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Google Chrome gaining on Microsoft’s Internet Explorer

Andre — Tue, 04 May 2010 11:33:39 +0000

Recent results for internet browser use read well for competitors of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer with Google and their Chrome browser coming off best.

Although Internet Explorer 8 has approximately a quarter of the market all to itself Netmarketshare are reporting that 59.95% of the market are currently using any version of the browser, meaning that quite a significant number of users are still using older versions of Microsoft’s browser.

Nothing much has changed for Mozilla and their Firefox browser who have stagnated at 24.59% of the market share, the same amount they have had for the last year.

The biggest increase comes from Google’s Chrome browser which has made quite a significant jump in the past year from 1.79% to 6.75% of the market share.

Internet Explorer has been on a steady decline since 2002 but it has undergone its most significant drop in users more recently losing 8% of their market share since April 2009.

It is no coincidence that this loss of users coincides with the vastly increased awareness of alternative browsers for internet users. The main cause of this was the new addition of the ‘browser ballot’ in Europe which has forced Microsoft to give users of their Windows operating system a choice of which browser they would like to use.

Other factors that have pushed the decline in users of Internet Explorer include Google’s rigorous advertising campaign for their Chrome browser and the rise of popular new upstart browser Opera.

This news will not be received well by Microsoft, expect to see some sort of update to their browser soon as they attempt to hold on to the market share that they still have left.

Google take on the mighty Microsoft Office

Andre — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 11:55:26 +0000

Google has undergone a major overhaul of its suite of business management applications (Google Apps) in order to provide a rival to Microsoft Office 2010 which is set to be released in the coming months.

With the imminent arrival of Microsoft’s new office suite, Google have decided to update their own ‘Office suite’ with the view of taking users away from Microsoft.

The dominance of Microsoft’s Office suite speaks for itself in that many people are not even aware that Google has one of their own and pretty much every office and home in the land use Microsoft’s business suite. Much like Google’s attempt to take on Internet Explorer with Chrome, Google have shown a fearless and confident approach with their products of late.

New features include enhanced collaboration tools which will allow up to 50 users at a time to work on the same document whilst being able to see the changes that others are making as they make them. Vastly improved support for imported documents was also added as well as the ability to drag and drop spread sheets.

Google are attempting to hook users in by claiming that their software is significantly cheaper than Microsoft’s at £33 per user, per year.

“When they come knocking saying that you need to upgrade to Office 2010, you should know that you now have a choice, a viable replacement for the vast majority of your users,” said Anil Sabharwal, product manager of Google Apps.

The update for Google Apps is available now whereas Microsoft Office 2010 arrives in summer.

Europe revolts against IE6

James Oliver — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 16:29:08 +0000

The French government have joined their German counterparts in recommending that citizens don’t use Internet Explorer. The government issued a statement today, two days after Germany, warning French people to avoid all versions of the browser, both statements appear to have been prompted by the online posting of the malicious code implicated in the recent attacks on Google, to which IE6 is thought to be particularly vulnerable.

Incensed that the French have failed to make the distinction between IE6 and the new version IE8, Microsoft has released a statement calling IE8, “the most secure browser on the market”, and advising people who are still using IE6 to upgrade.

They even went as far as to describe the risk to web users as “minimal,” making the point that in order to be affected, the web user would have to be using IE6 and visit a compromised site, of which they claim there are very few.

The French and German governments obviously disagree, recommending that all citizens switch to rival browsers like Chrome or Firefox. However, security analysts are advising users of these rival browsers not to get complacent, making the point that whilst switching browsers will avoid this particular threat, all browsers have vulnerabilities and it’s impossible to be completely safe.

Google Chrome officially released

Matt Thomas — Fri, 12 Dec 2008 10:51:29 +0000

As of Today, Google have removed the beta tag from their Chrome browser, making the full version of Chrome 1.0 downloadable. At present, the full version only is only available to Windows users though Google programmers are thought to be hard at work on both Linux and Mac OS versions.

The removal of the beta tag puts Chrome under a lot of pressure to perform. The browser still has less than one per cent of overall market share, lagging way behind Firefox, Internet Explorer and even fringe browsers like Opera. The excuse thus far was that Chrome was still in the beta stage and hadn’t been aggressively promoted yet – now that the official version of Chrome is out, it will have to pick up users quickly to justify Google’s gamble.

Despite its current position, (near as makes no difference to the bottom of the browser league) few would bet against Chrome becoming a major player in the new year. The reason for this widespread optimism is the reported deals that Google have struck with a number of computer makers to have Chrome pre-installed on new PCs.

Google are hoping that by borrowing a trick from Microsoft, who until now have packaged their Internet Explorer browser with practically every new PC, they can replace them as the number one browser provider. The move is expected to work to an extent, since most people still simply use the browser they’re given.

However, it’s not 1995 anymore – more people than ever are aware of the alternatives. Google Chrome will have to be good in order to keep hold of its new users.