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Study: Chrome reached nearly 2 million in U.S.
It appears that nearly 2 million people in the United States downloaded Google's new Chrome Web browser in its first week of availability, Nielsen Online said Wednesday.
Nielsen, which bases its statistics on the behavior of a panel of Internet users, said that from September 1 to September 7, 1.93 million people visited the Google "Thank You" page associated with the download process.
The online chatter about Google's browser surged to more than half the remarkable level of Apple's iPhone, Nielsen said. This chart shows the percentage of blog postings and other online commentary that mentioned Chrome.
(Credit: Nielsen Online)That's nearly 1.4 percent of all U.S. Internet users, Nielsen said. That may sound small, but it's a pretty good response for a beta version of a product that most people don't need, since so far, it only refines the familiar activity of using the Web.
Of course, getting people to try Chrome is easier than getting them to switch, but Google appears determined to push the open-source browser as hard as possible. On Tuesday, the company began a program to let people get the latest Chrome updates.
The buzz followed on the heels of the launch, according to Nielsen's measurement of Chrome mentions on blogs, discussion boards, and other online forums.
"The interest in all things Google was apparent in the online discussion surrounding the somewhat-unexpected Chrome launch," said Jon Stewart, research director of technology and search at Nielsen Online. "The browser was mentioned in nearly 1 percent of all online discussions the day after its launch--a respectable slightly-more-than-half of what the highly anticipated iPhone 3G generated when it launched earlier this summer."
Stephen Shankland writes about a wide range of technology and products, but has a particular focus on browsers and digital photography. He joined CNET News in 1998 and since then also has covered Google, Yahoo, servers, supercomputing, Linux and open-source software, and science. E-mail Stephen, or follow him on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/stshank. 
2. There are a few 'compatibility' problems with a few pages that don't like Chrome and want you to have either Firefox 3 or IE when their website should work on Chrome since it supports Adobe Flash no problem.
3. The Bookmark Manager in Chrome is missing a 'Sort by Name' function so you don't have to go and manually reorder things in the bookmark menus by name yourself.
4. The scroll doesn't work correctly yet. It will scroll down MORE than one page (too far) with the wheels on mice, and leave you wondering where half the paragraph you were reading went to. It will also do this with the page down and page up buttons on keyboards.
Other than these four minor problems however.... Chrome is a damn good browser, and I am loving it.
In terms of browser I dont see any big reason to use chrome, or maybe they are trying to do something similar to Adobe AIR
As has already been pointed out by others above, 2 million vistis to "Thank You" page is not equal to 2 milliin downloads, or anyhthing close to 2 million Chrome browsers in use.
But hey, keep on Google shilling. Not gonna make much difference to how Chrome sucks, or remove the Google spyware from Chrome.
- by ndotkrame September 18, 2008 8:39 AM PDT
- chrome opens so much faster than firefox, and the dynamic homepage is a great feature. neither of these were enough to make me switch though. all it took was quicker page loads. can't wait for add-ons. was loving firefox, but there's no contest in terms of speed and interface.
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