Chrome Takes Second Spot from Firefox, Per StatCounter
Chrome Takes Second Spot from Firefox, Per StatCounter
Posted 11/21/2011 at 5:44am
| by Pulkit Chandna
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Over the years, Firefox has made the second position on browser market share charts all its own by refusing to budge either way. A few years ago, it was ridiculously difficult to even imagine a market scenario with Mozilla's browser at any place lower than number two. But the release of Chrome three years ago started threatening the improbability of such a scenario. Now, there is strong indication that the unthinkable might have already happened.
If StatCounter's latest data is to be believed, Chrome recently overtook Firefox in market share. The former started the week ending November 13 with 25.5 percent market share as compared to Firefox's 25.79 percent. Even though the market share of both browsers shrunk slightly during this period, it was Firefox that lost more, and as a result ended the week trailing Chrome for the first time. Google Chrome ended that week with 25.47 percent market share as compared to Firefox's 25.32 percent.
Recent data from other firms has also been hinting at the possibility of Chrome pulling ahead of Firefox before the end of the year. So you can expect other firms like NetApplications to confirm Chrome's new status in the browser market in coming weeks or, at the most, a few months. Now Mozilla needs to make sure that it does not let Chrome build a massive lead in the near future, for that might end its hopes of regaining the second spot.
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Teeebs
November 22, 2011 at 10:38pm
Of course this would have nothing to do with the fact that Chrome is bundled as an optional adon with certain other software installations? Sort of like one of those annoying toolbars you end up with if you don't read what you click on when installing certain Adobe products.....lol
CatherineMcClarey
November 21, 2011 at 3:28pm
Just when my spouse & I had finally switched from IE9 to Firefox, Google Chrome dethrones Firefox as the #2 most-used browser. Perhaps this is another sign that I'm firmly dragging at the tail end of the technology curve as a late adopter of Mozilla Firefox? ;(
QuadraQ
November 21, 2011 at 3:23pm
How can anyone stand Chromes interface? It's got to be the worst designed UI in history. Webkit is great stuff, but I can't stand the UI so I'm sticking with Firefox.
biggiebob12345
November 21, 2011 at 6:32pm
+1 the stupid blue and white theme with every menu crammed under one button makes me want to punch a kitten. Chrome also has the worst preference panel. FF at least you can tune to your exact tastes or leave it as it is and it's great.
0ly1r3m@1ns
November 21, 2011 at 2:28pm
im a huge ie8 fan but ie8 is slow as fuck so i use ff and have a ie8 ui plus i have all these handy addons and i dont have to baby site my browser and downloads like chrome, on another note i use chrome and its my "defalt" browser because its faster to start (cause i have lots of app bars on ff causing it to load alot of webpages bogging it down on start up) and its good for loading large amounts of stuff fast but i hate the ui and FF is more my main even tho its not defalt. Now on to the preinstalled note chrome is preinstalled on just about every computer i see at future shop as is ie9 firefox never is and using idiodic computer user logic they will just use the preinstalled stuff and never even know theres more browsers.
bloodgain
November 21, 2011 at 1:06pm
I'd bet 0.15% is within the error adjustment. Until Chrome pulls ahead by at least 1%, I'm calling it a tie.
Even then, I don't put too much stock in these statistics. What really matters is that the software is functional and being actively developed.
bautrey
November 21, 2011 at 11:45am
Even with Chrome now in second place on the market, some website's still don't support it. Like when buying music on Amazon Music, it says specifically that it doesn't support Chrome and because of that I almost lost my album purchase. However Firefox was able to download my album... Another example is my university. I cannot check my grades using Chrome is just shows an error page, however Firefox works just fine...
I'm not switching browsers, I just hate how some websites and Chrome are incompatible and it needs to be fixed.
biggiebob12345
November 21, 2011 at 10:17am
Can one tech site actually do some DD and note that Firefox's adblock addon blocks these stat detectors? I'd bet at least 50% of FF users use ABP. Last I checked even with ABP on Chrome, you can't actually block content just prevent it from being displayed.
Cregan89
November 21, 2011 at 10:38am
Not true. Even with ABP your browser still has to send an HTTP request containing a user-agent string. Stat detectors then cross reference HTTP request user-agent strings against JavaScript based detection in order to determine the browser that was used.
User-agent strings are very rarely hidden or spoofed since there's not a lot of reason to do so, and it will often lead to website issues. User-agent strings are generally only spoofed on mobile browser's in an attempt to load a website's desktop version as opposed to it's mobile version.
biggiebob12345
November 21, 2011 at 10:18am
FF is way better than Chrome with or without NoScript. I gave up on NS years ago when I got fed up with having to click accept 3000 times per webpage. It's just being over-paranoid.
RandomInt
November 21, 2011 at 8:19am
Wikipedia shows the median percentage from Statcounter plus four other companies which track browser market share:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Browser_market_share
lostcause64
November 21, 2011 at 7:19am
It seems to be that the results are going to be a bit skewed in the same way that IE is so dominate - IE is automatically installed on every Windows machine, so it tends to be the default unless someone intentionally makes a change. Chrome "magically" appears courtesy of some software installs, which ones escape my memory at the moment, unless the person doing the install or update interceeds. But there isn't anything automatically installing Firefox on a Windows machine, so the results would seem a bit skewed to me...
Captain_Steve
November 21, 2011 at 8:49am
The kind of people who would install software via a prompt when installing software are probably un-likely to un-check the "set as default option".
Cregan89
November 21, 2011 at 10:44am
That doesn't make the results "skewed" then though. Those user's are in fact using Chrome to browse the web. And that's what this stat is stating.
jbwhite99
November 21, 2011 at 7:10am
that I don't know anyone that uses Chrome, but I know a ton of people using Firefox. Is it one region dominating, or how does it break down? Or is it all of the Google servers crawling the web that are driving it up?
The other thing of interest is that 25.4+25.3 = 50.7, which means that IE's share is less than 50%.
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