After last month’s interesting results, it’s time to see how did the February turned out for your favorite web browser.

For the second month in a row, Internet Explorer continues to increase its market share and is now up by 0.76 point, from 48.16% to 48.92%.

Surpassing the 20% mark, Firefox has no intentions of changing the trend, down from 19.35% to 18.97%, 0.38 point decrease.

After last month’s drop, Google Chrome has pretty much recovered from the drop, up from 17.20% to 17.48%, 0.2 point increase.

Slowly edging towards the 10% market, Safari’s market share has increased by a 0.01 point, up from 9.27% to 9.28%.

After some consolidation, Opera’s market share went up from 1.54% to 1.60%, reaching the level last seen on July 2011 (0.06 point increase).

After the previous benchmark results that tested the latest stable versions of web browsers, people expressed their interest in the beta or alpha build results as well. Well, today is your lucky day, folks.

Tested web browsers

Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) Platform Preview
Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) Metro Platform Preview
Google Chrome 18 Beta
Firefox 11 Beta 5
Opera 12 Alpha

What’s the difference between Metro and Desktop IE? As mentioned earlier, “IE Metro (aka Immersive web browser) uses the 64 bit libraries by default.”

Benchmark results

With the release of Windows 8 Consumer Preview, guys at Neowin have managed to benchmark the latest version of IE10, which is Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview 5, running in both desktop and Metro modes.

What’s the difference between IE10 Metro and Desktop? IE Metro (aka Immersive web browser) uses the 64 bit libraries by default.

Tested browsers

Internet Explorer 10 (IE10) PP5
Google Chrome 17
Firefox 10
Opera 11.60

Benchmark results

Chrome 17 is out with a new prerendering feature designed to make your pages load faster, and both Firefox and Opera have also released speedy new versions since our last round of speed tests. So, we've once again pitted the four most popular web browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab loading times, and more, with more surprising results. More »

 

With the Firefox 10, Opera 12 and Internet Explorer 10 releases just around the corner, guys from TomsHardware have decided to test the latest stable builds of the top 5 web browsers on both Windows 7 and Mac OS X Lion.

How did your favorite web browser perform? Let’s find out.

Tested versions

Internet Explorer 9
Firefox 9
Google Chrome 16
Opera 11.60
Safari 5.1.2
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Startup Time Performance Benchmarks

Happy New Year!

It’s that time of the month again when we look at the market share results for the last month. How your favorite browser did finish the 2011 race? Let’s find out.

Already broken through the 50% barrier, Internet Explorer share continues the downtrend, this time it has decreased by 1.19 point, from 48.95% to 47.76%.

It looks like more releases did not really help Mozilla as Firefox is going in the same direction as IE, down from 20.58% to 20.09% (0.49 point decrease).

With every month passing by, Google Chrome is gearing towards the #2 spot in the market and has now increased its share by 0.68 point, up from 16.90% to 17.58%.

Thanks to Apple device sales, the happy days continue for the Safari web browser as its share has grown from 8.35% to 8.67% (0.32 point increase).

Despite overall downtrend, Opera has managed to rebound some of its losses and is now up by 0.11 point, all the way from 1.55% to 1.66%.

Opera Mini on the other hand has been doing well for quite some time and saw a generous 0.36 point increase, up from 1.53% to 1.89%.

That’s all for now, folks. What are your predictions for 2012?

Google funded study confirms.

Accuvant, the US based research, firm has published a new study, which compared security features of the three most popular web browsers: Internet Explorer, Google Chrome and Firefox.

As it turns out, the search giant funded study has made a conclusion that Google Chrome is the most secure browser out there, followed by Internet Explorer and Firefox.

After such claims, Mozilla has decided to respond with the following statement:

“Firefox includes a broad array of technologies to eliminate or reduce security threats, from platform level features like address space randomization to internal systems like our layout frame poisoning system. Sandboxing is a useful addition to that toolbox that we are investigating, but no technology is a silver bullet. We invest in security throughout the development process with internal and external code reviews, constant testing and analysis of running code, and rapid response to security issues when they emerge. We’re proud of our reputation on security, and it remains a central priority for Firefox.”

So here you have it folks. Despite continuous IE bashing in various communities, it still managed to beat Firefox in a non-biased study.

What do you think?

With just one month left before the end of 2011, it’s time to check the latest stats for the browsers market share.

Falling below 50% last time, Internet Explorer is now down from 49.58% to 48.95% (0.63 point decrease).

Despite regaining some of its market share on October, Firefox is nearing towards 20% level, down from 21.20% to 20.58% (0.62 point decrease).

Soon to cross paths with Firefox, Google Chrome continues its dominant uptrend, up from 16.59% to 16.90% (0.31 point increase).

Gaining market share for many months, this time Safari has lost some of it, climbing down from 8.54% to 8.35% (0.19 point decrease).

Just like Firefox, it looks like Opera is stuck in the never ending downtrend as its share has also decreased from 1.49% to 1.45% (0.04 point decrease).

Now that Gmail's rolled out its new look and you've learned your way around the changes, it's time to fix the little quirks and annoyances that remain. Here are a few of our favorite userstyles and userscripts for making the best of the Gmail redesign. More »

Chrome/Firefox/Opera/Safari (Greasemonkey): If you're tired of plain text links that you have to copy and paste in your address bar, free Greasemonkey script Linkify Plus will turn all URLs and email addresses into clickable links. More »

It is October already and there’s no time to waste. So, let’s dive into the latest browsers market share results and explore those changes.

Just a couple more months and Internet Explorer will break the 50% market share barrier, this time it lost 0.62 point, down from 51.59% to 50.97%.

With more and more Firefox releases hitting the Internet, Mozilla’s browser has managed to secure 0.03 point of the market share, up from 21.03% to 21.06%.

Google Chrome does not have any plans to stop and has now broken though 15% barrier, up from 14.46% to 15.17% (0.71 point increase).

Continuous sales of Apple devices have helped Safari to increase its market share by another 0.32 point, up from 7.71% to 8.03%.

After 6 months of losses, Opera’s market share stayed flat at 1.58%.

Firefox 7 is set to be released today, and with a big focus on performance, we thought it time for another round of browser speed test. We pitted the four most popular Windows browsers against each other in a battle of startup times, tab-loading times, JavaScript powers, and memory usage, with some surprising results. More »

Web browser benchmarks on Windows and Mac OS X.

With the recent Firefox and Google Chrome releases, TomsHardware has decided to test all the competitors in both Windows and Mac OS X operating systems.

There’s no time to waste, so let’s dive into the results.

Startup Time

Page Load Times

It’s Friday, Friday…

Another month passes by as we look at the August market share stats to find out, how web browsers competed at the end of summer.

Internet Explorer is approaching the 50% market share mark, as it’s now down another 1.13 point, from 52.72% to 51.59%.

Firefox is the new IE and it continues to show, this time its market share has decreased by 0.4 point, down from 21.47% to 21.03%.

Another month and another gain for Google Chrome, in August Google’s web browser market share grew by another 0.97 point, from 13.49% to 14.46%.

Combining both desktop and mobile versions of Safari, its market share continues to climb as well, up from 7.37% to 7.71% (0.34 point increase).

Despite reporting growth in the latest financial report, all major trackers show Opera’s market share contraction, this time it went down from 1.62% to 1.58% (0.04 point decrease).

Available in the latest Dev builds.

With all the upcoming changes, it looks like Google Chrome users will soon enjoy a new tab page, borrowing elements from Opera and Maxthon web browsers.

As you can see from the screenshots below, updated Tab Page groups data into the following categories: Most Visited, Apps, Bookmarks and Recently Closed.

In addition to that, the new Bookmark Manager now displays sites in a Speed Dial like fashion, offering a much more refined experience for its users.

Whether such updates are set for the upcoming Google Chrome 15 Stable release, remains to be seen.

The battle for best browser on Windows is especially close, but we have to pick Google Chrome for its speed, extensibility, and awesome syncing features. More »

The browser debate is pretty heated on all platforms, but we love Chrome on the Mac. It's fast, easy to use, has a great developer community, and even handles failure with grace.

Shortmarks lets you manage and sync your custom search engines and bookmark keywords across computers and browsers, without even needing to download an extension. More »

It’s August already as we look at the July’s web browser market share numbers. As you will see form the stats below, this month was awful for everyone but WebKit.

Internet Explorer is first in our list and there are no surprises here. It has lost some of its market share again, down from 53.68% to 52.71% (0.97 point decrease).

Firefox 5 did not change the situation for Mozilla as its browser market share continues to grind lower, down from 21.67% to 21.47% (0.2 point decrease).

Google’s Chrome growth is in a steady uptrend, nothing new here, up from 13.11% to 13.49% (0.38 point increase).

There is something about Google Chrome which I have not seen in any other browser. It is one of the fastest growing browsers across the world and currently has around 20% usage world wide.

Many tech related websites around the world are seeing that Google Chrome has been overtaking Firefox. Last year both TechCrunch and Techmeme reported that Chrome was the most users on their site which prompted me to write the article; Why is Chrome Winning and Firefox Losing Market Share?. Back then, Chrome’s market share was around 10% was constantly growing on our site too.

Recently, I wrote an article on How Chrome is Growing in India and Hurting Microsoft and Mozilla. In that article, I delved upon how Chrome has been dominating Indian markets even though the internet usage there is around 15% of the population. This definitely showed how much impact Chrome has had on the browser market.

Recently, I was checking the browser market share for Techie Buzz and found that Chrome has overtaken Firefox by a small margin. Last month, Chrome was behind Firefox by 2%, so the month over month growth is pretty impressive. This means that almost 1+ million out of the 3.5+ million users on the site were using Google Chrome to visit Techie Buzz.

One of the reasons for Google Chrome’s growth is the heavy advertising Google is doing for it. I see many ads which pitch users to play Angry Birds on Google Chrome and I can swear that those have converted many users to switch to Chrome including my own brother who is a big Angry Birds fan.

Google is also landing some punches on rival browsers like Firefox and Internet Explorer by stopping development on certain products while providing plugins for them too. Recently, Google has decided to stop development of Google Toolbar for Firefox 5. This has sent Mozilla in a frenzy because lot of users are not upgrading to Firefox 5 from Firefox 4 because of the incompatibility of the add-on.

Google also provides Internet Explorer users with something called as Google Chrome Frame to bring Google Chrome’s technology to Internet Explorer. As you can see from our browser stats, we have around 0.13% IE users who have installed the Google Chrome Frame.

Additionally, Google has also been blocking several features in their products on Opera. Our in-house Opera guru Pallab has always been finding problems using Google’s features on Opera including the recently introduced Google Instant.

So is Google intentionally doing all these things to switch users to their own browsers? It could very well be possible, however, they are also backing that up with an excellent browser and I for one have been using Google Chrome as my primary browser since it launched and yes some of the new features in it including the Multiple Chrome Profiles are definitely good.

What do you think about Chrome’s dominance? Is it good or bad? Do you use Google Chrome as your primary browser? If not which one do you prefer to use? Please let me know through your comments.