Happy Third Birthday, Chrome!
Google's Chrome browser is turning 3 today.
First released on September 2, 2008, Chrome is credited with fueling the browser speed race to accelerate JavaScript as well as a trend that removed the focus on complex menus and shifted it to more space for web content.
Chrome has not been an instant hit. It took Google over half a year to collect more than 2 percent market share as users took time to adjust to the radically different look of the minimalist interface. However, since the second quarter of 2009 Chrome has been adding market share from its rivals IE and Firefox aggressively and has recently broke the 23 percent mark, according to StatCounter. At the current pace, Google will surpass Firefox in November at the 26 percent mark and could exceed IE's share by mid-2012 at about 32 percent.
As Mozilla challenged Microsoft in 2004 with Firefox and reignited a browser war we thought was long gone, it is Google that has been fueling the battle with a rapid innovation cycle in web browsers that has caused more than one headache for Microsoft and Mozilla. Both have responded to Google's speed and interface challenge and significantly accelerated their browsers. Mozilla recently also adopted Google's rapid release cycle model that unveils a new browser version available every six months. Microsoft has also cut its release cycle in half and is generally believed to be on a 1-year release cycle, instead of the previous 2-year cycle (Microsoft does not officially comment on its release cycle).
While the business model of Chrome as well as the Chrome-based Chrome OS is questioned, Chrome has become a critical component in Google's structure that protects core revenues. Chrome users are strongly tied to the use of Google's search engine and are seen as key in shielding Microsoft's attempts to attract search advertising business to Bing. Google said that there are currently 160 million active Chrome users.
Take that Corporate Brand Identity Stooges!
While Google Chrome is still better and faster than the others I think it is getting slower not faster as time goes by. They are adding features and this is slowing it down gradually.
So who is going to create the next "light weight super fast" browser? .
Yeah, I feel that the current version is significantly slower. It might be due to "Predict Network Action", which could possibly be turned on by default and hidden from users in older versions, being turned off by me. Don't quote me on this.
Happy Birthday Chrome. You are the best browser as for now!
I have been using FF (now FF7B) and IE (now 9) and they do all what I needed them to do without missing a beat.
is it really that distracting? i don't even notice it now, and when i first seen it i was wondering, how long has that been there.
firefox for me, sucks with anything multimedia, either crashing, or playing it unreliably, so i use alturnative browsers. and chrome is my second choice, followed by opera, and if all else fails ie8
I've been using Nightly for a long time. I love it. I think I'm using Firefox 9 Alpha 1 now. I don't notice any extra "features" because I never look into them. I just use the basic browser, and take advantage of the fact that it's 64-bit.
Maybe chrome isn't for people that anal about a title bar color
lol'd
Going off topic, i realised that there's not been much spam on the last few articles. Finally!
Extensions/plug-ins are still not in the same league.
Some examples are adblockers and flashblockers which is 10 times better in FF.
Last pass works much better in FF when you want to access certain things.
And loads of plug-ins are just still missing in Chrome (it is getting better though)
Bookmarks is a joke in Chrome and it isn't even faster when you try the compare the latest builds. It didn't even feel faster before that for me(never has), probably because adblocking isn't really stopping the ads to load in Chrome, they are just hidden.
Anyway, I still use Chrome for just one thing : Chrome2Phone which is a handy way to get webpages of the Pc to my android phone.
im guessing you are talking to me...
i have a few extentions, and on a fresh start up, firefox can run everything easily, but after a while, ff starts to suck on multimedia. flash based things start to pause every now and than, and if i have a bunch of tabs open, everything multimedia goes to hell, but i intalled bartab, it sucks with version 8, but whatever, it stops tabs from loading while still saving them on startup, and i'm ok with that.
but chrome, even like now, i have i think 30-50 tabs open, and if i go to youtube, flawless play, even if it is FAR more resource hungry.