Google's Chrome claims a 20% browser market share

Google’s Chrome is rising in the popularity ranks (soon to be voted “most likely to succeed” in its high school yearbook? I think so). How much so? Today, Google’s Chrome claims 20.7% of the global browser market, according to website analytics company StatCounter. This represents an increase of nearly 18 percentage points since June 2009, when Google’s Chrome claimed only 2.8% of the global market.

The graph created by the StatCounter research arm, StatCounter Global Stats, puts it all into perspective. While most other browsers have remained pretty steady (Opera dropping slightly from 3.36% to 1.7%, Safari rising slightly from 2.9% to 5%), Chrome has seen a fairly dramatic increase over the last two years.

But Chrome’s rapid increase corresponds directly with Internet Explorer’s rapid decline. While Chrome climbed 18 percentage points between June 2009 and June 2011, Explorer’s market share fell from 59% to 44% over the same time period. Nevertheless, Explorer maintains its lead over all other browsers. Firefox ranks second with 28% of the market today, down slightly from 30% in June 2009.

But Chrome is advancing on Firefox pretty quickly, and while Firefox still maintains an overall lead over Chrome by nearly 8 percentage points, Chrome is bumping it out for the number two spot in certain countries. In South America, for example, Chrome overtook Firefox in April with 29.7% of the market to Firefox’s 24.6%, but both still lag behind Explorer’s 44% market share.

And it looks like Chrome is catching on in the UK as well, where its 21.1% market share is now nearly neck-and-neck with Firefox’s 21.7% market share.

Oddly enough, though, in the U.S., Chrome’s rise has been a bit more sluggish, climbing to 16% in 2011 from 2.8% in 2009. Meanwhile, Explorer has dropped to 46% from 56% in 2009, while Firefox has dropped to 24.6% from 31.5%. The land of late adopters?...

“It is a superb achievement by Google to go from under 3% two years ago to over 20% today,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of the Dublin-based StatCounter. “While Google has been highly effective in getting Chrome downloaded, the real test is actual browser usage, which our stats measure.”