Mozilla Firefox’s crown as the browser of choice for the tech elite may now belong to Google Chrome, according to new data from Chitika Research. In a comparison of version usage taken between 8/23 and 8/29, when both browsers had stable beta versions available, Chrome users were six times more likely to be running the beta version, indicating a higher proportion of users who intentionally sought out and installed the advanced version.
| Total | Beta | %Beta | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Firefox | 1,283,338 | 6,583 | 0.513% |
| Chrome | 491,390 | 15,485 | 3.151% |
| Source: Sample of traffic from the Chitika ad network | |||
Of course, beta usage is by no means a surefire measure of the tech-savviness of a user base. It does, however, indicate a willingness and a desire to actively experiment with newer, more advanced software.
Between May and August, the traffic shares for both browsers have increased – Firefox to 24% of all traffic sent to the Chitika network, Chrome to 9.2% – at the expense of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, which has lost some 3% of the market during that time. It would appear that with its growth in usage and popularity, Firefox has become something of a mass-market browser, becoming closer in user profile to IE, while Chrome has stepped in and become a browser of choice for tech-savvy users.
While it can and will be argued that Opera is another popular choice for the tech elite, it remains a distant fifth place in browser popularity, accounting for only 1.6% of traffic to Chitika network sites in August.
Contact
Daniel Ruby
Research Director, Online Insights
Chitika, Inc.
+866.441.7203 x966
press@chitika.com
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