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Chrome Microsoft Operating Systems Stats

While Chrome Dominates, Microsoft Edge Struggles To Attract New Users (neowin.net) 172

Posted by EditorDavid from the losing-their-Edge dept.
An anonymous reader quotes Neowin's report on the newest browser-usage figures from NetMarketShare: Microsoft Edge only commands a market share of 5.65% -- which is an increase of only 0.02 percentage points compared to last month... it only grew by 0.56% year-over-year. On the other hand, Google Chrome has continued its dominance with a market share of 59.49%. As a point of reference, this is a sizeable growth of 10.84 percentage points year-over-year... Data from another firm, StatCounter, depicts an even more depressing situation for Microsoft. According to the report, Edge sits at 3.89%... Chrome is the king of all browsers according to these statistics as well, with a market share of 63.21% -- a decrease of 0.14 percentage points compared to last month. Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari command 14%, 9.28%, and 5.16% respectively.
The firm also calculates that when it comes to desktop operating systems, Windows has 91.51% of all users, followed by MacOS at 6.12 and Linux at 2.36%.
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While Chrome Dominates, Microsoft Edge Struggles To Attract New Users More

While Chrome Dominates, Microsoft Edge Struggles To Attract New Users

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  • Edge's OK (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 02, 2017 @03:23AM (#54728291)

    It was a POS when it came out but it got better. Now, it's usable.

    Interesting to think that forcing the Windows 10 upgrade while Edge was a total turd may have accidentally killed the web browser market for Microsoft.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      "usable"? Even links is usable

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Z00L00K ( 682162 )

        Then you have Safari and Opera trailing around too.

        And here's a list of more browsers: http://www.thewindowsclub.com/... [thewindowsclub.com]

        Anyway - Microsoft browsers are only useful as a last resort if you can't get anything else to work. Mostly on company intranets.

      • What is Microsoft waiting for?

        You fundamentally misunderstand Microsoft's motives. Microsoft's strengths have traditionally been bringing power user functionality to products that are also relatively easy to understand by novice users. However, that all changed when the iPhone came out, and then Steve Ballmer laughed at it, and then ended up eating his foot.

        After that, Microsoft changed its business strategy to target the lowest common denominator of users, because if it worked really well for Apple, then clearly it will work for them a

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Dracos ( 107777 )

        I find it a little odd that a company the size of Microsoft can't better Chrome

        This is the same company that couldn't better Netscape for 3 version of their browser, so they bought a rendering engine and built IE4 around it. That same rendering engine is the core of Edge, 20 years later.

        MS is rather bad at making software, they're much better at buying into market segments they want to be in, then using their dominant market position to push "their" product. Trident, Excel, Visio, Skype, Nokia, the list g

  • It's neither compatible with IE, nor better.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      But it comes with extra spyware, designed to integrate with Windows 10's spyware!

      • But Microsoft spyware is BEST spyware! Chortle. When you have an OS which detects you changing your browser and then pleads with you to give Edge a chance and people still have something better in mind, you really need to rethink your strategy. Oh, this is Microsoft we're talking about here - fuck the User and full steam ahead with the OS rental plans.

  • Even with aggressive defaults (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    Even with aggressive defaults or the missing eu browser ballot, most users appear to be deciding they do not want to use edge on Windows 10.

  • Mobile (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    I use Chrome on my phone and tablet but don't even have it installed on my Window 10 desktop. There I use SeaMonkey, with Edge in the places where NoScript won't let through must see pages.

  • Depicts an depressing situation (Score:4, Insightful)

    by s1d3track3D ( 1504503 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @03:42AM (#54728335)

    depicts an even more depressing situation for Microsoft. According to the report, Edge sits at 3.89%...

    when it comes to desktop operating systems, Windows has 91.51% of all users...

    Depicts an even more depressing situation for the world...

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by stooo ( 2202012 )

      >> Linux at 2.36%

      Linux increased it's desktop market share. That's good, but a long way remaining to the top.
      Probably next year Linux could overtake Edge, that would be cool.

      • Good for who? I can't imagine who Linux desktop market share is good for. Maybe Steam box game developers.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tepples ( 727027 )

          X11/Linux taking desktop usage share away from Windows 10 is good for people who want to work on projects requiring more than one window at a time without being beholden to a known private spy agency.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by stooo ( 2202012 )

          Good for me.
          It means more and more companies are switching to Linux desktops, which makes sense when nearly all infrastructure and often also products run Linux.
          This means my next job could has more chances to be bound to a Linux workstation, which would make me a happier guy.
          I already had the delight to work in a 95% Linux environment for 3 Years, it was like being on holiday, but at work.

        • Good for who? I can't imagine who Linux desktop market share is good for. Maybe Steam box game developers.

          It's good for almost everyone who is not a tech giant like Microsoft or Apple.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      What is missing in that 91.51% of desktop users, is the rapid shrinking of that desktop user market, now smaller that smart phones. Which is why when you total up desktop, notebooks, smart phones, smart TVs, tablets windows loses to Linux and even Apple is looking to pass M$. So how rapidly will the desktop market shrink, is the real question and it most certainly is shrinking and that is what will kill M$ because they can not fall back to the server market, their game console market is shrinking and they a

  • User Interface (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tim12s ( 209786 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @03:52AM (#54728351)

    It all comes down to the user interface.

    I'd still be with firefox if they didnt butcher the interface trying to copy windows ribbon with a shytty alternative.

    • I'd still be with firefox if they didnt butcher the interface trying to copy windows ribbon

      I use Firefox all the time and I have no idea what ribbon interface you're talking about. When I use Firefox on Windows I turn on the menu and I also switch to the Compact Light theme, which is one of the three default themes.

    • "Hey everyone! Look what we did! We threw Internet Explorer out the window, copied Chrome, added the Windows 8 Metro interface that everyone loves, and we took out all the options! ... and if anyone has any feedback, we don't care!"

      The fundamental point that both Microsoft and Google are missing with the latest iterations of their browser, is that Internet Explorer offered an alternative to Chrome that gave people more personally configurable options, plenty of corporate configurable options via group pol

      • You're basing your desktop choice on what browser is installed by default on the desktop OS? Browsers used to be something we installed after we chose an OS. Ooops, they still can be and are.

        • Try Windows 10S!

          It's a real product that exists and Microsoft is pushing right now!

          And the default browser is locked to Microsoft Edge and cannot be changed. You can install other browsers, but every link you click in an email, or in a store, or in a notification, or anything is going to take you right back to Edge.

          The future!

  • Both are bad (Score:5, Insightful)

    by tezbobobo ( 879983 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @03:53AM (#54728355) Homepage Journal

    This is actually still really bad news for consumers. Both browsers are designed to lock you into an ecosystem. In Chrome's case it is Google's advertising ecosystem; Edge is designed to keep you dependant on Microsoft tech. What is really needed is a move to Firefox and (yes) Opera. A diversification of browsers is good for compatibility and standards compliance and liberates users from monopolistic corporation whose motivations are unclear and convoluted.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by donaldm ( 919619 )

      This is actually still really bad news for consumers. Both browsers are designed to lock you into an ecosystem. In Chrome's case it is Google's advertising ecosystem; Edge is designed to keep you dependant on Microsoft tech. What is really needed is a move to Firefox and (yes) Opera. A diversification of browsers is good for compatibility and standards compliance and liberates users from monopolistic corporation whose motivations are unclear and convoluted.

      With Chrome you can go into the settings and change what you want to be tracked or not tracked. In fact, you don't even have to log in to Google so if they are tracking for advertising purposes all they have is an IP address. There is also an "Incognito window" (Pretty well all browsers have this) although this does not stop tracking by ISP's and the target site. Yes TOR can but you have to trust that the site operators respect your privacy.

      Personally, I would rather trust a browser not to be annoying wit

    • Re:Both are bad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @06:38AM (#54728619)

      You could also always just go for a chromium based browser like SRiron that strips the Google ogling from the Chrome.

    • Re:Both are bad (Score:5, Insightful)

      by fafalone ( 633739 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:26AM (#54729039)
      Firefox is 100% dedicated to becoming indistinguishable from Chrome. They've been continually dumbing it down and shitting up the UI for years, and soon they're trashing the one remaining bright spot, plugins. Losing NPAPI plugins wasn't the problem, the real issue is coming this November with the elimination of XUL. The new WebExtensions offers far less power and customization. The only reason I don't use Chrome now is because of its god awful extension capabilities, so once Firefox is similarly crippled the last reason to use it flies out the window. They don't understand how they got a large userbase, don't understand why it shrunk, and don't understand that their current userbase doesn't want ChromeFox and cloning Chrome won't attract new ones.
      So no, nobody is going to be moving to Firefox, nor should they, and their existing userbase will largely be abandoning them this year. I'll be using a pre-57 version for as long as that's viable, then that's it.

      You say Yes to Opera, but does it really offer a compelling alternative to MS/Chrome like Firefox used to? Doesn't seem that way. The Pale Moon fork of Firefox seems like the only reasonable alternative at this point. But that's never going to be mainstream. So Edge v. Chrome here we come.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by short ( 66530 )
      Firefox performance sucks, what do you have against Chromium?

  • I use Edge for Netflix and nothing else (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ramze ( 640788 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @03:56AM (#54728367)

    Edge is the only browser that Netflix supports for 1080p (and even 4K streaming with certain processors). All other browsers are stuck at 720p or less for Netflix. It's an artificial limitation created by Netflix for piracy protection, but until I set up another device (perhaps an Amazon Fire TV) that can do as well or better for Netflix, I'll stick with Edge. Netflix's Windows 10 app will also allow 1080p, but the interface is a bit wonky, and for some reason, it doesn't work well on my laptop (though it works perfectly well for another laptop I have, and I have no idea why.) The app will just up and crash.... but, Edge works just fine.

    Sure, I could use a different browser and watch Netflix in 720p, but why when Edge can do better?

    My 1080p smart TV has its own Netflix app, but I believe it's also limited to 720p (it's pretty old for a 1080p TV)... maybe if/when I get a 4K TV I'll just use the app that comes with it instead.

    • I honestly don't think it's about piracy protection. It's definitely not about hard protection, because even their 4K streams are currently available on pirate sites. And preventing casual piracy could be done in any browser. So what does that leave? I suspect they're being paid or threatened to limit support to whatever particular technologies MS or possibly the film studios want.

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by Ramze ( 640788 )

        I tend to agree... but, it's their official reason.

        I don't think Netflix really cares about piracy -- they dominate the online streaming market & they're about to surpass any cable company in terms of subscriptions in the USA alone (assuming they haven't already). Why would they care if anyone pirates Orange is the New Black when almost everyone has a subscription and can watch it for free (with paid subscription) whenever they like anyway. Watching a pirate version just means you aren't using Netfli

  • Chrome, the One Percenter (Score:4, Funny)

    by CyberNigma ( 878283 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @04:07AM (#54728389)

    Chrome may only be 59.49% of the market share, but it owns 99% of the memory out there. It's the browser one percenter!!

    • I recently switched from Firefox to Chrome (Chrome portable actually because Google won't let you change the install directory on regular Chrome). The speed increase is incredible, granted my PC is quite old.

      I do notice that sites like Wired and WaPo have started telling me I am using an ad blocker. When I Google for a solution all I get instructions for uninstalling an extension, but I have no extensions to uninstall, and I can't find anything in the settings.

      I may have to go back to Firefox for this rea

  • Can Chrome become the new IE? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by wvmarle ( 1070040 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @04:26AM (#54728415)

    Chrome becoming the new IE is what I'm afraid of. Its market share is >60 and rising fast - at this rate in a few years Chrome is reaching 90% and everything else is marginalised. That opens up the opportunity for Google to start "extending" its browser and for web developers to develop sites that are Chrome-only as "it's what everyone uses", instead of coding to standards as they just about have to in the current situation.

    The risk of Google stopping browser innovation and stalling the web for a decade is less likely than back in the IE vs Netscape days but it is a distinct possibility when we again have a single browser dominating the field.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      It would be a problem, but not as huge as the IE f***up..

      The issue with IE was that it not only prevented other browser from gaining popularity, but also preventing people from running anything else than Windows, and it still does in some cases (there *still* exists IE6 only sites!!). I would say this is one of the causes they have reach such a user-count today. If applications would have been built for multiple platforms it would be a fight for what is best, not what has the largest user-base... And with a

    • Chrome is just an advertising platform for Google. It exists to make sure Microsoft didn't cut them out of ad revenue. They don't care what browser you use as long as you can see their ads.

    • Re:Can Chrome become the new IE? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by Voyager529 ( 1363959 ) <.voyager529. .at. .yahoo.com.> on Sunday July 02, 2017 @11:56AM (#54729675)

      Partially, I agree with this - anyone having 90% of a market in just about any computing segment turns into a problem pretty quickly. Google, however, is in a place where they've been EEEing 'the internet'. Google fonts are everywhere. Google AMP is becoming a de facto requirement for mobile sites. GCC might be bouncing between second and third place with Microsoft for cloud hosting, but don't underestimate Google's ability to play the long game. Google also basically-owns the advertising market, meaning that they largely control the financial aspect of what runs many of the smaller sites. Even if they switched market shares with Opera, an internet without Google is basically a broken internet now.

      • an internet without Google is basically a broken internet now.

        Indeed. And that's pretty scary in itself.

    • You're a few years too late with this worry. We are solidly in the middle of "best viewed in Chome" websites. Use a standards compliant browser off the beaten path and you'll run into all sorts of barriers you can't get around and sites that don't work well, all because they are wittingly or unwittingly designed with Chrome in mind. It is awful, and as a web developer I feel it is no longer responsible to build or test with Chrome.

      • Use a standards compliant browser off the beaten path and you'll run into all sorts of barriers you can't get around and sites that don't work well, all because they are wittingly or unwittingly designed with Chrome in mind.

        That may be the case, but all that means to me is that those are sites that I will never go to. Much like sites that don't work if I've disabled javascript or block ads: that's fine, those sites are now nonexistent to me.

        It hasn't harmed my browsing experience at all.

  • Give the world the ability to write tools. Block ads, block scripts, save content.
    Imagine been able to create something useful on a Microsoft OS thats not a computer game.
    Edge does nothing thats useful.
    Been a browser that can surf the web without crashing or not failing as much is not a really a selling point.

  • A differential shows that more than a half of percentage points lost by IE (.71%) since the last month go to "other" (.38% increase) which is more than twice larger than the increase in Safari points (.16%) which is actually a largest winner (by a small margin) last month (Chrome has only .13% increase)

    Month June, 2017
    Chrome 0.0013
    Internet Explorer -0.0071
    Firefox 0.0004
    Microsoft Edge 0.0002
    Safari 0.0016
    Other 0.0038
    Sum 0.0002

  • Microsoft products can attract users only and only if they can create an "artificial" environment where that product is the only one to work.

    For example, can you tell me where and when a Microsoft browser is preferable to any other one?

    • You don't remember the time when Netscape was becoming so broken that people longed for the much better working and faster IE?

      That, by the way, was only partly due to the strong lock-in MS created with their extensions. A lock-in that led to the disaster of IE6 (which, when it was just released, was a pretty advanced browser).

    • Nope... you win the thread.

    • On a touchscreen, actually. Edge has a reasonable tablet/touch UI. Chrome and Firefox used to, but they removed them.

  • The phase out of W7 flattened in the last year. The year before it was slowly dropping, but now it is steady percentage. W10 continues to grow but at the expense of earlier W versions. I suspect that some of the incentives MS was offering to upgrade to W10 expired last year.

  • I definitely think Edge is usable now. But Chrome is far more compatible on many devices. Edge is locked to Win 10 a big disadvantage and even Win 10 users seem to have ignored it. Edge might have a advantage in battery life? Kind of debatable the significance of that. So it's possible some users have tried Edge and weren't compelled enough to switch.

  • The problem is Microsoft (Score:4)

    by SpaghettiPattern ( 609814 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:22AM (#54729009)
    Too many negative connotations with MS. Nice guys until they're on the winning hand. And then they turn into big, cocky scoundrels.

  • Excellent situation (Score:3)

    by OneHundredAndTen ( 1523865 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @09:37AM (#54729083)
    The dominance of MS in the desktop is an excellent situation for those of us who like Linux in such an environment: all the security issues will be blamed on Microsoft, and the bad guys will continue focusing on Windows, leaving us mostly alone. We might not get access to the latest and greatest hardware immediately, and we might not have some key applications (none, in my case - YMMV) albeit a Windows VM (or even Wine) fixes that. But we enjoy a fully functional desktop, that does everything that we want, that is secure and (when avoiding the Windows wannabees hogs that are KDE and (especially) Gnome) efficient. Thank you, Microsoft. May things continue this way indefinitely.

    • I agree wholeheartedly!

      Linux is, in my opinion, in a bit of a sweet spot. Popular enough to have decent development happening, but not so popular that it suffers from all of the various nastiness that happens to popular operating systems.

  • Gosh (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ledow ( 319597 ) on Sunday July 02, 2017 @10:25AM (#54729229) Homepage

    Gosh, I wonder why people don't really choose to use a browser that's a replacement for a previously atrocious browser from the same company, that was foisted upon people resulting in monopoly lawsuits, that choose just about every non-standard and insecure method of rendering a page that it possibly could, that only ever runs on a single operating system, is again bundled so you can't avoid it and pesters the shit out of you on upgrades to make it the default AGAIN, and really doesn't do anything that other browsers don't do, while also NOT doing quite a lot of things that other browsers do.

    I can't possibly work it out.

  • ... the javascript engine that it is bundled with is sure nice. I've been working on a project that will require an embedded javascript engine, and I've been looking very seriously at using ChakraCore.

  • add-ons make the difference (Score:4, Interesting)

    by swell ( 195815 ) <jabberwock@poetic.com> on Sunday July 02, 2017 @12:17PM (#54729775)

    I stick with Firefox because of the addons. No Flash nonsense with slide shows, popups, flashing adverts, etc. No unwanted trackers or spyware. No suspicious remote scripts. And the ability to change the format of a page: for instance, seeing Slashdot the full width of the window instead of wasting half my expensive screen space.

    It seems that some of these addons are available for other browsers, but perhaps less effective. I'd experiment with other browsers but I really don't care as long as Firefox gives me a clean browsing experience. Yes, your browser may be 1.6% faster, but if it can't cut the crap from the screen I don't care. The choice of browser for me is not a religious obsession, it is simply a plea for peace of mind as I try to navigate aggressive web pages and preserve some privacy.

    • Yes, I am the same. I don't really care about speed -- all of the browsers are fast enough. I really care about two things: the user interface and whether or not I can have the functionality that NoScript provides. RIght now, that means Firefox with the Classic Theme Restorer.

      Once CTR stops working, I think that Pale Moon is the only refuge left.

  • As long as Firefox has FireFTP extension working, I will be staying with Firefox. If any of Firefox's upgrades permanently breaks FireFTP, then I will be shopping for a new browser. Edge does not support in-browser FTP nor does Chrome. If none ever do, then it may be Chrome or a Chromium offshoot in the long run. Edge seems born to make MS money from me, so I doubt I will use it. I realize Chrome is the same way :). I support a lot of beginners, and I usually configure their Windows 10 systems to use Chrom

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