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The Internet Android Firefox Opera Software

Samsung's Android Browser Hits 1 Billion Downloads, More Than Firefox and Opera Combined (androidpolice.com) 87

An anonymous reader shares a report: Samsung's mobile internet browser, if you ask its users, is pretty great. A lot of folks even say it's better than Chrome. That appreciation has manifested in the app hitting a very exclusive Play Store milestone: Samsung Internet Browser now has more than one billion installs. That impressive figure puts the browser's install base ahead of those of Firefox and Opera combined. Now, there are a couple of caveats here: for one, Samsung's browser comes pre-loaded on Samsung devices, of which each activation counts as an "install." What's more, both Firefox's and Opera's Play Store listings report that each browser has "100,000,000+" installs, which, because of the somewhat silly way figures are reported on Android's app marketplace, means their combined installs total anywhere between 200 million and 999,999,998. Still, though, Samsung's browser is on more devices than the both of 'em.
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Samsung's Android Browser Hits 1 Billion Downloads, More Than Firefox and Opera Combined

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  • by Type44Q ( 1233630 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @12:35PM (#58110306)
    Would this be for any other reason than the fact that the world is littered with cheap Samsung phones??

    I rather think not.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      Pre-installed software has more installs than software that you have to download and install?

      Duh. No mention of how many Samsung users actually use it, vs Firefox or Chrome.

    • Well, that and it lets you install an ad blocker.

    • by Anonymous Coward

      I think not also. I haven't seen Samsung phones cheap anywhere. Maybe they are in Korea. Since you didn't offer an explanation, I can - the browser is fast and simple and renders well and importantly allows for installation of several high quality third party ad blockers very easily. Samsung doesn't typically do software well, but they got this right.

    • ...if it still counts if you uninstall updates, then disable it.

      I really love Lineage + MicroG - no avalanche of updating apps. It's quite a bit of work to shut them down on most stock ROMs.

    • Would this be for any other reason than the fact that the world is littered with cheap Samsung phones??

      I rather think not.

      Yes, and? It should be a wake up call to both Mozilla and Opera to show that making a good browser is not enough.

  • I wonder how many people actually use the Samsung browser instead of Chrome which is likely also on many of those devices. One would imagine folks downloading Firefox or Opera actually used it at least once.
    • by Anonymous Coward

      The Chrome EULA requires that the user consent to (the exact phrase eludes me) a series of high frequency sounds which will cause painful headaches and eat away at your brain, so I would guess a lot of people download it but never run it for that reason

    • Websites tend to keep statistics on the browsers being used to access them, I'm too busy to look but feel safe in assuming that this particular browser is not exactly dominating those counts.

    • I could not root my Galaxy S8+. Chrome does not let you use an ad blocker on mobile without rooting. Samsung's browser does. So, there I was not using Chrome simply because I wanted to actually read websites without half the screen being rendered useless. If I could get an ad blocker in chrome, I would switch back so my bookmarks and history can be synced between my phone and my computer.
    • by _merlin ( 160982 )

      I use Samsung's browser on my phone and I have Chrome disabled (can't uninstall it unfortunately), and I've never signed in to Google on my phone. How many more people like me are there who don't count in statistics, but actually use the Samsung browser?

  • by JasterBobaMereel ( 1102861 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @12:45PM (#58110368)

    I have this installed, as I have a Samsung phone - number of times I have used it ... once ...

    • I have this installed, as I have a Samsung phone - number of times I have used it ... once ...

      Congrats. On the flip side I use it daily. It's a browser, it has an ad blocker, and it works.

      That hits the trifector in things I'm looking for in a browser. The fact that it's a default means I don't need to play with others. Mind you I did play with others. Chrome is unusable on a mobile device thanks to no adblockers so it failed on the second account and Firefox ... well it can't even render text at a readable size on a standard content zoom on my device so it failed on the last account.

      • by Rob Y. ( 110975 )

        Me too. It works pretty well, and even has a dark mode. So I use it as my default browser.

        But I am concerned about having yet another entity tracking my web browsing activity. I figure Google already does it one way or another. But is this Samsung browser tracking me at Samsung too? I assume it is - just because everybody seems to track everything they possibly can. But seriously, why would Samsung want this info - they're not in, and not planning to get into the online advertising business. That ma

      • by Cederic ( 9623 )

        It's not just that (essential) trifecta. It's also actually sensible designed too.

        No stupid 'new tab' splash pages. Night mode. Privacy mode that's obvious and easy to access.

        Best of all, I wrote to them asking if they could add an option for 'Open in new tab' to open as a background tab rather than replacing the current one and the next patch added a new sub-menu option to 'Open in background tab' so that you can do either.

        That makes it more usable and nice to use than the others, in addition to the trifec

    • by nagora ( 177841 )

      Slacker! I've used mine twice. The second time was by mistake, though...

  • by guacamole ( 24270 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @12:45PM (#58110370)
    The world's largest Android OEM installs its web browser, which is impossible to uninstall or even disable, on every device sold. If anything, this is just a testament to how much Samsung Android devices are out there.
    • The fact that it is usable and has an adblocker is to their credit as well. I've tried a few different browsers, but quite unlike IE I went back to the default installed on my device. Chrome is unusable due to adverts, and Firefox well after trying it over and over again and finding bugs that made it difficult to read (wrong zooms to content, stupid choices of font size, etc) I just gave up.

  • Waterfox for Android (Score:5, Informative)

    by ArhcAngel ( 247594 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @12:50PM (#58110398)
    I prefer Waterfox [waterfoxproject.org] since it allows me to use the same add-ons I use on the desktop. I tried the Samsung browser when I had a Samsung device and it was meh. I'm sure it being pre-installed on all Samsung devices is skewing its actual "user" base.
  • by Anonymous Coward
    Just because it's installed doesn't mean its actually used.
  • by mr_mischief ( 456295 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @12:59PM (#58110482) Journal

    The word "install" is a verb. The noun is "installation". You install something. The something in a state of having been installed is an installation.

    You invite someone with an invitation. A judge passes judgment. Someone passing judgment when one shouldn't is being judgmental.

    News for nerds, parts of speech that matter.

    • by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      Mate, language what was, was and what is, is and install reflects change in use of nomenclature. A digital install, is the accepted terminology and has been so for quite some time, you need to get your head out last millenniums English and catch up with what ever it is today in which locale it is. Funnily enough a digital install, is never ending and needs to be continually updated, debugged, maintained, you never actually finish installing it but most continue to do so, until you finally replace it. Geeks

  • If an application is forcibly preinstalled, it shouldn't count towards the Play Store's install count. It's completely disingenuous, and implies far greater interest than there actually is.

    Yeah yeah I know. Apparently I'm new here.

  • usually to check repair times from my electrical supplier during outages.

    The only thing it had going for it was it used less of my battery than chrome or ff at a time I needed to check 3 or 4 times an hour...

    Then I was notified about an update to the app which required so many permissions my head almost exploded.

    • Then I was notified about an update to the app which required so many permissions my head almost exploded.

      Browsers need all those permissions in order to do all the things they normally do these days, so that's true of almost any browser. On the other hand, you can often turn a lot of those perms off after install and as long as you don't use those features, the browser still works fine. If a browser crashes (or bitches) on run when you take away things like the ability to see your contacts, uninstall or disable it immediately.

  • It doesn't count (Score:5, Insightful)

    by roc97007 ( 608802 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @01:13PM (#58110582) Journal

    Installing a browser by default on a popular platform, and then claiming it's the most installed browser, is a tad disingenuous. It's like Microsoft claiming that IE was the most installed browser on PCs, even if a great number of people only ever used it to download Firefox or Chrome.

    I have a Note 9 that came with Samsung's browser, which almost certainly counts as an install, even though I use the Adblock browser exclusively.

    So really, it's all market-speak. Nothing to see here.

    • Disingenuous it may be, but to ignore it is to commit a fatal error of understanding how users interact with software. If anything this should be a clear indication to the likes of Firefox and Opera that in this day and age it is no longer sufficient to produce good software. You have to be in control of the default user experience.

      • Disingenuous it may be, but to ignore it is to commit a fatal error of understanding how users interact with software. If anything this should be a clear indication to the likes of Firefox and Opera that in this day and age it is no longer sufficient to produce good software. You have to be in control of the default user experience.

        There might be some truth to that. On the other hand, users have been trained for decades by Microsoft to automatically install an alternate browser on the platform they use frequently. I have absolutely nothing to base this on except gut, but I suspect that this phenomenon carries over to phones and tablets as well. [1]

        However, you do bring up a good point, and Firefox and Opera need to continue to behave like the underdogs they are, and promote their products aggressively. A really good argument might

        • users have been trained for decades by Microsoft to automatically install an alternate browser on the platform they use frequently.

          Actually users have been trained by decades of "Switch to Chrome, a smarter browser for a better experience" popups every time they search for something. There's no such jarring marketing on mobile platforms.

          It's worth remembering that users didn't make a choice to dump IE. They were told to, by friends, by websites they visit, by the sheer frustration of the slow piece of shit that was IE.

          Incidentally this is also why I used a variety of browsers in the early Android days. The included browsers were garbag

  • by mschaffer ( 97223 ) on Tuesday February 12, 2019 @01:41PM (#58110786)
    How many people not using Samsung phones have installed this? That would be a far more interesting number.
  • Even if not installed, Samsung apps require it for Samsung account access, no way to make it work with chrome
    • by crow ( 16139 )

      The only reason I created a Samsung account was because it's required to get into the Bixby settings where I can disable the button. After doing that, I was able to delete the account from the phone. I've also gone in and removed all permissions from unwanted apps that it won't let me disable or uninstall. My Samsung calendar doesn't have access to my calendar anymore.

  • their software wants to overshadow most of android, and that bixby thing kept getting in the way, and on my phone case i took an exacto knife and trimmed the inside of the bixby button so that button wont work anymore and i had to finally sign my phone out of my samsung account, then disable and uninstall as much of samsung's software as possible in order to tame it and make my phone more like a pure android, but there are a few samsung apps that wont go away, i like samsung's hardware, just not a big fan o
  • by Anonymous Coward

    software baked into the OS by the OEM is not "installed"

  • by Anonymous Coward

    I install multiple browsers on my devices, because some let me do things that others can't (such as being able to bypass javascript malware that denies me access to the right click/long tap function without having to disable Javascript). At least one of those browsers have the ability for me to change the User-Agent string, to be able to download stuff to Android which would otherwise be denied*, or get a page that is not gimped^Woptimised for mobile.

    *and I really hate those kind of sites; "Oh you smelly An

  • according to my web traffic reports, which says that out of 2.4 million page views, that browser came in at less then .05% of my overall traffic. Meh.
  • been using it for the better part of a year. very happy with it.

    - js.

  • It is better than chrome. Choice of adblocker. better privacy mode. better tab management. I use Firefox, but Samsung is actually a good choice.
  • Just another WebKit browser? Sigh.

    I would have accepted the idea that it can't be uninstalled or disabled, has upsell notifications and suggestions, if it were anything but yet another WebKit browser.

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