Browser wars: Chrome takes the number two spot, but ET readers still love Firefox

By Sal Cangeloso on December 2, 2011 at 5:20 pm

The browser horse race is something that every internet user, especially those of us that work on the web, can follow with all the glee of a presidential run, the console wars, or a good, old fashioned distro battle. At the start of each month we get the numbers from organizations that analyze huge tracts of data and tell us how much market share Internet Explorer has lost, how much Firefox and Chrome have gained, and how much mobile browsing has exploded. These numbers might not have a great effect on us at the end of the day, but they sure are fun to track.

This week we learned from web analytics company Statscounter that global usage of Google’s Chrome browser beat out that of Firefox for the first time. Chrome did this with just over a quarter of the browser market, 25.69% to be precise, while Firefox had 25.23%. Internet Explorer still managed a dominant plurality with a 40.63% share. Statscounter’s sample size is tremendous — it was over 16.3 billion hits in May 2010 — so we’ll take their word for it.

A huge survey of web users is great for getting representative numbers, but what if you want to know about browser market share among a smaller group… say technology enthusiasts. In fact, let’s narrow that down even further and look at people who specifically want to “answer the unanswerable questions of technology“. What browsers do ExtremeTech readers use?

The November 2011 numbers are as follows:

1. Firefox – 33.95%
2. Chrome – 32.09%
3. Internet Explorer – 14.43%
4. Safari – 10.35%
5. Android – 4.32%

By browser and operating system:

1. Firefox / Windows – 26.37%
2. Chrome / Windows – 23.98%
3. Internet Explorer / Windows – 14.34%
4. Chrome / Macintosh – 5.47%
5. Safari / Macintosh – %5.32%

And finally by browser version:

1. Firefox 8.0 – 13.50%
2. Chrome 15.0.874.106 – 11.13%
3. Firefix 7.0.1 – 11.02%
4. Chrome 15.0.874.121 – 10.09%
5. Internet Explorer 8 – 6.54%

So what are the quick takeaways from these numbers? Obviously ExtremeTech’s readers are not representative of internet users at large. The site’s readers are making a conscious decision about their browser, not simply using the one that comes pre-installed. They (you!) also keep their browsers updated, which is always usually a sign of someone who is thinking about their tools, though some people do have to use what their place of work makes available to them.

Interestingly, IE9 was number six on the list, trailing just behind IE8. About a quarter of our Windows readers are still on XP so that could easily account for that though.Want to know the refreshing fact of the day? Only 0.26% of ET’s readers are on IE6.


source : http://www.extremetech.com