10 Reasons why Google Chrome is beating the competition
Google has finally overtaken Firefox in the race for market shares. The news that broke a couple of days ago still has some detractors. But Statscounter tells us that by a mere 0.46% Chrome has indeed finally beaten Firefox. And for the detractors, if you were to create extrapolations, there is a slow decline in Firefox’s market share while Chrome climbs rapidly.
Source: Top 5 Browsers from Nov 2010 to Nov 2011 by StatCounter
While we can’t comment on market shares we can tell you why we made the shift from Firefox, the champion of open standards to Chrome, who did it one better. Here is the rundown on 10 things that make Chrome our browser of choice.
1. The Interface is “browsing” friendly
While copywriters within our agency get very critical with the meanings of words, we couldn’t but help throw some of that thinking in here too. Browsers are meant to help us, “browse” the big wide world of web. One of the common concerns amongst designers in our midst is usually the hundreds of toolbars that our most probable end users have installed in Internet Explorer. What could have been good real estate in the first fold is wasted by spyware bars. We love Chrome for its focus on allowing us to cut through the crap and really enjoy our browsing experience. Its especially more suited towards the smaller resolution screens.
2. Dedicated Apps & Games
Mozilla Firefox made add-ons popular but it was really Google who took it one step further with their app store for Chrome. When the boss is away, we sneak open a tab to catch up on some Angry Birds. And the fun doesn’t really stop there. For the productivity freaks there are tons of excellent collaboration, management and note-taking tools. For the women and food channel watching men, may we suggest BBC’s Good Food app.
3. Address Bar = Search Bar
At work I’m stuck on a PowerPC which only leaves me with Safari and Camino, both of which are really quite crap. Yes, you Apple Fanboys, I’ve said it. Chrome’s search bar is the address bar and the address bar is the search bar. It’s that simple. Even Apple in all their infinite loopy wisdom could never build that. With the mini-search bar prevalent in both Firefox and Safari, they’ve wasted some ample space that Google have been able to give to its “under the hood” section.
4. Google Instant
Google launched Instant search in September last year and they’ve ensured that Chrome gets the same loving too. So start typing away a search query in your “address” bar and you will instantly see search results popping up. Since they’re not being fed by Siri or Apple’s autocomplete dictionary, you’re bound to see stuff that you might actually find worthwhile or have a good laugh at what people search for.
5. Web History is a breeze
Going through web history is easy on all browsers but Google’s search algorithms make it that much more sweeter and accurate. Since most sites couldn’t care to write better page titles, this feature makes going through your past dalliances that much more easier. There is no need to bookmark everything anymore. It’s all there in your history and indexing makes it easily accessible when you need it.
6. Extensions! 
Firefox has add-ons and they were part of the reason why I stuck with Firefox for the longest point. But Google’s extensions do just what the packaging says. It extends your browsing experience. Both Picnik and the Goo.gl URL shortener that come mighty handy for me all the time. Also, until very recently the whole restart action to install extensions on Firefox had become quite painful. With Chrome, you just keep going.
7. Google Apps + SPDY
Google claims that their apps when loaded in SPDY are 64% faster than over HTTP. An optimized layer over the traditional hyper text transfer (HTTP), SPDY comes standard with Chrome and you’ll instantly notice a incremental speed gain when using Google Apps – Mail, Docs, Spreadsheets, Calendar and more…
As this is experimental stuff, currently you’ll see its effects mainly on Google’s Apps portfolio. If Chrome continues to rocket the way it is right now then other browser makers – Apple, Mozilla, Microsoft & Opera – too might have to take heed. However, the speed hump for complete transition is two-sided – SPDY requires both sides to be optimized – on both servers and the user’s browser. But this is definitely a +1 for Google and Chrome.
8. Download Bar
I had to download an add-on in Firefox called Statusbar to show my downloads into my status bar. It was the most thoughtfully made app for me until I found that Chrome did it naturally. That was the day I finally succumbed and set Google as my default browser. Well that and the fact that I didn’t need Better Gmail anymore as Chrome already did Gmail better. For those of you who are unaware of what the status bar is, its the bar at the bottom of your browser window. Every time you hover on links, you’ll see the destination link at the bottom. That’s the Status Bar.
9. Updates
I have no qualms with Firefox about how frequently and actively they update their browsers. But somehow Google does it without making too much fuss about the whole affair. Also, Firefox’s update cycle is getting quite ridiculous. The whole one release a month from June of this year is making it quite difficult to keep up with version numbers. Ultimately, browser makers need to realize that its not about version numbers but really how stable your current version is.
10. Built-in Flash & HTML5 support beats competition
All of the 5 leading modern day leading browsers support HTML5 but only Chrome in there takes the cake in HTML5 support benchmarks. While HTML5 is still a new and not completely exploited framework, Google Chrome beats Firefox by a slight margin and they both leave the others biting dust. What this means for you is that Chrome is best placed as the best browser for you to experience content as designers and developers dabble in this framework.
Chrome comes with built-in Flash support and runs this in a sandbox so you’re always protected from any security threats therein. Gone is the page leading you to Adobe to download the Flash player and instead you have a browser that is ready to play the worst site intros you can imagine.
What is your default browser?
Here is a little poll so we can all begin to see which browser is the favorite amongst you folks.
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Tagged browser, chrome, development, firefox, google, market, mozilla, share, standards, web
