The web browser market has become a lot more interesting and challenging in the last year. Windows users now have the choice between four (five if you count the mediocre Safari as well) primary web browsers that they can use: Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera and Internet Explorer. Firefox and Internet Explorer have been dominating the web browser market last year but the the market is changing thanks to recent developments.
If you look at Ghacks for instance you notice that 47% of all visitors that visited our site in the last year have been using Firefox followed by 35% Internet Explorer users, 7.34% Google Chrome users, 4.31% Safari and 3.52% Opera users. It is likely that the stats look similar on other technology sites whereas general websites still see Microsoft’s Internet Explorer at the top.
The picture changes if you look at the stats of December 2009. Firefox lost almost 8% and ranks with 39% behind Internet Explorer which gained 6% and is now at 41%. Google Chrome managed to get another 2% and is close to breaking into the two digits with 9.67%. Safari and Opera both dropped about 0.5% each.
There are two main reasons for the change: Basic keyword optimization brought new visitors to the website of which many prefer Internet Explorer over other web browsers. The second reason is the release of Internet Explorer 8 in March of 2009 which boosted the stats for Internet Explorer.
Google Chrome manages to get marketing share because it it actively promoted by Google on sites like Amazon but also on Google’s own site as well.
Web Browser Predictions:
- Google Chrome will reach 15-20% of market share on tech sites by year’s end.
- Opera and Safari will not be able to gain significant market share.
- Internet Explorer will lose market share (Internet Explorer 8 will gain but 6 and 7 will lose)
- Firefox will lose market share
I will – on a personal note – likely switch from Firefox to either Google Chrome or Opera. Firefox is a great web browser and the main reason for running it as the main web browser are its extensions. But it feels slow and memory hungry. The likely choice as of know is Google Chrome as it supports the Last Pass extension. If someone would port NoScript I would switch immediately.
Could be that I switch back to Firefox once the devs release Firefox 3.6 or 3.7 although 3.6 cannot compete with the speed of Google Chrome or Opera 10.5 alpha. Opera would be the prime choice if the developer’s would consider better extension support so that popular extensions could be ported to the web browser.
What about you? Will you switch web browsers in 2010? What has to happen to make you switch?
Related Articles:
Browser Market Share August 2010Browser Statistics October 2010
Web Browser Popularity
Opera Browser Surpasses 50 Million Desktop Users
Browser choices…
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I think I will stick to FF
I’ve used many browsers including Chrome and Firefox. No other than Opera have so convenient, customizable interface and low memory consumption. I like Opera and use it for a long time. But it has some disadvantages such as incorrect displaying of some pages and slow (compared to Chrome) JavaScript engine. I use Opera 10.10 and I hope that poor items will be improved in 10.5 version. I will switch to that one.
Re complaints about Firefox’s slowness: as I may’ve mentioned before, Ff must be properly configured in about:config for optimum broadband speed.
Yes, but even an optimized Firefox is much slower than Chrome. If it was just faster “on paper”, I’d pay no attention to it, but it is so noticeably faster it’s ridiculous.
I suppose it depends on a users needs, too. I’m on the internet all day for my job, so Chrome saves me a lot of time, especially when I’m using an RSS Reader and scrolling through stories with my mouse wheel. In Firefox, there is hesitation between each story scrolled, along with the obligatory hourglass. In Chrome there is NONE of that.
If you use this for hours upon hours like I do, it QUICKLY adds up! Not to mention that Chrome loads up faster, tabs load faster and if something crashes, it affects only that tab, not the whole browser.
I never intended to switch to Chrome either, but I just can’t deny it’s superiority. In comparison, Firefox makes me feel like it’s 2001 and I’m on Explorer. Kudos to Chrome!
Being on a Mac, I use Firefox.
It is fast and I really cannot think of a reason to switch.
NoScript, LastPass, and an intuitive Awesome Bar…
Plus so much more….
I like it a lot and recommend it to all.
I’ve been an avid fan of opera for ages and only use portable chrome incognito for porn :)
As with a number of people here, I was getting performance issues with FF on my linux installation (mostly cpu usage on sites with a lot of links and the same with Java. Using a combination of browsers atm
1) arora ( http://code.google.com/p/arora/ ) which is very lightweight and fast and has an Ad Blocker which works. Only downside is that it doesn’t run Java, but for everything else its ideal.
2) chrome to run the websites that were causing problems in FF I run it in incognito mode, manually clear the user data at the end of each session, and regularly remove the cookie that google keeps putting on my system ( a different on each time as far as I can see from my records) its Java use is much better than FF
3) Ice weasel ( firefox variant) which I run as a secure user, and need access to No-Script, ad-Block and petname.
Its basically finding which browser suits which purpose best. I run on a very low powered older system, so browsers such as arora that use little or no resources for my dailty browsing are ideal
For me, Google Chrome is my only choice.
Yes, I’ll use Firefox and Opera because they’re good browsers as well, but Chrome 4 outperforms them easily in speed and the Chrome extensions are so much faster too!
I have and always will be a fan of Internet Explorer. As a web developer it is important for me to use what most of my clients use as my primary browser and become familiar with it. When I develop web apps I use FireFox simply because of the FireBug addon but other than that I don’t use any other browsers except for testing web sites I build.
Chrome certantly “looks” cool, but I don’t see any reason to switch at this time.
Uh, Google Chrome more than “looks” cool. Its hands-down the fastest, simplest browser around. Its ridiculously faster than Internet Explorer, which reminds me of browsing the web circa 1998 in comparison.
You’re a developer and believes that Chrome is nothing but cosmetically different from IE? Really? Alrighty then.
I use Portable Iron version of chrome so google cannot spy. I can run two sessions by using in portable and as default browser- Great. And good plugins now. Incogniti mode only makes chrome private from your wife and kids. This also applies to other brosers – only Iron blocks your privacy against google! I also use Opera Portable and Firefox for duplicate bookmark checking using Checkplaces addon. Otherwise FF is crap but even worse is TB3.
I would like to use the SEWare iron instead of chrome. However since I am using a Slackware-based operating system, Zenwalk (http://www.zenwalk.org/) there appears to be an ongoing issue with libpng12.so.0, in that the Slackware version of the library is compiled without the version information which is held in the libpng12.la file. Without this version information the SRWare iron crashes each time. From my reading, there doesn’t appear to be an easy fix to all of this, since the problem is more with slackware than iron.
In the meantime, I will continue to run Chrome in Incognito mode, realizing that its not terribly private straight out-od-the-box. I can improve this by manually clearing all the private settings at the end of each session through Options. I can see why Google doesn’t do this, but as a security issue it is an important feature in most other browsers. One wonders why no indepentant developer has not come up with a plugin to cover this functionality.
It is interesting to note that although the Incognito mode does not store cookies on your system, from the web sites you visit, Google keeps writing a cookie to my system everyso often. And every so often I keep deleting it. if you examine the details of the cookie, it would appear to be a different one each time.
I should note that Google writes the cookie to my system although I have not during that session visited any google sites. I’m sure there is a logical explanation for this behaviour, though I can’t think of one, since the presence, or otherwise, of a Google cookie does not seen to have any effect on the behaviour or performance of the other websites I am visiting. One must therefore assume that the placing of the Google cookie on my system must only be for the benefit of Google .
You always think of an explanation, after you post. Checking through Firefox and No-Script, I notice that one of the sites has google-analytics activated (which I normally dis-allow through No-Script). This may be the reason for the mysterious appearance of goole cookies during the session. Probably should have a look at the session through Wireshark to see what is actually happening.
Raises two issues. Firstly, how much one comes to rely on No-Script and its ability to block this sort of thing, so one forgets that its not done as normal practice in other browsers. Secondly, one should always peer under the bonnet to see what is happening, and to note if anything strange is happening.
I may have implied some behaviour by Google, in my previous post, that may not have been correct. I will know after further testing who and what is calling the cookie. But as their own site says, everytime you open an Incognito session …Be wary of: Websites that collect or share information about you
It’s a bit disheartening to see you say that Firefox will lose market share this year, fair enough that Google Chrome and Opera are great browsers but when you think of what Mozilla has achieved over the past five years since it started, it’s come a really long way. I’ll be staying with Firefox as it’s an excellent browser and I’m excited about the forthcoming release of Firefox 3.6. I have tried Google Chrome & Opera, Google Chrome was blisteringly fast but it’s just not for me. I#ll be keeping an eye out for enhancements made by Google Chrome & Opera but I genuinely can’t see me moving away from the fox.
hhmm,nobody mentioned about COMETBIRD.so sad
til now in history da fastest web browser is COMETBIRD
cometbird 99.999% similar to firefox but only difference is that its faster than firefox.frens give it a try.otherwise u people wil miss a grt browser.
my options 1.cometbird 2.firefox 3.opera
Salutations, gentlefolk !
Spent the weekend trying out Chrome. IMHO it’s a bit faster than Firefox on basic web page loading, but the ‘save page as’ and ‘save link as’ functions are slower and less reliable.
While I much prefer the user interface of Opera to any competitor, its ‘save page as’ and ‘save link as’ functions are even less reliable than Chrome. Will definitely tryout new Opers version, though.
FIREFOX 4ever :-)
Opera, of course.
I have tried a few browsers at http://www.multibrowsers.com (there are about 50 browsers there) and liked Maxthon and K-meleon!