Google isn’t just losing market share in A.I. 2023 was rough for Chrome too.
Both Apple & Microsoft gain market share in the browser industry, while Google’s Chrome falls behind as it lacks privacy & AI features—something that users today demand in their browsers.
«The 2-minute version»
It’s not just AI: Google is losing its game at Chrome too. According to data through November 2023 from Statcounter, Google is poised to lose 2% market share to Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s Edge.
Microsoft isn’t the only culprit: We plotted a timeline of all the things Microsoft did to make Edge standout from Chrome and found out it is as much about clever product strategy as it is about adding AI features in the browser. For example, Apple’s Safari has been able to focus entirely on engineering Privacy into Safari and it still stood as 2023’s winner.
What other browsers are doing: Arc Browser is latest browser launched last year with its own unique spin on intuitively adding AI features such as auto-renaming file downloads and using AI to manage tabs. Others like Brave and Opera have taken more traditional Copilot-style AI Assistant approaches, while Google’s Chrome makes it hard for users get what they really want of a browser - AI, Privacy and Efficiency.
Seems like Google is firefighting on all fronts nowadays. Google Search was one of the last bastions of Google’s dominance in the post-pandemic era of the internet. But we all know what ChatGPT did to shake the search giant out of its dizzying heights and bring it back down to question its own future.
This post, however, will be less about AI or Search and more about another domain that Google held a stubborn lead over its competition until 2023—the CHROME BROWSER.
Chrome Browser has finally started to cede ground in market share
If browsers were our window to the world online, Chrome would be the most efficient way to see the world for many users on the internet. For those who are old enough to remember, Internet Explorer IE existed at some point in our online lives, where it was almost always plagued by security issues and vulnerabilities. Google took advantage of this gap and leveraged its dominance in Search traffic to launch Chrome, which instantly became an overnight hit.
However, by the end of the decade, Google Chrome’s growth had started to flatline, as can be seen below.
As more users sat at home and remote work became the norm, issues like “privacy” and “efficiency” suddenly became more important. But Google either seemed to completely miss the point or was too slow to grab the opportunity to redirect the Chrome browser’s direction towards what people wanted.
And then came ChatGPT.
2023 was Microsoft’s year of ruthlessness. Chrome was one of the casualties.
Yes, 2023 was the year that OpenAI announced the arrival of AI in the world. And 2023 was the year Sam Altman became Silicon Valley’s new poster child. But I can also argue that 2023 is the year the world experienced the raw intensity of Microsoft’s ruthless focus on innovation and agile product strategy. This Youtube short from the Verge sums up Satya Nadella’s side ambition for 2023:
“I want people to know that we made them (Google) dance” — Satya Nadella
To prove my point, I combed through as many articles as I could over many months and drew up a timeline of just how ruthless Microsoft became at making sure that Microsoft Edge was no longer just an option that users knew of. Edge was ACTUALLY good this time around, and Microsoft wanted to make sure users considered using the browser before deciding. Here is the timeline -
As many of you would expect, Microsoft led from the front, leaning hard and fast on GenAI. It started the year by integrating ChatGPT as Bing Chat in Microsoft Edge and recently rebranding the entire browser AI experience to Microsoft Copilot.
Among all the in-browser AI chat agents that help you summarize pages or answer questions based on information available on the web page, Microsoft Copilot seemed to be the most accurate. Its seamless integration between Chat GPT and its Bing search engine gave up-to-date, accurate information (with citations) in clear, formatted, easy-to-access, and concise answers. This indeed led many to believe Edge was “actually good” at what it was supposed to do.
Meanwhile Google Chrome has seriously fallen behind.
Google Chrome seemed to adopt the weirdest strategy throughout the year when it came to touting its AI features on Chrome.
To start with, AI features are not available by default. At last check, Google still requires users to jump through many hoops to activate AI-enabled browsing.
It involves users ‘voluntarily’ signing up for Google’s Search Generative Experiments (SGE), then enabling SGE for search & browsing, then restarting the browser, seems too cumbersome for many.
What is even more puzzling is that Bard is not yet available in some countries, Canada included, despite other AI services such as ChatGPT being available.
All of these issues and logistical nightmares have forced users to switch to other browsers.
Here’s how some of the other browsers in the space are innovating.
Meanwhile, let’s take a quick look at what browsers have been doing ever since AI began eating the internet 12 months ago.
The Arc Browser
Arc is the newest of browser apps launched mid last year. It captivated a niche section of early adopters. The browsing experience is built around key strokes. The browser re-imagines managing the galaxy of browsing tabs everybody always has open. But incorporating AI is really where Arc Browser has gotten creative.
Ask Arc’s browser to give you summaries of a web page or advice on what other web pages to possibly visit if the web page you’re on does not give you the answer to your questions.
Interact with ChatGPT directly from Arc’s side panel and allow Arc’s AI to rename all your open tabs with memorable names. It also renames all the files downloaded from the browser to an intelligent name, so you don’t have to rename the downloaded files yourself.
Brave & Opera
Brave is relatively newer than Opera but both these browsers blend a user’s browsing experience with their own AI assistants. Brave’s AI assistant is Leo while Opera named its in-browsing assistant Aria.
Incidentally, both Brave and Opera have been heavily focused on Privacy.
Safari & Firefox
Interestingly, both Firefox and Apple’s Safari have nothing much to talk about AI in their browsers. In fact, these browsers have doubled down on engineering privacy in their respective browsers.
Additionally, Safari launched a slew of features this past June focusing on privacy and seamless experience for users who are part of the Apple ecosystem. That seems to have worked well because Safari quietly gained significant market share, as seen earlier in this post.
Closing Thoughts
The strategy for Apple AAPL 0.00%↑ and Microsoft MSFT 0.00%↑ seems to have worked strongly in their favor, as both of these tech titans have gained marked share in the browser industry, while Google GOOG 0.00%↑ has been left behind. Google’s Chrome is neither known for its privacy nor for its AI features—something that users today demand in their browsers.
❓The question remains: will Google be able to reorient its strategy soon enough and steer its Chrome browser in the right direction?
My work forces us to use Google, however I use Firefox & Safari outside of the office and plan to try Arc.
As someone who was in charge of tech for a school a few years back you could see that Microsoft wanted “in” hard and the day is finally here for them. I think Google assumed with Chromebooks in classrooms they would dominate the market by forcing the new, younger set to use their products; however I don’t think they banked on the agility of those users, technologically speaking, to be able to pivot so well. We had never had such a large swath of tech educated demographic before.
I think it’s an interesting time we are in and most users today aren’t intimidated enough to just stick with the “pre-loaded” software. From Soccer Moms to CSuite we have a society who has opinions and don’t readily accept slow performance.
I also think those who grew up with those early years of Google and understood the data collection issues have trust issues with Chrome - especially since they were collecting data on the youngest of our population and only using it to serve their purposes. So the clunky setup you reference above is likely due to the corner they put themselves in over that whole issue.
It will be interesting to see how the next 5 years in this market play out
My work has everyone using Edge which I find very good; however, at home I prefer to use Brave.