Chrome Down, IE Up in Market Share Last Month, Again

Well, Ars reported it too, I’ve always sung their praises, so I’ll concede defeat this time and not argue about sources and how this was measured.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2013/03/chrome-hits-17-month-low-windows-8-still-only-creeping-upward/

That said, to suggest that Chrome would have been a flop with a subtle amount of promotion is categorically absurd Jim. You may be happy with IE, you might have seen one of those dumb demos where the goldfish swim around really fast, it might have blocked some sort of dangerous site for you that made you glad, you yap it up with fellow Microsoft enthusiasts, BUT Chrome is a hell of a browser. You underestimate people in general to attribute its massive and rapid adoption to whatever you mean by likening it to Adobe Reader.

You should have likened it to the Ask Toolbar in Java update installations to make your dumb point, more people would identify with that.

One of the things you could write about in another Dear M$FT article is why don’t they write a good television ad like Google, the kind people rewind their DVR to watch again and go on Youtube to comment on how brilliant it is. Are these tap dancing and Google-bashing bits the best they can do? Can’t do the heavy lifting required to sell Windows Phones and get Bing off the ground and off life support with such mediocrity.

Could you be more specific in what ways you object to Google promoting Chrome and what’s this about a checkbox that you think shouldn’t be opt-in in Chrome? What checkbox?

This is news to me that Chrome is in any way being “snuck” into computers. I would love to know more about it, other than your anecdotal evidence that it happened.

Perhaps it happened to these friends of yours because someone like me paid them a visit and, asked or volunteering or being hired to clean up their computers and speed them up, after getting rid of the usual crap he slides in Chrome?

Chrome has almost a 40% share worldwide, in just over three years from its debut it overtook Firefox, several months later IE. It may be the default browser of course on Chromebooks but those aren’t that ubiquitous yet to give it the same advantage IE has. You cannot shower the globe with enough proper advertisements or duplicitous advertisements and tricks for that matter to get a crap product to do that and also be heavily accoladed, you also need an excellent product too, and indeed that is what Chrome is and it is widely regarded as such.

Privacy concerns are addressed within Chrome, Google makes no secrets of what they do and how you can get them to stop doing certain things like URL discovery, they don’t just give you boxes to check or uncheck and let you read privacy statements, or just give you the easy to use Incognito mode, they also let you use Chromium, which is like Chrome minus Google, and it is open source for anyone to dig through and examine its code for sneaky tricks before compiling and running it. It’s a good browser if you secretly love and vocally hate Google, or if you want to make your own browser that is like Chrome but with any customization you want to make.

So, Chrome has both been selling itself and boosted by really impressive TV spots and whatever else they do, the horrible extent of which I thought was limited to banner ads and inserts on Google’s homepage if you’re not already running Chrome. It helps block the proliferation of viruses, it doesn’t lead the way by actually sneaking onto computers itself. First time I’ve ever heard that.