Browsers: Does minimalist win the race?
There's a good bit of hubbub over browser market share stats from Net Applications. The short version: Google Chrome is gaining at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer and gains from Mozilla's Firefox and Apple's Safari are muted.
As you can see, Chrome is on a tear. Adrian Kingsley-Hughes asks a simple question about Chrome's market share gains: Why?
Kingsley-Hughes goes into a bevy of reasons for Chrome's gain, but the best one is that it's lightweight and simple. In other words, Chrome just kind of blends into the background. There's something nice about a light, fast browser.
He writes:
Having spoken to a number of recent converts to Google Chrome, it seems that the minimalistic nature of the browser is certainly one attractive feature. Tech geeks aside, people are more interested in web content than they are the browser.
Following the thread forward, the big question is whether we need a Firefox Lite or IE Lite browser. My short answer: No. We don't need Diet Coke for browsers. And the "lite" trick never quite works well. It's far better to just cut the fat and let us get on with our browsing.