Latest stats from a non-tech website show that Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome are slowly converging to a point of equal share of global Internet usage.
This is the date from Google Analytics for a popular health website today:
|
Browser
|
% visits
|
|---|---|
|
Internet Explorer
|
32.94% |
|
Firefox
|
29.65% |
|
Chrome
|
24.51% |
|
Safari
|
10.12% |
|
Opera
|
1.27% |
As you can see, Chrome only needs to gain about 4% and if it takes 3£ from Internet Explorer and 1% from Firefox, they will all be at around 29%.
It really is close.
What Does It Mean?
Not a lot really. It is interesting to see though. Firefox has for a long time been a favorite amongst web developers and techies because of its many add ons. When Chrome first appeared the general thought was that the general web users would stick with IE and that many techies will want to keep their Firefox for the many extensions and plugins that are used.
However, it really does seem that many Internet Explorer users have defected. But how many? What has changed? Lets go back in time…..
A Year Ago Today – March 2010 Browser Stats
|
Browser
|
% visits
|
|---|---|
|
Internet Explorer
|
56.86% |
|
Firefox
|
25.69% |
|
Safari
|
8.47% |
|
Chrome
|
7.72% |
Interestingly Firefox has actually gained a little, so those that predicted that Chrome would not tread on Firefox’s toes were right. Internet Explorer has lost almost 24% of the market share in just one year. This is a staggering loss really and considering that Microsoft has been trying to fight Google in search with the Bing-Yahoo search engine, such a big drop in IE usage must mean that their marketing and advertising schemes over the last year have failed.
Could there be other problems running at IE other than much stiffer competition from Chrome? Maybe. Maybe Windows usage has decreased, with more people running Linux distributions, but this does seem unlikely. Safari usage has also fallen, so it is unlikely to be due to defections to Apple Mac.
Maybe Google have just been promoting their own browser over the last year. I have certainly seen adverts for Chrome appearing in Adsense on many occasions, so maybe their promise of providing a faster web browsing experience is paying off.
The Android Connection?
Another trend over the last year has been the rapid rise of the Android smart phone operating system from Google. Mobile phones have been a much larger market than PC’s for a long time. It could be that many new Android users are discovering what Google has to offer for the first time.
Prior to Android a vast majority of people only knew Google as a search engine. Few people are even aware that the adverts on many websites are managed by Google. Many still do not make the connection between YouTube and Google.
However, through Android Google is marketing its brand better and people are becoming more aware of the larger Google picture.
Google Me / Social Circle
All this is good news for Google’s plans to develop and launch its own social networking site, or platform, to rival the mighty Facebook. With so many people using Chrome now, Google could do some hard marketing when the Google Social Network is running.
