'Open' browsers serve majority of web

Google developer Peter Beverloo has remarked that, according to StatCounter, “open-source browsers now serve the majority of the Web”. The StatCounter report has Firefox on just under 28% and Chrome on 22%. Opera and Safari remain more or less stagnant, on 1.5% and 5%, respectively, while IE’s seemingly terminal decline continues.

The figures don’t only make grim reading for Microsoft, though: Firefox is gradually trending down, from a high of 31% last year, and if this continues, it’s possible Chrome will be ahead of Firefox by the end of 2011. According to StatCounter, this has already happened in the UK. Its figures have Chrome on a whisker over 22%, marginally ahead of Mozilla’s browser. However, Microsoft’s UK share remains slightly ahead of the combined share of Chrome and Firefox.

StatCounter says that its figures are “based on aggregate data collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (830 million from the UK and Ireland) from the StatCounter network of more than three million websites,” and so while they provide an indication of general trends, they shouldn’t be considered definitive. In fact, rival service NetMarketShare is far less positive about Chrome (13.5%) and has better numbers for IE and Safari. But the general trend nonetheless appears to be WebKit strengthening, mostly at the expense of Firefox and IE.