Google’s Chrome browser – which turns 5 years old as of next month – has captured a substantial share of the market from its older competitors. It can now lay claim to 43% of the internet traffic generated by desktop computers worldwide. When Chrome was, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) was the market leader with a share of 68%—it has now fallen to only 25%.
Mosaic, the first browser capable of displaying words and images on a single page, was designed just 20 years ago. As the internet began its soon-to-be astronomical rise in 1994, some of its developers launched an improved version called Netscape. But when Microsoft began including IE with its Windows operating system, Netscape’s prominence took a huge blow. Such was the proliferation of IE and other Microsoft products that in 2000 an American court began to consider the prospect of splitting the company into two.
Alternative browsers such as Mozilla Firefox were already gaining traction in 2010 when the European Commission ruled that Microsoft would have to offer users a choice of browsers. Since then, Firefox has begun to fall into the shadow of Chrome. There are many, often conflicting measures of market share for web browsers. Microsoft itself claims that Internet Explorer’s current net market share stands at 56.5% (which is itself a far cry from recent highs such as 2008’s 78.42% share, measured by the same metric). One source shows that IE is still in front in terms of numbers of visitors to websites. But for e-commerce, share of traffic matters more. By this measure, Chrome is currently leading in a large proportion of countries. World domination beckons.
To find out more about Google Chrome, contact Freetimers on 01604 638421.
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