Data released by web statistics firm StatCounter shows that Google's (NASDAQ: GOOG) Chrome web browser is poised to overtake Mozilla's Firefox as the second most popular browser by end-2011.

Chrome's market share currently places it in third at 23.6 percent, just behind Firefox's 26.8 percent. Internet Explorer is still the most popular web browser by far with 41.7 percent of the market.

According to StatCounter, Chrome has seen an increase of eight percentage points since Jan. 2011, a steep 50 percent increase. If maintained, this will put Chrome on track to overtake second-placed Firefox in a matter of months. On its part, Firefox suffered a decline of almost four percentage points in market share over the same time period--which translates into a decline of about 13 percent.

As pointed out by Computerworld, Chrome's market share lags Firefox by a larger amount based on statistics from Net Applications, another analytics company. Yet there is no denying that Google has been successful in attracting defectors from competing browsers such as IE and Firefox. In the meantime, the market share numbers for the other top browsers such as Safari and Opera also appear to be more or less stagnant.

For more:
- check out this article at Tom's Guide
- check out this article at Computerworld

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