There is a perception that Google’s Chrome is a rounding error when it comes to browsers. And maybe it still is, but Google is now fighting that perception in a very public way. Today, it announced that the Chrome Team won a Founder’s Award for their achievements so far, and for the first time revealed how many people are using the Chrome browser: 30 million active users. Update: I guess I jumped the gun here. Google has been using that 30 million active user number since July.
Now, 30 million is certainly a big number, but it is still a tiny fraction of Internet Explorer or Firefox (which has 330 million users). NetApplications shows Chrome with only a 3.58 percent market share at the end of October, compared to 24 percent for Firefox and 65 percent for IE. But remember, Chrome only launched a year ago, so that is a fast ramp by any standard.
Nevertheless, Google is signaling with this award (which was previously won by the teams which created Gmail, Google Maps, and AdSense) and this figure that it is dead serious about Chrome. A few weeks ago, at a press conference I attended, CEO Eric Schmidt was asked about how Chrome was doing. Here’s an excerpt from that part of the Q&A:
Q: You keep adding to Chrome and nobody seems to be paying attention. If that is one of the places where the battle is fought you seem pretty far behind.
Sergey: Perhaps that is true in media . . .
Schmidt: let me, some of your assumptions about Chrome adoption are wrong. The adoption rate of Chrome is [very strong]. We are going to do a better job of getting that message out.
Schonfeld: Steve Ballmer calls it a rounding error, is it?
Schmidt: I don’t respond to Steve Ballmer questions. Next question?
The messaging has begun. Google generally doesn’t reveal user numbers for anything, so this is significant. And now it sets a precedent for Google to update the number in the future. Will it grow, and how fast?
I can’t wait till a proper version for mac is available. I am growing tired of the instabilities of ff and safari (pushing too hard in dev?) and hope to get a more stable platform with good performance out of chrome.
i stopped using this POS as soon as it stopped letting you open acrobat files inside of it. acrobat writer that is, not sure about reader.
And you look to yet a newbie on the block who is, ahem, “pushing too hard in dev” to release?
Hmmm. Doesn’t seem logical to pretend you know how stable of a platform chrome will be. It is fast though… but then so if Safari.
Safari on the Mac is a memory pig, PIG.
Firefox is pretty darn great all around but features in Safari keep me using it for GP.
Chrome all around does seem nice but I’m not wetting my pants … it uses quite a bit of memory. FF has a great memory footprint and that matters even in the days of 4gb standard ram configs.
I’m not sure how Mobile Safari keeps 4 “tabs” open for me all the time and doesn’t crash. Oh, maybe it’s that little thing, or lack thereof called a flash plugin?
Have you tried opera 10.1 for the mac yet? It’s super fast, and most pages render perfectly and much, much more stable hen chrome.
My biggest reason that I don’t use it as my default browser is because I like to have my bookmarks synced to my iPhone and my mac mini via Mobile Me.
I can import all my bookmarks from Safari to Opera quite easily, but I can’t figure out how to automatically sync Opera bookmarks to Safari. If I could sort this 1 issue out Opera would be my browser of choice on the mac.
I’ve been using Opera v10.10 beta for Mac…beautiful, stable and really fast. I’ve got the new Visual Tabs on the side on my Mac…great real estate.
Just use Opera Link to sync your bookmarks and typed history and custom searches to the cloud. From my iPhone, I go to http://link.opera.com to access them.
Check it out; 40M users can’t be wrong.
http://www.oper...m/browser/next/
I love Chrome. Even tried the latest IE on my new HP laptop. But it kept crashing, slow, pitiful. When will Microsoft understand that folks want light, simple, quick? I can’t wait for a Google operating system. My Vista is horrible.
your “announced” link simply leads to the same image in the post, not the actual announcement
give ability for add-ons, like adblockPlus and flashBlock and this thing will take off.
Google give an option for adblockplus? When ads are THE reason Google is where it is today? Seems highly improbable.
Besides, ads are why you GET this stuff for free… like the wonderful TechCrunch.
I am looking at the analytics of a 10m+ uniques per month website- and Chrome is growing very fast.
I have been using Chrome for more than a year and I cannot live without it. It is relatively very fast compared to IE and Firefox. I tested IE and Firefox last week just for comparison and they cannot beat Chrome.
Not that I’m a particularly good data point, considering my employer, but I just switched from Firefox to Chrome as my default browser, and couldn’t be happier. I’m still using Firefox for web development because Firebug is still indispensable, but for everyday browsing, Chrome is just so much faster. And maybe someday somebody gets around to building an extension for Chrome that gives the Developer Tools all the power of Firebug.
I’ve been using a variant of Chrome for awhile now, it’s fantastic only still waiting till plugins are made public, so far there are only a few dev. plugins but are of little or no use.
Considering that Google is ranked #1 on the web; the Chrome Browser is growing in popularity very fast. It is the most secure web browser; hackers don’t like playing in the “sandbox”. The security of Google Chrome will only lead to the creation of the most secure Operating System on the market when Chrome OS is released early next year. Pay attention Microsoft…you could learn a lot from Google…
I don’t think google is quite different from MS. Chrome is good and I sometimes use Chrome, but there are no reason to change to Chrome if you don’t have any specific problem with the current browser which most people usually don’t.
Yeah, if you love your internet to be slow, you may even have problems with Chrome.
When your internet connection ebbs & flows, other browser will only slow down, but the new Turbo feature in Opera will kick in to give you a ~3x rendering boost. Btw, it’s great for pruning those ugly flash-heavy sites.
http://www.oper.../browser/turbo/
When your connection gets fast again, it will go auto-off. Pretty cool.
Chrome has added 30 million users in 14 months compared to Firefox which has added 30 million new users in the last 8 weeks.
Yep. They’re killing it!
The numbers looked a bit confusing to me. Particularly the claimed market share compared with the number of users.
Chrome claims 30 million users with a 3.58% market share. That is ~8.379 million per 1%, making for 837 million total user base…
Firefox claims 330 million users under 24% market share. Thats 13.750 million users per 1%, making for a 1,375,000,000 total user base.
Have I missed anything?
I know these numbers (particularly browser %’s) should always be taken with a grain of salt though… just emphasizing that.
It’s pretty straight forward.
Firefox is a mainstream browser which means it has hundreds of millions of non-geek users. These “regular people” don’t spend 24/7 online. They will account for a smaller amount of _usage_ each.
Chrome is an early adopter, power-user, geek elite browser like Firefox was 5 years ago. Almost all of their 30 million users users are in the “heavy web users” category and each one will account for a large amount of _usage_.
Web stats firms measure usage, not users. Early adopter users use the Web more than late adopters.
Firefox’s first 30 million users were probably a lot more like Chrome’s current 30 million users, but today Firefox has more than 330 million users and most of them are not power users, they’re “regular people”.
-A
@Keith the 30M figure comes from Google, the market share figures come from Net Applications. Two different sources. You can’t extrapolate one from the other.
@Keith: You’re assuming that Net Applications has a modicum of credibility…which they do not. Gauging browser share is a black art, at best.
http://my.opera...oves-opera-to-2
They’re US-skewed, which would be like tabulating OS market share in Redmond and extrapolating globally. (Plus, they’ve been demonstrably dishonest in the past, as you can see from the link…fugly).
Chrome rules! Fastest browser ever. FF is turning into a slow & buggy browser.
I am an early adopter of Google Chrome all the way from day one. It is simply the greatest browser I have ever used. I love it. I’m also an early adopter of Gmail from day one which is also he best email system I have ever use and love seeing the growth, stabilization, innovations and improvements along the way.
i tried ff for a few days, and honestly i think its alittle slower than ie. i didnt use any add on. does it make a difference?
I don’t know how many people use Chrome and I don’t care. It’s the best browser, and so I use it.
Chrome 4.0 BETA is out now! (for Windows only …do’h)
It’s kinda funny how Schmidt interrupts Sergey and takes over the conversation with a simple “let me”. It’s clear who wears the pants in this relationship.
Chrome’s getting my vote – much faster starting up than Firefox. Superb browser.
google chrome, sux for developers
How so? I’ve been working on a pretty sophisticated extension for a few weeks now and I find it rather fun to work with. Admittedly I haven’t work with Firefox on the extension/plugin aspect so I can’t really compare, but what I’ve found with Chrome seems pretty awesome.
In particular I enjoy the background page model where you can have every tab/page/toolstrip communicate with a single core page to do the heavy lifting.
its not because chrome is good or bad.. have to support another browser because of rounding error
I’ve found Chrome to agree very closely with FF (and Safari not surprisingly), especially code-wise, though there is the odd discrepancy in the rendering… IE on the other hand… Would be so nice if we didn’t have to support IE anymore. Someday soon, with any luck! (If their versions even agreed with each other, let alone with the other browsers, that would be an improvement.)
This thing is super fast. I introduced it my co-worker to it, and he was like WOW.
It just needs more plug-ins, and perhaps more speed!
When’s it coming to Mac OS tho?, Firefox stopped being cool for a long minute now.
Firefox is weak.
No linux, no mac…and they released it what…almost a year ago…complete FAIL.
There are Linux and Mac versions in the developer channel (or whatever they call it). I’ve been using the daily builds of Chromium for months now and I’ve hardly bothered using Firefox at all.
I could see Chrome/Chromium picking up a few percentage points in the next few years when the major distributions switch to it as their default browser. I think that’s pretty inevitable; to me, Chromium is so self-evidently superior in every way that I’d be very surprised if this didn’t happen.
“and they released it what…almost a year ago…complete FAIL.”
The initial, and Windows-only release was 14 months ago. They said they were hard at work making a Mac version happen but that it was proving more difficult than they’d at first thought.
- A
Funny how 3.6% is “strong” for a google product but any market share under 50% for microsoft products is weak.
The google-influenced techcrunch lives on!
Oh yeah, apple under 10% is also strong…
what a joke
0 to 30M users in one year for any product is a strong ramp up.
@ Small Biz – Considering most computers are PCs and already have IE installed anything below 80% for IE means mainstream (non techie) users are actively switching away from their default browser. That’s huge. Have some perspective!
And Chrome does not come pre-installed in any OS by any OEM at the moment. But Sony and others are considering bringing Windows 7 computers with Chrome browser pre-installed instead of IE, and Chrome OS is going to be released within weeks for $100 ARM based laptops that will dominate the laptop market.
It’s a bit of spiced up figure…Google might have also included users who use chrome once in a blue moon..
I love Chrome, but i think if it supports more plug in (add on) like firefox, it’ll be much more better.
I’ve heard of Chromium, is it the open source version that are open for developed?
Of course Firefox has a larger market share. When you introduce the FIRST real competitor to a product (IE), any market shift is seen as significant.
When you start introducing more competitors, shifts seem less dramatic. 30 million users in a year is nothing to scoff at. If Chrome had come out first and had as much time on the market as Firefox has, I have no doubt it would easily outnumber the amount of users Firefox has at this time. Chrome is a great browser and is poised to be an amazing one. Give it time.
“If Chrome had come out first and had as much time on the market as Firefox has, I have no doubt it would easily outnumber the amount of users Firefox has at this time. ”
I’m not so sure about that.
One often overlooked reason that any not-Mozilla browser is succeeding right now is that Mozilla pushed the industry towards standards compliance from 2000-2004 when Firefox was released. It was Mozilla’s effort that broke open the IE-only world of websites and that was no short-term task at all. It took years and years of outreach to Web sites and developers and a slow grind up to a few percent of the market to push the top 1000 or so sites to not be totally broken in not-IE browsers. Even the brand new Safari, when it was released, had to claim to be “like Gecko” to get any decent number of websites to render.
Now any browser can come along and benefit from that knowing that sites will mostly “just work” but that didn’t happen magically. That was Mozilla’s doing.
Take that away, and anyone would be hard pressed to get traction because the Web was IE before Mozilla’s efforts to open it back up gained some success in the first half of the decade.
- A
You make a very, very good point and perhaps my claim was a bit sensational. I just feel that most people making comparisons of Chrome vs Firefox’s market share are really not taking into account the leverage Firefox had by coming out when it did. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great browser, but it’s success also has a lot to do with that often neglected fact.
still using ff and safari
They announced having 30 million users in July: http://googlebl...-chrome-os.html
There is no reason why anyone should be using the headache that is Firefox or heaven forbid, IE. Chrome is simple, and a heck of a lot faster than any other alternative.
We are running an extremely big website. We had to make our codes compatible to Chrome as the number of Chrome browsers is by no means to be ignored.
When working as an seo, I prefer firefox. When surfing online for fun I use maxthon. Accasionally, I use Chrome.
Your “announced” link points to the logo.
thanks, fixed
Chrome Toolbar please!!!!!
I’m not sure if chrome will ever be successful. It just doesn’t have the market share for growth
For ordinary users… Firefox is f….
But it depends Firefox is awesome for me as web dev. No wonder other browsers need to cater 2 customers ordinary users and developers….
Chrome has as much of the browser share on my, decidedly non-tech, site as Netscape 4. Yes, Netscape 4. Heh.
Chrome is the Firefox I always wanted!
I have been having massive problems with IE on my Vista, so I switched to Chrome and never turned back. I absolutely love it.
Now that I’ve upgraded with Windows 7 and IE probably fixed some bugs, I am still a loyal Chrome supporter. Count me in the 30 million!
I have been using Chrome from its initial days and now its part of my online life. But as a web developer, I feel to get decent applications on Chrome other web development standards need to be compatible this browser.
Chrome is very light and very fast browser so i think that’s the reason behind the popularity of google chrome.
Yes, 30 million is certainly a big number & thats will take much of the share of browsers market.
Recently Portable version of chrome was launched , Portable Google Chrome 3.0 (http://inforids...e-for-download/) & thats really good.
I’ve been using Chrome for a few months now and I love it. Sure I miss Firefox’s plug ins but I guess speed and stability in the context of browsers are a priority.
p.s. Chrome should use a more legible font for the address bar.
I’d like to give it a try when the mac version is ready. FF has been pretty decent so far except for the occasional crash/hang (probably due to all the apps i run), but generally a nice browser. Presently use both Safari and FF.
- John
http://twitter....om/johnmorrison
@John: If you don’t feel like waiting, check out Opera v10 for Mac.
It has the original Speed Dial and Opera Link (bookmark sync) and custom search shortcuts and ‘Quick Find search from the address bar’ that were “borrowed” bit-by-bit by lesser browsers.
You may be shocked.
http://www.oper...m/browser/next/
I see a few comments saying “still using FF and Safari” etc. Why the heck are you? Fair enough if your on a Mac and don’t want to beta test the current version but if you’re on Windows then what’s the deal? It’s the fastest and most stable browser for Windows, I’ve been using it for 14 months intensively for both work (along with FF) and home and its been almost flawless throughout. I just don’t get it, if you’re worried about privacy get a build from Chromium…
I use Chrome exclusively at home, and IE7 at work. The difference is no rounding error.
The best thing about Chrome? Automatic updates. Users have proved lazy, slow and ignorant, stop allowing them to anchor innovation needlessly. A user wants innovation as much as us, they just don’t realize it.
I live in Shanghai. I love Chrome. It’s very fast and clean. however, not too many people know it, not to mention to install it. Google should launch a marketing campaign to promote it.
Three things. First, Chrome just doesn’t work very well yet and lacks a lot of features that people like. Second, javascript speed is overblown. Try Chrome side by side with Firefox or IE in 10 Web pages and say with a straight face that you notice a huge difference in speed. Third, of those 30 million users, a large portion are people like me and you – technorati who mess around with kind of thing as a hobby. Most people do not do that. I have installed Chrome probably 15-20 times but use it rarely.
I have to say, I’ve grudgingly replaced Firefox with Chrome at work. I love Firefox’s plug-ins, but it’s become so bloated that it’s practically useless to me (due in large part to the plug-ins, I suspect). So its biggest advantage is also its biggest weakness.
Chrome has proven itself to me to be reliable, fast, and effective. What more can I ask? Plus, with a dual-monitor setup, the ability to drag a tab from an open Chrome on one monitor to the other one is just… well, life-savingly simple.
Have been using Chrome since it came out, and it has never let me down like IE and FireFox. I really like it’s everyday operation.
How many users are there on flock?
I have design blog that gets like 100k users a year (I know not much)
This is the stats for the last year
Firefox: 68.97%
Internet Explorer: 17.72%
Safari: 5.22%
Chrome: 3.39%
Opera: 2.60%
If Firefox has 330 million users than I can see how Chrome could have 10% of that.
Looking towards the launch of Google ChromeOS… Hope it will be as fast as Chrome (browser) is…
Hi guys.
Why you guys want to use Chrome so much?
What are the good things with it?
Im security and tech personel and i have test allmost everything in allmost every browser and i haven´t found anything so great from it what you guys hype here.
First i have seen that with slower computer´s chrome is overkilling program that just make computer freezing if you keep even 4 page up. And yeah it take´s lot of ram versus others.
Sure chrome download pages faster than others, but same time it takes much more of prosessor´s power to do it whitch make it crashing more usual than others. (i dont like chrome also becouse it needs so many things from your OS to work, so you cant use it in custom OS)
Sure the browser from Google is great for new computer user or others who don´t use their computer so often. But it lacks most of things that may be needed for work; but it is good try from google (others used few years to fix most of problems that google just copied from others, so it is better than IE and sometimes better than firefox).
I wont say that other browsers are better or something, but Chrome don´t do most of things that it is saying, but they have hided most of bad things very well. Well maybe can be one of best browsers in time, but right now they are not the uberious god.