Google Chrome Overtakes Safari in December

With Google's might behind it, it's inevitable that Chrome will grow in market share, though, by how much is another issue. It has been rising steadily since it launched over a year ago and a bigger jump was to be expected in the last month with the big beta launch and the extensions gallery. Sure enough, Google Chrome is now the third most popular web browser in the world behind only Internet Explorer and Firefox, but having passed Apple's Safari, confirming initial numbers.

According to the numbers from Net Applications for December, Google Chrome owns 4.63 percent of the browser market, ahead of Safari's 4.46 percent. This is very much in line with Softpedia's very own numbers for 2009 which, admitedly, are a bit skewed towards newer browsers thanks to the more tech savvy audience. Still, it's far behind Firefox which enjoys a significant 24.61 percent market share, while Internet Explorer holds a very solid lead with 62.29 percent. It's a big milestone for Chrome though, as the browser market has been notoriously hard to crack.

It took Mozilla over five years and five big product updates, counting Firefox 1.5 and 3.5, to get to this point and, while doing much better in some regions, especially in Europe where it is the market leader in several countries, globally it still has a long way to go before challenging IE. This is mostly because of a couple of large markets, notably the US and especially China, where IE holds a very firm grasp.

Just one year after being launched, Firefox was closing in on 12 percent of the market, by some measurements, well ahead of its very optimistic, initial goal of 10 percent within one year. It's a very different market today, in fact, thanks to Firefox, so Chrome's almost five percent are probably as big as could be expected for a new browser, even one with Google in the name. By all accounts though, the rise will probably accelerate at least and it should see healthy growth for at least a couple of years from now.

Google is just getting started promoting the browser and will probably increase efforts in this area with things like offline advertising and more visibility in other Google products. This should lead to an uptake in adoption, especially as Chrome is heading for stable releases on all platforms. Another major engine for growth will be Chrome OS which, if the platform proves as successful as Google wants it to be, will lead to even more usage.