Chrome off to a flyer - at the expense of Firefox

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 8 Sep 2008 at 07:57

Google's new browser, Chrome, is already being used by around 5% of the visitors to Pcpro.co.uk, less than a week after its launch.

Chrome has already overtaken long-established browsers such as Opera and Safari to become the third most popular browser among visitors to this site.

But the Google browser's early success appears to have come at the expense of Firefox, which has seen its market share dip considerably over the past week.

August stats for Pcpro.co.uk gave Internet Explorer a 47.6% share of the browsers used to visit the site, with Firefox close behind on 44.1%.

However, since the launch of Chrome last Wednesday, the landscape has changed significantly with Internet Explorer claiming 50.1% (up 2.5%), Firefox on 37.2% (down 6.9%) and Chrome nestled in third place with 4.9%.

Fellow WebKit browser Safari has been relegated to fourth place with 4.0% of the Pcpro.co.uk market (down 0.7% since August), with Opera down in fifth place with 2.3% (down 0.2%).

Firefox killer?

Whilst most analyst believe Chrome was launched as an assault on Internet Explorer's dominance, the early stats suggest Firefox is the prime victim of Google's entry into the market.

Whilst Internet Explorer clearly benefits from the inertia of Windows users who see no reason to download an alternative browser, those that are prepared to look beyond IE are seemingly doing so at the expense of Firefox.

In an exclusive interview with PC Pro last week, the president of Mozilla Europe, Tristan Nitot, said he didn't believe Google intended to harm Firefox. "I think Chrome is not aimed at competing with Firefox," he said. "Rather it's made for competing with Internet Explorer."

Our stats suggest that Chrome could be a bigger problem for Mozilla than Microsoft.

Click here for news of the second alpha of Firefox 3.1.