A recent survey has determined that Google’s Chrome is cruising upwards in terms of popularity, among all the browsers.
In recent times, in a survey by Net Applications, Chrome (google) grew in popularity by 0.57% to 5.20% of the browser market. While Internet Explorer still remains the browser most people (62%) use, the bottomline of the story is beginning to change. Firefox (Mozilla), Safari (Apple) and Opera are used by 24.41%, 4.51% and 2.38% of the users respectively, as on February 2010.
While the major reason for the huge popularity of Microsoft Explorer is that it is bundled free with the Windows operating system, and thus needs no further installation, thus avoiding the hassles of downloads and nstallation, for the not-so-tech-geek user, its limitations started to show with the wake of Mozilla Firefox. Now Google Chrome has been another source of headache for Microsoft, due to its spiralling popularity in such a short time.
Chrome has the added advantage of being one of the fastest browsers and is noted as one which provides a great surfing experience, without consuming too much memory and slowing down your computer. Add to it, Chrome’s rolling out support for the grease monkey, made it a tough competitor to Firefox, for supporting third party applications and APIs. While initially, the stability of the Chrome became a concern, that issue has been firmly dealt with by Google.
While Chrome was introduced it quickly grabbed 3% of the marketshare, but later slumped to 1%, due to few concerns on its stability. But the story has ended now and Chrome is experiencing a spiralling popularity amongst tech-savvy netizens. Today, Chrome looks poised to challenge Microsoft, espescially in the buzz of Google’s operating system launch. Google’s Chrome Operating System, is poised for a kill with lots of features suited for the netizen, and is even looking to incorporate touch features. Google’s recent stand on the Motorola’s Android for incorporating touch, may make Apple and Microsoft squirm with discomfort.
Looks like Google is aiming at challenging Microsoft with the latter’s own bundling strategy. And with Google giving everything free to the user, Microsoft needs to chalk out a sustaining strategy for maintaining their revenue growth and for survival . What can be Microsoft’s strategy in the light of such developments?