IE No Longer No. 1 in Europe, Losing Ground to Chrome
Internet Explorer has been steadily losing ground to its competitors for quite some time now, and today Microsoft’s default Windows browser was overtaken by Firefox in the European front. According to analytics company StatCounter, Firefox share of the European market this December was 38.11%, compared to IE’s 37.52%.
“It’s the first time that IE has been knocked out of the number one position in a major geographical area, says Aodhan Cullen, StatCounter’s CEO, who points to the growth of Google’s Chrome as the reason for the shift. It isn’t that Firefox is gaining steam, but rather than IE is losing users to Chrome.”
Firefox’s win over IE is attributed to Chrome for a good reason; Google’s contribution to the browser war is up from 5.06% in December 2009 to 14.58% in December 2010.
Nonetheless, despite of IE’s slow descent on the European front, the browser has seen an increase in popularity with over 10 million downloads of IE9 beta, which we covered here. The browser war continues on other fronts as well, and while Firefox won the role of IBM’s default browser, IE has recently made some of its biggest gains to date, which we covered earlier here.
Internet Explorer is still slowly losing ground though, and our Editor in Chief Mark “Rizzn” Hopkins discussed an infographic which described how IE is just about as unpopular as Chrome is and is the least talked-about browser with only a 13.6% share of the buzz.
Since you’re here …
… We’d like to tell you about our mission and how you can help us fulfill it. SiliconANGLE Media Inc.’s business model is based on the intrinsic value of the content, not advertising. Unlike many online publications, we don’t have a paywall or run banner advertising, because we want to keep our journalism open, without influence or the need to chase traffic.The journalism, reporting and commentary on SiliconANGLE — along with live, unscripted video from our Silicon Valley studio and globe-trotting video teams at theCUBE — take a lot of hard work, time and money. Keeping the quality high requires the support of sponsors who are aligned with our vision of ad-free journalism content.
If you like the reporting, video interviews and other ad-free content here, please take a moment to check out a sample of the video content supported by our sponsors, tweet your support, and keep coming back to SiliconANGLE.
