14 DAY TRIAL // Google has been making so many announcements for these past couple of days that it’s hard to keep up with all of them. One tidbit of information Google revealed on the first day of the Google I/O 2010 conference merits more attention, though. It seems that Google Chrome has now reached 70 million active users, a very solid number for the relatively new browser, more than double the numbers it saw just months ago.
The last time Google shared some user stats, Chrome was at 30 million active users. That was impressive for a browser launched just a year before. Its market share was also on the rise, but still very small compared to its competitors, especially Firefox.
Just six months later, Chrome has more than doubled its user base, reaching 70 million. No doubt, the release of beta versions for both Linux and Mac helped with that, as well as the more solid and feature-rich stable versions for Windows.
Another major feature that probably has as much to do with the steady growth as anything else, is support for browser extensions, which was introduced along with the beta versions for all platforms late last year. Extensions made it to the stable release later on and the online gallery has gotten a lot bigger since launch.
Not so fast, though, says Mozilla. While Google Chrome’s growth is impressive, Firefox gained new users at an even faster rate. According to numbers provided by Mozilla’s Aza Dotzler, in the time it took Chrome to acquire 40 million new users, Firefox got 100 million. All of a sudden, Chrome’s rise doesn’t look that impressive anymore.
Dotzler even provided a nice graph, based on the one Google released at the I/O conference, which shows how both browsers compare for the past several months. Both figures are from the official source, Mozilla and Google, so they’re as accurate as they are going to get.
As a side note, you’ll notice a big dip in usage during the holiday season for Firefox but not for Chrome. “That dip you see in the Firefox line is nothing to worry about. Lots of regular people out there surf quite a bit less during the winter holidays,” Dotzler explained. Of course, Chrome users tend to be more tech savvy, whereas Firefox has really gotten into the mainstream at this point, which would explain the different trends.
Mozilla Firefox is available for download here. Google Chrome is available for download here.