Data from analytics provider, StatCounter’s global stats shows that Chrome currently occupies the number two spot among web browsers in India.

The first place is held by Firefox, which currently has a market share of 32.97% after displacing Internet Explorer from the top spot just last month. Google Chrome is second, with 31.75% and is closely followed by Internet Explorer, which has been losing popularity steadily over the past twelve months and currently has only 31.33% market share.

The success of Chrome in the Indian market could be attributed to various factors including advertising on television, which is the most popular form of advertisement in India and the need for faster browsers to compensate for slower Internet speeds in the region. The browser also gets promoted through various other Google services.

When Chrome was launched internationally, in 2008, it secured 10% market share in India, but that went up to 22% within a year, thanks to its technical excellence as well as rapid release cycle.

Last month, Chrome overtook Firefox in the U.K. to occupy second place, with a market share of 22.12% compared to 21.65% for Firefox. Similarly, Chrome has also overtaken IE during the month of July in three countries of South America – Argentina, Chili and Uruguay.

Google’s social network Google Plus, which was launched just a couple of months ago, is also doing well in India, especially when compared to the rest of Asia. 

In India, Google+ had 0.4% market share in mid-July, after it was released but has tapered down to 0.2% since then, according to data from Experian/Hitwise. In Singapore, the social network had 0.8% share a week after its release and grew to 1.2% less than two months later. Google+ has not, however, fared too well in Hong Kong, where it had only 0.074%. This could be largely due to the pre-dominance of local social networks in China and the East Asian region.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) wants the browser developers to install a system similar to the ‘Do Not Call’ system, which prevents telemarketers from calling users on their phones.

As a result of the pressure from the FTC, developers have started incorporating measures to prevent advertisers from tracking users against the wishes of the user.

Google has built a Chrome Extension that enables users to permanently opt out of ad tracking. The tool is known as ‘Keep My Opt-Outs’. This feature preserves the user’s privacy settings even if cookies are wiped out. Users will, however, have to opt out of ad tracking themselves.

Google Chrome extension ‘Keep My Opt-outs’

Mozilla, on the other hand, provides an HTTP header that lets users declare a preference along with the basic information they provide to any site that they visit. However, there is one major catch in this system – for it to be successful, advertisers will have to agree to honour the user’s preferences as declared in the HTTP header. According to The Wall Street Journal, no advertisers have agreed to be a part of this deal, so far.

Microsoft has also announced that their new browser, IE 9 will include a feature that will provide “Tracking Protection” to their users.

While it is a good sign that browser developers have started moving in this direction, many advocates of user privacy believe that these opt-out features are just not enough.

A number of privacy advocates insist that instead of opt-out features, which leave the task of opting out to the user, thereby going un-noticed by the non-techie majority, the browsers should enable opt-in features, which safeguard user privacy by default. This way, user tracking by default will be forced to end, and advertisers would only be able to track users who have clearly indicated that they are happy to let advertisers study their browsing habits and target ads at them accordingly.

Chitika recently conducted a study that revealed that users of Microsoft browsers and operating system have a tendency to click on advertisements more than users of other services such as FireFox, Safari, Chrome etcera. Not only that, even users of Windows click on ads far more frequently than users of other operating systems such as Mac OS or Linux.

The findings of this study are significant as it was conducted using a sample of over 130 million impressions across 80,000 sites.

The details emerging from the study are as follows:

• Internet Explorer users on average have a click-through rate (CTR) of 1.05% compared to 0.66% for Firefox users, 0.50% for Safari users and 0.21% for Chrome users
• Windows users have a CTR of 0.92%, while Mac users have 0.52% and Linux users have 0.46%

These findings have been indirectly validated by TechCrunch, where reports that users of Microsoft’s search engine Bing have a higher CTR than users of other search engines. Bing users have a CTR of 1.74% as opposed to 0.98% for Google users and 1.37% for Yahoo! users.

TechCrunch insinuates that the higher CTRs from Microsoft users is because these users are more gullible and easier to dupe than others, which has ruffled a few feathers, even though it is probably true.

Microsoft users don’t click the most, though. AOL, which is a much smaller network has the highest CTR of 2.5%.

Sony has already conducted a test run this last May, and the test phase is now almost over.

It may be safe to assume, though, that other browsers will also be available on Sony PCs as they would not want to upset their users.

The deal is a first for Google, and they hope to be able to win similar deals with other computer manufacturers as well, in order to promote Chrome.

Chrome’s market share might get a slight push by this means. Personal computers from Sony account for less than 5% of the US market share. This could be a very good first step in the right direction. However, Google should have probably waited to win some bigger players over to their side before announcing their strategy to their competitors!

With competitors like Microsoft, Google had better watch its back when trying to make in-roads into the PC market. Microsoft pretty much has that market cornered. Internet Explorer comes with the Windows operating system, which is used on over 90% of all PCs shipped.

Internet Explorer and Mozilla’s Firefox browser are way ahead of Chrome in terms of market share. They have, of course, been around for a much longer time.

According to Net Applications, Internet Explorer currently has about two thirds of the market share among Internet users, with 67.7%, Firefox has 22.5%, Apple’s Safari has 4.1%, while Google’s Chrome has a mere 2.59%.

Mozilla is expected to launch the latest version of their browser, Firefox 3.1, shortly. In Russia, however, the default page will now be Yandex, the leading Russian search engine, instead of Google.

According to Harvey Anderson, who is the General Counsel at Mozilla, they have conducted a very extensive and detailed study into the matter before arriving at this decision. He says, “Russian users really wanted direct access to Yandex search services in official Firefox RU builds. As a result we’re planning on setting Yandex as the default search provider for the Firefox 3.1 Russian locale builds.”

The change by Mozilla from Google to Yandex at this point of time is particularly interesting, given the fact that in August 2008, the Russian online ad market grew by 73% compared to what it was in the same month a year earlier. It has also been estimated that the Russian online ad market will grow from $400 million in 2007, to $4 billion by 2017, which is a 10-fold increase in a span of just 10 years.

This move will certainly boost the fortunes of Yandex at the expense of Google.

In the past, Google and Mozilla have shared a mutually beneficial or symbiotic relationship for quite a long time. Google received exposure by being the default home page and default search engine on Mozilla browsers, and in turn, Mozilla earned a major share of its revenue through Google.

This happy situation may now be on a slightly sticky wicket, given that Mozilla will replace Google with Yandex in Russia and Google is now promoting its own browser, Chrome.

Sundar Pichai, Google V.P. Product Manager, said during an interview published in The Times, “We could work with an OEM (Original Equipment Manufacturer) and have them ship computers with Chrome pre-installed.”

According to Pichai, there is no reason why Google should not be able to do so, once they are satisfied that their product has no teething troubles and is ready for general use. They will then work hard to make their browser easily available and accessible to all users.

Pichai further adds, that newer versions of Chrome, which would be compatible with Linux and Mac computers will also be ready in the first half of next year, thus making it possible for Chrome to work on 99% of all computers.

Currently, however, there are still some flaws in the browser, as pointed out on ReadWriteWeb, and add ons that make Firefox so popular are absent from Chrome. Google should get to work seriously towards eliminating these issues.

If Google does manage to get Chrome preinstalled on all new computers at the time of shipping from the manufacturers, it could easily become the defacto browser for many of the users who currently use IE simply because it is the only browser their systems are shipped with.

An OEM relationship of this type, if correctly orchestrated by Google, could make Chrome a very dangerous competitor for IE and Firefox and could further seal Google’s future as the default search destination.

According to reports by GetClicky, Chrome accounts for under 2% of all web site visits at present. On the other hand, reports from Net Applications, show that Chrome holds only 0.74% of the market, as opposed to Internet Explorer’s 71.27%, Mozilla Firefox holds 19.97%, Safari holds 6.57% and Opera holds 0.75%.

The first thing that strikes users about chrome is its speed. The browser installation is really quick. It opens up faster than Firefox, and pages certainly load faster than Internet Explorer. The interface is quite clean, without too many icons, menus, or toolbars that clutter up the page. However, there is also a disadvantage to it as some everyday tasks take longer in the absence of toolbars.

Most surprisingly, the browser does not even take up space for branding. During normal operation, there is absolutely no indication that Chrome is a browser made by Google, except on the start-up screen alongside the most visited websites and when the browser window is restored.

The regular address bar, however, has been very smartly hijacked by Google and turned into an “Omnibar”, which now also works as a search box with in-built search and URL suggestion.

It is possible to move tabs from the main window to separate windows, and then back to the main window – a feature that has limited use, but looks cool nevertheless.

Chrome also has a multi-threaded setting, as opposed to the single-threaded setting on other browsers, which means that it is at least crash resistant, if not crash proof. In theory, this means that when a webpage opened in one tab freezes, it is not necessary to close the browser or PC or press CTRL+Alt+Del. Instead, with Chrome, one can just shut the affected tab, and the system then continues working as before. This does not work as well in reality, though, and once a user starts multi-threading with more than 3 or 4 open tabs, the browser seems to be much more prone to crashing than Firefox is.

Another nice feature for everyone who enjoys a bit of Internet porn is Chrome’s ‘Incognito’ mode. When the browser is set to incognito, users stop leaving a trace in the search and browser history, so that their online activity remains private during that session.

While most regular browser features are present, the option to ‘send this page’ is missing, form history does not seem to work or is missing and RSS feeds are not automatically imported or supported. There are no plug-ins either.These could be just teething troubles, which are bound to occur during the initial stages, and can be easily taken care of.

After all has been said and done, Google seem to have come up with a winner, especially when one thinks about the possible damage this could do to Microsoft if Chrome became the defacto browser of choice for all users, instead of Internet Explorer.