Google Chrome beta beats Safari down to fourth place

Jonny Evans
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December 15, 2009
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Google’s Chrome browser has shoved its way into the third place slot in the Web browser charts on the release last week of betas for Mac and Linux, Net Applications tells us.

Chrome marketshare rocketed to 4.4 percent for the week between December 6-12, the analysts said. That’s up 0.4 percentage points since November, based on analysis of 160 million unique visitors to 40,000 sites monitored by the Web analytics company.

These figures mean Chrome has narrowly eclipsed Safari in terms of usage. The Apple browser holds 4.37 percent of the market to Chrome’s 4.4 percent.

"It appears that Chrome has made a substantial surge in usage market share," Vince Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of Net Applications, told Computerworld.

Chrome accounted for 1.3 percent of all browsers used on Mac OS X last week, the analysts revealed, that’s up from just 0.32 percent during November (when rough Alpha builds were in circulation). Gains came at the expense of both Safari and Firefox, suggesting Mac users are curious about Google’s browser offering.

On Linux, Chrome grabbed 6.34 percent of browser usage in the period. This leads Google into battle with Firefox, which is the dominant browser on the Linux platform.

“I'll be curious to see if Chrome will be to Firefox on Linux what Firefox is to IE on Windows ... a forceful competitor,” said Vizzaccaro.

Comments (9)

vaticdart (not verified) | December 15, 2009 - 6:07am

I was using Chrome during most of those days because whenever a new browser comes out I give it a few days of use without touching any other browsers to see if I like it. Chrome was snappy and worked well, but it's still too beta for fulltime use.

 

So now I'm back to Safari 4 until Chrome comes out of beta. I don't think these numbers mean much other than a new browser was released that Mac and Linux users have been hearing about for a year, and we were curious. I bet they'll go down in the following weeks.

akw (not verified) | December 15, 2009 - 6:31am

Does it really matter what web browser you use. Are the companies that put out the browser getting any revenue from the consumer using their browser, or is it just bragging rights?

Kerryn (not verified) | December 15, 2009 - 6:44am

I believe the plan is for Google to mine your browsing habits and to then use that fr targeted marketing purposes.  That is how Google will make their money.  How Firefox makes money is beyond me.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 15, 2009 - 7:10am

Win win for webkit, which is a win Apple and their future plans. 

I want to see more IE users using it!

the Cappy (not verified) | December 15, 2009 - 9:08am

Agreed. It's a win for a future of standards-compliant surfing. So long as Chrome's gains are at IE's expense :)

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 15, 2009 - 7:20am

Hey Johnny - when you made that chrome logo on the 27" imac screen you should have made the bottom half of the screen a yellow tint....like the THREE IVE ALREADY GOTTEN AND EXCHANGED.

9to5Mac Noob (not verified) | December 15, 2009 - 12:41pm

cant wait for chrome to be released its gonna blow safari away!!!! 

RayCon (not verified) | December 15, 2009 - 1:36pm

And what, pray tell, makes you so certain?  The only thing I've liked about it so far is the position of the tabs.  Oh, maybe Google won't used any punctuation... except for !!!

Gambo (not verified) | December 16, 2009 - 1:31am

I am wondering why still hearing the "research" from Net Application after the last summer exploit.

(OSX usage from nearly 10% to 5%)

 

Gambo