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Chrome Overtakes Internet Explorer For Most Popular Desktop Browser (thurrott.com) 126

Posted by msmash from the battle-for-browser dept.
Google Chrome is now the most widely used desktop browser. According to the latest figures from marketing and research firm Net Applications (which looked into data from over 40,000 websites), in April, Chrome captured 41.66 percent of the market, surpassing Internet Explorer which now sits at 41.35 percent. Brad Sams writes:This growth by Chrome should not be too surprising as Microsoft has left Internet Explorer behind for Edge but unfortunately, the Edge browser available to the vast majority of Windows 10 users is a sub-par experience as it lacks basic features like extensions. This is a big milestone for Google as their browser faced and uphill battle against Internet Explorer when it was introduced back in 2008.Also read: Windows Desktop Market Share Drops Below 90%
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Chrome Overtakes Internet Explorer For Most Popular Desktop Browser More

Chrome Overtakes Internet Explorer For Most Popular Desktop Browser

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  • On the bright side (Score:5, Funny)

    by Locke2005 ( 849178 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @01:17PM (#52029491)
    Internet Explorer is STILL the most popular browser used to download Chrome so that you can install it! (But Edge is gaining...)

    • Well, if Microsoft can't produce a good browser, it makes sense to switch strategies and build the best free Chrome installer on the planet. Millions of customers smoothly directed to Google is better than nothing!

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Internet Explorer is STILL the most popular browser used to download Chrome so that you can install it! (But Edge is gaining...)

      At least IE is good for something. Back in the Win 9x days we would call it "Aiiiieeeee!" because of how insecure and terrible it was.

      Chrome is far better in terms of features, stability, and security. Though given the history of Microsoft browsers, that isn't saying much. Too bad I consider Chrome to be spyware. I really, really don't like anything that phones home. Much of the tracking "features" are optional, some are not. Chromium isn't bad but I still don't like the Chrome-ish interface. Yes the

      • Leather seats. Don't forget, you want leather seats. Heated too. But you don't want the floor mats bundled. Give me the Lexus for free separately and the floor mats for free separately. Want to mix and match.
    • Congratulations Google on duping naive Windows users into downloading your spyware and setting it as their default browser, when they update Flash. How else do they become the number one browser? The differences between browsers are not enough for most people to care about. Firefox and Chrome both have plenty of extensions. One has a mission of privacy and open internet. One is a corporation whose stated mission is to steal your personal information

  • Netcraft confirms it (Score:3, Informative)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @01:18PM (#52029511)
    Firefox is dead.
    • Over the past month so many exploits have come out I dunno how it's still even used, now they are going to use chrome base (They tapped out) so yea it's pretty dead lol

    • Re: (Score:1, Troll)

      by denis-The-menace ( 471988 )

      Mozilla is no longer chasing users or market share.

      Mozilla is chasing sponsorship $'s from third parties. (e.g. Pocket)

      Once Mozilla has exhausted this dubious source of $, they will sellout to a spyware provider; members of the board will each get a cut of the sale and dissolve Mozilla.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by Tablizer ( 95088 )

        Tips for (legally) screwing with that Pocket gizmo to give Mozilla headaches? Let's punish stupidity.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

        Mozilla is no longer chasing users or market share.

        Mozilla is chasing sponsorship $'s from third parties. (e.g. Pocket)

        Once Mozilla has exhausted this dubious source of $, they will sellout to a spyware provider; members of the board will each get a cut of the sale and dissolve Mozilla.

        As opposed to Chrome and IE that get it directly from Google and Microsoft respectively.
        How exactly should Mozilla pay their employees?

        • Re:Netcraft confirms it (Score:5, Interesting)

          by KGIII ( 973947 ) <uninvolved@outlook.com> on Monday May 02, 2016 @04:39PM (#52031091) Journal

          Have you seen what some of their employees do? Do they really need half of those people? Do they need dozens of evangelists? Does a non-profit need a director of diversity or whatever that title was that was brought up the other day? No - really. Do they need one of those? How much are these people making? It's a non-profit. They should be making a browser and, I guess, an email client. There. Done. They should be damned good versions, all told.

          That said - try the "Aurora." It's their special dev build. It's not the dev tools - it's their special dev build. It's not even installed, I just load the binary from a folder. It even updates like that. I stuck some binaries around and made shortcuts and made an alias so that I can load it. Oh wow...

          I've not been a fan of Firefox for years - but I've always tried to be supportive. Even my first paragraph is me being supportive. Whatever they're doing with the Aurora version? Do that. Stop with the crap. Stop with the social statements. Make a browser. Make it good. Done. They don't need evangelists, they're a non-profit browser company. They don't need diversity - they need skilled people who will do their job.

          Seriously, write a browser and keep Thunderbird. Thunderbird and Aurora are the only two good things they have right now. Aurora, by the way, is awesome. The dev tools are great but it's still great as a browser. It is not my default but it's almost good enough to be my default.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
            Let's say they reduce their staff down to what you deem necessary, the question still stands:
            How exactly should Mozilla pay their employees?

          • I have no idea why you're praising "Aurora" as somehow better than "Firefox", when it is simply a rolling alpha test version of what will BE Firefox in 2 releases (12 weeks). Firefox Developer Edition, which is what the Aurora channel of Firefox is called for Windows, Mac, Linux, has the same dumbed-down UI, the same Pocket and Hello RTC, as Firefox. You still need Classic Theme Restorer and/or Status-4-Evar to make it a sensible and full-featured UI. I normally install both extensions.

            If you are a develope

    • Re:Netcraft confirms it (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Tablizer ( 95088 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @01:42PM (#52029725) Journal

      Too bad. I hate to see the main browsers controlled by conglomerates with records of being anti-competitive and playing games with privacy.

      Firefox could clean up its UI act and market itself as the anti-corporate choice. People might care about it again. Tap into the vibrant Bernie Sanders crowd.

      • Firefox could clean up its UI act and market itself as the anti-corporate choice. People might care about it again. Tap into the vibrant Bernie Sanders crowd.

        Fair enough... but how do you make money with that plan?

      • >> I hate to see the main browsers controlled by conglomerates with records of being anti-competitive and playing games with privacy

        You realize that conglomerates develop browsers for exactly this reason: they want to control and track eyeballs with a degree of lock-in that prevents competitors from getting a foothold. It's been that way for 20 years now.

        FWIW, many people's main browser for news, events and other web browsing these days isn't even a "browser" - it's the Facebook app on their phone.

        • FWIW, many people's main browser for news, events and other web browsing these days isn't even a "browser" - it's the Facebook app on their phone

          I see it everyday here, on the bus to my work and back home: sad, but true...

        • You realize that facebook built that app for exactly this reason. They want to murder the openness of the internet, and make money with that. Not really enough yet to replace good old MS as no #1 evil us tech corp, but still a big deal.

      • Y'know, that sounds about like when they got started, what with NutScrape dying and freed up the code to become Mozilla/FF. They were even the anti-corporate choice for a while. So yeah, this story feels real familiar.

      • UI, performance, standards compliance.
        There is no love for second best.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sootman ( 158191 )

        > Firefox could clean up its UI act

        Oh, but they've done that. Several times!

    • This makes me sad. Competition is always a good thing. It would suck for Android if iOS went away (I don't consider MS Windows Mobile to be much of a competitor). It would suck for Chrome if Firefox went away (I don't consider MS IE/Edge to be much of a competitor).

    • Oh well, there's always Pale Moon [palemoon.org]

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

      I just switched back to Firefox from Chrome on Linux Mint, because Chrome has developed a nasty habit of blanking and refreshing pages (and scrolling you back to the top) that renders it unusable. This has persisted for months through several Chrome updates. And yes, I've tried disabling all my extensions and hardware acceleration. Of course, I used Firefox for years, but on Linux, it has the nasty habit of blocking during connects to a new page - during which time the whole app becomes unresponsive. C

    • but, but, I still use it...

    • >Firefox is dead.

      No, Firefox is not dead. It is the only major, multiplatform, open source, open standards, and fully openly developed browser. Chromium almost makes the mark, except it doesn't build well for many Linux distros.... and since it is lock-step with Chrome, even though it might not contain as many [unacceptable] Google ties, it can't really be said it is openly developed. It is also hostile to customization and hostile to centralized configuration.

      If Firefox is dead, so are all hopes for

    • It seems to still be running on my computer. And maybe I'll switch to Chrome when they put a real menu on it. (In Windows. I understand that in the MacOS, it does have a real menu.)

      Actually, Vivaldi looks pretty good.

  • Or it's a net gain as I don't want extensions (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday May 02, 2016 @01:19PM (#52029519)

    Seriously, it seems like half of them just exist to do the same thing, and the rest are security holes.

  • For the few sites that prefer IE, IE Tab completes the deal for me. Occasionally use Firefox but it seems slow in comparison to Chrome. Win7 OS as basis for my observations.

  • I have enjoyed Chrome since I switched to it. The only time I use IE on a new box is to install Chrome. The sheer difference in speed over IE alone sold me. Pair that with some handy extensions, and I am a happy customer.

    I used to be a Netscape user, always had a flare for using non Microsoft Browsers. It's a shame Netscape died the slow, agonizing death it did. RIP Netscape - you failed to keep up with the times and were killed by both a decline in speed and a Microsoft Monopoly.

    As for privacy, I figure my

  • Extensions? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Artem S. Tashkinov ( 764309 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @01:23PM (#52029573) Homepage

    99% of people out there don't understand what they are and they are for, so, unlikely.

    The two most important reasons are: firstly, Google loves to peddle its browser whenever possible (they own the largest ad network for that), and, secondly, IE has a reputation of being slow and unreliable.

    As for the Edge browser - it is really fast but its fonts rendering on low DPI screens is beyond awful (just like all other UWP apps). Also its UI is way too cumbersome for a lot of people.

    At the same time with the advent of Windows 10 Microsoft has stopped caring which browser you actually use - they own your PC and your data.

  • IE Gots its majority, because it booted and ran faster than Netscape (By cheating by integrating it in the OS)
    Firefox got some traction in the mid 00's Due to a bunch of security issues in IE. However Firefox goals of a Small Lightweight quickly become bloated, so IE once again reasserted it dominance.
    Google Chrome, Had a bunch of things going for it.
    1. It nagged users who used IE to switch.
    2. It installed without Admin access
    3. It was fast
    4. It supported the web standards well.
    5. No major security issues.

    • And it does all this while collecting your web surfing habits, so in the near future, merely typing the URL of your favorite restaurant dispatches a Self Driving Delivery Car to your door. If it's not there in 20 minutes, it's free, except if a bus is encountered...

      • Unless you are surfing in incognito mode... which you probably should be if you're worried about how much data Google is collecting on you.

        • Good point.

          Truth is, I'm not that concerned about that. I keep my nose clean, well in so far as I know. No telling these days.. what is allowed today may be illegal tomorrow. Soon it may be illegal to use Ad blockers.

          I for one, do want my pizza delivered before I know I want it. If my Google Overlords can do that, I for one welcome them.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by KGIII ( 973947 )

            I'm a fan of Opera which is basically built on Chromium but has all the nasties ripped out and a bunch of new stuff added. The Dev version has a built in (free) VPN and ad blocking. Those will trickle down to beta and then to stable. You can cheat and use a second extension (it doesn't eat resources really) that only comes up when you're at Google's Chrome site - then you can install and use both the Opera extensions and the Chrome extensions.

            I am not invested in Opera. I've just been using them for... Hmm.

            • I tried Opera, I did like it, but, me being a creature of habit I kept using the same browser anyways. It was not that I did not like Opera, but that I was too used to what I used every day. To me, Opera was the Rolls-Royce of web browsers: a fancy ride to surf the web with, but at the end of the day, I preferred my less glamorous Honda Accord, complete with cracked windshield and worn off bumper stickers.

              *Disclaimer: I drive Toyota, but the Accord just has that reputation of being driven forever and fit my

    • 6. Came bundled by default with useful software, so if you didn't pay close attention and uncheck the box it would install itself whenever you updated, IIRC, Java, and I think a couple of other things.

      Any software that needs to piggyback itself on other packages like that is really great software, yes I do say. That earned itself a place on my list of "uninstall immediately" packages whenever I see it installed on something I manage.

  • This worries me a lot. Google is growing too powerful. They more or less defined the new HTTP/2 protocol. They own the search market. In other words, they determine what can and what cannot be found on the internet. Now, they're on their way to own the browser market. With that, it's easy for them to make changes in how the web works. That, and Googles reason for existence: information. Personal information. If the really want, nothing can be kept secret for them.
    • I'm _still_ not having any problem finding free porn on the web, so I'm not seeing a problem here. Isn't search one of those industries that should be considered a "natural monopoly"? Yes, government regulators do need to keep an eye on Alphabet (It's not just Google anymore) to make sure they are serving the public good, but regulators are doing that, at least in Europe.
    • Microsoft pretty much dictated a lot of industry standards too... and that was one of the GOOD things they did! Would you rather have standards like those compiled by CCITT, which were both ambiguous and impossible to implement?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

      Why on earth is "They more or less defined the new HTTP/2 protocol" a bad thing? Now, if it's a bad protocol, sure. But Google doing the work to improve web standards, and (presumably) making it available in an open source and unencumbered implementation is a good thing, no? Even if you hate (or fear) Google.

      • It's not really a bad thing, but it's just another step in Google defining the way the internet works. But on the other hand, HTTP/2 is a merely a protocol by Google, for Google. Unless you're like Google, you won't benefit from it. And that's my point. Google is, step by step, optimizing the internet for themselves.

  • it's all about marketing... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    the willingness to spend huge amounts on global advertising campaigns,

    the sleeziness to pay for installs just like spyware,

    plus the ads^H^H^Hnags on google's pages (placements and pageviews that nobody could buy if they wanted to, and google's chrome folks paid nothing), including discontinuing support for browsers (some of which are not or were not actually eol at the time) with an 'install chrome instead' message.

  • I've generally liked Chrome and have been using it pretty much since it dropped. That being said I use all 3 major browsers and lately have been experiencing more and more sites that just don't work properly in that browser. Given these could all be situations where a particular site is doing something non-standard and Chrome is just dealing with it appropriately but when massive major site after massive major site don't work quite right there I'm guessing the fault lie more on Google than the web devs. I'm

  • I am still surprised when I connect to some website with Chrome, Firefox, or Safari and basic things do not work. I can't print their document or fill out their form or get some basic thing to work. It spits out some obscure error message or just does nothing. Then I go to the same site with IE and it works fine. This drives me insane.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Like what?

      No seriously, I'm just curious because I've personally not had any problems. Obviously that doesn't mean that all sites work because of my user experience, I just like citations with my anecdotes...

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Torodung ( 31985 )

        Ticketmaster's "print tickets" function (absolutely critical) failed to work in Firefox, and worked in IE. That's one example I ran into a while back. Fx devs may have fixed it by now.

        On a lighter note, Firefox won't use Diffie-Hellman for key exchange, and IE will. I can't log in to my university cloud services without mucking about in about:config with Firefox (I have to explicitly tell it to use DHE anyway). I'm not sure this is a favorable thing for IE.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by rmist ( 4515759 )
      Its not the browser, stupid. The websites are broken (or IE friendly).

  • Chrome is a great browser, but... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    it's constantly phoning home to the mothership logged in or out. Of course your data tastes better to Google with cookies, so I use Chrome for just Google-related things, logged in or out. I never leave the Googlesphere logged into my Google account.

    A friend recently purchased a Google OnHub device and raves about it. Problem is you must have a Google account to connect, giving Google a veritable firehose of your personal data. This bothers me on a number of levels. How long before the correlation starts be

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by NotAPK ( 4529127 )

      Hey, that's cool, I do the same. I run Chrome, logged into my Google account, for G+, maps, Gmail, contacts, analytics, etc...

      I then run two other web browsers for doing different things: one for private and important online services, such as net banking. Another I run for general web browsing (which is Pale moon with a rash of extensions to protect my privacy: NoScript, AdBlock Edge, Disconnect, and Self-Destructing Cookies.

      Vivaldi seems nice, I've found it does some things pretty well.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by iamacat ( 583406 )

      It sounds to me like you have both logically available choices - accept analytics by running Chrome and have your crash/performance/malware issues fixed by others, or install open source Chromium and fix it yourself. As for other claims about collection/misuse of your personal data, you are assuming that everyone is always out to get you without a concrete proof. I would recommend using SSL to order Domino's pizzas all the same.

  • in April, Chrome captured 41.66 percent of the market, surpassing Internet Explorer which now sits at 41.35 percent.

    Net Applications posts disclaimers that its publicly accessible stats lack the QA expected by its paying customers. In other words, they can be a little rough around the edges and the horse race shouldn't be taken too seriously.

  • is that they still do not allow adblock on their mobile version.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      that's what happens when the OS (android) and browser (chrome) are owned by the same company as the online services they drive users to (google, gmail, etc), and the advertising networks they use (doubleclick, adwords).

      i fully expect adblockers to be yanked from the google 'store' for desktop and chromeos users at some point in the not-so-distant future. considering chrome's new position as the top desktop browser, that time may be sooner rather than later. companies love to abuse market position.

  • The absence os Chrome/Chromium in this area is a deal breaker for me, and keeps me on Mozilla's :P

  • "...it lacks basic features like extensions"

    Unlike Chrome, which supports NPAPI?

  • Extensions? (Score:3)

    by PmanAce ( 1679902 ) on Monday May 02, 2016 @03:24PM (#52030531) Homepage
    Just curious on how the vast majority of users (the parents type or the not so savvy type) would care about extensions let alone use them? "sub-par experience as it lacks basic features like extensions" Don't think for them it's a sub-par experience.
  • Windows 10 has promised full support for ssh, not just a client but a server as well. I am sure there is going to be support for ftp might even support wget. Even if there is not, Google will find a way to use ssh to install chrome painlessly without going through IE or Edge.
  • I run one pretty typical website (i.e. not named chromeuserslove.com). Where I don't see a whole lot of IE.

    Personally I see IE as the new AOL. It kind of tells you that you are dealing with a rank amateur.
  • ... that this happened a couple of years back. Someone want to straighten me out? :)

  • I'll bet there are still people using AOL too!

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