Could Chrome overtake Internet Explorer in the browser wars?

[News Feed]

A month ago, Google's three-year effort to push its Web browser, Chrome, took a major step when analysts said it had passed Mozilla's Firefox to become the second-most popular tool of its kind on the Internet.

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[Glaucus]

Well, it still hasn't overtaken Firefox and doesn't even exist in the mobile market. Opera Mini seems to be doing well on the mobile market. I'll probably install the Mobile FF once I get my ASUS Transformer Prime (damn thing has been back ordered for weeks now).

But funnily enough, Google demotes itself on it's own search engine!

Google demotes Chrome in search results after violating own paid links policy

Google's search team has demoted the main page for its Chrome browser for at least 60 days after being accused of violating its own policy against paid links with a marketing campaign designed to boost Chrome's popularity. Searching Google for "chrome" no longer brings up www.google.com/chrome in the first page of results, but the first result is still a guide from Google on how to download and install Chrome.

That should teach themselves a lesson!

 

[ilwrath]

Well, it still hasn't overtaken Firefox and doesn't even exist in the mobile market. Opera Mini seems to be doing well on the mobile market.

Actually, a lot of sites have Chrome trending just above Firefox for late 2011.

And as for mobile... Well, it depends on how you look at it. If you go by family, Chrome is WebKit. WebKit includes Android browser and Safari. I'd say that is a pretty good presence in the mobile market. All the features you'd expect in a mobile Chrome are in Android Browser, and all except Flash are in Safari. So while, in name, you're correct, in practice, I'd say Chrome owns a stranglehold on the mobile market.

To me, Opera has always looked like the odd one out. It just doesn't seem to have any defining point. IE hangs its hat as being the best built-in experience on Windows. Firefox hangs its hat on open source freedom. Chrome/Webkit has the Linux/Macintosh crowd and is also open source, so it stands to reason it's starting to eat into Firefox a bit. Opera.... Well, it isn't open source, it isn't built-in anywhere, it isn't the most secure, it isn't the most compliant, it really seems to just say "At least we're not IE." Is that really enough? Modern IE isn't as bad as it was back in the IE5/6/7 days.

 

[the_leander]

Opera is the browser of choice if you have either a low end computer of phone. It is by far the most useable browser going for said devices. Only both my old tocco lite and my vodafone 858 I have opera mini installed, only my tablet Opera mobile and on my laptop Opera 11. On 3g connections outside of city centres here in the uk, Opera's turbo feature is indespensible and nothing else I've tried comes close in this regard.

Likewise for some platforms Opera is the only game in town - Nintendo's wii, for instance.

--edit--

Looks like the issue with Opera mobile not being able to post here was down to the rich text editor... kinda like opera desktop had around the version 9.x or so. Switched back to the basic one for now and all is good again.

 

[faethor]

I like Opera for the Amigaishness (nice new word there) of it.

 

[Robert]

I use Dolphin on my android 'phone:
http://www.dolphin-browser.com/

 

[ilwrath]

Opera is the browser of choice if you have either a low end computer of phone.

Really? Interesting. I've always been of the opinion that WebKit was the thinner of the two. Maybe I should re-examine.

Likewise for some platforms Opera is the only game in town - Nintendo's wii, for instance.

Ugh. Yeah, I suppose that is true. Though the Wii browser is 20 shades of terrible. Any time it encounters the simplest Flash ad or animation... (PING!) Out of Memory. Do you want to lose your browser window or crash the system and lose your browser window? (And there's no way to disable flash. Nice touch, Internet Channel.)

I use Dolphin on my android 'phone:

Isn't Dolphin just a wrapper for the built-in browser? I tried it once, but couldn't see the point.

 

[the_leander]

Really? Interesting. I've always been of the opinion that WebKit was the thinner of the two. Maybe I should re-examine.

On my eeepc 701 it was consistently faster than either rekonq or chromium and more compatible than midori overall. That said I did have to set it to run with the -nomail ? switch so it was just the core browser and not the full suite otherwise it could bog down quite quickly.

Ugh. Yeah, I suppose that is true. Though the Wii browser is 20 shades of terrible. Any time it encounters the simplest Flash ad or animation... (PING!) Out of Memory. Do you want to lose your browser window or crash the system and lose your browser window? (And there's no way to disable flash. Nice touch, Internet Channel.)

On the tocco lite it is the only feasible way of browsing the net due to it only being edge capable. My Vodafone 858 suffers from cheap battery syndrome, so my choices are maybe 4hrs use with 3g on, or use opera mini via 2g and get a faster rendering web for double that as well as a much reduced use of bandwidth.

Isn't Dolphin just a wrapper for the built-in browser? I tried it once, but couldn't see the point.

I tried DolphinHD for a while and thought it OK, no better or worse than opera mobile via wifi, but again once on 3g it couldn't keep up once Turbo mode was engaged in opera. Not to mention using Turbo effectively halves the amount of bandwidth I go through (am metered on 3g).

However, DolphinHD's interface was better thought out for tablet use, although I think the default browser in Android is better again in that regard.

 

[Glaucus]

Since I got my Nexus S in December, all I've used is the default Android browser. I was surprised it wasn't a port of Chrome, but I'd imagine it shares something with it's big brother. Still, this chart shows who's king of the mobile market:

 

[Robert]

Isn't Dolphin just a wrapper for the built-in browser? I tried it once, but couldn't see the point.

Could well be. I've never checked. I just like the layout and the way it works.