Chrome Beats Firefox as Second Most Popular Web Browser

StatCounter, a site that collectively gathers global Internet user information such as browser types and operating systems, officially announces that Google Chrome has overtaken Firefox as the second most used web browser globally, with a usage rate of 25.69% and 25.23% in November 2011, respectively. Google Chrome has seen one of the most rapid growth in popularity for the past two years, thanks to the frequent updates and lightweight of the browser itself. This marks another milestone for Google's ambitious conquest of the web, with Internet Explorer still remaining the top browser of choice.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats - Browser Market Share

These stats are calculated based on random sampling of billions of accesses to millions of websites globally. The reason that IE still dominates over all browsers is that it is the default browser installed alongside Windows, which dictates the majority of the PC market share. IE has a solid user base in Asia, with nearly 90% of IE use rate in China. However, there is a steady decline as users turn to less problematic and faster browsers: even with the latest stable release of IE9, which cannot be installed on Windows XP or earlier, still has issues with some CSS3 rendering that most other browsers do not encounter.

Firefox has been the favorite aside from IE because of its strength in CSS support. However, it comes loaded with plug-ins, which significantly slows down the hardware acceleration and startup. This may be the main reason that Chrome is getting the upper hand: it is by far the fastest browser to startup and load pages heavy with javascript.

Apple's Safari still dominates mobile device market with the additional sale of iPad, iPhone and iMac, but it is the weakest of the top four browsers in the world. There is also a drop of usage rates from 64% to 55% in mobile devices last month.

By comparison, a different list of browser statistics can be viewed at W3schools' stat, calculated based on the logs of its website. Because W3school has a target audiences of web developers, the stats are better described as developers' preferences rather than the general public. IE is much less favored, while more developers still use Firefox as their primary browser choice over Chrome.