IE losing ground to Chrome

Many surfers abandoned Internet Explorer in favour of Chrome, the new browser from Google, during its first week.

Read Web User's first look at IE8 Beta 2

Although it captured less than one per cent of the overall market, Chrome put in a good first week performance according to NetApplications, a web metrics firm.

Microsoft also lost ground to Firefox, Safari and Opera which all posted increases in users.

Mozilla's Firefox increased its market share to just under 20 per cent. Safari's share stands at 6.7 per cent, while Opera and Chrome are tied at around 0.7 per cent each.

Read Web User's first look at Google Chrome beta

Internet Explorer is still by far the world's most popular browser with an overall share of 71 per cent, but it will be paying close attention to its Google rival, which like IE8 is still in 'beta' format.

"IE took the entire market share hit from Chrome," said Vince Vizzaccaro of NetApplications. "And the rest of the alternative browsers all had gains as well."

"These are very early results, but when considering whether Chrome market share would come from IE or from other browsers, it's definitely coming from IE," he added.

www.netapplications.com
www.google.com/chrome
www.microsoft.com/ie8
www.mozilla.org