Chrome nears 10 per cent market share

published 4 January 2011

Google's Chrome browser has snuck up the ranks with its market share now amounting to almost 10 per cent.

Chrome users were responsible for 9.98 per cent of all browser usage in December, higher than both Opera and Safari put together. This has risen from 5.61 per cent at the beginning of last year, according to new statistics from NetMarketShare.

Although it has clearly taken away a few percentage points from its major rivals, Microsoft's Internet Explorer and Mozilla's Firefox browsers still dwarf its numbers.

IE was responsible for 57.08 per cent of market share, whilst Firefox claimed 22.81 per cent. However, the statistics were not broken down into versions of the two browsers.

Google claimed back in December that its browser was now fit for businesses to use, thanks to the addition of new features around policy management controls and an MSI installer.

"By deploying Google Chrome, organisations can take advantage of improved security and web application performance without needing to upgrade other expensive software licences or buy new hardware," Google said in a blog post at the time.

"Since Google Chrome is the same as the browser on Chrome OS, admins considering Chrome OS for their organisations can start testing their mission-critical web applications by deploying the Google Chrome browser."

Jennifer Scott is a former freelance journalist and currently political reporter for Sky News. She has a varied writing history, having started her career at Dennis Publishing, working in various roles across its business technology titles, including ITPro. Jennifer has specialised in a number of areas over the years and has produced a wealth of content for ITPro, focusing largely on data storage, networking, cloud computing, and telecommunications.

Most recently Jennifer has turned her skills to the political sphere and broadcast journalism, where she has worked for the BBC as a political reporter, before moving to Sky News.