Browser usage is not an exact science, there are a lot of factors than can skew the results. That said, according to StatCounter's latest data, Google Chrome is now the second most popular web browser in the UK, overtaking Firefox on its way to possibly becoming the most used browser in the country.
Google Chrome was used by 22.12 percent of UK users in July, as
measured by StatCounter, compared to Firefox which was used by only 21.65 of users in the last month.
Google Chrome has been slowly catching up to Firefox in the UK and, for the past few months, the race has been very close.
In June, Firefox had a lead of only half of a percent point, in May the difference was of about 1.5 percent points.
The interesting thing about the trend is that Firefox's share hasn't really diminished in this time frame, it went from 21.68 percent in May to 21.65 percent in July.
Firefox started the year with 22.5 percent of the UK market, while Google Chrome started with 16.73 percent.
All of this leads to a fairly obvious conclusion, Google Chrome is not growing at the expense of Firefox, it's taking market share away from Internet Explorer. Still, it has a long way to go, IE had 45.51 percent of the market in the UK in July.
While Chrome is not stealing Firefox users, at least, not that many, the fact that the Mozilla-backed browser hasn't managed to gain more users in the UK, or in many other places, signals that the Firefox team needs to make some changes to revitalized growth.
The rapid release cycle, which borrows a lot from Chrome's approach, could be a start and more new features in a shorter time frame could entice users. The performance improvements in the works at this moment, landing in Firefox 7 and beyond should help as well.
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