The browser of the future

Google's Chrome browser hit the market just over a year and a half ago and it is fast becoming the replacement of choice for people seeking to break free from Internet Explorer. As the table presented here shows, Microsoft's flagship browser (regardless of version) has been steadily losing market share for a long time. Firefox had earned most of IE's losses by virtue of its superior interface, its innovative tabbed browsing, and - of course - all of those fantastic, free add-ons.

But while IE continues to lose ground, users are no longer defaulting to Firefox. Chrome gained a much larger slice of the market last month than Firefox. Certainly, Google has done its normal, excellent work of promotion. But there is more to the story than superior hype.

For one, Chrome is fast. Really, really fast. On every one of my PCs, Chrome launches and loads pages far more quickly than Firefox. Second, Chrome's exceedingly simple interface provides nearly an inch of additional rendering space on the screen. And of course, Google is encouraging their developers to make the application more useful everyday.

Firefox is still my preferred browser, but I suspect that may change in the coming months.

Credit where credit is due ...
Visit Net Market Share for more information about global browser usage.