Chrome is now undisputed champion of the browsers

Google's Chrome has grabbed first place in terms of desktop browser market share, wresting the crown away from Microsoft's Internet Explorer.

While some analyst firms have had Chrome as top dog for some time now, that wasn't the case with NetMarketShare – but now the latter's figures have Chrome finally sneaking past IE.

NetMarketShare's figures for April showed that Chrome hit a 41.67% share of the browser market, edging out Internet Explorer which is on 41.37%.

The other big browser watcher, StatCounter, has actually had Chrome in front of Microsoft's ageing IE for the last four years, but now NetMarketShare agrees, we can safely say that Google's browser is the most used in the world.

The difference in results is down to the very different methodologies these firms use to collect their data (for example NetMarketShare counts unique users rather than page views).

Edging back

Microsoft will, of course, expect to start pulling ground back on Chrome in the future with its new Edge browser – when more people convert to Windows 10, that is, and Redmond actually finishes this piece of software (adding missing elements such as extensions, which really should have been there since launch).

As for the other browsers in NetMarketShare's latest figures, Firefox is a long way off the pace in third place on 9.76%, with Safari on 4.91%. Fifth position is held by Opera on 1.89%.

Just a few weeks ago, Chrome dropped support for Windows XP (as well as Windows Vista and older versions of OS X, namely Mountain Lion or older), giving XP users another possible reason to upgrade (or switch browser).

Via: Neowin

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