Has Google Chrome Passed IE as The Most Popular Browser? Not So Fast

Yesterday TheNextWeb reported that Google Chrome had surpassed Internet Explorer as the most popular web browser on the planet. The data is based on StatCounter's Global Stats which was first discovered by Joey deVilla. deVilla later posted a follow up to the story with additional sources from W3Counter and Clicky which show that Chrome has yet to overtake IE. So what's the deal?

Simply put, browser market share is not an exact science. You can throw a hundred surveys, research, and monitoring, and you'll get a hundred different answers. On the other hand, if the sample sizes are large enough, you'll get many similar results from which you can draw a conclusion.

The great thing about the StatCounter data is you can drill down to weekly and daily data in addition to monthly and yearly results. If you pull the weekly browser data, you'll find that the two browsers are still battling it out.

Over the past several weeks, both IE and Chrome have been trading places a few times with Chrome edging out IE progressively as you can see from the chart above but IE holding the edge collectively over the last few weeks. It's easier to see the collective data when viewed as a bar graph, which you can do on the site easily. No doubt Chrome will edge out IE in the coming weeks given the trend that it has been enjoying over the last few months, but in the mean time, IE is still ahead, if only just slightly.

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