It’s browser share comparison time again.  This round got started by Webware’s Stephen Shankland who switched over to Google’s Chrome for the speed gains. 

Speed

Chrome is undoubtedly faster than Firefox, especially in Javascript execution, but as WebWorkerDaily points out, the lead may be quite short-lived, the next FireFox release, 3.1 with Tracemonkey turned on (off by default in the current beta) beats Chrome’s performance.  Personally I’m not sure I will wait for it – Firefox is my favorite, I do think I can’t live without some of the plug-ins, but the fact that it is still a memory-hog, and the recent round of unexplained crashes my just drive me to the Chrome camp.  But forget me, let’s see some reader stats.

Reader Stats

Google’s Matt Cutts jumps in, he is seeing a surprisingly high 5.11% Chrome usage amongst his visitors. Well, he is probably read by all Googlers, perhaps that skews his numbers?  Let’s see what we have here on CloudAve:

Wow, who would have thought… in fact Chrome is growing by the week: as I play with the time horizon for this Google Analytics report, the full month is at about 5.8%, while narrowing it to just a week shows over 7.6%.

Reality Check

OK, enough of the KoolAid, let’s look at the world outside our reader-base:

Out in the "real world" Internet Explorer is still the leader. No wonder, it's the untouchable default on all corporate computers. I wonder how this will change if Google really pulls off a coup and gets Chrome as the default by several PC manufacturers.

Related articles:

• Browser Market Share?
• Which Web Browser is King?
• How widely used is Chrome? More than I expected