Don’t look now guys, but only 16 months after it was officially released, Google Chrome is now the world’s no. 3 browser, based on Net Applications’ web browser usage data for December.
What makes this more interesting is that Chrome has edged out Apple Safari which has been occupying the third spot next to Internet Explorer and Firefox. Google Chrome registered a 4.63% market share while Safari got 4.46% making it the no.4 browser for the first time.
It is also worthwhile to note that Google just released the beta editions of Chrome for both Mac and Linux so it is most likely that this brought a sudden surge to its market share.
While Safari may have slipped down to the no. 4 spot, it still managed to increase by 0.1%. Not unlike IE and Firefox which both suffered minor setbacks with 0.92% and 0.1% decrease in market share respectively.
Joining Google Chrome and Apple Safari with increases in market share is Opera’s web browser which managed to get 2.4% of the browser market.
Net Applications’ data was based on usage share from the 40,000 sites it monitors for clients. This amounts to 160 million unique visitors monthly.
