A four-year history of internet browser usage in two minutes (video)

9 Jul 2012

StatCounter has created a video that illustrates the changing trends in internet browser use worldwide over the past four years.

The animation shows the top browsers – Internet Explorer, Firefox, Opera and Chrome – represented on the world map with a colour, in darker or lighter tones depending on its usage.

The timeline begins at July 2008, before Google launched its Chrome browser in December of that year. At this point, Internet Explorer was the clear market leader, with 66.87pc of the market share.

While most of the map is bathed in blue for Internet Explorer in the beginning, viewers can gradually see Firefox (orange) and Opera (red) gaining traction as the weeks tick by.

By 2011, Chrome (green) starts to infiltrate the market, surging in 2012, and resulting in a more colourful map by Week 24 of this year (11-17 June). By this stage, Internet Explorer and Chrome’s usage were equal at 32.49pc apiece, with Firefox coming in third place, having 24.64pc of the market.

The fall of Internet Explorer

“When we began the StatCounter Global Stats project in 2008, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer dominated the global market,” said Aodhan Cullen, CEO of StatCounter. “There is much greater competition now. Although IE still leads in countries such as the US and UK, on a worldwide basis Google’s Chrome overtook IE in May and maintained a narrow lead in June.”

However, Internet Explorer is not dead in the water and saw its first increase since October/November 2011 between May and June this year, though the figure was just a fraction of 1pc.

The independent web analytics firm currently ranks Chrome at the top, with 33.46pc of the worldwide market to IE’s 32.13pc during Week 27, 2-8 July.

StatCounter browser statistics

 

Elaine Burke is the host of For Tech’s Sake, a co-production from Silicon Republic and The HeadStuff Podcast Network. She was previously the editor of Silicon Republic.

editorial@siliconrepublic.com