OMG! Chrome!

Ahh, the paradox of being the market leader.

Remember when Chrome tried to innovate with how we use bookmarks? [1]

People cry out for innovation, but then freak out when said innovation happens. This is why disrupters are so successful - they can do something crazy and people will try it out and think - this is amazing. Because the mindset/psychology is that this is something new. But the market leader implements exactly the same thing and people won't give it a chance because it's a change and they can't handle change.

But I actually disagree that they are stagnant. They may be hesitant to change the UI, but there is a lot happening under the hood to make them more secure, faster, standards compliant, stable etc.

[1] http://www.omgchrome.com/new-bookmark-manager-chrome-disabled-how-to-get-it-back/

Edit - Adding an example of recent Firefox innovation being rejected
https://support.mozilla.org/en-US/kb/hello-status

After some more looking around, it seems it was a mutal decision.

Windows started the war when they locked out native third-party code development on the Windows Phone 7 platform. Then in subsequent findings, Chrome lamented they can't get enough privileges with Metro app development to make it work and Mozilla knows MS doesn't want to further their platform - so a sort of stalemate at this point, and a loss to Windows Phone users.

Sources:

Mozilla: No plans to release Firefox for Windows Phone 7 (March 2010)

http://www.zdnet.com/article/mozilla-no-plans-to-release-firefox-for-windows-phone-7/#!

Google Has ‘No Current Plans’ to Bring Chrome to Windows Phone (August 2014)

http://www.omgchrome.com/no-current-plans-to-bring-google-chrome-windows-phone/

Is the bump in Linux attributable to Chromebooks/Chrome OS? There's this thread from a year ago speculating about NetMarketShare's methodology with regards to Chrome OS, but nothing was confirmed: http://www.omgchrome.com/chromebooks-fuelling-rise-linux-os-marketshare/

If true, it's incredible that this seems to be biting directly into Apple's marketshare: the Generation Z "I'm a teenager/college student who just wants to use Facebook and do all my homework" demographic now has an alternative to the millennial's "I need a MacBook to be cool and work effectively." Tremendous ramifications for those of us who still make desktop software, especially in the professional multimedia space.

Google had a Metro/Modern/whatever version of Chrome in the App Store when Windows 8 came out. I didn't search very much, but here is one reference to it - http://www.omgchrome.com/open-chrome-metro-mode-windows-8/

I don't remember when they took it away, but I wonder why they stopped producing it? My guess is that they realized what a flop the Windows Store turned out to be.

Personally, I don't use a single Metro app outside of Settings because I don't like walled-gardens and I don't want to give Microsoft anymore incentive to turn Windows into one (Apples profits have already incentive-ized them enough!)

Yeah, given that you don't mean the Pixel. I can't back up my claims since I'm sitting on mobile on vacation, however a quick search I found http://www.omgchrome.com/samsung-axes-chromebook-sales-germany/ so the market in Germany is different. I scouraged the laptop market two months ago and it seemed that many shops have really outdated variants or lack the whole scope of laptop types. I could imagine it being tougher now since we have a lot of different formats. I would love some input from store employee on that.