Google released the Chrome browser on September 2, 2008. Now that Chrome has been out for about a year and it’s been almost six months since I last looked at Chrome’s market share, let’s take another peek.
For the last 30 days, here are my Google Analytics stats for mattcutts.com:
For me, 8.97% of my readers run Chrome, up from 7.04% in March 2009.
Some different browser marketshare numbers:
- Net Applications says that Chrome went from 2.59% to 2.84% from July 2009 to August 2009.
- StatCounter gives daily stats. I’m seeing 3.31% on Saturday August 1st to 3.59% on Saturday August 29th.
- Clicky says that in the last 60 days, Chrome has gone from 3.376% to 4.004%:
So after one year, three different sources report market share of 2.84%, 3.59%, and 4.004%. That’s pretty good for 12 months. More importantly, Chrome has pushed all browsers to be faster, more modern, and generally better.
I’m also looking forward to some of the fun things coming in Chrome. Features like bookmark syncing and themes in the latest developer or “dev” release of Chrome are quite nice. If you’re adventurous, you can also try dev versions of Chrome for the Mac and Linux too. And if extensions are your thing, those are coming along as well.
Does anyone know of other sources for browser marketshare? How do the browser stats look for your site(s)?
Google Chrome continued its upward marketshare march in March. I was looking at my browser breakdown tonight. Here’s what I’ve got from the last 30 days in Google Analytics:
Some different browser marketshare numbers:
- Net Applications says that Chrome went from 1.15% to 1.23% in the last ~30 days.
- StatCounter says that Chrome topped 2% recently. Click through to see fewer people using Internet Explorer and more people using Firefox and Chrome over the weekends. StatCounter provides CSV export, so I made a separate chart for Chrome:
- Clicky says that in the last 60 days, Chrome has gone from 2.099% to 2.479%
Not shabby for a little over six months since Chrome was released. My favorite Chrome links recently are:
- The dev channel switcher to get the latest/greatest features in Chrome. For example, the dev channel uses the F11 key to switch to full-screen mode. You can also delete auto-form-fill suggestions by cursoring down to them and hitting the “Delete” key.
- The Chrome Experiments site demonstrates how well Chrome handles JavaScript. My favorite demos are Browser Ball, Ball Pool, Wavy Scrollbars, and the bizarrely addictive Twitch.
How do the browser stats look for your site(s)? And does anyone know of other sources for browser marketshare?
I just installed a “hello world” Chrome extension from this Chrome Extension HOWTO page. When you surf to www.google.com, the Google logo is replaced with a Lolcat:
Here’s how to write your own Google Chrome extension in three steps:
1. Install the developer-channel version of Google Chrome. I don’t know if this is 100% necessary, but new support for plugins will probably show up in the developer version first. You can read instructions on how to switch to the developer version. It takes maybe 3-4 minutes — you basically run a small program to indicate your preference. In case you’re worried that the developer version will crash a lot: I’ve been running the developer version for months and haven’t seen any major issues. The developer version also gets new features (such as pressing “F11″ to get full-screen mode) way before the beta/stable releases of Chrome. I’m using version 2.0.170.0 of Chrome and the “hello world” extension worked fine for me.
2. Read the initial documentation. This is a brand-new feature, but you can already start hacking. Extensions currently have very Greasemonkey-like functionality: you identify which web pages should be modified, plus JavaScript to be added to those pages. By default, the extension’s JavaScript runs after the page loads, but you can specify that the extension’s JavaScript should run before the page loads. Right now, you can only load one JS file, but that could change in the future. You also can’t currently load Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), but that might also change.
I like several things about the extension framework:
- Your plugin has to have a unique identifier (40 digit hexadecimal number). Given an identifier such as “00123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456″, an extension can include an image such as foo.gif and then easily access that image by using a full path such as “chrome-extension://00123456789ABCDEF0123456789ABCDEF0123456/foo.gif”
- The “content script” (the JavaScript of an extension) gets its own global scope separate from the web page, so you don’t need to worry about global variables conflicting. But you can still get access to the web page’s global variables using the “contentWindow” variable.
- Bundling your extension directory into a “.crx” Chrome Extension file is as simple as running a short Python script.
- Chrome also supports binary NPAPI (Netscape Plugin Application Programming Interface) plugins.
The Chrome extension manifest, which has metadata about your extension such as name, version, etc., looks much simpler to me than how Firefox wants extensions to be packaged. That’s a big plus in my book, because you spend most of your time writing code and not worrying about packaging up your plug-in. On the down side, I didn’t see any support for internationalization, which is one of the benefits of Firefox’s more comprehensive way of packaging up plugins. Another limitation of the current Chrome extension spec is that you can’t do much other than modify pages via JavaScript. And I didn’t see a way to introduce new widgets into the actual “chrome” of the Chrome browser.
3. Try it out! If you’re running the developer version of Chrome, you can install the “hello world” plugin from the extension howto page just by clicking to download the .crx file. Then type “chrome-ui://extensions/” and you’ll see something like this:
Once you see how it works, just start hacking around and see what happens. Remember, this howto document is only a few days old. I’m sure the Chrome team is thinking about ways to add more functionality to extensions, but the current developer version of Chrome already lets you do a lot of neat things.
One more nice thing: it looks like installing extensions doesn’t require you to restart the browser. 
And a hat-tip to Google OS for pointing out this document.
I was browsing the web when I ran across a statement about Google Chrome that I’ve seen echoed in different ways in the last couple months: “the reality is that Google Chrome is sending basic info about my pc back to them. Is Google the new “Big Brother” looking over everybodies [sic] shoulder…you betch ya.”
I’ve covered the issue of when Chrome communicates on your behalf before, but recent versions of Chrome have made it even easier to understand. Back in early November, the Chrome team addressed this concern:
Privacy section in Options.
We grouped together all of the configuration options for features that might send data to another service. Open the wrench menu, click Options, and select the Under the Hood tab.
And here’s a picture of what the Privacy section looks like:
There’s also a link to this web page with more information on each option, and from that web page you can drill down in more detail into any specific feature that interests you. For example, I opted-in to send usage/crash data to Google to improve future versions of Chrome (that option is off by default).
I like that you can manage Chrome’s communications settings in a centralized location. I don’t consider features such as phishing protection or DNS pre-fetching to be worrisome, but it’s nice to give easy controls to turn features on or off. I don’t expect that will stop people from mistakenly repeating that Chrome is somehow scary or has privacy issues, but for the people that care enough to do the research, they’ll be happy to find out that Chrome lets you choose exactly how and when Chrome sends data to the outside world.
By the way, I think Chrome was released on September 2, 2008, which makes it the four-month birthday of Chrome. Happy birthday to the Google Chrome team!
I used Wakoopa to track which applications I run on my home Windows machine. Here’s what it says:
When 96% of your computer time is spent in a browser, that’s living in the cloud.
