Browsers War

With more and more Google Chrome apps and extensions coming out it's time to take a look on the war between the browsers. I know the apps are mainly made for the Google Chrome OS, but I can't see ChromeOS taking a  major place in the OS market in the near future, which means most of the apps and extensions will be used on Google's browser , Chrome.
I've looked on W3Schools browser statistics for the past year, according to W3Schools five browser control the market Microsoft's IE, Mozila's Firefox, Google Chrome, Safari and Opera. Since Safari and Opera control between 2-4 percent, I won't be taking a look at them. According to W3Schools IE and Firefox have been loosing the battle mainly to Google's Chrome, IE has been dropping in a rate of 0.961 percent a month and Firefox 0.209 percent a month for the last eleven month, mean while Chrome has been climbing in a rate of 0.882 percent a month. In these rates Chrome will over take IE in less then six month and Firefox in less then twenty two month. The battle between IE and Chrome is close, six month is just over the corner, Microsoft is taking about IE 9, but looks like it's all ready too late. On the other hand twenty two month is a long time almost two years in this time Firefox can stop the it's dropping, probably with Firefox 4, but still it's hard to predict
A lot of writers, when writing about browsers, write on things like better support of CSS or how it works with HTML5 (hell, some people don't even know what a browser is). Most users don't care about those things, the two things that matter the most, in this order are speed and safty and in the meanwhile looks like IE is loosing and Chrome is winning, Firefox had developed a lot of speed problems but looks like version 4 had solved part of that.

Browser percentage (January-November 2010)

 Change rates

Change rate crossing (November 2010-November 2012)

You can check the numbers at this Google Docs spread sheet.

Google Chrome Weather app

Lately Iv'e been using more and more Chrome apps (on Linux I use Chromium and on Windows I use Firefox 3.6, but that's for anther post). One of the nicest apps is the "Weather Underground" app. Most weather apps or extensions on Chrome and on Firefox don't put ecstatics  or user experience and user interface in the center, the main focus is on the information, delivering it in the fastest and simplest way mostly in the status line at the bottom or in the tool bar above. The "Weather Underground" app may not bring you the weather in the fastest way but it will give to you in the most beautiful way, you get all the information you need at the bottom of the screen but you also get A beautiful photograph relating the current weather. There are two kind of computer apps, the first is an app made for regular people by computer people, the second is regular people use computer technology and computer people for building an app,"Weather Underground" is from the second kind. 

Is Firefox becoming IE ?

Iv'e been using Firefox for last five Years,for the last two month Iv'e been using Chrome more and more until it became the default browser . Both of those browsers Firefox and Chrome are installed on my machine and don't get me wrong I have allot of respect for Firefox. Five years ago there was no real alternative for IE, at least on Windows Firefox was the only safe browser and Iv'e been using it  since then and of course since I started using Ubuntu Iv'e used Firefox. 

Lately something went bad at Mozilla, Firefox takes allot of time to start, the number of crashes is increasing and installing extensions became a big problem. In the meantime Chrome has started to gain more and more fans, It has almost the same extensions as Firefox and it's faster, so why not ?   

In January 2009 Firefox passed IE and it's peek number of users was in July 2009 but since then the number of users is going down. Firefox is still the most common browser, but one can remember that once was IE. IE is still the fastest looser of users mainly to Chrome but also Firefox (check the numbers here).

Since I had to add something graphic or a picture I add a graph I mad on Google Docs (I like to test it once in a while, It's getting better, but that's not enough for me) . back to the graph, the graph is made to January - June 2010, IE includes IE 6, IE 7 and IE 8. You can see that IE is loosing very fast to Chrome but Firefox is also starting to loose, is starting to loose users, will Firefox end up like IE ?

Browsers Usage (January - June 2010)