Google Chrome threatens Safari’s third spot

Wed Aug 5 2009, 14:46 PM

Google’s Chrome browser is closing the gap on Apple’s third-placed Safari in the web browser rankings, according to Net Applications. Chrome had a 2.59% market share in July, compared to Safari’s 4.07%. The gap has narrowed from more than two percentage points in March and now stands at just 1.48 percentage points.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) remains the market leader with a 67.7% share, a slight drop from the 68.1% share in May 2009. Within this total, Microsoft’s new IE8 browser continues to increase its market share, up from 5.95% in May to 12.5% in July. Most of these new users have most likely migrated from IE6 or IE7. The market share of IE6 and IE7 continues to drop, although IE6 remains the most popular version with 27.2% of the market.

Mozilla’s new Firefox 3.5, which launched on June 30, now claims 4.54% of the browser market, likely stealing users from its previous 3.0 version, whose market share dropped from 20% in June to 16.2% in July. Firefox is still second in the browser market with a 22.47% share.