Google Chrome Overtakes Internet Explorer

By | March 23, 2012 | 26 Comments

Google Chrome Overtakes Internet Explorer

For one day only.

Just after Microsoft’s post about the inaccurate market share reports from StatCounter, the company behind one of the most popular monitoring sites has published a report of their own.

However, it has nothing to do with the HitsLink vs. StatCounter, in fact what they did is revealed that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been overtaken by Google Chrome for the first time in history on Sunday 18 March.

While IE remains the number one web browser as of today, Aodhan Cullen, CEO of web Statcounter said that Google Chrome usage peaks over the weekends when people don’t work and can freely choose what web browser to use.

With the upcoming release of Windows 8, Windows Phone 8 and Xbox Next, which might have IE pre-installed, it will be interesting to see how IE’s market share changes over the course of next year.

[Via DailyMail]


About (Author Profile)


Vygantas is a former web designer whose projects are used by companies such as AMD, NVIDIA and departed Westood Studios. Being passionate about software, Vygantas began his journalism carrier back in 2007 when he founded FavBrowser.com. Having said that, he is also an adrenaline junkie who enjoys good books, fitness activities and Forex trading.

  • Some1

    most used browsers order: chrome > ie > ff > safari > opera
    best browsers order: opera > firefox > chrome > safari > ie

    • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

      For best browsers I’d say:
      Maxthon > Opera > Firefox > Chrome > IE > Safari

      IE’s not much of a joke anymore and Safari 5.1 is getting quite old.

      • Anonymous

        True using Safari is pointless when Chrome has the same webkit engine

        • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

          While Chrome’s WebKit is different to Safari’s, Chrome has a more up-to-date WebKit core and is faster. However, Chrome does have some problems with HWA because IE9 is faster at my college.

          Chrome – speed , Safari – features

    • Supremekai19

      not trying to be a troll or anything but whats so great about opera? i use firefox its technically the same right?

      • Shaketheababyass

        Opera is amazing.  No “Server Not Responding” every 4 min and it is so much faster to me.  Of course it is opinion but I have used it for years and I will probably never use anything else.  I have always hated Firefox so my statements against it might not be 100% fair.

      • apád anyád

        Opera and Firefox are two completely different browsers.
        Opera has many features built in by default, things that requires add-ons to be installed on other browsers, usually it is stable and very smooth.
        Of course it also has some weak points: compatibility problems on some sites (site’s designer didn’t count Opera due to small user base), no hardware acceleration, etc
        I have been using both of them for a while, and I think the my opinion is more fair than Shaketheababyass.

        • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

          Opera 12 snapshots have some decent HWA on Windows (which aren’t even DirectX powered yet, only OpenGL ATM).

          I think Opera will have the best HWA of this generation because although Firefox and IE are fast with HWA, Opera will be faster.

          I personally use Maxthon (which doesn’t use HWA) but it’s still a feature-laden browser.

      • Guest 101½

        Does Opera still insists on users having to press F11 to toggle fullscreen on/off – rather than allowing, say clicking on an element (like a picture) to fullscreen it? Yes, I know various 3rd party media player plug-ins can toggle fullscreen on/off, but that’s not what I’m looking for.

    • Martin Suchan

      Exactly – there is nothing better than native mouse gestures and handy bookmark manager for like 1000+ bookmarks in Opera :)
      On the other hand, Safari is getting older and slower, currently it’s the worst browser in all major benchmarks like Peacekeeper, HTML5test, Kraken, V8, EcmaScript conformance… (when testing with IE10 instead of IE9)

  • Anonymous

    How is it that Chrome has overtaken IE when the article admits that StatCounter’s stats are invalid?

  • Warson-lotro

    I personally think Chrome is the best browser

  • Dragos

    My Opinion is simple: Opera is the best browser, but not everybody is aware of it.

    • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

      Which explains why Opera only has 2% share on desktop. I love Opera because they’re not bothered by market dominance but they always want to do better.

      Still awaiting a new Opera 12 snapshot but I think they’re holding back to release 11.62.

      • Dante

        “Which explains why Opera only has 2% share on desktop.”
        It mean that all internet users select and use the best product on market?

        • http://twitter.com/Kostadin Кostadin

          Your comment proves the contrary :)

        • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

          I meant only 2% of the Internet community are smart enough to be using Opera. Maxthon is also a smart choice and of which aren’t bothered about market dominance either. :-)

  • tomkaten

    Opera the best ? Yea, right, at what ? Failing to open the most common pages ? Cause it’s been king in that department for quite some time. A browser that can’t open something like DPreview correctly is not a very good or modern browser in my book, regardless of all the goodies it might offer on the side.

    Google uses some nasty pitching for their Chrome browser, but I use Chromium and I love its speed. It’s really unmatched. Everything happens in a flash. It hasn’t been gaining constant market share for being a horrible browser, many people appreciate its qualities and I bet it will continue to grow for a while. Not much, but it’s bound to gain a few more supporters.

    • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

      Give me one website that Opera will fail to open…

      • tomkaten

        http://i.eho.st/ppu4rsbj.png

        http://i.eho.st/pp8lesxg.png

        What it should look like:

        http://i.eho.st/ppqddoui.png

        I know, I’m probably gonna get the ‘it’s an alpha, don’t use it” line, but it works merrily in all the other alphas and betas I use.

        • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

          Try harder next time: http://www.filedump.net/dumped/untitled1332867541.png

          How to fix: You have add blocker. Right click anywhere on that web page > Edit site preferences… > Content > Enable content blocking take off the check mark. Basically ad blocker add on breaks the web page.

          • tomkaten

            Alright, let’s see… It’s the adblocker. You’re right. Can I surf the web without an adblocker ? No. Do any of the available extensions work well in Opera ? No.

            Sure, there’s urlfilter.ini, but then you don’t get an adblocker’s click to block advantages. So let’s see what Opera provides for my needs.I need a good adblocker that lets me kill adds in one click, the included content blocker is not even close. The Urlfilter.ini method is pretty ancient and it does nothing for video ads.

            Then, I need a Password Maker extension to log into all my web accounts. Surprise, no PM extension exists for opera, only a silly widget that’s basically a standalone windows program.

            Does my home banking account work with Opera ? No, and it’s not even certificate-based, which means it works fine in Chromium and Firefox. I hate to switch browsers for certain pages, I just need a good one that does it all.

            I need a good download manager that’s not plugin-based, cause those suck. Any available ? I think you’re out of luck if you’re not the happy owner of one Internet Download Manager.

            And I can bet there are still some sites that don’t look right, I will check all my bookmarks in Opera and see what I can come up with. That was on short notice :)

            There was a time I was really fond of Opera and it was my browser of choice, but I got tired of waiting for some things that would always look like they would never come. When there are better alternatives around, that advance at a much faster pace, why should I bother ? Opera is great for people who love to tweak, but those days are behind me. I just want something that works great out of the box now, with minimal effort.

          • tomkaten

            And if the total market share is any indication, there are quite a few people that were deterred by one or more of the things I mentioned. :)

            Opera, in my view, is kinda like the Linux of the browser world. Advanced, capable of greatness, but requiring more than its fair share of meddling with it if you want to truly get anywhere. And I don’t hate either, but judging by their respective market shares, I’d say that’s a business model gone wrong :) Cheers !

          • tomkaten

            My apologies for the triple post, I just noticed from your SS that you’re a fellow SC player and TL reader :)

            Oh and sorry about my initial reaction to all of this, I really should take it easy on the Interwebz.. It was a knee-jerk post above all else, but sometimes I just hate to see people ignorantly praising Opera wherever I go. This reminded me of that cute caricature I’ve recently seen:

            Mom: Come here, dinner’s ready.
            Me: I can’t, someone’s wrong on the Internet ! :D

          • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

            I am not going to read your 300 word essay on why Opera sucks. I can tell you one thing thought first fix your hands then blame Opera or Ad block or any other product. I have been using Opera for many many years never had a single problem.

  • Pieter Nieuwoudt

    5 years back site compatibility was an serious issue with Opera but these days I rarely find a page that’s broken in Opera. I have Firefox too and tested these culprit sites and they gave the same error.

    So for my fall back browser (like most people I guess) I use Internet Explorer.

    Luckily most sites these days are working towards better web standard support so the falling back to iE we must do on all other browser will hopefully fade away.

    So why do I use Opera? Well was the first browser I tried after IE back in the day and had a few months with Firefox back in version 2. Tested Firefox a few times since but couldn’t find decent addons to clone the features I grew attached too in Opera.

    Chrome just feels too much of an effort to setup because its missing even more features I need and couldn’t bother to try and disable some of the stuff like page preloading.

    Using Opera on my phone and ipad is also a big incentive to stay with them for the content sync between the devices.

    A 2% share of the pie is still very big. Facebook have 800 million users and Opera roughly have 200 million(including mini/mobile of course). So having 25% the users of Facebook can’t be ignored ore sniffed at. So hopefully this will just increase and development will just continue to flourish in the future. 

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