14 DAY TRIAL // When Google sets its mind to something it usually gets its way. It's not infallible, but when everything comes together the results can surprise even Google. Chrome has been out for almost a year and a half now and the browser is really starting to pick up Steam. It hovered in the low one digit percentage points for most of its lifespan, but the project is really starting to come together which reflects on its increasing market share. According to numbers from Net Applications, Google Chrome is now at 5.2 percent market share, up 0.6 percent from December.
That's double what it had just six months ago and the growth rate has actually slowed down from the previous month. Statistics aren't exact and 5.2 percent isn't exactly Earth-shattering, but considering that Firefox managed to get just below 25 percent, 24.4 percent specifically in January, in five years since 1.0 launched, it's quite an achievement. Speaking of the open-source project that showed everyone that web browser wasn't a synonym to Internet Explorer, Firefox actually lost market share (0.2 percent) from December.
The biggest loser though, as expected, is again Internet Explorer which is now at a combined 62.2 percent of the market, losing 10 percent in the past year. The ancient IE6 dropped 0.9 points last month to an all time low of 20.1 percent, still not fast enough for some. IE 7 shed even more users as many switched to the newer IE 8, dropping to 14.6 percent. IE 8 was up 1.5 points reaching 22.3 browser market share.
One interesting aspect is that IE 8 became the world's most used browser this month passing IE 6 to get the title. Firefox 3.5 came in third with 17 percent, according to the numbers. The newly launched Firefox 3.6 was off to a good start growing from 0.4 percent to 1.1 percent market share. Considering it was launched on January 21, it's a decent number.