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Chrome rockets past Firefox in browser arena

Google's Web browser is gaining traction, according to Net Applications, while Mozilla's Firefox keeps sliding.

Lance Whitney Contributing Writer
Lance Whitney is a freelance technology writer and trainer and a former IT professional. He's written for Time, CNET, PCMag, and several other publications. He's the author of two tech books--one on Windows and another on LinkedIn.
Lance Whitney
2 min read

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Net Applications

Google's Chrome continues to shoot past Firefox among the desktop browser crowd, according to the latest stats from Web tracker Net Applications.

For the month of June, Net Applications gave Chrome a 19.3 percent share of all desktop browser traffic, up from 17.7 percent in May. Mozilla's Firefox took home a 15.5 percent share last month, down from 16.8 percent the prior month.

To be sure, the road has been bumpy. In June of 2013, Chrome's share was pegged at 17.1 percent by Net Applications. So, it took Google almost a year to recover lost traffic and make further gains. Over the same time, Firefox's traffic has been dropping fairly steadily. The two Web browsers have been duking it out for second place behind Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which currently holds 58 percent of browser traffic based on the latest data.

Of course, who's on first and what's on second depends on which Web tracker you follow. Net Applications' stats differ from those of other companies. Data from StatCounter, for example, has long shown Chrome as dominant over IE and Firefox. That's because each Web tracker uses its own unique methods and sources to determine Web traffic data. As one example, Net Applications counts unique visitors per day versus page views and has a stronger presence in certain countries than other Web trackers.

Looking at Net Applications' results for specific browser versions, Internet Explorer 8 took the lead last month with a 21.2 percent share of all traffic, followed by IE 11 with 17 percent, and Chrome 35 with 12.5 percent.