How has Chrome had such a meteoric rise?

[mikeymikec]

I've spent a little while looking at w3school's browser stats this morning.

IMO:

In 2005, Firefox had the support of the early adopters who looked for a change from IE6. More non-tech-inclined people would have been attracted by the recommendation because IE6 on their machine was probably loaded up with unnecessary toolbars and other junk slowing it down and/or making it unstable. Firefox enjoyed a steady rise in usage for years.

Chrome appears on the scene in 2008 with apparently an immediate 3% market share (which I find a bit surprising). It looks like a good portion of that percentage was nabbed from IE, so my guess is that Google put that link to Google Chrome on the google home page immediately after release.

Firefox hit its peak usage in 2009, and its usage faltered consistently from that point onwards. Chrome's usage steadily went up to the present date, but significantly faster than Firefox's usage ever did in previous years.

My initial thought was perhaps a major reason for this rise was Google recommending Chrome on its home page, but then it occurred to me that Firefox Start was a Google search page hosted on the Google site but did not have a link to Chrome on it. At some later date, Firefox had the firefox start page that was hosted locally.

My next thought was perhaps approximately 5 years is enough for a browser profile to start really going to pot and for the average person to look elsewhere, that and earlier adopters of Google Chrome are probably singing its praises (perhaps for the same reason, they switched from a borked FF/IE profile, just sooner than other people, or some people just like to try something new once in a while), but Chrome has been around for 8 years now. I've seen enough Chrome profiles with crap in them, or the fact that Chrome ate memory for breakfast, which must have put some people off it (or perhaps they upgraded in one way or another?).

I checked when Australis was introduced, it was some time after Firefox began its decline (2013).

 

[lxskllr]

Google whores chrome everywhere. You can't do a simple search without being spammed by chrome. Chrome is also shovelware, and you get it whether you want it or not. Most people don't care what browser they use, and I bet 25% of them don't notice when their browser changed to chrome after installing some software they found online.

 

[ControlD]

I think one reason is that as people started to use Chrome as their Android browser they naturally started to use Chrome as their desktop browser. The two integrate very well.

The pattern for me went pretty much as mike described. When I was looking or something better than Internet Explorer I found and started to use Firefox. When Firefox started to suck (and it did, terribly) I naturally found Chrome. It hasn't started to suck (as a browser anyhow) yet so I have stayed with it. Most people I know run Chrome for similar reasons.

 

[nerp]

Because for a long time, IE sucked, Firefox was bloated and Safari was garbage. That left just Chrome.

Things have changed but people tend to stick with what works.

I like Chrome for the simple reason it includes flash and you don't have to install the standalone junk.

I perfer Edge now for font rendering and overall performance. Extension support is coming, which is great. I might fully switch then.

 

[Nashemon]

One reason I think may be partially responsible is that Chrome came (comes?) preinstalled on many computers. I've never seen Firefox preinstalled on anything.

I still use both of them, for different reasons. Mainly to keep cookies separated for synchronous logons, but also Chrome's video playback is smoother than Firefox, though I admit I'm not running the most recent version of Firefox.

 

[Ketchup]

Yep. Agreeing with remarks so far. People don't go out and look for it. It comes pre-installed. Now, if it's on the phone, they may actively look for it on the tablet. I mean, who wouldn't take it over IE? Google is huge, they can afford to have it placed where they want. I don't think Mozilla will ever be there. Which is fine with me, as it should mean that hackers are looking more in the IE and Google direction. Which isn't to say Chrome doesn't have the best security of any of them, but that's because a) they afford to, and b) they have to.

 

[John Connor]

I was a loyal Firefox user. In fact, I ran the Mozilla browser prior to Firefox. Then they started to copy Chrome and I ditched them and went with Pale Moon. Now Pale Moon has it's own engine. Surprisingly, all my FF addons work in PM with the new engine. PM is not for somebody that doesn't want to work on things under the hood. Because some websites don't like the UA. In other words, a lot of websites use user agent sniffing.

 

[TheRyuu]

I think people forget how Firefox development stagnated as Chrome was gaining momentum. Even now the Firefox devs don't seem to particularly care about security as much as I think they should.

 

[master_shake_]

Google whores chrome everywhere. You can't do a simple search without being spammed by chrome. Chrome is also shovelware, and you get it whether you want it or not. Most people don't care what browser they use, and I bet 25% of them don't notice when their browser changed to chrome after installing some software they found online.

everything here.

that's why.

 

[mikeymikec]

I think people forget how Firefox development stagnated as Chrome was gaining momentum. Even now the Firefox devs don't seem to particularly care about security as much as I think they should.

I agree with all of your points except that the masses would notice anything like that. I personally have always considered Firefox's performance and functionality to be perfectly satisfactory, and while I spend more than the average person on computer hardware, I don't chase upgrades (pretty much everything in the last several years has waited until it had to be done). The factor that got me to change over in the end was the news about Pwn2Own dropping Firefox for pen-testing because it was "too easy".

I initially disagreed with lxskllr's post about Chrome's rise due to it being "whored everywhere", though I hadn't remembered/considered that Avast has Chrome as an opt-out option during install, I'm fairly sure Adobe Reader does (or did) too, so that probably stacks up. I've not seen Chrome being "shoveled" in the way he described though, nor have I seen it in an OEM PC install (but then that may be a regional factor).

 

[sbpromania]

Mainly, because of two reasons:

1. Backed up and pushed by Google
2. It's a good browser

Google Chrome it's like IE (from the first point of view) and like Firefox (from the second). So you got the 2 "ingredients" of success into the same product.

 

[nemesismk2]

i used to like google chrome because of the speed but didn't like using it very much so started using mozilla firefox which i have stayed with now for ages. my anti virus would auto install google chrome unless i didn't make sure it wasn't installed.

 

[TheSlamma]

Google is also master of the noob farm, basic PC users don't have to think about much with the plugins being auto updated with Chrome and it seems fast since it's busy puking up cache files all over your user profile.

Just like Google Apps vs Office 365, 365 is way more powerful, especially Excel vs that wimp Sheets rag, but average PC users don't use most of the functions and probably could never figure them out anyway.

 

[TheRyuu]

since it's busy puking up cache files all over your user profile.

Can you elaborate? I don't really see how its caching is any different from Firefox or IE.

 

[TheSlamma]

Can you elaborate? I don't really see how its caching is any different from Firefox or IE.

In Firefox cache can be easily set to 0 the GUI. The portable edition of Firefox it is already disabled by default too.

With Chrome the only way to limit cache is by editing the target in your shortcut with some variables or with group policies. If you don't then what Windows users find is a user profile that had hundreds of megs and even gigs of useless files all over it, Mac users have their user library filled with the same junk. Sure you can clean it with the GUI menu for a single instance but I want it off at all times without having to go to incognito mode.

We live in the era of broadband, I don't want cache files that were beneficial for the dialup era taking up precious real estate on my SSD.

The portable edition of Chrome thankfully redirects cache to the temp folder and then cleans it up when you are done, but unlike portable Firefox, Chrome portable breaks the built-in update feature so you have to download the new version and overwrite it yourself.

This all stems from Googles want to control how people use the web and their own computer. It's fine for average users but not that great for power users who want more control over how things run on their PC.

This is my settings, Override and set it to zero. I have the GPO's from Chrome on my PC and I can control cache there but it disobeys the size in bytes settings regularly.

 

[ronbo613]

I've used Firefox primarily for the past few years but recently, there have been a number of issues and a noticeable increase in pages that do not display correctly, especially as things transition to HTML 5. I find myself going from Firefox to Chrome when Firefox does not display webpages properly.

While "advanced" users scrutinize the technical minutia of different internet browsers, the average person just wants to view websites without a lot problems. Android phone users can sync accounts, which saves people time. Chrome using a lot of memory? Most modern computers have plenty of RAM to handle it(sorry Mr. Hundred Tabs Open Guy, you don't count). Chrome works fine on my $100 Android phone.

Google may be spying on everyone, but has there been any real cases of physical or financial harm for this heinous intrusion? How much privacy can you realistically expect in today's world?

Bottom line is that Chrome is easiest to use and works better than the other browsers for the average user.

 

[Rakehellion]

Google whores chrome everywhere. You can't do a simple search without being spammed by chrome. Chrome is also shovelware, and you get it whether you want it or not. Most people don't care what browser they use, and I bet 25% of them don't notice when their browser changed to chrome after installing some software they found online.

All of this, basically.

 

[ultimatebob]

I use Chrome for Seamless bookmark and history syncing between my Mac, PC, Smartphone, and tablet.

It doesn't matter if you use Apple, Microsoft, Android, or Linux OS'es... There is probably a version of Chrome for it that works more reliably than Firefox.

 

[TheRyuu]

In Firefox cache can be easily set to 0 the GUI. The portable edition of Firefox it is already disabled by default too.

You can set Chrome (at least on the dev branch) to delete local content on browser close. I'm not sure if this includes the cache or not. I don't see any other way to disable the cache other than just using incognito mode. I always did find that slightly annoying but at least with Chrome you get a cache which isn't terrible (unlike the sqlite database you get with Firefox that scatters a million small files around).

This is my settings, Override and set it to zero. I have the GPO's from Chrome on my PC and I can control cache there but it disobeys the size in bytes settings regularly.

Chrome will enforce a minimum cache size. If you set it to zero it will instead use the enforced minimum, not the greatest if you wanted it disabled but it should at least prevent the cache from growing to crazy sizes.

Chrome does cache some semi-useful things beyond just site content. There's a GPU cache which will cache shader programs along with a V8 javascript cache for compiled code. These probably won't be blowing up the size of your Chrome profile folder but I do understand your issue with it for site content.

 

[mikeymikec]

It makes little sense disabling the browser cache for the simple reason of "which is faster, your Internet connection, or local storage?". Perhaps you have a point if you're running off a tape drive If your SSD is so small that say 350MB is a problem, then you have bigger problems than browser cache IMO.

 

[John Connor]

Well, in his defense. Don't you think writing to an SSD constantly isn't really a good idea? Especially with the aforementioned high speed Internet connection?

 

[Ketchup]

In who's defense? I am pretty sure any browser is writing to a file, even if it just isn't saved after the session has ended. In which case disabling would cause MORE writes as frequently visited sites would be writing to said SSD on every single visit as if it were a first.

 

[mikeymikec]

Well, in his defense. Don't you think writing to an SSD constantly isn't really a good idea? Especially with the aforementioned high speed Internet connection?

My SSD is two years old and has had approximately 4TB of writes to it in that time. In TechReport's endurance trials, IIRC the poorest-performing drive reached 200TB of writes. Using that as a yardstick, I should run out of host writes when the drive is 100 years old (I actually bought the model of drive that lasted longest in those trials).

Furthermore, in the past I've replaced the boot drive in my system about every 5 years (usually for extra capacity). While I would assume that a decent SSD will outlive a decent HDD in both performance and reliability terms, I only have a 256GB SSD which is currently ~75% full.

Even if an SSD only could handle 10 years of host writes (assuming my typical storage usage continues), it's still probably more than enough for me.

PS - I haven't done anything special to my Windows configuration to avoid host writes. Defrag was automatically configured to not defrag the SSD by Windows, and SuperFetch was auto disabled (which are the only two things I'd bother to check).

 

[John Connor]

In who's defense? I am pretty sure any browser is writing to a file, even if it just isn't saved after the session has ended. In which case disabling would cause MORE writes as frequently visited sites would be writing to said SSD on every single visit as if it were a first.

Nope, not true. I have disabled ALL caching in Pale Moon. Sure, there's other writes, but no cache thrashing.

 

[sweenish]

Well, in his defense. Don't you think writing to an SSD constantly isn't really a good idea? Especially with the aforementioned high speed Internet connection?

A user will NEVER reach the write limit on a modern SSD before the drive itself keels over.