Archive for November, 2008
Google Chrome Market Share Update
In late August, Google released the Chrome browser. Five days after
release, its market share had exploded to 2%-which really was quite strong
for a product put on the market without much fanfare, and competing against
established heavyweights like Firefox and Internet Explorer. At that time,
I posted a daily breakdown on Chrome’s market share growth, and at the
end of my post I promised to circle back and look at the uptake numbers
after a few weeks of use.
Which brings us to today. There were two ways Chrome’s user base and market
share could go: up or down. The initial 2% number represented the very
early adopters who would either stick with it and evangelize the product (in
which case we’d witness continued growth in the overall percentage of Chrome
browser visits) or the novelty would wear off and they would abandon the
Chrome browser. So what was the verdict?
| Date | Chrome | Firefox | Safari | MS IE (All) |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 09/30/08 | 0.501% | 15.007% | 4.321% | 79.832% |
| 10/15/08 | 0.433% | 15.387% | 4.178% | 79.592% |
| 10/20/08 | 0.462% | 15.643% | 4.296% | 79.183% |
The numbers unequivocally show that Chrome doesn’t appear to be gaining
any lasting traction, yet. The early adopters have opted out and seem to have
returned to their original browsers-and on a side note, take a look at the
consistent drop in Microsoft Internet Explorer usage. Interesting.
For those interested in our methodology: we gathered data from more than
1,500,000 unique browsers within each of the three two-week periods being
referenced. I hope that during the December holiday break I’ll have a
chance to pull a more comprehensive set of data and also provide more
information on the IE trend I mentioned earlier.