14 DAY TRIAL // The browser market has become a lot more interesting in the past couple of years or so, especially after the arrival of Google Chrome. While it had previously been a two-horse race with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer having a huge lead over Firefox, Chrome shook things up and, at its current growth rate, is becoming a serious contender. In May, the Google browser gained even more market share, nibbling away at both IE and Firefox, to go past the seven-percent mark for the first time, according to Net Applications numbers.
Google Chrome was used by 7.05 percent of the people visiting the sites Net Applications monitored. This was up from 6.73 percent in April, a small increase but having a sustained growth rate. Google Chrome has been adding more users ever since it launched in September 2008 and has been doing so at an increased rate in recent months.
Stable versions of Google Chrome have recently been launched for all platforms it supports, Windows, Mac OS X and Linux. As the browser becomes more mature, users are finding it a real alternative to Firefox in particular.
Speaking of Firefox, Mozilla’s browser saw a small dip in user numbers in May, going from a 24.59-percent market share in April to 24.35 percent now. It isn’t the first time the browser lost some market share from one month to the other only to gain it back in the next, and Firefox has been hovering over the 24-percent mark for more than half a year now.
Apple’s Safari also saw a small bump in users, going from a 4.72-percent to a 4.77-percent market share. Normally, such a small change could be attributed to the inherent relativity of web-browser market share stats, but the small growth continues a trend that goes back at least a year. Meanwhile, the dominant browser, Internet Explorer, has also continued its slow downwards trend with its combined market share dropping below 60 percent for the second month in a row.