Google's Chrome Already Tops Opera
Opera is much-loved, but it's more of a cult browser. Its users swear by it, but it's never been able to make inroads into browser market share. And the star of the week, Google's Chrome, which stole the headlines away from IE8, has already topped Opera in market share.
According to NetApplications, which has been tracking Chrome usage hourly, on 9/4 at 2:00 AM EDT, Chrome reached 1.57% market share. Since then it's dropped down somewhat, but it's never dropped below Opera's 0.74%, and at the time of this writing is at 1.16%.
This is all despite the fact that Chrome is definitely a CPU and memory hog.
Personally, while Chrome is great as a basic browser, it's missing too many features, doesn't work with too many work-related intranet sites (for example, Sharepoint sites), and is too buggy for full-time use.
So we wonder, just how much of this usage is "trying" rather than "adopting." We're not ready to switch full-time, and we have no doubt that many will try but not switch permanently. On the other hand, the usage data has been pretty stable.
As Google continues to improve Chrome, if they can manage to keep it from becoming bloated, and if they can get some adoption in the Enterprise, you might see Chrome usage approaching Firefox usage - close to 20%.
According to NetApplications, which has been tracking Chrome usage hourly, on 9/4 at 2:00 AM EDT, Chrome reached 1.57% market share. Since then it's dropped down somewhat, but it's never dropped below Opera's 0.74%, and at the time of this writing is at 1.16%.
This is all despite the fact that Chrome is definitely a CPU and memory hog.
Personally, while Chrome is great as a basic browser, it's missing too many features, doesn't work with too many work-related intranet sites (for example, Sharepoint sites), and is too buggy for full-time use.
So we wonder, just how much of this usage is "trying" rather than "adopting." We're not ready to switch full-time, and we have no doubt that many will try but not switch permanently. On the other hand, the usage data has been pretty stable.
As Google continues to improve Chrome, if they can manage to keep it from becoming bloated, and if they can get some adoption in the Enterprise, you might see Chrome usage approaching Firefox usage - close to 20%.
