Chrome has overtaken Firefox globally for the first time, with analytics company StatsCounter's figures suggesting that Google's browser is now leading the IE-chasing pack.

Chrome's growth this year has been astounding, and it breezed past Mozilla's Firefox in the UK in the summer.

However, the latest global figures show that this trend has been repeated across the planet – with Chrome now the official number two with a 25.69 per cent market share. That's all the more remarkable considering that Chrome held just 4.66 per cent share of the browser market in November 2009.

Fascinating

"We can look forward to a fascinating battle between Microsoft and Google as the pace of growth of Chrome suggests that it will become a real rival to Internet Explorer globally," said StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen.

"Our stats measure actual browser usage, not downloads, so while Chrome has been highly effective in ensuring downloads our stats show that people are actually using it to access the web also."

StatCounter suggests that IE remains hugely dominant in the US with a 50.24 per cent market share – that's up slightly on last year – with Firefox in second on 20 per cent and Chrome on 17.3 per cent.

The UK is a market that seems to be ahead of the curve in browser trends, and it has IE on 42.8 per cent, Chrome on 24.8 per cent and Firefox on 20.6 per cent

In the US Internet Explorer continues to perform strongly and is maintaining market share at 50.66 per cent, up slightly from 50.24 per cent year on year.

Firefox retains second place on 20.09 per cent, down from 26.75 per cent. Chrome is up to 17.3 per cent from 10.89 per cent. Safari is on 10.76 per cent from 10.71 per cent.

TechRadar figures

TechRadar reported on Chrome overtaking IE among its users in October, but IE has inched back ahead in our latest statistics – with a shade under a quarter of the traffic (24.98 per cent) compared to Chrome's 24.16 per cent.

Firefox holds a 21.79 per cent share of TechRadar browser traffic, Safari on 19.04 per cent and the Android browser on 5.67 per cent.