Google Chrome vs. Firefox -- a genealogist's perspective

With a few stellar exceptions, most of the genealogists I know are far
more interested in genealogy than they are in technology per se. Since both
avocations take a great deal of time, it is not surprising that they
would make decisions more in favor of doing genealogy than tinkering
around with the newest technological whiz bang. Some times I think my
brain is going explode trying to keep up even partially to both areas.
There is a major area of overlap. Genealogy is rapidly becoming more and
more technology based.

Among genealogists, even those who are comfortable using newer technology, there is a tendency to be very
cautiously conservative. I know a significant number of genealogists who
are still using Windows 95 or perhaps Windows 98. It is not unusual for
me to discuss genealogy with someone who is running PAF 5.2 on a
Pentium 2 computer. So when I get into a discussion about web browsers,
the majority of people I talk to are not even aware that there is a
choice. They use Internet Explorer because it came with their computer.
Without getting into the argument about Microsoft's bundling of
software, chances are, that the average genealogist is using Explorer.

In discussing this with many of my compatriots, I almost universally get
the reaction that they didn't even know that there was an alternative
and they are not much interested in changing. But here it goes anyway.
You will immediately notice that I do not compare either Firefox or
Chrome to Internet Explorer. Mainly for the reason that I do not use
Internet Explorer at all on personal computers. I do however, use it
almost every day at work, at the Mesa Regional Family History Center and
on almost everyone else's computers.

This is an interesting fact because some
statistics show Firefox with almost 50% of the web use.
While other
statistics show Explorer use at over 50%. If you look around for a
while you find that the most believable statistics show Internet
Explorer with about 60% of the web browser use and Firefox a
distant second at about 24%. The only other major web browsers with a
significant market penetration are Google's Chrome and Apple's Safari.
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