Chris Evans: Looking after the security of hundreds of millions of users

FOR all intents and purposes, Google’s Chrome web browser has been one of the fastest adopted browser in the history of the browser wars. Although there is some debate going on about how these metrics are exactly measured, it’s safe to say that indicatively, Google’s share of browser use has escalated in the past three years since it came into being.
 
According to StatCounter, Google Chrome’s share of desktop browsers for Aug 2012 stood at 33.59%, followed closely by 32.85% by Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). Wikimedia clocks Chrome as having 27.25% over the 23.65% for IE. Even a quick check on the kind of browsers employed to access Digital News Asia (DNA) reveals that Chrome is the top browser used.

Bearing in mind that Microsoft’s IE has been around for eons longer than Chrome, while the latter only came into being in 2008, this is indeed an achievement. So what makes Google’s Chrome so popular?  A straw poll of users by Digital News Asia noted that Chrome is popular because of three reasons: A minimalistic approach to its user interface; its light-weight demand on computing resources; and its performance in terms of speed of access.