Two Champions Are Crowned: Windows 7 And Linux
Web Browser Grand Prix Champion: The Windows Circuit
With a higher combination of wins and strong finishes, and the same number of losses, Firefox barely pulls off another victory over Chrome. While Mozilla solidified its lead over Google in WBGP VIII, Chrome all but took that lead back, returning Firefox to the tenuous victory is pulled off in WBGP 7.
Opera remains in a comparatively distant third place, while Safari is even further behind. Meanwhile, IE9 is looking more like IE8 in the face of its fast-paced competition.
Web Browser Grand Prix Champion: The Linux Circuit
Chrome sweeps the Linux Circuit in a way we haven't seen in a very long time. Earning more wins, achieving a higher combination of wins and strong finishes, and fewer weak showings than both of its competitors, Google Chrome is the undisputed king of Linux Web browsers.
While many people expected Chrome to take this crown, Opera is actually the big surprise on our Linux Circuit. It manages the same win/strong combo as Firefox and less weak performances than Firefox 10.0.1, earning Opera 11.61 a distant second-place finish.
Operating System Comparison
Of the 25 charts where we compared platforms, Ubuntu's result was shown in red only seven times. And that doesn't even factor in Chrome's lower Linux score in HTML5Test.com and the complete lack of real Silverlight support, inhibiting services like Netflix.
On one hand, Ubuntu has the potential to to beat Windows in local application performance, where Linux has a serious disadvantage due to its low market share. On the other hand, we've seen today that Linux cannot yet defeat Windows on the Web either, where the operating system is largely irrelevant. How unfortunate. A meaningless victory and a defeat.
But hey, at least Linux fared better against Windows 7 than OS X. Zing!
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