Google Chrome is now No. 3 browser

Google's Chrome browser has inched into the position of third most-popular browser, a mere 16 months after its debut in September 2008. According to research firm Net Applications, Chrome ended December with 4.63 percent of the market, an impressive increase of 0.7 percent from November. Consequently, that move tipped Safari one notch back into fourth position. 

As a comparison, second placed Mozilla Firefox finished with 24.6 percent, or 0.1 percent lower, while Safari posted a share of 4.46 percent, which is actually an increase of 0.1 percent. The gains by competing browsers appear to be at the expense of top ranked Internet Explorer, which fell 0.92 percent to 62.7 percent. This is a far cry from its former high of over 90 percent of the market.

For now, the numbers for Google Chrome can only increase as the company tweaks the browser's support for third-party plug-ins--which is a common complaint from users. A beta version of Google Chrome with extension support can be downloaded here.

Don't be put off by the beta moniker though; I have been using the beta of Chrome for the last two weeks now, and it has effectively replaced Mozilla Firefox in my life. For those who missed my earlier grouse about Firefox, I wrote in November about the CPU usage problem I encountered in Firefox. For now, do give the various Chrome extensions a try if you have downloaded Chrome Beta.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at Computerworld 

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