Google's Chrome browser reaches 10.9 percent, while Mozilla Firefox dipped 1 percentage point to 21.7 percent through February, according to Net Applications.
Google's Chrome Web browser nudged up to 10.9 percent through February,
showing just a touch of growth from January when it
hit 10.7 percent market share, according to Net Applications.
Microsoft Internet Explorer rallied, growing from 56 percent through January
to 56.8 percent in February, the market researcher
reported March 1.
Microsoft noted in a blog post that IE9, the company's freshest browser
iteration, reached 0.66 percent market share across all Windows operating
systems, with over 2 percent share on the Windows 7 platform.
Moreover, the browser has been downloaded more than 36 million times since
its September 2010 launch, Microsoft said in a
blog post.
Apple's Safari also grew a touch, to 6.4 percent from 6 percent for the
month.
Chrome, IE and Safari appeared to gouge Mozilla Firefox, which dipped an
entire percentage point, from 22.8 percent in January to 21.7 percent this
month.
While Chrome's growth to almost 11 percent market share since its inception
in September 2008 would normally be the key story line here, Firefox's fall
takes that prize.
It's unclear why Firefox has dropped. Mozilla has been
working feverishly to bring Firefox 4 to market, releasing new
beta versions of the build every few weeks across desktop and mobile platforms.
Firefox 4 revs startup time, page loading, and Web applications and games.
Mozilla's Kraken performance benchmark shows it to be more than three times
faster than the current Firefox 3.6.13 build.
Whatever the reason for Firefox's fall, it's clear Chrome, which Google is
updating with a new stable release every few weeks, and IE9, which has won
kudos from browser users worldwide, have been the hot browser builds.