For the first time, Google’s Chrome web browser has shimmied past Mozilla’s Firefox global browser market share, becoming the second most popular browser on the planet in November 2011.
Stat-juggling, research firm StatCounter registered Chrome’s market share as 25.69%, up 4.66% from last November, with Firefox’s share a smidgen lower at 25.33% during the month.
Both browsers still trail a considerable distance behind the long running don of browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, although its market share is way down from a year ago.
”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,” observed StatCounter CEO Aodjan Cullen.
Here’s the PR guff:
Chrome Overtakes Firefox Globally for First Time
Free web analytics company reports that Internet Explorer still leads despite falling market share
Boston, USA; Dublin, Ireland; Thursday, 1st December, 2011: Google’s browser Chrome overtook Firefox for the first time globally on a monthly basis in November, according to StatCounter, the free website analytics company. The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that Chrome took 25.69% of the worldwide market (up from 4.66% in November 2009) compared to Firefox’s 25.23%. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still maintains a strong lead globally with 40.63%.
“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,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “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.”
In the US Internet Explorer continues to perform strongly and is maintaining market share at 50.66%, up slightly from 50.24% year on year. Firefox retains second place on 20.09%, down from 26.75%. Chrome is up to 17.3% from 10.89%. Safari is on 10.76% from 10.71%.
In the UK, Internet Explorer also leads the market with 42.82%. Chrome is on 24.82%, having overtaken Firefox (20.56%) in July. (For other individual country or regional analysis see StatCounter Global Stats).
StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US) from the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.
As well as free web research, StatCounter (http://statcounter.com/) provides free website traffic analysis. This allows website owners, developers and bloggers to capture valuable intelligence on their site in real time including number of visitors, visitors by country/region, search terms, popular pages, download stats, exit links and other data.
Is this because it’s used by android, or is this desktop usage only?