Chrome has pipped Safari to third place in the global browser market, according to figures from analysis firm Net Applications.
Chrome saw out December with a 4.63% share of the market, enough to unseat Apple’s Safari as the world’s third most popular browser. Safari finished the month with a 4.46% slice of the market.
According to Net Applications, December was the first month that Google managed to unseat one of the big three, and was the result of a 0.7% jump in usage – the largest since the browser was released 16 months ago.
The success comes shortly after the web giant released versions of its browser for Mac and Linux. Google has also embarked on a huge marketing splash for the Chrome browser in the UK.
While nowhere close to challenging Internet Explorer – which maintains a 62.7% stranglehold on the market – the figures remain troubling for Microsoft. Internet Explorer dropped 0.92% over the month, representing a 7% drop for the browser since January 2009.
Firefox also lost ground, dropping 0.1% to finish with 24.6%, easily enough to maintain its second place position.
However, it was a good month for Opera, which accounted for 2.4% of all browsers used during December – a record high for the browser.
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