Chrome Edges Firefox for Second Place in Browser Battle

[ParamouR]

Google’s Chrome Web browser has leapfrogged Firefox to claim the number two slot in the browser battle, according to Web analytics firm StatCounter.

Chrome held 25.69 percent of the worldwide market in November 2011 compared with Firefox's 25.23 percent. Internet Explorer remains the top browser globally with a 40.63 percent share of the market.

Of the top five browsers, only Chrome is seeing rapid growth -- in November 2009, it held just under 5 percent of the market. Firefox and Internet Explorer have been slowly losing market share the past two years, while Safari and Opera have been more or less flat.

Chrome has often been cited for its superior speed and stability over other browsers. Each Chrome tab is assigned its own process, so one buggy site won't crash the whole browser. Recent versions of Firefox, by comparison, have seemed a bit slow and bloated. Word of mouth about Chrome seems to have slowly accelerated over the past few years, according to StatCounter data.

NetMarketShare, another Web analytics firm, shows Chrome still in third place, but on a similar trajectory to overtake Firefox soon.

In the United States alone, StatCounter finds Chrome still in third place, but also not by much.

Technically, it's still Microsoft's world on the Web, but not quite like it was in the days when Internet Explorer had more than 90 percent of the browser market. Perhaps by the time Windows XP is no longer a dominant operating system, Chrome may have a shot at the browser crown.

Chrome Edges Firefox for Second Place in Browser Battle | PCWorld

[SomeGuy]

Chrome deserves to be top browser, firefox is too bloated. To fix it they have to write it from scratch, not only improve it :]

[Instab]

chrome lacks tons of normally basic features not to mention all the personal stuff it sends to google. addons still need to catchup as well as the simple reason that without the name "google" on it nobody would care

[SealLion]

Chrome deserves to be top browser, firefox is too bloated. To fix it they have to write it from scratch, not only improve it :]

Is it ever bloated. And I also agree that the browser might need to be written from scratch. Having these bug fixes over and over increases it's size and probably even it's memory usage too.

chrome lacks tons of normally basic features not to mention all the personal stuff it sends to google. addons still need to catchup as well as the simple reason that without the name "google" on it nobody would care

This I agree with too. I would like my privacy taken seriously when using Google extensions inside Chrome rather than what I think might be seen as nonchalant from Google's side. I have this Android phone and of course, as you know Android is from Google and I can't even use Google Maps on the phone without Google wanting to know where I am.