At the end of every month, using public data sources, we can take a look at trends in the desktop and browser markets and the day has finally arrived where Chrome is now a more popular browser than Internet Explorer.

According to Net Marketshare, they state, according to their data from 40,000 websites for the month of April, that Chrome has 41.66% of the browser market share while Internet Explorer has 41.35% which is a small margin of victory for Google and its Chrome browser. Because this is such a small margin, I originally titled this post as “Google Ties Microsoft For Most Popular Browser” as it is sampling and the margin of error surely outweighs the point differential between these two browsers but that’s not the entire picture once I dug a bit further into the data.



If you look at the chart to the right, Edge is not represented even though other charts Net Applications showcases says it has over 3% of the market. The only way I could calculate a number close to the 41.35% shown in the chart is by combining the Internet Explorer and Edge percentages which means that Chrome is actually larger than all of Microsoft’s browsers, combined.

This growth by Chrome should not be too surprising as Microsoft has left Internet Explorer behind for Edge but unfortunately, the Edge browser available to the vast majority of Windows 10 users is a sub-par experience as it lacks basic features like extensions. With that being said, the Windows 10 update coming later this year will make Edge a much better offering which could impact Chrome’s growth.

This is a big milestone for Google as their browser faced and uphill battle against Internet Explorer when it was introduced back in 2008. Considering that the web is a vastly different place today than it was in 2008, having options is a good thing as it forces Microsoft, Google and Mozilla to keep pushing boundaries as the web advances and consumers more of our daily lives.

Tagged with Chrome, Edge, Windows 10