogous to the number of crap webpages on the internet. Most people dont spend a lot of time on those, including you. Where is it that Chrome "parses faster"? If you're a user who's remotely familiar with plugins, Chrome offers LESS in every area. Other than the single process tabs, I didn't see anything good about Chrome.
Re:I know why... (Score:2, Interesting)
Speaking of ad blocking, has anyone else noticed a fundamental flaw in their pop-up blocking?
Whenever a pop-up is blocked from loading, it shows a bar at the bottom of the screen that says "Pop-up Blocked". This bar, however, is the title bar of a window that contains the pop-up fully loaded. So in essence they are merely preventing it from being visible but not preventing any scripting from running on the resultant page.
This seems like an exploit that would be child's play to take advantage of.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
I think you are correct regarding the importance of plug-ins.
What I have not seen mentioned so far is Chrome's handing of bookmarks. I believe most users depend on bookmarks quite heavily to remember and organize sites they wish to visit. Chrome's handling of bookmarks is awkward. For example, how do you add the current page as a bookmark in a couple mouse clicks? It seems that Google is trying to discourage the use of bookmarks and encourage their more googly way of doing things that relies on search and search history. I think many users drop use of Chrome because of this.
Re:I thought it was in beta (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm still using it on Windows because I find it genuinely nicer than Firefox. AdBlock is the one feature I really miss; currently I use privoxy, but it's not nearly as easy to use. The main thing I like about Chrome is that the UI is so much cleaner than Firefox, and I'm not talking about the tabs; it's all the little things, like being able to find stuff in the preferences dialogue, to the focus model being much less stupidly modal which means it's easier to find where the caret's gone, etc.
The multithreaded model is nice, too; it feels far snappier than Firefox. I can't use the Firefox Awesomebar for searching, for example, because after the first few characters it hangs for about two seconds while it does a network lookup. Firefox is a right pig when it comes to multiple tabs, too, and as I frequently load about 20 at once I appreciate Chrome's smoothness. Oh, and I also like the way that when Quicktime crashes, it doesn't take my web browser with it.
I wish there was a proper adblocker for it, and I wish there was a Linux version; I'd switch in a moment...
smooth scroll please (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:I know why... (Score:2, Interesting)
Regarding the enthusiasts... from the resume:
>>> On Slashdot, Chrome is still the #4 browser (after FF, IE, and Safari)
Are those stats published somewhere?
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
The number of pages where parsing javascript is more than 2 miliseconds is probably analogous to the number of crap webpages on the internet. Most people dont spend a lot of time on those, including you.
A rather ironic comment to be making here, the one site I frequent which uses sufficiently heavy javascript to regularly trigger firefox's "this has been going on for bloody ages, do you want to abort it" warning dialog.
Other examples? Facebook uses javascript quite heavily, a quick profile with firebug suggested about 93ms spent parsing javascript when I hit F5 on my homepage. I know slashdotters are far too sneery and off-my-lawn to use social networking websites, but "most people" do use them.
Gmail took a mighty 7219ms running javascript when I logged into my inbox. I believe Hotmail, Yahoo etc have similar AJAXy interfaces for their webmail too, and "most people" in my experience use webmail rather than use the address their ISP gives them, let alone the 'run my own server' stuff popular on slashdot.
Opening the Youtube homepage? 203ms.
Opening the Flickr homepage? 94ms.
So, sorry, I can't really agree with your statement. I fear you might get on that aforementioned slashdot sneery high horse and declare that I only proved your point because Facebook and Youtube are classic examples of "crap webpages", but that still leaves the rest of the statement to disagree with, and I would argue that "most people" use these sort of sites, and they conclusively take a lot more than 2ms running their javascript.
So personally I know where GP is coming from, with js stuff becoming increasingly widespread and heavy, I'm finding it increasingly common to sit here annoyed with a laggy, cpu-spiralling firefox, wondering how the hell a PC I bought for music production, and which handles umpteen tracks of hi-definition audio with ease, struggles to view a webpage these days. But, the speedup of a faster engine in Chrome isn't worth seeing ads for me. Nothing is, heh.
Re:I know why... (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm with you on this one. The difference in js performance is so blatantly obvious anybody claiming it's not there might just as well claim the sun is fiction. The days I tested Chrome it felt as if I'd done a major computer upgrade whenever I tested a js heavy site.
Unfortunately, it doesn't really matter. Until another browser supports and has available as many extensions as FF does, they're not an option for me.
Re:I know why... (Score:3, Interesting)
You forgot #6: Whereas most browsers will refuse to cache to disk any content retrieved over SSL, Chrome not only writes 'secure' pages to disk (like your bank info), but indexes it as well to make it easier to find (for anyone with access to your PC) (source.
It bothers me to no end that one of the most basic concepts of dealing with secure data (to avoid storing/disclosing it insecurely), something done since the first version of Netscape Navigator I'd ever used, could be so easily and idiotically ignored in a project meant to represent the future of web browsing - a future, I guess, that doesn't include privacy.
Note to Google: Security is more than just not letting attackers into your machine - it's also protecting secure data to prevent them from getting anything once they get in. One line of defense is not enough.