It looks like Chrome is doing a pretty formidable job at becoming the new choice for Internet users who want something other than Internet Explorer.
For the last several years, most PC users were resigned to one choice – Internet Explorer or Firefox. Those who were smart enough to ditch IE ended up jumping over to the Mozilla-owned browser.
But in the last year, Google has been able to do what it does best – jump into a market that has historically slow and stringent changes, and shake up the status quo in record time.
The search giant’s Chrome browser has catapulted to popularity thanks to its simplistic user interface, fast site-loading technologies, and an array of add-ons that allow users to truly customize their browsing experience.
Becuase of Chrome’s sustained growth, industry tracker StatCounter reckons it will overtake Firefox by the end of the year.
The numbers don’t lie. At the beginning of 2011, Chrome’s browser share stood at a little under 15% while Firefox was resting at more than 27% and IE was at 45%.
Now, there’s a stark trend emerging – today, Chrome reaches 23.6% of Internet users, while Firefox is at 26.8%. IE remains somewhat comfortably on top at 41.7%.
But the distance between Chrome and Firefox is now slight, just three percentage points. And for the entire year, Chrome has been rising while Firefox has been falling.
In the Internet browser world, market share numbers almost never jump by these kinds of margins. It certainly proves that Chrome is a beast, and also suggests that it is even successful at pulling users away from the de facto Internet Explorer platform.
One caveat is that browser tracking is a largely unprecise science, so the numbers are to be taken with a grain of salt, but the very obvious trend is not. Chrome could well become the new champion of non-IE users.
