Google Chrome Now the Most Popular Web Browser

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Google Chrome is gaining ground quickly. Just hot on the heels of Chrome overtaking Firefox as the second most popular browser, Google’s webkit-based browser is now actually the most popular among all web browsers to date.

StatCounter has released data from last week, and one exciting finding is that Google Chrome has surpassed both Firefox and Internet Explorer 8 to be the most popular web browser. Chrome 15 took 23.6% market share worldwide, while IE8 took 23.5% in the last week of November.

Of course this information comes with some qualifiers. Google Chrome’s latest version 15 release has overtaken Internet Explorer 8, which had previously dominated the browser market. This does not take into consideration other versions of Internet Explorer like IE9, IE7 and even IE6, each of which have their own slice of the pie. If all versions of Internet Explorer were combined, then Microsoft’s browser will still have the top spot when it comes to worldwide market share, although their lead is slowly declining.

Google updates its web browsers automatically, hence a homogenized market share from among its active user base, which also causes the rise and fall pattern in the above graph. However, some stalwarts of older Internet Explorer versions are still holding out, for some reason, which is viewed as both a security and web standards nightmare.

Aside from now being the second most popular browser, Chrome has much to boast. The browser is deemed to be more secure than Firefox and Internet Explorer due to its sandboxing and Native Client features. Google also plans to establish its NaCl platform as a de-facto standard for running web applications on the browser, as it takes advantage of hardware acceleration even across various platforms.

Chrome has traditionally lagged behind in Internet Explorer in terms of user base, but with the new trends, will Chrome soon overtake IE in its entirety?