There’s a completely BS article by Fran Foo over at Australian IT today about Google Chrome’s “failure to shine in its first 100 days”. Apparently, according to Nielsen Online statistics, less than one per cent of visitors to Fairfax and News Ltd websites in Australia use Google Chrome. For a start, since when is News.com.au or The Age a reliable metric for how a browser “shines”? I might just go out on a limb and say that the reason 70% of their audience still uses IE is because in many cases they’re completely ignorant about the superior alternatives, while many workplaces also restrict which browser can be used.
Then there’s the line, “Some argue Chrome’s languishing figures could be bolstered if it were pre-installed in computers.” Now, I don’t pretend to speak for Google at all, but considering they have 10 million active users worldwide after just 100 days, I don’t think they’d be describing Chrome as languishing. Seriously, I thought The Australian was meant to be objective.The simple fact is that browser choice varies depending on who a website’s target audience is. I can tell you that for Giz AU, 44% of you guys use Firefox, 38% use IE, 11% are on Safari and 4% are on Chrome, although I expect that figure to jump up a bit when Google release a Mac version (lots of you use Macs). So the whole premise of Google’s browser “failing to shine” is completely flawed based upon the figures Australian IT are sprouting.
The bottom line: Looking at Google’s own global figures is a much more accurate way of discerning Chrome’s success than using Fairfax and News Ltd sites, even if Google won’t share local figures. Because no matter how successful your site is, there’s still an inherent skew by the type of visitor that comes to your website.