Chrome tops Internet Explorer in StatCounter global rankings

Shawn Knight

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Google’s Chrome web browser is now the most popular in the world, according to one analytics firm. StatCounter says that Chrome overtook Internet Explorer last week by securing 32.76 percent of the market share compared to 31.94 percent for Microsoft’s product.

Chrome continues to hold first place as this week gets under way, but by a slightly narrower margin (0.41 percent). Of course, this isn’t the first time that Google’s browser has overtaken Microsoft’s in the polls. The same thing happened in March, although it only lasted a single day.

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StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen notes that Chrome has become a top choice for weekend web surfers. The reason for this is that most users are free to choose their own browser when away from work while they may be forced to use IE via company policy while on the job.

Note that these stats include users from around the world. In the US, Internet Explorer still has a firm lead on all other browsers with a market share of 37.81 percent. For the same time period, Chrome only managed to capture 23.83 percent. It appears that European users may have helped to swing the overall scale in favor of Google.

CNET points out, however, that StatCounter’s method of tallying usage is a bit different than most. They count raw page views but don’t correct for geographic differences between their own network usage and global browsing patterns.

Firefox came in third place followed by Safari, Opera and all other browsers combined.

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I used IE for over 10 years and have 100% switched to Chrome and love it! Will never go back. Microsoft really shot themselves in the foot with limiting ie8 to xp, ie 9 to Win7, can only test ie10 in Win8... boo!

and for pete's sake, why oh why can't IE put in a "paste and go" function like every other browser (why just "paste" + Enter key ??) ...it's downright stupid.
 
We need IE at work (Hospital with 800+ workstations, 50+ servers) here for our Intranet (Sharepoint) and some older programs/add-ins/SQL based Client/Network software require IE and will not work with Chrome/Firefox.
We did have many issues with the new IE9 and Java too, I hate IE9.

Chrome is a much better browser in just about everyway.
As a tech here I use IE here but nothing but Chrome anywhere else.
 
The article said it all too well. IE is for work and Chrome for weekend surfers. But in my group (a bit on the tech-savvy side) we only use Firefox. It's better when it comes to web development. I don't need an extra 1 second, I need functionality + speed.

But I do install Chrome for people that only need it for email and a bit of web-surfing. It's hard to teach someone how to use extensions when they don't know how to send an email :p .
 
<p>The article said it all too well. IE is for work and Chrome for weekend surfers. But in my group (a bit on the tech-savvy side) we only use Firefox. It's better when it comes to web development. I don't need an extra 1 second, I need functionality + speed. </p>
<p><br /></p>
<p>But I do install Chrome for people that only need it for email and a bit of web-surfing. It's hard to teach someone how to use extensions when they don't know how to send an email :p .</p>

agreed, I personally have the 3 on my quick launch. Ie is for school work, firefox takes most of my heavy use. I love fire fox for its functionality, in case firefox fails chrome steps in.
 
I was a pretty hardcore Chrome user for the first couple years of its existance, but I find myself using IE9 more than anything else at this point.
 
I used to use Firefox also, but with win8cp, I'm digging ie10 and just started exploring accelerators. I don't use extensions much anymore to be honest. Ie 9 and 10 is quite snappy enough for me. And with native logmein plugin, I just trying to simplify my life.
 
I have been Chrome for a long time. I jumped to opera recently simply for the sake trying something new. But now I find myself liking Opera more and more though I do miss Chrome's more effective autofill & dropdown menu.
 
I used IE for over 5 years, yet never really cared to change to another browser until I realized I needed an adblock. I'm now using FireFox ONLY because it has the best adblocker amongst the popular web browsers.

I didn't try Chrome because it's adblocker doesn't block all ads from what I've read since Google thrives off it's ads.
 
I use fanboy's adblock and tracking block for IE 9 & 10 here, it works really well for most of the ads:

just google "fanboy tracking protection list" and click the fanboy link
 
this survey company also stated that I have the biggest balls in the world.
 
Opera user here. LastPass, an adblocker, an inpage translator, and a couple other miscellaneous extensions. Since I use daily Bing images for my wallpaper, I use a little trick to set my Speed Dial background to the same thing as my current wallpaper, whatever it may be.

IE9 has surprisingly treated me rather well, and I tend to fall back to it when a website doesn't seem to like Opera's rendering engine. Chrome's been eating up a lot of CPU cycles in the recent versions, which concerns me in terms of battery life on my laptop as well as general system load, since I do tend to multitask between various programs and use a lot of tabs.

Firefox, well... I hope they grow out of their "me too" phase and work on innovation and more HTML5 features.
 
Is nobody but me really bored with peoples continued obsession with web browsers and telling everybody about how "browser A is amazing and you should be put down for using browser B"?

There's so little to choose between them now just pick your favourite and enjoy.

I think we need to start a new tedious fanboy war - maybe favourite mouse mats? The mouse mat you use probably has more impact on your browser productivity than the browser these days.
 
I use fanboy's adblock and tracking block for IE 9 & 10 here, it works really well for most of the ads:

just google "fanboy tracking protection list" and click the fanboy link
Ah yes, I used three Tracking Protection lists. Unfortunately those don't block ads from inside flash videos such as YouTube videos and other streams of which I watch a lot of. That's why I switched. I did find "simple-adblock" but that one only had a 30 day trial until they limited to a few ad blocked per day.

There really isn't a better ad block add on other than Firefox's Ad Block Plus. Oh I also like the NoSquint add on which is a lot better than the standard zooming options of IE (and Firefox).
 
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