30 September, 2011
By Greg Morgan
According to data provided by StatCounter, Google’s Chrome is on the brink of eclipsing Firefox as the second most popular Internet browser in the world. While Mozilla may be holding on to second at the moment, these figures suggest that Chrome will have the silver medal spot in time for Christmas.
The current global average user share for Chrome in September was 23.6%, while Firefox managed 26.8% and Internet Explorer was at 41.7%. However, there is much more movement in the Google camp, which has gained 8 percentage points since January. In the same period, Firefox has dropped almost 4 percentage points, with IE also falling by the same amount.
According to Brian Rakowski, Chrome’s vice-president of product management, some of this success can be attributed to Chrome’s progressive vision for the future of web browsers:
“Part of the mission of Chrome is to make sure that the browser market is healthy overall. There’s lots of good options out there and it’s fair to say that browsers have been getting better…Chrome began as a pretty vibrant open-source project and now we’re seeing Chrome manifest itself beyond the desktop or notebook… The objective is anything you can imagine doing on your computer, you can do within your browser.”"
If this trend continues throughout the year, Chrome will take the second spot in December and account for more than a quarter of the total user share. A more far reaching – and much more speculative – look at these figures would suggest that Internet Explorer is also on its way out, leaving Chrome in the number one spot.
