Statcounter: Chrome overtakes Internet Explorer in global browser share for the first time

Chrome’s share of internet use just inched past Microsoft’s Internet Explorer last month, laying claim to king of the web browsers. Statcounter’s analytics measured that 32.43 percent of its 15 billion page-views were done on Google’s browser, while Internet Explore took 32.12 percent and Firefox 25.55 percent. According to StatCounter, an upswing of over 0.6 percent to Firefox (from Internet Explorer) helped Chrome claim the top spot. The month rounds off some impressive growth for Chrome in 2012, which claimed second place in Statcounter’s results at the start of the year. Now, if Google could just get that mobile version out to more handsets, we could see how it fares against small-screen competition.

BusinessWire

StatCounter

Firefox 4 clocks up 5 million downloads within first 24 hours, fails to beat Firefox 3 download record

We noted Firefox 3′s spectacular eight million downloads in a day when discussing the recent launch of IE9, and that mark shall live on as a record for another day. Firefox 4 looks to have a had a thoroughly successful debut, going past the five million milestone within the first 24 hours of its release, but it hasn’t quite been able to overshadow its predecessor. And before you go comparing its numbers to the latest Internet Explorer, do be cognizant that FF4 released on a wider set of platforms, rendering direct stat comparisons a little dicey. That’s not stopping StatCounter, however, who notes that the latest Firefox already has a 1.95 percent share of the browser market, almost exactly double what IE9 can claim so far. Better get working on that XP compatibility, eh Microsoft?

Bing advances past Yahoo! to become world's second most used search engine — with 4.4 percent

How far we’ve come from the heady days when Microsoft was willing to splash $44 billion to acquire Yahoo! Since then, the online portal has done whatever the opposite of going from strength to strength is, and today it’s suffered the somewhat predictable ignominy of losing its second spot in search to Microsoft’s upstart Bing. Statcounter places the February global share of search at 4.4 percent for Microsoft and 3.9 percent for Yahoo! (the Redmond giant can actually lay claim to a bigger slice since Bing “powers” Yahoo! search results in some countries), neither of which should give Google much reason for concern while it’s sitting pretty with a share of just under 90 percent. It’s the first time Google has dipped below the 90 percent mark for a long time, but Statcounter says “it shows little sign of losing its global dominance any time soon.” So that settles that.