Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Google Chrome has 20% global market share

thenextweb.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 73 posts

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#61

Post by yuhong »

rmc wrote: post #34
pilif wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh - the end users of the application I'm working on use 70%-90% IE depending on the platform. I wish this would change, but I doubt it as IE still is a major player in the enterprise market.

The great thing about IE being now a minority browser is that web developers can now say "Oh you want IE6/7/8 support? Oh, that's a minority browser that doesn't support recent things, we can't do that/will charge lots more/etc."

Which means we can finally change from text/html to application/xhtml+xml. This way IE8 and earlier users will get a download message, and you won't have to worry about polyglot/Appendix C anymore.

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#62

Post by azakai »

ryanklee wrote: post #37
josefresco wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MS has tried and will try again to pry this spot from Google for their own engine Bing.

I would bet that Google wouldn't let this happen unless Chrome superceded Firefox's market share by a very significant margin -- but then again, the asking bid price for the default search engine is probably directly proportional to Firefox's market share, so at that point, why wouldn't Google hang on to the privilege (it wouldn't cost much). Does Opera have a default search engine?

Yes, Opera has a default search engine. In fact Opera is very good at monetizing that, they basically get all search engines to bid for it.

With much smaller market share than Firefox, Opera still makes a lot of money from the default search engine.

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#63

Post by estel »

rmc wrote: post #34
pilif wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh - the end users of the application I'm working on use 70%-90% IE depending on the platform. I wish this would change, but I doubt it as IE still is a major player in the enterprise market.

The great thing about IE being now a minority browser is that web developers can now say "Oh you want IE6/7/8 support? Oh, that's a minority browser that doesn't support recent things, we can't do that/will charge lots more/etc."

Minority? Sure, if compared to every other browser. But in that respect, surely every browser is a minority browser?

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#64

Post by MartinCron »

rmc wrote: post #34
pilif wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

sigh - the end users of the application I'm working on use 70%-90% IE depending on the platform. I wish this would change, but I doubt it as IE still is a major player in the enterprise market.

The great thing about IE being now a minority browser is that web developers can now say "Oh you want IE6/7/8 support? Oh, that's a minority browser that doesn't support recent things, we can't do that/will charge lots more/etc."

I think the phrase you're looking for is "plurality browser".

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#65

Post by rmc »

estel wrote: post #63
rmc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The great thing about IE being now a minority browser is that web developers can now say "Oh you want IE6/7/8 support? Oh, that's a minority browser that doesn't support recent things, we can't do that/will charge lots more/etc."

Minority? Sure, if compared to every other browser. But in that respect, surely every browser is a minority browser?

No, IE/IE6 used to be a majority browser. It used to have 80%+ of the browser share. You could not refuse it. Now, you can.

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#66

Post by moultano »

joejohnson wrote: post #11

I don't understand Google's game here. I thought Mozilla was being showered with cash from Google? If Google is now betting on Chrome, are they going to continue supporting Mozilla? Mozilla is a pretty small-budgeted non-profit and I think they rely heavily on Google's support.

My impression is that Google wants web browsers to be better in general. When people have a fast powerful browser, they're more willing to use rich web apps, and they spend more time online, both of which benefit Google. The primary purpose of chrome is to drive innovation in browsers, and to mitigate the downside risk of some company controlling the whole market and shutting Google out entirely.

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#67

Post by fleitz »

wccrawford wrote: post #3

So the real question is: What did Chrome do differently than Firefox to gain market share that fast?

For me like the original incantations of Firefox, aka. Phoenix, Chrome has the following "features". Fast, unobtrusive (no bookmarks bar, "Your browsing an insecure site", blah blah blah, nor million popups), and you just type stuff into the address bar and it knows what to do. I'm sure as market share increases it will regain bloat in the same way that FF did. And yet another developer will think, I know let's get rid of all those annoying popups.

I downloaded FF 5 the other day, 27 megs, I remember when it was ~2MB.

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#68

Post by csomar »

smackfu wrote: post #32
kalleboo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm luckily in that at my work, WebKit (Safari+Chrome) represents 60% of the visitors, with the rest being split among Firefox (20%) and IE (10%, which we don't even bother testing for)

Very odd, what sector has a majority of Safari/Chrome users? Even general public (non-enterprise) wouldn't skew like that.

My QrCode app (60% from France) 10% IE 30% Chrome/Safari 60% FireFox

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#69

Post by csomar »

wccrawford wrote: post #3

So the real question is: What did Chrome do differently than Firefox to gain market share that fast?

I really wonder the same thing. I saw my friends computers and they have Chrome installed. They are not tech savvy, and some of them don't know what it is. I don't know how it did install, but it did. I think it might be the install button in the Google Search home page, bundling with other apps (like Skype)...

Re: Google Chrome has 20% global market share

#70

Post by jemfinch »

joejohnson wrote: post #11

I don't understand Google's game here. I thought Mozilla was being showered with cash from Google? If Google is now betting on Chrome, are they going to continue supporting Mozilla? Mozilla is a pretty small-budgeted non-profit and I think they rely heavily on Google's support.

The less any one company controls the direction of the Internet, the better off Google is. Firefox fights Internet hegemony just as well as Chrome does.
Post reply on HN