Google Chrome knocks Safari down to fourth place

John Brownlee ()

google-chrome-mac

Our own illustrious Craig Grannell might have had issues with Chrome for its willful transgression of Mac interface design principles, but he still liked it enough to make it his new default browser at the end of the day. Looks like Craig wasn’t alone: after last week’s release of the Chrome for Mac beta, Google’s Chrome browser deftly shoved Safari aside in its ascent to the third place slot in the web browser charts.

According to web analytics company Net Applications, Chrome marketshare leaped to 4.4 percent last week, based on the analysis of 160 million unique visitors to 40,000 sites. Meanwhile, Safari only held 4.37 percent of the market. A narrow victory? Sure. But a victory the nonce.

At the end of the day, though, I doubt this means much: at least on the OS X platform, Safari still reigns supreme, with Chrome only accounting for 1.3 percent of all browsers used on OS X last week. Chrome only beats Safari when you take PCs and Linux into account.

DON'T MISS
Chrome Browser Growing Faster Than Safari

I imagine the gains Chrome for Mac has made against Safari in the last week largely come from curiosity. The question is whether or not Mac users will stick with Chrome once that curiosity fades… and once Google polishes off the last of Chrome for Mac’s missing features, they just might. Safari’s just not as good a browser as Chrome for Mac has the potential to be.

7 comments »

About the author

John BrownleeJohn Brownlee is news editor here at Cult of Mac, and has also written about a lot of things for a lot of different places, including Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, Gizmodo, Kotaku, Lifehacker, AMC, Geek and the Consumerist. He lives in Cambridge with his charming inamorata and a tiny budgerigar punningly christened after Nabokov's most famous pervert. You can follow him here on Twitter.

(sorry, you need Javascript to see this e-mail address)| Read more posts by .

Posted in News, Software |

  • http://www.toxicspark.com Andrew Macdonald

    I downloaded Chrome for Mac as soon as it was released on my iMac. While i liked the speed, I just didnt like the browser.

    I love Safari’s streamlined interface. I wont be changing to Chrome anytime soon. As you suggested in the article, i only downloaded it out of curiosity, didnt like what i found that much, or didnt like it enough to switch from Safari. Havent used it since.

  • imajoebob

    Based on my expert knowledge (blind guess), I’d wager that Chrome took that chunk out of IE and Firefox, not Safari, and only on PCs. FF and Safari probably held steady on Macs, but that’s not necessarily great. With the growing sales of Macs, Safari should also be growing. Most of the “loss” is likely going to FF, but some of us on older systems (PPC) are switching to Camino, because Safari 4 is a dog. It’s constantly bogging down and Flash is death. I’m using it right now, and the screen text is trailing my typing by about 10-20 characters. That makes spotting and correcting typos a real pain. I’m only using it until I transfer all my shortcuts over to Camino, and that’s taking a while to cull.

    Unless and until I hear that the problem is fixed in an update, I’m sticking with Camino, even though I like Safari’s interface better. I doubt I’m alone. This is the first and only program I’ve had a problem with since the Intel conversion. That it’s an Apple app makes it really disappointing.

  • Mat

    Does chrome for mac support the multi touch track pad or the magic mouse?if not, I would never even considering leaving safari.

  • Clown

    Yes. Chrome supports multitouch gestures. At least all the ones I use. It doesn’t seem to support pinching though.

  • Daniel

    I design websites so I use them all, but as my primary browser, I like Safari. Don’t see myself switching anytime soon.

  • Church of Apple

    Wow.
    Don’t EVER link to ComputerWorld again, plz. I took one look and threw up in my mouth. It’s like what a BAD website looked like in 1998…

    Oh, and any reduction in IE’s share is cause for celebration. I’m going to host a huge party when it finally falls under 50%. And yes, there will be cake. Probably jello shots too. Can’t wait. =)

  • DavidF

    Chrome even in beta is a much more solid browser than Safari. Safari has that weird Flash bug and has been constantly crashing since it came out of beta, what is up with that? Chrome is solid and works super duper fast. It seems Safari will take the ugly step child set next to its cousin IE.