GetClicky’s analytics are reporting at Google Chrome already holds a 2.6% global share of web browser traffic that visits the 45,000 websites they track. And this isn’t just in the United States: only 1/3 of the users measured by GetClicky are in the US. Actually, the numbers for Chrome have jumped from just under 2% to over 2.6% in a few hours, implying that Asian markets are waking up and giving Chrome a try as well.

Additionally, the rumors of Chrome’s superior speed are proving to be quite true. An aggregation of tests on CNET shows Chrome outperforming Safari, Firefox, and IE by massive margins in JavaScript benchmark tests. It’s an utter blowout.

Another test: memory usage vs. other browsers. On my PC, I loaded espn.com on both Chrome and Internet Explorer. IE is taking up over 70,000k of memory while Chrome is consistently under 30,000k. Firefox is worse yet, at over 80,000k.

Mozilla is countering by demonstrating the power its upcoming JavaScript engine, TraceMonkey. Mozilla hopes to have TraceMonkey integrated into the release of Firefox 3.1 by the end of this year. Since IE is preloaded onto Windows machines, it seems likely that Chrome is more likely to cannibalize Firefox market share than IE market share, at least initially, so Mozilla needs to act fast in the face of embarrassing benchmark results pitted against Chrome.

Then again, Chrome is lacking the add-ons that Firefox boasts. But we know it’s only a matter of time before developers begin creating similarly useful add-ons for Chrome.

In a year of rather unspectacular launches (WikiaSearch, Knol, Cuil), Google really seems to have hit a grand slam with Chrome.

GetClicky story via TechCrunch.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008 at 1:05 pmand is filed under Search Engine Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.