Chrome

I had no idea that Chrome was doing so well (via The Next Web):

Google Chrome has been long expected to leapfrog Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) to take its position as the Web’s most used browser and, according to data from Statcounter, the momentous change of leadership happened last week.

I wasn't writing back in 2008 when Chrome launched, but if I had been I probably would have very sceptically linked to this (via my Instapaper archive, but who knows where before that):

this is huge for Google, a step that needed to wait until the company had, essentially, come of age. It is an explicit attempt to accelerate the movement of computing off the desktop and into the cloud — where Google holds advantage. And it's an aggressive move destined to put the company even more squarely in the crosshairs of its rival Microsoft, which long ago crushed the most fabled browser of all, Netscape Navigator.

I'm sure I know people who use Chrome as their primary browser, and I use it myself for occasional Flash needs, but I definitely didn't realize how much market share it had picked up. Among Windows users I would have said that the conventional wisdom was:

• most people use IE because it is there
• people who know to even consider another option tend to choose Firefox

Chrome's market share, along with the trending for IE and Firefox, seems to suggest that Chrome is making strong gains in the first category. I say good for them.

I also wonder how continued growth in Mac sales might play into these changes. I'd be interested to see how growth in Mac OS usage correlates to growth in Safari usage. If Mac OS growth is more rapid than Safari growth I suspect the difference would largely be due to Chrome.

However, it seems important to point out that I was led to all of the above via data from Statcounter as reported by The Next Web. The same pair responsible for this gem:

Android has already become the most dominant type of mobile device on the planet, and now the Google-owned operating system is owner of the mobile Web’s most used browser

The problem with this 'news' is that it somehow takes 'Android' as one entry, but treats the iPod touch and the iPhone as two distinct entries, and doesn't appear to even consider the iPad. Maybe if iPhone browser share were to gain a bit more they could start splitting out the 4S, the 4, and the 3GS individually to keep it from being on top.

All in all, maybe this is closer to the truth in both desktop and mobile numbers. It is certainly closer to my gut feel for the situation.