Chrome’s gain is Microsoft’s loss

Google’s Chrome increased its browser market share by 0.6 percentage points in April to 6.7%, while Microsoft’s Internet Explorer fell 0.7 points to 59.95%.

Meanwhile, according to NetApplications, Mozilla’s Firefox rose 0.07 percentage points to 24.6% – just maddeningly shy of the coveted 25% milestone.

“Once considered a lock to hit and then move beyond the 25% bar, Firefox has yet to reach [that point],” explained ComputerWorld’s Gregg Keizer.

“Last month, Vince Vizzaccaro, an executive vice president at NetApplications, said that Firefox was ‘just holding steady’ and explained that gains that had once come easily to it were instead heading Chrome’s way. That appeared to be the case again in April.”

However, Keizer noted that Mozilla had managed to convince nearly two-thirds of its users to upgrade to the newest Firefox, Version 3.6, which launched in January. 



“By the end of April, 62.3% of all Firefox users were running the newest edition, while 23.6% ran 2009’s Firefox 3.5 and 11.2% ran the now-unsupported Firefox 3.0,” wrote Keizer.

“Microsoft’s newest browser, IE8, also showed strong gains last month as its market share grew by one percentage point to 24.7%; when its ‘compatibility view’ is included, IE8 accounted for 27.6% of all browsers.”