28 years of web browser usage, visualized

March 21, 2023 6:24 PM

2.5-minute video on YouTube and Reddit, by James Eagle, visualizing what proportion of Web users use particular web browsers (via Unpretty).
posted by brainwane (36 comments total)

I had Opera as a primary or fallback browser for a long time, but I forgot how surprisingly long they lasted.
posted by BrotherCaine at 7:03 PM on March 21, 2023

I hate that Firefox's share has dipped so low, it's long been my browser of choice, and as much as I complain about aspects of it I still find it better than Chrome. Part of that might be because it's the first-class browser on Android, but still.

I'm also surprised that for all of Microsoft's efforts to tell users that Edge usage is "recommended," it's still so low. Also, that use of Safari, the sole first-class browser on iOS devices, is so low.

If you're looking for a browser to use, please consider Firefox, like the only major browser anymore that doesn't run Webkit. If you have to go Webkit, I suggest Vivaldi, which like like the rebirth of Opera.
posted by JHarris at 7:04 PM on March 21, 2023 [31 favorites]

After Micros~1 was successful in killing Netscape they pretty much put IE into maintenance mode through 2007 or so. That ol' Ballmer magic.
posted by Heywood Mogroot III at 7:23 PM on March 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

Firefox on Android supports uBlock Origin, my favorite ad blocker. I basically never see an ad on my phone. I strongly recommend it. It's a shame that everyone uses Chrome these days: Google should not be trusted with that much power.
posted by novalis_dt at 7:27 PM on March 21, 2023 [14 favorites]

uBlock Origin, Privacy Badger, Sponsorblock, and Facebook Container. I'm probably still being traked, but I don't notice it NEARLY as much.
posted by Canageek at 7:40 PM on March 21, 2023 [7 favorites]

I am kinda shocked that Safari's share is so low, considering that it's the default browser on every iPhone.
posted by hanov3r at 7:58 PM on March 21, 2023 [4 favorites]

This visualization is several months old and I haven't looked up more recent data.
posted by brainwane at 8:24 PM on March 21, 2023

1. I'm amazed that Opera has tenaciously held onto its little sliver the whole time!

2. There were one or two places where "other" quickly grew then just as quickly faded again over the course of only a few months, I'm curious what happened there...
posted by Greg_Ace at 8:49 PM on March 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

Also a long-time Firefox user. I switched to Chrome for a while when it was new, but after Mozilla did the big re-write to move to a process per tab giving it the same stability as Chrome, I switched back.

Google is just as evil with Chrome as Microsoft ever was with IE, but they keep that stuff hidden behind a superficially decent user experience so people don't hate Chrome the way they did IE.

Anyway, try Firefox if you haven't.
posted by Ickster at 8:55 PM on March 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

This should really break IE into the IE6/IE7/IE8 division.

IE6 was why we couldn't have nice things for such a long time. What a great day that was when its usage dipped below the point I no longer had to support it anymore.
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:03 PM on March 21, 2023 [8 favorites]

I had Chrome on Android for a while and it was just awful. In addition to endless ads on Youtube and auto-playing videos (with sound!) all over the place, there were a lot of instances where I'd have a conversation with somebody in real life and then 15 minutes later my phone would show me a bunch of ads relating to the very topic we'd been discussing. I kept trying to install blockers for all that crap, but none of them worked. When I finally switched to good ol' Firefox I was able to install all of the same blockers I use on my laptop, they worked, and using my phone immediately became 1000% less annoying. And of course, everybody uses Chrome and Firefox will probably be dead soon. The shittier thing always wins.
posted by Ursula Hitler at 9:26 PM on March 21, 2023 [5 favorites]

I switched back to Firefox a year or two ago after many years on Chrome and it's been good but not great. I'm not super impressed with Firefox for Android. But I distinctly remember the day the summer before I started college when a very cool friend a year older told me that everyone in her CS department was using Firefox now and if I wanted to be cool in college I better get on it too.

This thread actually reminded me that an old friend is working on a new browser and sent me an invite link to their beta a few weeks ago, and I never followed up to try it. Thanks for the unintentional nudge!
posted by potrzebie at 9:50 PM on March 21, 2023 [3 favorites]

Safari "features" tanked a cool project I was working on, and it always seems to be behind the latest specs for CSS and such, so it will forever burn in my personal software hell.

Chrome must have some built-in awfulness outside of specs, too. I cannot use Citi bank's website in FF, and am definitely not doing any "secure" browsing in Chrome, so I cannot bank with them. Fair enough. I called their tech line to complain about the endless JS errors my FF console was showing (hence the reason FF wasn't working) and they said "Chrome is the only browser we support". Which seems to me like they need better tech people, but what do I know...
posted by maxwelton at 10:43 PM on March 21, 2023 [2 favorites]

I don't quite understand how Firefox's market share is so low. It's mostly equivalent to Chrome. Javascript is a bit slower in Firefox, but that only really makes a difference on a small set of sites. I do wonder if Google has deliberately sabotaged Firefox by making GMail slower.

Chrome's incessant insistence that I log into a Google account seems like the kind of thing that would qualify Google for anti-trust action, in world with functioning regulatory apparatus.

I wish Firefox would make dark mode a built-in feature, and make it work well. All the dark mode extensions are crap in one way or another and this is an essential feature for my aging eyes on modern large screens.
posted by qxntpqbbbqxl at 10:49 PM on March 21, 2023 [1 favorite]

I'm longing for the time when the web was so simple, you could create your own browser from scratch. International Browser Day 1998-2000.
posted by ouke at 1:12 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I am kinda shocked that Safari's share is so low, considering that it's the default browser on every iPhone.

The source cited for the statistics from mid-'99 onward are the visitors to W3Schools.com. So I'd expect that (a) the people sampled are not necessarily a representative sample of web users, and (b) mobile platforms are underrepresented among these visits.
posted by Johnny Assay at 4:50 AM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Really dislike Chrome. I keep it installed for a vanishingly small number of sites that just don’t play right with any other browser, but it’s used for one-offs (or web testing) only, really. I first downloaded the Gecko engine in 1999, back when it fit on a floppy, and moved to Firefox the moment it was stable enough for daily use. It’s been my browser ever since.

Safari on iOS, but I don’t often use Safari on desktop. It’s ok, really, but like Apple Mail there are a few quirks that I just don’t prefer, so I stick with the Mozilla apps instead.

I primarily use Edge at work because it’s a government computer and many intranet sites don’t work in anything else. There are a lot that work in Firefox, and I use that as often as I can, because Edge is Chrome and I dislike Chrome. I don’t care what you wrap it in, under the hood it’s Chrome and any software with 80% market share should be looked at with suspicion.
posted by caution live frogs at 5:05 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

I was a Chrome user for quite a while, and liked it a lot. I just got used to the way it behaved, and little details would annoy me when I tried anything else.

I switched to Firefox last year, but I am still pretty ambivalent about it some of its behavior. Firefox also does not support WebUSB, so I have to keep Chrome installed to update firmware on some of my Daisy-based Eurorack modules.
posted by Foosnark at 5:18 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Vivaldi user here; I used Opera for ages but found it unsatisfactory when they switched to Chromium; hung on to old Opera for a long time and then tried many browsers (I deeply feel "little details would annoy me when I tried anything else", Foosnark) and eventually settled on Vivaldi - despite being Chromium based as well I found it more palatable.
posted by Soap_and_Bathetic at 5:46 AM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

Chrome is not native on any major OS. So why do people choose to install it over Firefox? It's a mystery to me. You will have to pry Firefox from my cold dead fingers.
posted by 3.2.3 at 6:44 AM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

I suggest Vivaldi, which like like the rebirth of Opera.

Vivaldi was actually known more for concertos.
posted by kirkaracha at 7:23 AM on March 22, 2023 [8 favorites]

Chrome is not native on any major OS

Sorry, both Android and Chrome OS would like a word?
posted by potrzebie at 7:46 AM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Eagle also created a similar data visualization for desktop operating systems starting in 1978 which is fun to watch. OS/2 Warp! Various DOSes!
posted by brainwane at 8:06 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Do people really like this animated pie chart presentation? Why spend 2.5 minutes watching a video with some terrible clip art music when you can just look at a single time series graph?

The dataset he pulled together is nice though, going all the way back to 1994. I can't find any simple timeseries graphs that go back that far although making one from his data would be very easy.
posted by Nelson at 8:31 AM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Do people really like this animated pie chart presentation? Why spend 2.5 minutes watching a video with some terrible clip art music when you can just look at a single time series graph?

Yes. The music is nice and it enabled me to procrastinate from work for another 2.5 minutes.

I do miss Netscape Navigator. Remembering the days that I got my email on Pine.
posted by Ben Trismegistus at 8:37 AM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

Sorry, both Android and Chrome OS would like a word?

Wasn't thinking of Chrome OS as a major OS. Android certainly is if we mix in mobile platforms. But it doesn't account for Chrome's outsized browser share across all platforms. I think we need a table of browser share across OS, and maybe even browser share across OS share to start an attempt at explaining Chrome's outsized browser share.
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:31 AM on March 22, 2023

I guess there's disagreement over Chrome OS share. Other sources have Chrome book sales overtaking Macs. I just never see anyone using a Chrome book.
posted by 3.2.3 at 9:34 AM on March 22, 2023

Yes, I like the animated pie chart presentation! It feels more immersive than a line graph, like a story with suspense. And I like the music too.
posted by brainwane at 10:08 AM on March 22, 2023

Chromebooks are strong in both the education and enterprise markets. Inexpensive, essentially disposable and simple to admin in large numbers. Their share is also rising amongst end-users and may have surpassed Macs but Windows still strongly controls that sector.

[disclaimer] I was a beta tester for ChromeOS before its public release...
posted by jim in austin at 12:00 PM on March 22, 2023 [2 favorites]

RIP Netscape Navigator.

Though I do live under a rock, I am quite surprised at the large share that Chrome has (I thought corporate use of Edge/IE would be higher). On my computer, I use Firefox 95% of the time. I think my phone's browser is Safari, though I don't pay much attention to it. I dislike chrome for it's scrolling mechanism and it's google ownership.
posted by hydra77 at 12:50 PM on March 22, 2023 [3 favorites]

i'd actually like to see this chart based on rendering engines, as these days the majority of browsers seem to all rely on blink, which powers chromium and thus chrome, opera, edge, vivalid, and brave.

it'd also be neat to see the forks, since it split from webkit, which split from khtml; opera used to use presto; firefox uses gecko, but it's hardly the same gecko that started with netscape, as it now includes stuff from servo and quantum. trident drove ie, but then for edge, before they gave up and went with blink used a different one. if i remember right, trident is still used in office?

and there's also roughly around the 2008 era when they started with dedicated js engines; chromium browsers use v8, khtml has kjs, webkit has javascriptcore, and gecko uses spidermonkey, opera had linear b, futhark, and then carakan, and ie had chakra
posted by i used to be someone else at 3:21 PM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

Developer tools on FF have been a distant second to Chrome for a decade or so; websites tend to work better on Chrome because Chrome tools make it easy to diagnose problems.
posted by Kwine at 7:00 PM on March 22, 2023 [1 favorite]

There's a bunch of different splits of this data on w3schools' Web site that gives a more granular view on some aspects such as browser versions. It confirms my impression (like 3.2.3) that I never see anyone actually using a ChromeBook, although it could be that the subset of the population that visits w3schools doesn't intersect much with the subset that uses a ChromeBook.
posted by dg at 9:18 PM on March 22, 2023

I had Opera as a primary or fallback browser for a long time, but I forgot how surprisingly long they lasted...

I'd forgotten about Opera - I used that one for ages. It was great. I don't remember why or when I switched off it.

I hate that Firefox's share has dipped so low, it's long been my browser of choice, and as much as I complain about aspects of it I still find it better than Chrome.

Firefox is terrific. Sometimes I have to switch to Chrome or IE (aka Edge, but who calls it that?) for a site that is acting weird, but 95% of the time I use Firefox. It does screenshots of the entire webpage!
posted by jb at 6:27 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

On the Chromebook tangent, this site says Chromebooks have about 10% marketshare of all notebook shipments. I think you're right that relatively few Chromebook users are likely visiting W3Schools. I think the main market for them has been kids in school. And while some of them are hopefully learning web programming I'd guess it's a pretty small fraction compared to other laptops.

(I just got my first Chromebook and am really impressed with the hardware-for-the-price and how usable ChromeOS is. Interesting product!)
posted by Nelson at 8:31 AM on March 23, 2023 [1 favorite]

In our single NC school district, every elementary, middle and high schooler gets a Chromebook. That's ~160,000 Chromebooks, not including replacements. And unless you're in a classroom or helping your kid with their homework (or security updates), you're not going to see those specific ones out and about.
posted by Dez at 8:09 AM on March 24, 2023 [2 favorites]