Chrome is the world's most popular browser, for one day
Chrome has overtaken Internet Explorer as the world's most popular browser, but only for one day.
Chrome has overtaken Internet Explorer as the world's most popular browser, but Google's minimalist software only stayed on top for one day.
Figures from traffic monitor StatCounter say that on 18 March, Chrome blasted past Internet Explorer, topping the charts in India, Russia and Brazil to make it number one worldwide.
Last Sunday, Chrome had a 32.71 per cent share of global browser usage, edging Internet Explorer's 32.5 per cent.
That's a very modest difference of course, and when Monday rolled around, Internet Explorer was back on top. That's no coincidence, as when you look at the graph above you can see there's a strong trend towards people using Chrome at the weekend, which is when most people get to choose which browser they use on their computers at home.
Once folks return to the office, where they may have no choice but to use Internet Explorer, the numbers are suddenly in Microsoft's favour. In other words, the figures suggest that when people have a choice, they choose Chrome. Last summer Chrome overtook Firefox to become the second most popular browser.
On the Sunday when Chrome was in the lead, Firefox had 24.81 per cent of monitored browser usage, while Safari lagged with just 7.13 per cent and poor old Opera mustered just 1.86 per cent.
StatCounter gets its figures from 15 billion page views per month on over 3 million websites. The service counts page impressions, judging a browser's popularity based on how much actual web surfing is done using it.
Another site, NetMarketShare, counts how many people are using each browser. In February that site ranked Internet Explorer as top dog with 48.92 per cent of the browser pie, while Firefox is second with 19.35 per cent and Chrome is third with 17.48.
Taken together, the sites' figures suggest Chrome is used by a minority of surfers, but those folks do loads of web browsing.
Which is your favourite browser, and why? Get ready to defend your favourite in the comments below, or over on our Facebook wall.