Chrome is Google’s new web browser, direct competition for Microsoft Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox. I operate a number of websites and so have been able to monitor Chrome usage since day, it started of very quickly accounting for almost 5% of visitors within 1 week. However since that time the figures have held steady.
Over that same time though something has started to happen to the Google backed Firefox product (still my web browser of choice). With each new update it seems to become more and more unreliable. From it being slow to it just plain crashing, it never use to have these problems but now all of a sudden it’s become much less reliable. What’s going on with Firefox?
I have a theory. Google makes its money from ad revenue but with the other browsers there are plug-ins that disable those adverts. If Google can control enough of the browser market then they also control people’s ability to block their adverts. Making sure that Firefox becomes an anti-Chrome (fast and reliable) is one way of building market share, quickly.