Google Chrome now third most popular browser

Still a long way behind Firefox and IE though

3 January 2010 15:36 GMT / By Stuart Miles

Google's Chrome browser has overtaken Apple's Safari browser to become the world's third most popular browser behind Firefox and Internet Explorer.

The feat, which has been achieved in just 16 months since its launch in 2008, comes as Microsoft's IE browsers continue to lose market share.

According to net measurement firm, Net Applications, Apple's Safari browser dropped into fourth place for the first time with 4.46% of usage compared to Chrome's 4.63%.

The uplift, no doubt thanks to the release of the Google-created browser on the Mac and a big advertising campaign, including on the search engines home page, shows that Apple's Safari browser is still struggling to gain traction outside of the Mac operating system.

The two browsers are still a long way off Mozilla's Firefox and Microsoft's IE offerings however.

Firefox sits currently at 24.6% while IE has fallen from an all time high of just over 90% to 62.7% with the company suggesting many defectors leaving in the last couple of months.

Opera Software's flagship browser also gained ground in December, and accounted for 2.4% of all browsers used in the month.

>> Comment on this story

Full tags

Software, Google, Google Chrome, Safari, Browsers, Firefox

UK Shopping

Amazon.co.uk, play.com, pixmania.co.uk, Currys.co.uk, Dixons.co.uk, 7dayshop.com, ebay.co.uk

US Shopping

Amazon.com, bestbuy.com, ebay.com

Latest in Software

Latest on Pocket-lint

Comments

Not surprising given the number of newspaper/magazine cover ads and billboards i see for chrome, or is that just in London? Posted by paul roberts, UK
Wave forced me to switch to Chrome and I am very happy with Chrome. I said goodbye to IE and I found Chrome works better with Facebook. Posted by Jennie, US
Well considering that Mozilla actually paved the way for an open sourced browser to be great it's no surprise that Chrome is doing so well.

I think it's actually come to a time that most thing software we use is going to be open source. Posted by Jon, US
Thats because Macs are lame :D

Brandon
Just South of North
http://justson.blogspot.com Posted by Brandon, United States
I just wish chrome has as many addons as Mozilla! :(

Rash
http://indiatechnews.com Posted by Rash, India
Apparently, Opera 10.5 Alfa blows to doors off all the other browsers in Sunspider java testing - the same test that Chrome has owned since its inception. I was a Firefox evangelist before it was called Firefox (i.e., Phoenix, then Firebird, and finally Firefox.) But I switched to Opera about 4 years ago. It doesn't have the extensions that Firefox has, but it has a lot of great features built-in and just works really well. If 10.5 lives up to hype, I can't image switching to Chrome or any of its open source derivatives. Posted by TJ, US
Unfortunately following on from Jennie's comments I'd hate to see Google using their web content as leverage to force Chrome into the mainstream. Wave has a very pretty but horribly inefficient DHTML-based user-interface that rather reminds me of the bad old days of using Flash for its own sake. I'd much rather they'd stuck to simple UI elements such as simple scrollbars rather than making the whole experience scale abysmally when using Firefox. Posted by GK, UK