Google's Chrome browser continues to make strong gains according to the latest figures from NetApplications. For the second month in a row the browser was able to outpace all its rivals, jumping from 6.1 to 6.73% market share in April. In contrast, Microsoft's Internet Explorer wound up grabbing 59.95% of the market, which marks the first time since the ubiquitous and often criticized browser has dropped below 60%.

Opera was the only other major browser to lose share by dropping to 2.3%. Meanwhile, Firefox and Safari both saw small gains that put them at 24.59% and 4.72% each. The figure is a record for Apple but for Mozilla it seems gains that had once come easily to it are now heading Chrome's way instead. Google and NetApplications have said they expect the newcomer browser to have anywhere between 8.5 and 10% share by the end of 2010.

NetApplications measures browser usage share by collecting systems data from the computers that visit the 40,000 sites it tracks for customers of its analytics services. You can find the detailed list at the company's website.