Chrome enjoys browser stats lead

Back in March, we reported on StatCounter's revelation that Chrome had for a single day leapfrogged Internet Explorer in the browser wars. Google's browser had topped the polls in India, Russia and Brazil, resulting in a narrow worldwide lead.

Although Microsoft took exception to the figures, arguing prerendering data was included, and presumably enjoyed a subsequent story that showed IE9 use spiking at weekends, the most recent StatCounter figures will make for grim reading.

StatCounter's new data takes into account Google Chrome's prerendering; and for the first time, during W20/2012, Chrome eclipsed IE's market-share for an entire week, despite Microsoft's browser retaining a solid lead in the USA and Japan. Although the lead was short-lived – StatCounter's own figures show IE taking the lead again in W21/2012 – the overall trend is clear.

Tech Evangelist Joey deVilla noted on his blog that other sources are also in broad agreement, with Clicky and W3Counter showing IE in decline and Chrome on the rise. Neither places Chrome in the lead though, with IE's lead more slender according to W3Counter than Clicky, which gives it nearly a three per cent cushion. However, he added that all services along these lines pull numbers from sites using their widgets and so "might provide a skewed picture of browser share for the internet in general". As ever, take note of reported trends but when designing and developing take more notice of statistics related to your client site's visitors.