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.
I know why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Insightful)
I booted up windows to see what all the fuss was about, then went right back to linux. Let me know when they have a package in the ubuntu repository.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I know why... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Interesting)
and no-script. Does it run on FreeBSD yet?
Why didn't they just contribute to Firefox? (Score:5, Insightful)
...stop the presses...
This just in... Google should have contributed to Firefox, instead of reinventing the wheel. Following a wave of hype, market share is now declining... News at 11, 10 Central.
Speaking of FreeBSD/Linux/Solaris/AIX/BeOS/whatever OS you can name, chances are there is a Firefox to suit you.
Unlike any other browser in the history of the planet, there are also approximately 1.2 gazillion plugins for Firefox. The vast majority are cross platform, due to Firefox's Gecko/XUL/Chrome (note the name).
Firefox has momentum. I.e., it's growing on IE (pardon the pun) as well as Safari/Opera. (Was that an estimated 300 million FF users, out of 1.5 billion on the Internet?)
In addition to this, the future Firefox 3.1 is supposed to have a really, really fast JavaScript engine that rival's JS in Google's Chrome browser.
But wait, there's more. Wasn't it Google Gears that was supposed to create disconnected (on- or off-line) desktop apps on Firefox. Why throw in the towel?
There's even more! Google could have wrapped this all up neatly in a "plugin framework," and written it with less effort, and made themselves a defacto-must-have-it part of Firefox, and have impacted more users in less time.
People could have even written themes and other plugins that bolt on to their "plugin framework," the same way Firebug has its own add-ons (like YSlow).
So, why, why, why did they move away from Firefox and reinvent the wheel, instead? I saw no features that couldn't have been done as a Firefox Add-On.
Maybe I'm wrong, here, so feel free to flame away and moderate me out of my miserable existence!
They do! (Score:4, Insightful)
Google is the main contributor to Firefox [techcrunch.com].
Moneywise, that is. Not so much for the code.
Anyway, Chrome is such a radically different design than Firefox that no amount of code contributions could turn one into another. This is how it has to play out.
Re:I know why... (Score:4, Insightful)
(1) Lack of NoScript and AdBlock plugins.
(2) No Linux version.
(3) Speaking of plugins, There's no clear Google-sponsored plugin site analagous to Mozilla's [mozilla.org](googling "Firefox plugins" vs. "Google Chrome plugins"), so it lacks credibility.
(4) Speaking of lacking in credibility, GOOG are heavily into advertising - Incognito is a neat feature but what will GOOG do with our web records and even keystrokes? [/tinfoil hat]
(5) More of a suggestion, but Google should have given Chrome a bit more fanfare(Slashvertisements nothwithstanding
If it satisfied (1) it'd be my primary browser on Windows and if it satisfied (2) then it'd be my primary browser, period. Damn shame.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I know why... (Score:4, Informative)
That said, I recently dropped Chrome after using it since it came out. There are a few things I miss, such as Firefox's 'omni' bar not being as good, and the new tab page, but otherwise I prefer my Firefox.
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If you drag&drop an image file from a page to your desktop, the file is corrupt. (It's the right file size, but no editors can open it.) The screen fails to update often in strange ways, for example, it might randomly stop drawing the scrollbars.
It needs lots of work, in short.
Re:I know why... (Score:4, Insightful)
http://www.google.com/chrome [google.com]
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, its not that. Its just that its Google's own fault for releasing quality software and labeling it "beta" as well. For example, GMail is still officially in "beta", but the quality of GMail is far above the quality of Google Chrome.
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Have you ever tried to offer suggestions and development time to Mozilla? It's easier said than done.
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they need to define categories of Beta.
They have. [slashdot.org]
Re:I know why... (Score:4, Insightful)
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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.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Interesting)
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The upcoming Firefox 3.1 (December???) will negate much of the speed differences. At that point, Chrome's only real advantage will be the separate-process-per-tab feature.
For me, having separate processes would be nice, but it's the addons that keep me in Firefox. Here, Chrome has an uphill battle: it's not enough to have the ability to have addons. I also need specific addons, like the oft-required Adblock Plus, and lesser-known addons, such as "Better Gmail 2" and "Remember the Milk for Gmail". I ac
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:I know why... (Score:5, Insightful)
So Chrome is largely going to attract current IE users that are attracted to the Google brand. But these IE users have stayed with IE even when other options are available. Many of them stay because they do not have the ability to move to another broswer. Many because of the learning curve. I question whether there is a significant number of MS Windows users that care enough to use chrome, or if MS will let them go without a fight.
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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
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.
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Yeah, but you're still starting IE :-)
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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:4, Insightful)
Firebug holds the gold as a web developer
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That might be a reason why people don't use it, but doesn't explain why Google isn't pushing it more.
My take is that theyre probably wary of pushing it too hard because of monopoly concerns, especially with the Yahoo deal under scrutiny by the government right now, the fewer pieces of the internet it appears they have control over, the better..
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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 F
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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.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Interesting)
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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 t
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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 t
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.
I know why to (Score:4, Insightful)
People wanted to tested it.
Ohnoz, some people thought their old browser was better than the first public version of the other one, who could have guessed!?!
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Re:I know why... (Score:5, Insightful)
No add-ons. I want my ad block plus please.
According to one source [internetworldstats.com], there are about 1.5 billion Internet users in the world. Another source [hitslink.com] estimates that maybe 20%, or 300 million of them, are using Firefox.
Now, Mozilla.org says that most popular add-on [mozilla.org] right now is Video DownloadHelper with about 340K downloads each week. However, its developers have released 32 versions in the last 22 months [mozilla.org], so a big chunk of downloads will be for upgraders. Let's assume that a full one-half of all downloads are first-time users and not people upgrading from last week's version, and that 100% of downloaders actually use it. That means that Video DownloadHelper has about 16,000,000 users, or about 5% of Firefox's user base.
You like add-ons. I like add-ons. Objectively, though, we're a very small minority of users. The numbers look even worse for your position when you consider that the majority of Internet users are browsing with Internet Explorer, and therefore wouldn't miss add-ons were they to switch to Chrome.
There are a lot of reasons why people might not be using Chrome. The lack of add-ons is almost certainly not an important one, statistically speaking.
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Insightful)
I respect your math, but disagree with your conclusion. New technologies do not go straight to users. They get picked up by early adopters, who then tell everyone about them. Half of the students at my university were using Firefox after we left. Mostly because nerds like me installed it on their computers. When people like us start installing Chrome on everyone's computers, everyone will move to Chrome.
So without plugins and without Linux and Mac support, I won't support it. And if I don't, my parents, girlfriend, colleagues, and friends won't, because they don't really care, and why should they?
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You like add-ons. I like add-ons. Objectively, though, we're a very small minority of users.
But it is also only a small minority of users who will download new web browsers instead of just using what's already installed on their computer. And their is going to be a large overlap between the two groups of users.
Re:I know why... (Score:4, Insightful)
citation needed [xkcd.com].
Have you ever heard of innovators and early adopters? Do you recognize the influence they have in markets? There is a recognized "product diffucion curve" where innovators and early adopters have significant influence over the larger (mass) market.
I would assert that early adopters are more likely to use add-ons. I would therefore assert that the lack of add-ons may be important, and may be statistically significant. I would also assert that Firefox, IE and Safari meet the criteria of "good enough" and therefore replacement products have a much higher hurdle to achieve market penetration.
I would also assert the market share numbers show a problem for Google. A spike in usage followed by a decline as they are seeing indicates a problem in "crossing the chasm" (search for the book of that name if you don't follow).
However, all of this is simply "assertions" and not "proof" - same as your assertion that add-ons are not an issue. My primary point is that meeting the needs of the innovator vs. the mass market is often underestimated (and is a very tough balancing act)
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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
Re:I know why... (Score:5, Insightful)
Also, it's important to understand that all users of addons are not using any particular addon. VideoDownload helper? I've never even heard of it honestly, but I DO use Adblock Plus and NoScript. Other users use other addons. Now certainly many, many of these addons have overlapping user bases, but the percentage of users who use ANY addon is going to be a very different figure from the percentage of users that use any specific addon.
Re:I know why... (Score:4, Insightful)
Keep in mind that other addons, such as noscript, don't use Mozilla's download page.
For instance, my install of adblock plus - happened to come from my distro's package repository. Mozilla has no idea that I've downloaded it.
The best way to determine penetration is with phone-home ability, which naturally will not happen in these cases. We won't stand for it.
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I thought it was in beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I thought it was in beta (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I thought it was in beta (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I thought it was in beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Apart from Outlook Web Access, nobody else had ajax when GMail launched. And nobody else had 1GB of email space.
What are Chrome's unique selling points?
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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 multithread
Re:I thought it was in beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I thought it was in beta (Score:5, Funny)
Re:I thought it was in beta (Score:5, Insightful)
Well, "beta" doesn't necessarily mean "not ready for day to day use", especially with Google products. GMail has millions of users, but is still officially "beta."
But jargon aside, I think you're correct. Google people have their blind spots, but all in all they're pretty smart, and I find it hard to believe that this release of Chrome was meant to to grab any significant market share. Too many functional limitations.
If you go by the emphasis of the comic book [google.com], this version of Chrome is mostly about contributing to the open source browser community, and getting that community to rethink some of its strategies. And that actually makes sense. My only question is whether there will ever be a more serious version that will actually compete with other browsers. I think, probably not, but I'd be very happy to be wrong.
Now we know (Score:5, Funny)
Now we know how long Slashdot users can stand to browse the internet without AdBlock.
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A day after I started using Chrome, I discovered Privoxy. Haven't touched AdBlock since.
Just don't need another browser (Score:5, Insightful)
With all the options available today, there's just not a need for another browser right now. For most that don't want to use whatever their default browser is, they use FireFox. Firefox also had a lot more grass-roots promotion in the earlier days, that does not appear to be prevalent with Chrome.
Re:Just don't need another browser (Score:5, Insightful)
Pretty much it. Firefox is as good or better than Chrome and has a lot more plugins.
Adblock is probably a big driver for Firefox. Also Firefox works on Windows, Mac, Linux, Solaris, and BSD.
So why move
I think Chrome will be big on mobile devices.
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The real value is that you can subscribe to a block list and never have to block ads manually. I use AdBlock Plus and the Filterset.G filters. I've never once needed to right-click on an image ad and tell AdBlock to block it. I simply don't see ads at all.
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id actually forgotten there were ads on the internet.
Re:Just don't need another browser (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, one reason is the process independence of the tabs. Just yesterday I had a bunch of tabs open in Firefox to all sorts of stuff - the Globe and Mail, YouTube, Slashdot, various bits of documentation, etc. One tab went nuts and brought the whole thing down. I hate that, and it should never happen. Each tab is like a separate app - having one tab crash everything harkens back to the days of cooperative multitasking (hello again, AmigoOS/Win 3.1/OS 7/8/9).
Once Chrome is fully up to speed with plugins and various refinements, I'll switch for sure.
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.
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It is not a shock or surprise to me... well, in one respect it is -- that the market trends actually agreed with me. And I know I am not alone in this where slashdot is concerned because "we" tend to care about trusting the source and their motives, whether or not something works and is stable and most importantly, how much we can tweak it.
I trust Google about as much as I can trust any advertising/marketing company. Their motives are inherently tied to their core business. And because of this, you canno
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Is it 1% of all users, or 1% of traffic. Those who are using Chrome tend to be more active on the web than those who don't. I downloaded it, but saw nothing that compelled me to use it. The nicest feature is where it shown you how many instances of your "find" are in a page, and their positions on the scrollbar. Nice, but not compelling.
Re:Beta browser fails to grow after initial hype (Score:5, Funny)
Hell personally I'm shocked they beat 1% of people, I'm stunned that 1% of people cared enough to download a new browser.
Google could put a "Sell all my data to China and format my hard drive" button on their home page, and thousands of people would click it.
Linux port yet? (Score:4, Insightful)
Still waiting for their e-mail saying a native Linux port is available.
I gots no use for Windows apps.
It's not that it's a bad browser.... (Score:3, Insightful)
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In my day to day job I deal with having to develop for both IE and Firefox. I haven't even so much as downloaded Chrome. Why should I?
So you can see whether the sites you developed for IE and Firefox work in other browsers too, and if not, find out why. It might be an easy thing to fix.
I guess I'm one of the 1.5 (Score:5, Insightful)
But honestly, this seems entirely standard. Of course it's going to start off with a surge of popularity and then lose a little momentum. This doesn't mean Google has "dropped the ball", it means that people are acting quite normally. It may have been a mistake for Google to release Chrome before all the kinks were worked out (mine has crashed a couple times); however, I don't think this decline in percentage was anything that wasn't expected -- 1.5% is still a hell of a lot of people.
Re:I guess I'm one of the 1.5 (Score:5, Insightful)
1.5% is still a hell of a lot of people.
Weird. No one ever modded me insightful for saying that about Ron Paul. :)
Re:I guess I'm one of the 1.5 (Score:5, Insightful)
Chrome's not on a deadline to turn that 1.5 to 50.1
It ascended because it was novel and new. (Score:2)
Stability (Score:5, Insightful)
I've been giving Chrome a try myself, but my wife and my kids all still use FF or IE. I like that it takes up less screen realestate for tabs and so forth, and the history-homepage thingy is useful to me.
I'd be happier with Chrome if it weren't for it's habit of getting hung up on Flash sites and bringing the whole OS to a screeching halt - sites that work fine in Firefox.
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Yeah, it locked up my Windows box within a few minutes. Since it's Windows, there's no good way (for me) to debug it, so I guess I'll wait for the movie...
Still using it. Don't need ad blocking (Score:2, Interesting)
Excellent news (Score:4, Funny)
Just had this conversation (Score:4, Insightful)
with a bunch of engineering students last night. A few had Chrome on their laptops (We were meeting at a coffee shop about a conference), but most of the people in the shop were using FireFox. FF works fine for them and most asked why should they try chrome when what they have works with few or no complaints. There was nothing revolutionary in Chrome from their perspective. Hell, I opened it up and the first thing I saw was the dial pad area and I thought, "what the hell, looks just like Opera with different looking tabs at the top." To me there was no reason to use Chrome over Opera or FF or Safari.
People are generally hesitant to change unless there is a good reason. Look at how long it to FF to make in roads. Finally when MSIE was having the hijack of the week, people moved to FF because of the perception it was somehow safer. A lot of Mac users, myself included, use Safari because it works. That was not always the case, but these days I don't have many problems with safari and webpages. I have FF and Opera but I rarely use either unless I'm testing.
Re:Just had this conversation (Score:4, Insightful)
And it's great if Firefox users keep on using Firefox. The people we want to switch to Chrome are current IE users. What can Google do to attract them, where Mozilla/Apple/Opera have failed?
Loyal Users (Score:5, Interesting)
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Fixed that for you.
Firefox, Windows and Anti-virus (Score:2)
At work I am using Windows, so I was able to give Chrome a go, but after a week Mcafee ant-virus was flagging chrome.exe as a virus, followed by its installer. There wasn't much I could do to get round the issue. My main browser is Firefox and I like to have a menu-bar, instead of poking around Windows Vista style to find out where all the options are hiding.
While I did uninstall Chrome, I did install Iron, simply to be able to validate web pages I am developing:
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2008/09/24/iron- [downloadsquad.com]
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A better link for downloading Iron is:
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php [srware.net]
Too many dealbreakers... (Score:2)
... the biggest one being lack of "opening with a bang", if I was google and dropping a new browser into the market I'd want to make the best product possible and make sure the users needs were being met, speed and a spartan interface is not enoough.
If chrome were a browser serving customers, it would miss the mark by a large margin. They have good engineering but no sense of meeting their customers needs.
They open sourced it for a reason (Score:3, Insightful)
If your goal is to get other browsers to improve, then market share is nice but not a necessity. Google wants the world full of browsers that are good platforms for web-based applications.
No Opera? (Score:5, Interesting)
Works for me (Score:2)
I'm one of those 1.5%.
A few things I like.
I don't need noscript because so far, Chrome sandboxes the scripts well enough. The address box interpreter is the best of the lot by far. Most sites I visit are three keystrokes away and if I haven't ever been to a website but know its name, Chrome does an excellent job of guessing where I'm headed. The launching speed is a huge win and if adding gee-gaws on means sacrificing load speed, then I'll take Chrome as is.
A few things I don't like.
Adding bookmarks require
Typical Google... (Score:2, Troll)
Lots of hype and no follow through or commitment. Google is a search engine company with lots of half finished technologies they don't have the vision to stick with or continue. Everyone sorta does their own thing, sponging off of search, and there's no real vision to any of it. Hope Sergei likes his spaceship.
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.
It's a beta... (Score:2, Insightful)
It's a beta browser guys... Should they really be *that* worried if interest drops off after the initial peak and very first release? Between FF, Safari, and dare I say it Opera, there's plenty of non-IE choices out there in the world to satisfy everyone.
Let Google do their thing, and if they're on the right track they'll pick up users as they inch closer to a non-beta status. Though this being Google...
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)
Get a Linux / Mac Version (Score:4, Insightful)
Get a Linux / Mac version of the browser going and see what happens. I know there aren't nearly as many Linux / Mac users out there, but these are vocal communities who will extol virtues of anything that takes up less processor capacity or makes their day have one less click in it. There's an opportunity to make all these windows guys feel like they are missing out unless they use Chrome.
M
Google isn't looking for browser market share (Score:4, Insightful)
Google wants to be able to drive the future of the web and how it is used. To do that, they need some say in how browsers are built. Even if only 1.5% of people use Chrome, they still get this. For example, Google needs users to have browsers with fast Javascript so their apps work well. By releasing Chrome, they put pressure on Firefox and IE to meet their performance benchmarks. As they add other features, other browsers must take notice.
I'm using it mostly just for Slashdot.... (Score:3, Informative)
I use Chrome pretty much just for Slashdot. I use Firefox for almost everything else.
I assume it's the faster javascript (or maybe just placebo effect, who knows) but Slashdot seems a lot more responsive in Chrome than in Firefox.
Standard Google Practice (Score:3, Informative)
"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?"
My assumption is that this is a standard Google release - something half ass that only mostly works... which someday Google may come back to and fix, or maybe not.
Iron = Chrome 2.0 (Score:3, Informative)
There is a group in Europe that is distributing Chrome minus all of the ills and Google junk. It's vastly better.
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron.php [srware.net]
Chrome Vs Iron
http://www.srware.net/en/software_srware_iron_chrome_vs_iron.php [srware.net]
Clear win, IMO. Open source made this possible - and in only a couple of months.
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People slowly realizing it's not such a good idea to have your nine most visited pages available for anyone to see.
By "anyone" of course you mean "my friends that I allow to use my computer while they're here".
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They are.
And I think it's going to be hilarious when safari loses market share on macs.