Google Chrome 30 months later

Two and a half years ago Google launched Chrome; I’ve been slowly watching how visitors to this site leave other browsers and pass to this, while users of Internet Explorer get down from the hand of mobile communication invasion. With Chrome we have learned to do things differently, at least at desktop level, we also noticed substantial changes with safari, especially because 30 months ago since smartphones navigation was not a fashion as today, not obsessive dependency on social networks.

I use Chrome since it was first released to prove how it worked but I never went to download a Firefox beta and its endless extensions, although I miss that speed was always higher. I have Safari at my side, in case intranet gets slow, its interface is similar, but noticeable difference when I attach files in Gmail and I guess Mac users feel the same as both browsers are adapted to their products.

For purposes of comparison in the Spanish-speaking environment, let’s take a quick look at statistics of an approximately 30,000 visitors sample between January and March of 2008, three months before being released Chrome; and a similar amount between February and March 2011.

Before Chrome’s launch

There were shared between Internet Explorer and Firefox 97% of visitors to the web. Opera was stuck and Safari just for the small group of Mac users

How is it now

Watch how 23% that Chrome has now, has been reached taking off 8.392 users to Internet Explorer, it will seem simple but it represents a loss of 39% in just two years. Firefox’s achievement is not its substantial growth, but its sustainability because it surely lost users who went to Chrome; though it managed 945 users that also had to leave from Internet Explorer and it represents 12% growth.

Clearly the big loser is Internet Explorer, falling almost by half, which is not exactly representative of Windows operating system disuse. It is more a browsing behavior trend, hence 2% Safari recovering from nothing due to the demand that now exists from the mobile navigation, which is dominated by the successful navigation of the products iPad, iPhone.

See that Opera remains in almost the same, with the variant that its mini browser has now representation before mobile users demand, including those who urge Flash. The rest does not reach even 1%.

As for operating systems, Windows has dropped from 97.55% to 95.03%, in this can be seen a Mac growth that now beats Linux and then the full range of mobile browsers.

What to Expect

Definitely, Chrome has come to change the way browsers operate since Google’s goal goes far beyond that. The intention to bring it to an online operating system materializes every day with the arrival of mobile devices that confirm the trend.

I leave you a Woopra graph. It’s about last three weeks pages seen in the Spanish version of eGeomate to draw your own conclusions.

Google Chrome does not have versions, updates itself every time. From there, that is just 10 points on the preferred version by Internet Explorer’s faithful users from which we see even dispersed users using Explorer 5. It also exceeds Explorer 3 users, which remains the most widely used although there is around a cave user using Firefox 1.

This makes the image speak loudly: Chrome is one in a long list of 19 different flavors, of which 5 of them are from Firefox, 5 from Explorer and 5 from Safari.

Google has well used its strategy of automatic update on a single version, so that users are not thinking if download the new version or switch to Firefox. Although how big this platform is, is still not seen; it is displayed when Google starts to promote applications, its task manager, the transition of all Google Apps to a new platform, Chrome web store and their mobile version that there matures.

It’s funny that everything that has been implemented in Chrome arrived there and we almost never even notice. We noticed when we see a new option, and the way how it changed navigation is recognized when we use the previous browser in another machine.

Here you can download Google Chrome.