Interesting numbers out of Techmeme regarding their early adopter audience and which browser that audience chooses to use. 

As you can see Chrome has clearly overtaken Firefox.  This got me thinking…

In my job I interact with a lot of people who aren’t computer savvy.  When those people have a problem with their home computer I’ll usually try to help them either by giving advice or by asking them to bring it in so I can take a quick look. 

One thing I’ve noticed when doing this is many of those people are using Firefox.  Not because they like it but because some well meaning friend or relative told them it was better and installed it for them while helping with some other problem.

In my experience there are tons of enthusiast-installers out there putting the latest and greatest browser on the PCs of the uninitiated. 

But that’s where the chart comes in.  Those “installers” won’t rush to Grandma’s house to change her browser once they’ve personally discovered a better one.  Generally they’ll wait until Grandma needs help with something else and upgrade the browser then.  So you get a certain period of time where the enthusiasts have moved on but the people they installed browsers for are still on the old favorite. 

Which could explain why Firefox has a larger showing in overall market surveys. 

If that’s true it means Firefox is in much bigger trouble than anyone thinks.  In the same way IE6 pumped up Microsoft’s market share there could be a huge audience of auto-updating Firefox users that have no real affection for the browser itself.  Users that will soon disappear with the next upgrade cycle.