Chrome’s share of the browser market is fading as users who abandoned Internet Explorer and Firefox start to return, an Internet measurement company said today.
At the end of its third week of availability, Google Inc.’s Chrome accounted for 0.77% of the browsers that visited the 40,000 sites tracked by Net Applications, down from a 0.85% share the week before.
“The trend line on Chrome still has a slight downward angle, and these weekly numbers reflect that,” said Vince Vizzaccaro, Net Applications’ executive vice president of marketing. Although Chrome popped above 1% within hours of its release, the new browser now reaches that mark only in the middle of the night, U.S. time, Vizzaccaro added.
Chrome’s numbers, like those of Mozilla Corp.’s Firefox and Apple Inc.’s Safari, typically climb after work hours and then fall as work resumes the next day. Many businesses standardize on Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer (IE) and don’t allow employees to use alternate browsers.
IE and Firefox still showed share erosion compared to the period immediately before Chrome’s Sept. 2 debut, but both browsers regained users last week, Vizzaccaro said. IE picked up 0.24 percentage points last week, while Firefox regained 0.06 points. Both, however, remained down for the month, as was Opera Software ASA’s Opera and AOL LLC’s now-defunct Netscape.
Safari, the only browser to escape Chrome’s impact, was still on the plus side for September, ending last week up 0.45 percentage points before Chrome, although that was down from the prior week’s 0.68-point net gain.
Last week, Vizzaccaro said Safari’s immunity could be traced to the lack of Chrome competition. Although Google has promised a native Mac OS X edition, its browser is currently only available for Windows XP and Windows Vista.
Computerworld’s site metrics echoed Net Applications’ trend for Chrome. The percentage of visitors to Computerworld.com who used Google’s browser dropped to 4.01 points last week, down from 4.96 points.
Chrome’s slow slide may be because of Google’s low-key promotion, Vizzaccaro said. “The only marketing effort I’ve seen from Google is in sponsored links on search results for ‘browser’ or ‘browsers’ search terms,” he said. “On Google, Chrome is naturally the top sponsored link. On Yahoo, it was second. And on Windows Live, I couldn’t even find it in the first five pages of organic results.”
| Week starting |
Aug. 24 |
Aug. 31 |
Sept. 7 |
Sept. 15 |
Net Change |
| IE |
72.39% |
71.03% |
71.24% |
71.48% |
-0.91% |
| Firefox |
19.54% |
19.78% |
19.35% |
19.42% |
-0.13% |
| Safari |
6.27% |
6.67% |
6.95% |
6.73% |
0.45% |
| Chrome |
—– |
0.67% |
0.85% |
0.77% |
0.77% |
| Opera |
0.74% |
0.75% |
0.70% |
0.68% |
-0.06% |
| Netscape |
0.77% |
0.83% |
0.67% |
0.66% |
-0.11% |
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Most of today’s web sites and web applications are built using the JavaScript scripting language. Some may say that a trend towards the fine-tuning of JavaScript interpreters in modern browsers was just a matter of time since any such optimization translates into performance gains. Mozilla recently launched the browser speed race with Firefox 3, which delivers more speed than any other previous Firefox version. Apple answered with Safari 4, claiming the browser’s JavaScript engine has been accelerated by 53%. Welcome to the browser speed race.
Safari 4 has just been seeded to the developers at Apple’s developer conference. The manufacturer claims that the software has a 53% faster JavaScript engine than the preceding and current version 3.1 (based on the SunSpider JavaScript Performance test conducted on iMac with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor at 2.8 GHz, with 2 GB of RAM and running under Mac OS X Snow Leopard.) Although Firefox 3 RC3 was the first to deliver significant JavaScript performance improvement, Apple apparently is exceeding those gains with Safari 4.
Apple uses a new and improved JavaScript interpreter code-named SquirrelFish, which is provided on an open-source basis from the WebKit project, the same organization that makes the open-source engine used by Safari to render web pages. According to the WebKit project, the SquirrelFish engine is 1.6 times faster than the JavaScript engine in Safari 3.1.
SquirrelFish does its magic by turning JavaScript script into so-called bytecodes, an optimized code much more suitable for run-time execution than natural language-based JavaScript commands, which are longer and more complicated to interpret – and therefore are slower.
Why JavaScript performance matters
Most today’s web applications and web 2.0 sites rely on the JavaScript scripting language originally created by current Mozilla CTO Brendan Eich while he was employed by Netscape. JavaScript acts as glue that connects a user interface rendered in a web browser with a database and programming logic running in a web server. The browser’s JavaScript engine is solely responsible for interpreting and executing JavaScript commands embedded in HTML code. As a result, a browser’s JavaScript engine performance is directly related to the performance and responsiveness of a web application, contributing to an improved user experience.
The fact that many applications grow in size and become more bloated with each release means that a browser that can run web applications faster and make user interfaces more responsive on any computer is actually a big deal. You don’t have to have any specific market forecasting talent to predict that this trend may be impacting browser market shares: Speed can directly translate into more usability for most of us. Clearly, JavaScript handling is on its way to become a powerful weapon in the browser market.
SpiderMonkey, SquirrelFish, Tamarin and more
Mozilla was the first to introduce significant speed gains with Firefox 3 beta 5 (the final version is expected to ship by mid-June). Firefox has its Gecko engine to render web pages, which is generally considered to be slightly slower than Safari’s WebKit – which is largely responsible for the “fastest browser in the world” status Safari enjoys. Firefox’ JavaScript implementation is based on Mozilla’s own and decade old SpiderMonkey technology, which many considered to be the fastest JavaScript interpreter until SquirrelFish came out.
Although in beta, Firefox 3 scored with many reviewers who are praising the browser’s performance improvements, with WSJ’s Walt Mossberg declaring the browser a “winner.” But now that the SquirrelFish/Safari combination appears to be offsetting the speed gains in Firefox 3 and may set a new benchmark, we can expect more direct competition between Mozilla and Apple. Mozilla has plans to expand SpiderMonkey with Adobe’s JavaScript engine called Tamarin, included in Flash 9, which has a so-called “tracing” feature designed to enable faster code execution. However, the SunSpider JavaScript benchmark claims that SquirrelFish is at least 1.9 times faster than Tamarin.
Mozilla plans to wedge Tamarin into Firefox and match the API’s of both technologies “There are areas in which SpiderMonkey is faster than Tamarin and areas where it’s not. We’re looking to build hybrids that are best-of-breed for both worlds and we’re going to pull those into the Firefox release when ready,” Mozilla co-founder Mike Shaver recently said.
Can IE8 compete?
The big variable in this game is Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8, currently in beta 1 phase. IE8 is expected to deliver speed gains in JavaScript performance as well. However, Microsoft is facing a tough task. The fact that the software giant is often criticized for delivering bloated and inefficient software certainly doesn’t help. In our tests, the first beta of IE8 shows no noticeable speed gains in running web applications.
Quite the opposite is the case, actually. Websites and web applications run noticeably slower than in IE7. The whole browsing experience generally appears to be less responsive. Of course, IE8 is in an early development stage and you can bet Microsoft is going to tweak its performance. The only problem is that the software giant will have to work to raise the stakes in the browser race. If IE8 under-delivers, the market could respond with further market share erosion for IE. It is evident now that JavaScript engine performance has become a key metric in the newest race for the title of fastest browser.
The battle ahead is nicely summed by Mozilla co-founder Mike Shaver who said the following: “They [Apple] have dropped SquirrelFish in now and got a big speed up there. We’ve got more coming on our side. You’ll see this leapfrog pattern over and over. We’re not going to let anybody slack on that and the other browser vendors need to keep up, too.”
According to Net Applications, Firefox 3 captured almost one fifth (18.41%) of the browser market in May, followed by Safari 3.1 which hit 6.25%. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer continues on its pace of a slow but steady decline, ending up at 73.75% in May. Microsoft has scheduled second beta of IE8 for an August release, with a generally expected final release in the fourth quarter of this year.
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A web browser that gave many people their first experience of the web is set to disappear.
Netscape Navigator, now owned by AOL, will no longer be supported after 1 March 2008, the company has said.
In the mid-1990s, as the commercial web began to take off, the browser was used by more than 90% of people online.
Its market share has since slipped to just 0.6% as other browsers such as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) and Firefox have eroded its user base.
The company recommends that users upgrade their browser to either Firefox or Flock, which are both built on the same underlying technologies as Navigator.
“I think we represent the hope that was of Netscape,” Mitchell Baker, chair of the Mozilla Foundation which coordinates development of Firefox, told BBC News.
“We have picked up many of the things that Netscape launched but we’ve taken them further in terms of openness and public participation.”
Ms Baker was one of the first employees at Netscape in 1994.
Web window
Netscape was created by Marc Andreessen who as a student had co-authored Mosaic, the first popular web browser.
His company Netscape Communications Corporation released the first version in 1994.
According to Shawn Hardin, President and CEO of Flock, Netscape played an important role in making the internet “a relevant mass market phenomenon”.
“Netscape had a critical role in taking all of these zeros and ones – this very academic and technical environment – and giving it a graphical user interface where an average person could come online and consume information,” he told BBC News.
“During its halcyon days it really felt like the internet and Netscape were really the same thing,” he said.
Other companies capitalised on Netscape’s success, notably Microsoft, which began to bundle IE with its Windows operating systems.
Although this led to legal wrangles over anti-competitive behaviour, IE now dominates the browser landscape with an 80% market share.
As a result, Netscape became unviable.
“While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer,” said Tom Drapeau on the Netscape blog last year, when the demise of the browser was first announced.
Future return?
For the past week Netscape users have been shown a message alerting them to the end of support for the browser.
“Given AOL’s current business focus, support for Netscape browsers will be discontinued as of March 1st, 2008,” the message reads.
It then suggests users upgrade to either Flock or Firefox.
Firefox is the main competitor to IE, particularly in Europe where it has a 28% market share, according to some statistics.
The open source browser’s development is coordinated by the Mozilla foundation, set up by Netscape staff made redundant in 2003.
It has had more than 500 million downloads worldwide and in countries such as Finland it is the most popular browser.
“Competition is what brings quality,” said Ms Baker.
Flock describes itself as “the social web browser” and allows people to see feeds from community websites, such as Flickr and Facebook, and post to blogs without having to navigate to the page.
“There are lots of ways that people are engaging in having a conversation and Flock is very focused on making that as effortless and convenient as possible,” said Mr Hardin.
However, not all Netscape users are happy about having to change browser.
“I’m sad. Flock still needs improvement and I am not happy with Firefox’s interface. I’m [an] orphan!” read one post on the Netscape blog.
Others who posted comments on the blog predicted the browser will make a return.
“Netscape is a wonderful browser, and it will be so in the future,” read one.
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