Big ambitions for Chrome 3.0
It’s been a year since Google first released its Chrome browser on 2 September 2008. A year later the search giant has just released Chrome 3.0 and is still ambitious about its opportunity in the market. In an interview with Reuters this week, Chrome engineering director Linus Upson said that “if at the two-year birthday we’re not at least 5% [market share], I will be exceptionally disappointed.”
Five percent market share by this time next year may not seem a lot but in the highly-competitive world of web browsers, it is an ambitious target.
There are many metrics available that count browser usage numbers but they all give Chrome somewhere between 2.5% and 2.8% market share. In comparison, Apple’s Safari browser is just 4% of the market, even after many years in the market. The real battle, however, is clearly between Internet Explorer and Firefox which holds around 25% of the market compared to IE’s 60%.
Clearly Internet Explorer will retain its dominance for a while yet, but it is significant that the trend appears to have Internet Explorer losing ground to Firefox in the long run.
According to StatCounter, the Internet Explorer family of browsers held a combined market share of 73.5% in January 2009. In comparison Firefox 3 held 16.6% and Firefox 2 a 2.5% share. At the end of June this year, Internet Explorer’s total share had dropped to 55.7%.
In the same period the Firefox 3 browser showed a very healthy 10.2% increase in market share between January and June 2009. At the start of July Firefox 3 had 26.8% market share.
Catching up
Coming, as it did, late to the browser market, Google’s big challenge for Chrome is to get it up to speed with its opponents, something that Google is doing very quickly. When Chrome was first released its primary advantage was that it was streamlined in comparison with competitors. This isn’t enough, however, to get most users switching from their current browser. But with version 3.0 of its browser Google has made significant strides to match its opponents.
On the speed front Chrome 3.0 has one of the fastest page rendering engines ever. Google says that Chrome 3.0 is 30% faster at rendering pages than its competitors and in tests this seems to be completely true. Firefox 3.5 is certainly no slouch and gives Chrome a run for its money but browsers such as Opera are noticeably slower than Chrome 3.0.
Google Chrome 3.0 is more than just a speedy browser, however, and now includes a couple of additional interface features that make it well-rounded. One of those changes is the ability to use themes to change the appearance of Chrome. Firefox has long had the ability to be “skinned” with different themes and now Google Chrome can do the same. Themes can be browsed and applied directly from the Chrome theme home page. Right now Google has produced a collection of themes that can be used but third-party-designed themes appear to not be available yet.
The other improvement is in the “speed dial” home screen. Just like Safari and Opera, Chrome users can store their most visited sites as a collection of thumbnails. In previous versions these thumbnails were static and couldn’t be moved around. But in 3.0 Chrome allows users to rearrange the websites as they like. It’s not as impressive an implementation as Safari’s version but it works well enough to be a useful tool.
Google has also boosted its Omnibox in Chrome 3.0. The Omnibox is simply the URL bar with a host of additional capabilities. Typing into the Omnibox not only brings up previously viewed matching sites, like Firefox, but also a selection of suggested sites as well as search options. It is a nice feature although the icons can be confusing the first time around.
All things considered Chrome has come a very long way in the first year of its life. Whether it can capture a full 5% market share by this time next year is debatable but one thing that is clear is that Google is putting every effort into making it work.
Google Chrome 3 – will it gain more market share?
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