According to the latest figures from StatCounter, Google’s Chrome browser grabbed a fifth of the global market in June.
Chrome claimed 20.7 percent of the global browser market in June, up from just 2.9 percent in June 2009.
For Microsoft’s Internet Explorer the picture hasn’t been nearly as pretty – it saw its market share slide from 59 percent to 44 percent during that same time span.
Mozilla’s Firefox saw its worldwide market share drop from 30 percent to 28 percent during that time.
"It is a superb achievement by Google to go from under 3% two years ago to over 20% today," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter. "While Google has been highly effective in getting Chrome downloaded the real test is actual browser usage which our stats measure."
StatCounter noted Chrome’s particularly strong performance in South America, where it leapfrogged Firefox to become the continent’s No. 2 browser.
In the U.S., Internet Explorer leads the way with 46.5 percent of the market as of June, according to StatCounter. Back in June 2010, IE had 52.8 percent of the market.
Firefox follows with 24.7 percent, down from its 28.2 percent share in June 2010.
Meanwhile, Chrome has 16.0 percent of the market as of June, up from its 8.63 percent share in June of last year.
Safari is fourth with 11.6 percent of the market, up from its 8.8 percent share in June 2010.
Google’s cloud-based Chrome operating system was recently cited for having security flaws, according to WhiteHat Security. A researcher at the company said he found a flaw that enabled him to take control of a Gmail account.
“I can get at your online banking or your Facebook profile or your e-mail as it is being loaded in the browser,” Matt Johansen, researcher for WhiteHat, told Reuters. “If I can exploit some kind of Web application to access that data, then I couldn't care less what is on the hard drive.”
Chrome is expected to have voice and video chat functionality built in soon, according to comments on a Google developer forum.
Sources:
http://gs.statcounter.com/press/chrome-breaks-20-perc-globally-in-june
http://news.cnet.com/8301-1009_3-20075801-83/chrome-os-has-security-flaws-claims-researcher/
http://www.pcworld.com/article/230866/google_chrome_to_get_native_voice_video_chat.html
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