Report shows Safari hits 1 billion users worldwide, still behind Google Chrome – TechCrunch
According to a recent report, Apple’s Safari has finally hit 1 billion users, becoming the second browser to hit the milestone, alongside ever-increasing popularity Google Chrome. According to Atlas VPN, 1,006,232,879 Internet users (19.16% of all Internet users) currently use the Safari browser. Meanwhile, Google Chrome has three times as many, with 3,378,967,819 users. Microsoft Edge ranks third with approximately 212,695,000 users.
Atlas VPN’s findings are based on GlobalStats browser market share percentage, which was converted to numbers using the Internet World Stats Internet User Metric to retrieve the precise numbers. Its report seems to suggest that Safari’s growth could be tied to the browser’s adoption of privacy and security features, but that’s likely more reflective of the mobile market share where Safari and Chrome are installed on Apple and Android devices.
Apple’s web browser is automatically installed on every Apple device, while Chrome is installed with most versions of Android. This helps give the two tech giants a leg up in the competition. And while Microsoft ships its Edge browser with Windows, it lost out in the mobile market due to the failure of Windows Phone.
That said, Apple has introduced several new privacy features in the browser over the past year that could help entice users. The new Browser Privacy Report, for example, shows how many and which Intelligent Tracking Prevention (ITP) cross-site trackers blocked access to your information.
However, Chrome is often seen as a more attractive browser, with web apps like YouTube, Drive, Calendar, Docs, Earth, and Maps, among others. Last week, Google rolled out a new way to use Google Lens on desktop, allowing Chrome browser desktop users to search for any image on a web page with Google Lens. In April, a new “multi-search” feature via Google Lens was also launched on the Google mobile app.
Additionally, Google Chrome version 100 was launched at the end of March, and Chrome on Android has become 15% faster.
Other browsers in the report included Microsoft Edge, Firefox, Samsung Internet and Opera. As noted, Microsoft Edge was the third most popular browser with over 212 million users, overtaking Firefox, which has 179 million internet users. Since the release of Windows 11, Microsoft Edge has become the default browser on all devices and in turn has received a big boost in its user base.
The Firefox browser is geared towards more privacy-conscious users as it offers protective features such as tracking security, malicious pop-up blocking, and phishing. Mozilla released version 100 of the browser in early May.
Fifth on the list was Samsung’s Internet browser, which is used by more than 149 million users. Last is the Opera browser, with over 108 million users. Not only people can use Opera for daily tasks, but it also has a crypto browser and an app with an integrated crypto wallet that supports Ethereum, Polygon, and Celo blockchain technology.