Chrome overtakes Firefox - maybe

Stephen Withers
Friday, 02 December 2011 14:18

Business IT - Technology

Depending on whose stats you believe, Chrome has either become the world's number two desktop browser or it is still well back in third place.

It's not unusual for statistics to vary between sources, but different sets of web share statistics for November tell very different stories.

According to StatCounter's global figures, Chrome has passed Firefox for the first time, but only just. Google's browser was responsible for 25.69% of the world's page views, with Mozilla's offering just behind on 25.23%.

Internet Explorer is still the frontrunner with 40.63%, but that's well down on the 68.14% it enjoyed just three years ago.

The only browser apart from Chrome to show continued growth is Safari, which now has a web share of 5.92% (up from 4.70% a year ago) presumably on the back of solid Mac sales. Mac OS X's share has grown from 6.22% in November 2010 to 7.05% last month, but Windows 7, Vista and XP still account for just over 90% of page views according to StatCounter.

The company notes that Internet Explorer is much stronger in the US (50.66%, which is slightly higher than it was this time last year), with Firefox still in second place (20.09% compared with Chrome's 17.3%).

"We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally," said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen. "Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the web also."

Net Applications came up with substantially different results - see page 2.