Browser Loyalty (or not)
I guess this weekend will be google analytics weekend, given my post yesterday and today. In light of the rumors that Facebook may purchase the Opera browser, I got to thinking about how quickly browser market shares move. If the AVC blog audience is a good sample, then the answer is pretty quickly.
Here's the breakout of browser market share on AVC in the month of May 2006:
IE was dominant with over 60% of the AVC audience using it in May 2006. Firefox was coming on strong and Safari was tiny with about 5% of the users.
In just two years, the landscape had shifted rapidly.
In May 2008, Firefox was ascendant and over half of AVC readers used it. IE was still popular and Safari had doubled its share among AVC readers.
Two years later, in May 2010, the market was shifting again.
Firefox was still on top but was falling and Chrome was taking share from it. Safari had doubled again, and IE usage was in freefall.
And fast forward to today, we see a different story again.
Chrome is by far the most popular browser among AVC readers. Safari and Firefox usage has declined a bit. And IE contnues its decline.
All of this share shifting has happened in the relatively short timeframe of six years. There is apparently very low loyalty to browsers in the AVC community. I suspect our crew here is more likely to try something new and shift than the broader Internet, but even so, this is something to think about if owning a browser is part of your lockin strategy. Apparently that doesn't work too well.
UPDATE:
There was a question about OS market share. This is what the current OS market share on AVC looks like:
Comments (Archived):
First comment! Woo hoo! ..ok now to go read 😉
that’s cheating 😉
chrome, lean and fast to bloated and slow in two years .. next?
opera?
its possible ..still pretty snappy and the developer tools are killer
I wish people would quantify ‘bloated’. The chrome codebase hasn’t gotten much larger and it’s actually getting faster with newer JS vm’s and more HTML interfaces replacing the slow peered win32 stuff.Same is true for gecko, thorugh the overall feel of Firefox is definitely slower in a few of the version, memory usage and leakage have fallen in later versions. If you’re Firefox installation is getting slow, create a new profile, reinstalling doesn’t do anything. (This is also getting fixed somewhat, but it’s mostly a communication problem as far as user education. Reinstallation should probably flag the browser to recreate the profile and sqlite database, and profile switching should be more discoverable than starting Firefox with the -ProfileManager switch)
Where’s Rockmelt!?
I wonder if this is a comment on the browser itself – browsers do not create loyalty, or simply the state of the market for browsers – still in infancy but eventually a winner will take all. Obviously most people don’t care what their browser is as long as it works. I do tend to think that at some point, new browsers will stop coming on the scene, features will surpass common usage, and people will mostly stick with whatever it is they’re using at that point.
is 18+ years is still infancy? (I’m counting fro 1993/94 when I saw first browsers in college – Cello and Mosaic )I had the same view as you and was quite surprised when chrome came out .. I was a die hard firefox person at the time…with Chrome, google’s turned it into an app environment too[edit: ps : fun history, here’s cello https://en.wikipedia.org/wi… ]
Sure it could be. The entire internet is still really in a period of infancy, or perhaps adolescence. At SOME point this whole thing is going to flatten out. I do think the browser will be a particularly stable market at that point. I think browser stability will come shortly after super high broadband speeds are available to everyone.
Okay.. you’re probably right on infancy, certainly other industries have been around much longer. (books, printing, wheels ..ok now I’m being an a-hole 😉 )But I guess if we’re just looking at modern tech counting from the 40s adolescence feels more like it 🙂
I think there is a huge amount of innovation to come in browsers. To give one simple example, we are only now starting to support rich media types in HTML5.
using chrome here ..the first thing I typically installQuestion is .. what is “mozilla compatible agent” ..is that native apps embedding or web services pulling content ?
good question. i wondered the same thing.
Some platforms (eg. Debian Linux) don’t offer FF directly because it embeds code (eg the Flash plugin) which is not regarded as being truly open.In its place they offer a “pure” build of FF (for example IceWeasel) which is basically just the FF core without the proprietary extensions.My guess is that “mozilla compatible agent” refers to such builds.
Likely embedded webkit given the volume, but it could refer to any cloaked/spoofed user agent, including MSIE.
My guess is that it refers to a specific HTTP request header (part of the HTTP protocol) sent in the request that the client (usually a browser) sends to the server. (An HTTP request header is one of the fields, normally invisible to the user, that is sent to the server along with the main part of the request, which is the desired URL to be browsed – like http://avc.com )See here for the technical details:http://www.w3.org/Protocols…Typically each different browser like IE, Firefox etc. has their own constant/hard-coded value which they send as the value of the User-Agent header – it identifies them as IE, Firefox, etc. to the server. For Firefox it is something of the form “mozilla …gecko….”. But sometimes other apps or clients send that same value for the header, to “pretend” to the server that they are Mozilla a.k.a. Firefox, for various reasons. It’s not necessarily a fraudulent operation, sometimes they do it because they are written to behave like Mozilla so they send that header so that the server, if sending back anything which may sometimes have to be browser-dependent (e.g. JavaScript), will send Mozilla-specific stuff. Hope that made sense …
I think you’re right. Also – sweet primer on http headers and user agents.
I don’t believe in loyalty to a product. If a product is good and keeps on being better than the rest in my P.O.V than I’ll keep my loyalty. Once there’s a shift and I find something better for my needs, I’ll switch with it. I have done it with browsers, went from Netscape to IE to Firefox to Opera and now I’m with Chrome. Facebook looks like a very good potential browser with its premise of already built in apps, if you add Opera into that mix it sounds even better. Time will tell how things unfold with FB as a browser, but for now I’m staying “loyal” to Chrome.
This AVC analytics series is awesome. Good data from what are likely to be Innovators/early adopters. Can you tell what device people are on? Will make for a good future post.
not really. It is one of the limitations of analytics – this data doesn’t track, because it isn’t doesn’t reflect browser behavior (demo data)
One can’t tell if I’m on a mobile device or not?
I could tell if someone visited by a phone, but not a phone and a computer without both sharing the same IP address controlled by the same user. You end up doublecounting.Further, there is demographic data (income, the actual location of where you live versus where you work, age, gender, do you have kids, what’s your job) that is missing from browser cookies. If they were they life would be a lot more pleasant from an analytics point of view.
nope. 22% mobile, 78% desktop. mobile is mostly iOS. android is about 15-20% of mobile.
The decline of Safari in the last 2 years is interesting because if you compare the OS stats between 2010 and 2012 I’ll bet that the percentage of OSX visitors has increased in the same timeframe.
Oh – Fred should update the post with an OS graph
yes, i should. for now or for all four dates?
i just updated the post with current OS market share
thats cool – thanks!
The results are a fairly convincing demonstration of the overreaching of those who have declared the death of the desktop.
most surprising entry, imho : RockMelt
It’s counting visits, not visitors, so that could be one person.
good point. You’re probably right.So what this really means is that all I need to do is visit this site 500 times with my custom “Andy Idsingas wicked browser” user agent and tada I’m in the top 10. How cool is that![edit: maybe only “cool” for an ego surfer 😉 ]
I don’t have much invested in my browser, so switching is a breeze when a better one shows up. Only baggage is my list of about 200 favorites, which I believe you can export to new browsers.My understanding of Google’s Chromebooks is that you will not longer have a choice. Chrome or chrome. That could be an issue, they’ll really have to hold your hand and make people customize the experience so they couldn’t imagine leaving it.The more you’ve customized your browser with extensions, apps, shortcuts, and cool features, the more invested you are in it, and in that way of experiencing of the web.
Your understanding is correct. But it is rather different from Apple’s decision to ban alternative browsers. In the case of Apple other browsers could perfectly well run on iOS devices- they simply decided as a matter of policy to not allow it. In the case of chromebooks the OS is the browser so it is kind of meaningless to have another browser.
Interesting, I wasn’t aware you had to use Safari on iOS. HTC EVO Droid over here. 🙂
You don’t. I use Firefox as well as Safari.
I remember switching from Netscape to IE back in the 90s, today there is no loyalty or emotional connection, speed and maximum screen real estate.
It is funny that Opera is now worth .8 Instagrams apparently (http://news.cnet.com/8301-1… Opera + Facebook is a potential disrupting combination.I think the one factor that might be in play here is “making the browser social” natively, and not via plugins, bookmarks or bookmarklets. I liked how RockMelt integrated Social features right into the browser.From a developer’s perspective, it becomes more challenging to test compatibilities for all these browsers. Something always breaks for one or the other. We use Chrome and Safari as the primary ones, then test for Firefox & IE thirdly.Why hasn’t Apple innovated more with Safari- that is a interesting question.2014 view? Chrome, Opera, Safari. 1/3 each. FF will get acquired.
You just reminded me about Rockmelt! I remember using them very briefly more than one year ago and experience was good – I might check them out again
I don’t buy the Rockmelt approach. I think it is doomed to repeat the experience of Flock.
APPLE NOT INNOVATE MORE WITH SAFARI BECAUSE STEVE HAD LIMITED HOURS IN EACH DAY.NOW THAT BOTTLENECK GONE, MORE PROBABLY GET DONE.WHETHER IT GET DONE BETTER IS OPEN QUESTION.
will be interesting to see what happens
This may be a sign of my laziness – but I’m loyal to Chrome b/c of my huge investment of time in my bookmarks. Yes, I know. You can import, export, etc. But I have a nice collection of ~30 most used icons on my task bar with one “more” folder on the far left.I moved over from Firefox mainly for curiosity’s sake and stayed for the speed and developer’s tools.
If people don’t use Chrome I tell them they should download it, and all I need to do to convince them is say that it’s 10x faster – which it is, or at least feels like.
I wonder if there are other people like me who use Safari as their primary browser on a Mac but Chrome on a Windows PC. I find the user experience of Safari superior to Chrome on Macs, but I cannot even stand to use is for a minute on a PC. Am I the only one that feels like this?
I am a Mac user and generally love their product but have never been a fan of safari. I still find Chrome to be best overall and at least I use it on all computers
this is very interesting analytics. I don’t believe in browser loyalty and I switched from firefox to chrome about a year ago because it was easier at the time (or more intuitive) adding extensions. Also, I also wonder how relevant browsers will be in the future as the discovery process within sites such as twitter, facebook, quora, engagio, disqus, and others becomes more dominant.
That’s an interesting observation. If the browser is becoming more middleware than frontware, the type of browser may not matter that much.That said, the only desktop browser experience I care about is how my Gmail behaves in the browser, and so far Chrome is the best at it.
The point about gmail is spot on. That would be an important deciding factor. I was at a conference recently where the windows people were trying to advertise the ‘skydrive’ system but my main problem was that it was all mediated through hotmail. Also, I am a dropbox user which for some bizzare reasons I have loyalty towards but this is a topic for another day
Can you explain the difference between middleware and frontware as it applies to browsers? Also, I wonder if Dolphin and other browsers are broken out.– reply via engag.io “tagline goes here”
I think this is the question of Chrome OS – if the browser becomes so minimal in terms of tools, does it matter?
I think there is a huge amount of value still to be created in browsers. Watch this space 🙂
Is there going to be a blog post about the new Disqus update on this site? (or maybe it already happened and I missed it?) The titles are gone. Writing a comment from an iPhone has become virtually impossible. The experience on a laptop has also gotten worse.
You can check out the latest on Disqus and the new platform via http://blog.disqus.com/post…We’re still a few weeks out from our public launch, and tightening up mobile and a few other bugs.If you want to leave feedback or mention specific problems or suggestions, there’s a feedback link directly above the main comment box… We’d love to hear from you.
Hi,Thank you for your reply. I already left my feedback. Hope it helps.
There was a good one when the new Disqus launched: http://www.avc.com/a_vc/201…
Any stats on Mobile vs. Desktop browsers and on Safari iPhone? I noticed Android Browser at 3.54% which I would have expected to be a bit higher.
With most Android phones now using a Chrome browser, that could help explain…
Most android phones don’t use a chrome browser.
True. Certainly not globally, but imagine the AVC audience is mostly Chrome.
Chrome wasn’t available at all on Android until very recently. Android had its own browser – excitingly called ‘browser.’
not this girl..
@wmoug:disqus My question on Safari was related since mac users may use non-Safari but iPhone are primarily Safari.
As a Mac user, I use Chrome 90% of the time and Safari 10% just to keep certain account cookies separate.
90% Safari, 10% Chrome for the same reasons.
Thats very interesting that you guys do this too.. I do similar with chrome 95% and ff / safari to test social site privacy and search results without chromes cookies.
Identity management is so broken on the web. I want to be able to activate, suspend, and switch identities without having to delete cookies or switch browsers.
no kidding!! Quick story … one time I logged out of disqus so that I could make an anonymous post …and it worked – except that it went ahead and put my photo on it anyway! Doh! (not sure why it did this) .. but now I only do that kind of thing in another browser in a clean state.
Andy and @cammacrae:disqus : I keep Camino around for a utility browser. I clear cookies and history, etc. on every use so that I can get a true organic search result (for getting a better feel for SEO), but it also would work nicely for what you described here, Andy. I don’t even use bookmarks in it. Of course, it needn’t be Camino, but any decent browser you don’t intend to use regularly.
Just downloaded / trying Camino . nice browser .. based on gecko like FF. *however* camino does let you punch javascript into the address bar – SWEET! (try it : javascript:(function(){alert(“hi”);})() ) …ps also works in safari on mac.. but not chrome or FF
Yup. 😉 Hope it helps sometimes.I have at least five browsers on my Macs, plus different versions (FF 3.6.x; FF 11.x, Safari 5.0.x and 5.1.x, etc.; Opera…). We have another environment for testing Windows browsers. Checking for “real” search results is just one of the reasons I keep at least one clear of any history, cookies, etc.
Andy, two other WebKit-based options for Mac OSX are iCab and OmniWeb. I’ve not used them in a while, but you can tinker with them if you want to isolate histories, sessions, etc. iCab was very fast when I played with it some time ago.
people use camino?
I’m people (well, at least my mom thinks so) and I have it installed on all of my Macs. I don’t use it for “normal” browsing or for dev work. I use it to check untainted search results, as well as simply checking every new webpage we design. Frankly, I do about the same with Chrome (not the search, but the page testing).Safari has features which I really like for surfing, reading, etc. and FF is what I prefer for dev work. But then I check all pages in every browser I have installed for rendering consistency. 🙂
You’re definitely a person. More just shock, I haven’t heard camino mentioned in a long long time
🙂 Yup. I get it.I just like having a stable browser that I can keep clear of any history or session elements and Camino works fine for that. Also, if you put some fun thing on a page that may be a bit indulgent (like for a personal site, not a wide-use application) it’s handy to know which variables break it. 🙂 Silly example: http://www.mackenzieallyn.com view it in Safari or Chrome, or FF 11+. Some others don’t render the animation. It’s CSS only.Edit: doh, typo in link, fixed it.
If you have a gravatar set for your email address we show that for your guest comments, so even guest commenters can still set an avatar. Gravatar allows you to check to see if you’ve set a gravatar for your email address at http://en.gravatar.com/site…
ah – yes I did use my normal email. A good thing to understand that guest != anonymous. I wasn’t so concerned about being anonymous to “Disqus the company” as I was about being anonymous on the particular comments section.
ME, GRIMLOCK, USE ALL 4 BROWSERS.SAFARI, CHROME, FF FOR DIFFERENT IDENTITIES.IE … FOR TESTING THINGS ON IE.
I use Safari on my iPad and iPhone; FF on my Macbook. Will not touch Chrome.
i use FF, Safari, and Chrome. don’t go near IE. but i am not a web dev.
I use FF predominately; Safari #2. Would not touch IE with a 10-ft pole. And as I am philosophically opposed to Google in general, Chrome is out.
Yup. My developers hate testing for IE. It’s like punishment for them, really.
ONLY IF WRITE CODE WRONG IN FIRST PLACE.
It depends if it’s over or under 8.0.
GRIMLOCK KNOWS HOW TO WRITE CODE THAT ALWAYS WORK CROSS BROWSER WITHOUT DEBUG.IT JUST REQUIRE BE VERY GOOD AT CODE.
I’m sure FG can do magic. Then, no need for this type of testing? http://www.browserstack.com
iphone is pretty much 100% Safari because Apple does not allow a fully functional alternative browser.(don’t confuse mobile Opera or Firefox with a proper browser)
@myscrawl:disqus Well, that was my not totally clearly articulated point to @wmoug:disqus – How many of the “browser Safari’ users are actually iPhone users?? The data sets shown in the post for browser and mobile did not address this overlap. SInce I am an iPhone user and see AVC half the time on iPhone or iPad I thought to ask.
I wonder if part of the android browser being so low is that the experience is crappy with the touch support swiping the page all over the screen …at least thats my experience on my android phone (samsung galaxy sII with 2.3.x).
Not sure I’m qualified to comment on the Android browser, being an iPhone user.
I am android user for almost two years and quickly scrapped the android browser (HTC desire) for Opera which I find works pretty well most of the time. I also played around with Dolphin which had some interesting features such as gestures
I still need to try opera on android… have firefox ..its pretty good. Dolphin makes me nervous due to past privacy issues mentioned on the wikipedia page
just tried opera on my android phone 🙂 Slick UI!It loaded this post right away ..but there were problems loading disqus .. not sure if that was opera or disqus.fwiwregular android web browser also had problems with disqus.Firefox ..no problem with disqus FTW!
ANYONE SMART ENOUGH TO GO TO AVC.COM SMART ENOUGH TO INSTALL BETTER BROWSER ON ANDROID PHONE.
so which one do you suggest?
BEATS ME. ME, GRIMLOCK, USE GOOD PHONE INSTEAD.
FF on android is pretty good. I would be trying chrome on android if I had ICS.
While I don’t think browser loyalty is strong, I think it’s stronger than these numbers suggest on their face.IE is a terrible, slow browser, full of bugs that crashes frequently. Jumping ship was not a brand-based decision, it was the result of a monopoly that crumbled and resulted in an exodus to other browsers.Another external factor is that in 2003 Microsoft stopped supporting IE for Mac, and in 2005 Apple for the first time did not include IE with their operating system. This happened about the same time that the market share of Macs was skyrocketing.Finally, I would argue that the rise of Safari and Chrome are not mainly the result of people switching browsers, but people switching platforms and accessing the site on mobile devices, where those are the two dominant browsers.If iOS shipped with Firefox, Safari and Chrome and you chose your default browser the first time you opened a website I think you’d see a lot of decisions based on loyalty and brand recognition.
“…I would argue that the rise of Safari and Chrome are not mainly the result of people switching browsers, but people switching platforms and accessing the site on mobile devices, where those are the two dominant browsers.”I don’t think this is right Luke. Chrome has not been and still isn’t the default browser on Android mobile devices. It is only now that Google is migrating Chrome onto Android.
Oops I thought Chrome was now the default Android browser.The shift to iOS has certainly helped Safari adoption.
@fredwilson:disqus Do you see people mixing and matching hardware & services in the future or forming loyalty to a particular “brand experience”?For example Apple people using icloud, itunes, ipad, iphone, macbook, Eventually using their phone/itunes as their wallet (some form of nfc). Google people on Google phones, android tablet, google music, Google docs/etc., Google cloud, Chromebooks. Eventually using their phone/Google wallet.Because they work seamlessly together and sync across all the devices.
Good question. My suspicion is that in the short/medium term people will indeed tend to invest in one ecosystem because the the efficiencies of the integration are high as are the switching costs. In the longer term we may well see companies building ‘meta’ products that enable us to work across such ecosystems.
THIS IS WHY PHONE MATTERS MOST OF ALL.
Networks Vs Utilities http://bit.ly/xNPeyuThere was a great AVC post/comment about how networks go across platforms. Think Instagram – especially now that they have a droid app.
yes, one of the many reasons i use android is the google apps work a lot better on it
Flight to quality outwins loyalty. If IE was the best, that’s where we’d all be.
To a point – but IE was really buggy. Is Chrome really superior to Safari? They’re so close most users don’t care. When the differences in quality become smaller brand loyalty becomes a bigger factor.
Good point.Developers: I imagine that tech people generally don’t like IE at all, and the webkit browsers(chrome/safari) compete with Mozilla for designers and developers. Browsers that win developers over win.Ideas?
Developers have some influence over browsers (for example many developers no longer support IE or give IE users dumbed-down experiences) but in general I don’t think they have much influence over which browsers the general population uses.Developers love Chrome but Google also has massive consumer reach through search ads, gmail and YouTube where it pushed hard for Chrome. I think that would have a bigger influence than developer adoption.
Imho chrome is winning the developer war over firefox. Market size is the most important determinant and chrome is growing at the expense of firefox.
I find safari slightly more stable when I want to watch video content.They implement webkit slightly differently.
Chrome is speedy Gonzales. The super/magic address bar is ace. Extensions help a lot too.I’ve probably more brand affinity to apple than google but use their browser
address bar FTW!
That’s so funny, because that is the primary reason I stay away from Chrome.
I only wish I could do javascript:(…) from the address bar :)If anyone knows the magic syntax let me know.
Re: Speed – http://googleresearch.blogs…
V8 is super fast, but after you install Ghostery, AdBlock and ClickToFlash/FlashBlock I find there is no perceptible difference between the two. Chrome is better on memory, but my MacBook has 16GB RAM so it doesn’t really come into play.
I like Chrome, but my parents don’t notice the speed differences. They notice “IE has crashed and you need to restart”.
the address bar would keep me, even if Firefox was faster.
too many extensions (not even) will cause crashing and flash problems…….
i have three browsers open on my desktop right now and nothing else. chrome, firefox, and safari. i use chrome for most things, firefox to blog, and safari for streaming music. i’m not sure why. that’s just how i roll.
Interesting. I have seen similar behavior with many users including myself. Browsers are replacing desktop apps, and I feel the need of different windows for different functions (and different browsers for different email logins).
Interesting to see browsers try and tie in loyalty / increase switching costs — such as being able to sign-in to a browser and connect your phone, home, work, etc. experiences, favorites, and settings.But in the end all we’re looking for is a faster, more intuitive browsing experience that doesn’t get in the way. As such, I love to experiment with new browsers… Dolphin recently became my default on the iPad.
There are two other important factors to consider: trust and cost. Google is going for low price-point + quality with the their hardware offerings, and I feel they might be the most trusted / do-good internet company in the world – especially with their stance against censorship and helping to try to solve large problems such as driver-related fatalities with vehicles, etc.. Whether they actually are or not probably could be argued.
Funny how our perspectives are so different; I do not “trust” Google, for reasons I could elaborate on but won’t do so here…
Perhaps some of the distrust can be alleviated or brought to a level-playing field by realizing Google, as a business, also does push their limits/boundaries to that of what other companies currently are allowed to do by law, at least in some areas.
I am not altogether clear on what you are saying; can you please restate? I have worked for years with a competitor to Google’ AdWords; my dislike for them is not from a consumer’s perspective as much as it is from a professional one.
Right. Well, they are still a business. If they don’t play in the same rules / same sandbox that with the tools that the other kids / businesses in the sandbox are playing with then they’ll get trampled over. I understand how this can cause them to be doing trampling behaviour themselves; I don’t have any specific cases in my mind to reference, though I know they exist as I’ve read/skimmed many examples over the years.
My ire is borne not of competitive jealousy. It is a product of the hyper-focus I have had Google under for 10 years+ – you look at anything or anyone that hard for that long, and you’re going to find some warts 😉 If you ever want to hear some insider gossip about things, hit me up on Skype one day …
I didn’t think it was out of jealousy. 🙂 I’d be all ears sometime – might have to be the week after the next though!
If facebook buys opera, do you think there will be another browser war. Currently they’ve been the good if bleh browser on the market?
From a web development point of view, Opera has a surprising number of quirks and incompatibilities for a “forward-thinking” browser.
I was just going to say the same thing, Luke. Opera is very “W3C standards respectful”, but often requires special tweaks to get pages to render similar to other standards-compliant browsers. It’s a pain. And the support of CSS3 is typically behind the others (of course, excluding IE).
THAT KIND OF THING EASY TO FIX WITH HUNDREDS OF DEVELOPERS AND BILLIONS OF DOLLARS.
Haha, true. But also easy to fix with slight shift of priorities, however Opera users have different values (i.e. priorities) so that such shifts would likely be met with complaints.Opera fixes are usually pretty trivial and mostly style issues, but it is an additional step. I do appreciate their commitment to Web Standards.
No – I don’t predict that happening. The only way Facebook would cause Opera or another browser to take over is forcing some kind of requirement on users. That would be a rapid downfall for Facebook (talking about users, not their stock price ;))
If they do buy Opera then yes – it will most definitely kick off another browser war. It will signal Facebook moving directly into an absolutely strategic area of core competence of Google. It would be a high risk strategy if pursued on the desktop but may be an interesting move for mobile. An important question is how this would play with Facebook’s developing relationship with Apple. It would seem unlikely that Facebook would buy Opera without Apple’s ‘blessing’ if Apple is indeed going to deeply integrate FB into iOS.
IT PLAY OUT ON DESKTOP AS “FOR AN OPTIMAL FACEBOOK EXPERIENCE, DOWNLOAD THE NEW FACEBOOK APP”.THAT APP JUST OPERA WITH INTEGRATED FACEBOOK, LIKE ROCKMELT TRY TO BE.NEXT DAY IT HAVE 40% SHARE OF WEB.
So why didn’t rockmelt manage that?
ONLY NERDS HEAR ABOUT ROCKMELT.NERD ALREADY HAVE BROWSER TRICKED OUT, NOT WANT NEW ONE.
I agree. It would be a huge browser presence real fast.And a much stronger presence than Rockmelt – I don’t buy Rockmelt or Flock.But what do you think about the impact on the Apple relationship?
IT GOING TO DEPEND ON WHAT THEM ANNOUNCE NEXT WEEK.
i agree that facebook can drive adoption, but not that much. i’d bet closer to 10-20%
THIS SAME PEOPLE THAT NOT BLINK WHEN ASKED TO INSTALL FARMVILLE.CLICK HERE FOR FASTER, BETTER FACEBOOK?MOST OF THEM DO IT. JUST LIKE GETTING NEW APP FOR PHONE.
We went to that movie. It was enjoyable. I am not sure we want to go again
They have to move for mobile soon – the public and the street will complain if they don’t. Opera would be a great strategic buy for just the compression technology….
I agree. They will be making bigger bets on mobile.There are much cheaper ways of getting the compression technology e.g. Skyfire. I think Opera offers huge experience across a very wide range of phones.
there still is a browser war. three browsers are fighting for share right now. a fourth won’t change too much.
it seems to in part stabilized with firefox slowly losing due to browser bloat.
the OS pie is a peace sign, between mac and windows, that’s heavy
Not sure for how much longer – it seems like the tides have changed
that’s neat
Chrome is an OS, it’s just being a smart competitor by hiding itself as something else. The focus and structure of Chrome allows for it to continuously become more and more valuable. There will be a tipping point when Chrome is up there with Windows and Macintosh. In reality, it’s already piggybacking and being tested on top of Windows and Macintosh – allowing quite a large and expanding user base of beta testers.
I don’t quite understand your point here. Could you elaborate?things I don’t understand:a) chrome is the browser, chromium the OSb) chrome is already ‘up there’ as a browser, it now has the largets market share in the world in most territoriesAre you saying the chrome browser is being used as a testbed (on windows and mac) for the chromium OS?
The web is the future OS; De-centralized is the only way for consumers to receive 100% benefit of the internet; Controlled ecosystems are bad.”Are you saying the chrome browser is being used as a testbed (on windows and mac) for the chromium OS?”Pretty much. I’ve not looked at Chromium, though what Chrome provides is enough, and the best tool in existence, to connect people to the web.
Thanks.Funnily enough the idea that “The web is the future OS” seems way more vulnerable today than it did three years ago. The mass adoption of mobile apps that have nothing to do with the web is a real counterforce. I don’t happen to buy the trope that ‘the web is dead’ but it is certainly under attack.
I believe most mobile apps will be non-native in the future, the ones that don’t require a lot of special coding anyway – though I can see HTML5 integration with phone functionality becoming much stronger. And those non-native apps will likely be written in HTML5/CSS3 – so they will also be cheaper to produce, and therefore available at a lower cost, and therefore users are more likely to be using them; Think 20 years from now when potentially 100% of the world is connected.
Imho it is very hard to assess how quickly HTML5 will erode native and which segments will be most impacted.
Indeed, however things that need to happen, things that are good for the consumer, end up happening – at least eventually.
I don’t buy that, they said that about itunes, and look what happened there – bloat on top of bloat
What are the same things they said about iTunes?
steve jobs used to count itunes instillations as os instillations.
Clearly Apples and Oranges. 😛
This is a BIG deal. A few observations.a) The above statistics hide another fact. Chrome users are ‘up to date.’ In other words the incidence of Chrome users running the latest version of Chrome (thanks to auto update) is extremely high, much higher than IE. The IE numbers above include multiple versions.b) it is hard for IE to compete with Chrome because of their different demographics. IE is constrained by the high percentage of corporate users where MIS departments do not want auto update. They want to control the version of the browser their users are running. This makes it much harder for MS to continue to improve their offering.c) Firefox is dying. Google will play nice and continue to fund them, why shouldn’t they? But they are going to have to do something radical to try to compete with the storm of innovation coming from Google and I’m not convinced they can.d) Google’s commitment to massive investment in Chrome is strategic because (i) they need an open searchable web because it is their core business and (ii) most users don’t change the default search engine so every percentage gain in browser market share translates directly into revenue.b) Google has other products/technologies coming down the road that promise to further increase their technology lead in browsers (e.g. Native Client).There is more…this is one of the critical battlefields that the big players are engaged in and right now Google is not only winning but is gaining ground as a direct result of strategic commitment that is unlikely to change.
a) is key for maintaining and keeping happy users
Agreed. So you can continue to innovate rather than being weighed down by legacy versions of your product.
I don’t use Chrome because I don’t like Google’s strategy. Chrome is strategic because Google wants to create a web ecosystem that makes it ever easier for them to hoover up information about the users to target ads at them.But I use Linux, so I’m a meaningless statistical outlier.
Mark, I have the same feelings. I don’t have time to look into to what Chrome is sending back to the mother-ship, but I feel that in the future there will be more and more data sucked into the Google volumes. That’s fine to support their model, but I don’t necessarily want for the “precision” they decide is “better” for me.That said, I do feel Google are doing a good job with browser security so far.
Ironically the amount of information that google hoovers up about users pales into insignificance compared to the information that users typically permit mobile app users to collect about them.And I don’t see you as that much of an outlier. Chrome is huge on Linux. 🙂
Just Curious … Does this data and your post yesterday include those that read your posts via email, or just visitors to avc.com? I get the posts in my inbox where I read them from there but rarely click on the site, so I was wondering if the data may be under reporting your followers.
it does not include those that read in email.
That’s potentially a big group! I read your post religiously via email. It probably doesn’t change the statistics for browser access but I am part of the under reported followers! Thank you for running a fabulous blog.
I like Chrome for 3 reasons:1) When it first came out it was seriously fast (although the others caught up quick)2) It’s still the browser that gives the most real estate to the actual web page3) It’s cool the way it syncs with your google account so your whole history (including field & pwd prompts) are available across machines.I’ve never understood why google doesn’t improve the developer tools, though.For serious web dev there’s still no alternative to FF with the Firebug extension.
David, I work in FF and Firebug as well. I prefer it to other options, although I do have the dev tools in Safari active, too, just to check things from time to time. Edit to add: I typically work in FF and surf in Safari. There are features in Safari which are important to me and absent in FF.My primary complaint with Chrome is that I very much dislike the address and search fields combined. (And by the way, when I say “very much dislike” I’m being very kind.) Chrome is pretty clean though, but as others have commented, it seems to be slowing and bloating.
There is a FireBug Light extension for Chrome.
Yes, and there is also one for Safari. I’ve installed the extension in Safari and use it at times (as well as the native developer tools), but still prefer FF with Firebug. I’m not a fan of Chrome in terms of various UI/UX elements, so typically only use it for compatibility testing/confirmation. Of course others love it, and Firebug Light is an option for them.
I haven’t yet synced — the experience has been good?
Take a deep breath Matthew and hit the sync button….
Attempt #1″Invalid username or password”Fail.Attempt #2*Sigh of relief”It is done.
I knew you had it in you!
Thanks for the nudge. 😉 I don’t love change if the benefits aren’t immediately noticeable. 😛
Also, there is a fairly good debugging tool with Chrome, though it’s not as user-friendly as some FFs extensions / plug-ins I’ve seen.
I use Chrome’s developer tools. It is good enough for me. There is a Firebug Light Extension for everything out of Firefox.
As a user, these charts make me go yeah! Such a far cry from the year 2000 when our only real choice was a Windows desktop computer with Internet Explorer. What an amazing variety of devices and operating systems.As a developer I say ugh! Such a far cry from the year 2000 when we really only had to test against Windows computers with Internet Explorer. What a scary variety of devices and operating systems (to test against).
yup
As a web developer, developing for Chrome/WebKit and Firefox/Gecko is a breeze. Developing for IE is still troublesome. You still have to target some elements specifically to get it to render fine in IE. IE9 is a real great improvement over IE8, but it is still not there yet.
Have you guys played around with Dolphin Browser much? http://dolphin-browser.com/I think we’ll be hearing more about it in the coming years if more Web 2.0 incumbents look to bulk up their mobile offerings through mobile-browser acquisitions. That’s a big *if* though.
Yes.It is interesting. It is my strong suspicion that this browser is being developed in the US for deployment in China.
I think I will stick to firefox for now. I’ve tried most of the browsers on the list and some not listed. I also went from a Windows to a Mac recently. I miss Windows but I’m getting used to the Mac. I like my Android over my Blackberry but I see myself having more than one brand when it come to mobile. Maybe there’s an iphone in my future or an LG. So I will probably switch between browsers, computers and mobile. I guess I no longer am just loyal to Firefox, Windows and Blackberry.
Three comments. One how do you reconcile the low Safari numbers with fact that 15+% is iOS, presumably all of which is Safari? Two, the fact that Apple platforms command 50% of the traffic is pretty bullish for Apple. Three, the Android numbers are pretty damning.
the only thing i can think of is the AVC audience is very mac/chrome based. as am i.
Thanks, Fred. The other comment relative to the tiny percentage of Android users vs. iOS users is that it **seems** to suggest that despite the higher number of Android devices, those users are less technical, less heavy web/app users. That’s obviously a generalization.
i think that is very much true in the USless so around the world
Interesting. Is that a function of Samsung (or another OEM) having stronger brand pull outside of US, different carrier dynamics, or? I ask because the Apple story from the last earnings call was about surge of international, especially in Asia. Just looking for your sense of causality.
my loyalty is value-as-in-moral based: pro open-source and internet freedom against corporate greed and privacy infringement … that is what puts me in the Firefox & Mozilla browser camp … that’s why I’ve never even given Chrome a try … that is also what puts me in Ubuntu OS … that is also why I am so happy to have absolutely nothing to do with Microsoft.There are many small seemingly insginifcant choices that we can make with moral impact and context … to me they are like voting … and I believe my voice does count.I wouldn’t go with a browser (or OS or anything else for that matter) that isn’t good, reliable and useful … but all else is equal I believe there is room for higher-order choices.
i am highly sympathetic to your approach. i use firefox every day. but i run all the google apps in chrome and that’s where i spend most of my time.
Chromium?
Great series! Have you considered integrating the advertising revenue? It would be great to see a chart for monthly visitors and monthly revenue. Even better would be a regression of revenues ~ visitors.
monthly ad revenues are about $4k
I count about 235K visits for May 2012 in the above charts. That makes it about .02 per visit.
I don’t see ads. I use Ad Block for Chrome, Firefox, and Safari.
A few cents less for charity
“,,,this is something to think about if owning a browser is part of your lockin strategy.”THX!!! Now *that* is a real eye opener. Thx again, Fred.Hey, don’t miss my question about your glasses response from yesterday’s post. I’m still smiling about that!
kindle silk. bandwidth crunch + transition to mobile = kindle silk.and how about okc last night!!!!! that was awesome. loving this year’s conference finals. now we just need celtics to tie it up…….
but it’ll take some time for the kindle silk revolution to go into high gear. till then, chrome. ff is slow for me and IE….lol, c’mon now. i may not be wildly successful but i do have self-respect.
Don’t understand your point about silk? Could you elaborate?
because kindle silk does so much of its processing on amazon’s AWS servers, it is going to be faster. i think this will be especially important if the spectrum problem remains unresolved and bandwidth becomes more scarce. other browser manufacturers are not positioned as well to offer a split processing browser. if the kindle line of computers continues to develop, i think it will be a huge competitive advantage.
It’s not clear to me that the server side processing makes Silk faster. Amazon say that “With Amazon Silk, most of the heavy-lifting is shifted from the processor on your device to our powerful AWS servers.” but it’s hard to beat a dedicated local processor. Where Silk does score is heavy server side caching of pre-rendered content and algorithmically tuned prefetches. And it implements SPDY but I don’t think this will be an advantage for long as SPDY becomes more widespread.Your point about spectrum is interesting. Hadn’t thought of that one. Better give it some thought.But of course, unless Amazon licences Silk its market penetration will be limited to the penetration of Kindles so its impact on browsers will be limited.
yes much depends on how much market penetration kindle can get, and how they continue to develop their line of computers. i’m hopeful amazon can become a major computer manufacturer and thus make the kindle silk a widespread browser. but perhaps that’s just wishful thinking on my part — we’ll have to wait and see.
Yes. I had high hopes for them because Amazon is one of the very small number of companies who have all pieces to construct an ecosystem around the kindle that rivals the ecosystem apple created around iOS. But as you probably know Kindle sales have taken a pretty big hit lately.
New OKC fight songhttp://fredwilson.vc/post/2…
hahhaha that’s great!
also, whatever happened to rockmelt? doesn’t fb own a piece of that already? i was blown away by that and think that is truly the kind of browser fb needs….only reason i don’t use it is because i don’t trust fb enough and don’t want them all up in my business. but for hardcore fb fans, rockmelt is amazing, IMO. not sure why they feel the need to buy opera when rockmelt is built on top of them already.
I use Chrome as a browser because I have a Chromebook that runs ChromeOS.Chrome is the future.
MAIN REASON IS WEBKIT.IF SHOP BUILDING FOR WEB AND MOBILE, WILL FOCUS ON WEBKIT.THAT MEAN SITES LOOK BEST ON CHROME/SAFARI AND IOS.PEOPLE SWITCH TO BROWSER SITES WORK BEST IN.
Webkit is the big deal in browsers no question. But I think it’s overstating it to allege that it is webkit that is giving mozilla problems. I think it is just the sheer pace of Google’s releases and advances in Chrome. And I don’t think it is the fact of webkit that is boosting Safari, I think it is the fact of iOS.
ME KNOW DEVS THAT NOW MOSTLY FOCUS ON WEBKIT, TREAT FF, IE AS “AS LONG AS IT NOT TOTALLY BROKEN, SHIP IT”.THAT MEAN NOT LONG BEFORE USE FF MAKE YOU FEEL LIKE 2ND CLASS WEB CITIZEN.
There are definitely such devs. And the momentum is with webkit for sure.
Great post. There is probably a side thread in this beyond the discussion of whether a browser is a control point or not for a vendor to own and have a lock-in strategy. A more obvious idea I see here is: make the best product and people will come to you. Make the best OS and people will flock to you. Make the best browser and people will flock to you e.g. Chrome. This also explains why Safari’s share is declining even though Mac OS share is increasing. Given a choice, savvy users (readers of this blog) will choose the best product and that’s what these stats and charts really imply.
Applications are the future.
Your stats do not look representative of the general market. Different studies show different market shares but tend to group around different numbers than yours. Not surprising, though. It’s probably a safe assumption that your readers tend to be more tech savvy than average and are far more likely to be aware of alternative browsers, not to mention comfortable trying them.(I managed the customer support team at a prior startup. You would not believe how many people think the search bar on their home screen is the address bar. These guys think Chrome is for classic cars, Safari is a vacation they can’t afford, and they ain’t never even heard of Firefox. I’m pretty sure they aren’t reading this blog either….)A more representative sample would most likely show less rapid swings.Ignorance and inertia are not quite the same as loyalty, but they’ll do in a pinch. 🙂
Agree – your comment that AVC is more tech savvy – yes, although – I might argue that the community is just a head of the curve…and that main stream will catch up to Fred’s stats.
so consider us a leader, and that other groups will follow in two years?
“Chrome is for classic cars, Safari is a vacation they can’t afford, and they ain’t never even heard of Firefox”that’s the IE user base in a nutshell!
In the last graph, shouldn’t iPad, iPhone and iPod all be clubbed together considering they all,use iOS just like all other OSs?
yup. something like 15% of the total
With all of the clutter in our lives, people aren’t loyal to brands, we are just looking for the best things out there. This is amazing though because it forces brands to innovate and not sit around relying on their popular product-or maybe thats what internet explorer did…
I love Safari. FOREVER.
Safari has a slow rendering engine.
Google has being advertising since 2010 Chrome on TV comercials in most expensive spots at Brazil. No other company do that here.
Ha Ha! Look at Linux go!
My browser pie is even more polarized — Chrome at 50%:https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11…OS-wise Mac penetration is way behind US here in Asia:https://dl.dropbox.com/u/11…
I know this was termed “google analytics weekend”…..I would add two or three additional trends – I am sure they have be commented on over the years @ AVC.1. Computing platforms – discussed a little in the post – chart added w/ OSs….at one point in my career, I worked for computing accessory companies, we primarily sold into the Enterprise space – Fortune 500 / Global 2000 etc. One of the items that we sold to these large companies were laptop bags/cases. Each company would work hard to develop a consistent “standard”, Make, Model, re: (i.e. IBM ThinkPad T20), it was a certain form factor, another part of the standard was a consistent “Image” on the hard drive. From a support perspective this made a lot of sense – easier to support a known config.In recent years there has a been a new trend called consumerization, where companies are moving away from their “Standards” allowing employees to bring/use their own personal CPUs, or giving the employee a stipend amount allowing the employee to go out an buy their own PC/Mac2. Apps – Enterprise, Schools and many home users still MS Office – I would guess most of the users of this community ( as well as others in the start-up space) have all migrated off office and have gone to the Google apps2A. Mail App – Ditto Exchange/Outlook > Gmail, Google Apps
Poor choice of colors on charts for browser share evolution. Sticking to same color for a given browser would have illustrated how the share of each browser changed over time. (IE always blue, Firefox always green, Safari always orange, Chrome always yellow, etc.)
i use Chrome on a laptop and i wonder if there’s a difference in browser share between laptops and desktops I can’t use any other browser on my laptop but on a desktop i find IE usable.