Browser Market share: August | July
Every month, we take a look at the market share of operating systems and also the browser market share of the top three players: Internet Explorer, Firefox and Chrome. Why do we do this? Well, for those of you who follow the tech scene closely, you will know that web browsers are competing heavily for your attention.
If you wondered why these companies want you to use their browser rather than a rival"s, it is because there is a lot of money on the line for these products even though they are free. How do they make money? Well, it all comes down to searches. For Firefox, Google pays them hundreds of millions of dollars to be the default search engine and on Chrome, Google gets the default search preference too, while on Internet Explorer, Bing gets the nod as the default engine.
When you search, which users tend to do frequently in a browser, it racks up advertising dollars for either Google or Microsoft. So, to be the default search engine is a big deal to both companies, which is why Firefox is able to charge Google exuberant sums to be the default in its browser. More so, Firefox needs a large user base to justify this charge and that is why they are fighting for your business.
So here we are, looking back at August which shows that Internet Explorer has gained from July and Chrome has dropped below 20% share; Firefox has also gained a few new users as well. You can see the recent figures in the chart above with August on the left and July on the right.
Is Microsoft worried about Chrome? While only Microsoft can answer that question, it is likely safe to say that they do watch these numbers closely. Over the past few years, Chrome has been slowly catching up to Internet Explorer"s market share which was likely the motivation behind their recent browser campaign, "The browser you love to hate".
Source: Net Applications