Google Chrome is now the world’s number web browser; that according to Statcounter, a traffic monitoring and reporting tool used by thousands of sites.
For the month of May, Chrome and Internet Explorer both owned about 32% market share, with Chrome slipping past in the last week to take the lead as the most popular web browser in aggregate across all global regions.
News of the change at the top is not exactly shocking to those who track the market. For years (see chart above) Internet Explorer has been on the decline. With mobile surfing becoming more frequent, and the influence of the Windows operating system declining, IE has seen it share erode from a high of almost 70% in 2009.
Users generally cite speed, ease of use, and flexibility of the user interface including comprehensive tabbing as key reasons to choose Chrome as their primary browser. It likely doesn’t hurt that Google promotes the web browser on its search landing page at google.com, the number one web site in the world (per Alexa Internet, Inc.).
Interestingly, in Europe Firefox (30%+ share) is the lead browser, followed closely by Chrome (which continues to gain share), and then by IE.
In Asia, Chrome (36%+ share) passed IE earlier this year in what is essentially a two browser race.