According to NetMarketShare, the Google Chrome browser gained .4% of global usage share in February. All other major browsers showed a month-to-month decline.
Browser Trends?
Maybe more interesting is that these first two months of 2010 may end up being the beginning of a new trend. At the start of the past month, Net Applications site revealed that the Google Chrome browser gained a minor .6% of global usage share in January. Whereas, Firefox and Internet Explorer both dropped market shares during the last month.
Internet Explorer- From the browser versrions perspective, Internet Explorer 8, however, increased its market share, but the increase was offset by the much more consistent share loss of IE7 and IE6. Microsoft is currently working on Internet Explorer 9, with more details on this version of IE planned for mid-March at MIX10.
FireFox- FireFox has not fared well. The first couple of months in 2010 brought with it the release of Firefox 3.6, an update to version 3.5, it climbed modestly to 5.16% share of the market. However, that was the good news; the larger trend is not so good. Firefox 3.5 has suffered a marked reduction of its market share, from 17.08% to 14.54% in the past month, a loss which can be attributed to the release of Firefox 3.6.
How the Data is Collected
NetMarketShare has a distinctive methodology for collecting this data. First they collect data from the browsers of site visitors to their on-demand network of live stats customers. Next the data are compiled from about 160 million visitors per month. Finally, the published information is an aggregate of the data from this network of hosted website statistics. The compilation of the unique site unique visitor and referral information is summarized on a monthly, weekly, daily and hourly basis.
For information on NetMarket Share see: Chrome Only Major Browser to Gain Usage Share in February
