Google’s Chrome 15 browser is now the most popular browser build in the world. New data from StatCounter suggests that Chrome 15 recently reached a total global market share of 23.6% compared to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 market share of 23.5%. Internet Explorer still has the largest global market share if you combine all versions of the browser, however. While Chrome 15 may be more popular on a global scale, that’s still not the case here at home in the United States where it had an 18.1% market share as of December 5th, while Internet Explorer 8 had a 27% share. “Looking at the daily stats, Chrome 14 and 15 have been overtaking IE8 at weekends since the beginning of October,” StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen said. “However, Chrome 15 overtook IE8 for the first time during the five day working week, in [the] week commencing [December 5th]. It looks as if people favor Chrome on weekends at home but office commercial use has now caught up.” The full press release from StatCounter follows below.

Chrome 15 Becomes World’s Most Popular Browser

Free web analytics company reports IE 8 still leads in US but Chrome 15 is number one in UK

Boston, USA; Dublin, Ireland; Thursday, 15th December, 2011: Google’s Chrome 15 has become the most popular web browser version worldwide for the first time on a weekly basis, according to StatCounter, the free website analytics company. The firm’s research arm StatCounter Global Stats reports that in the last full week in November, Chrome 15 took 23.6% of the worldwide market compared to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 at 23.5%. If one aggregates all versions then IE still leads the global market with Chrome in second position, having overtaken Firefox in November.

“Google announced Chrome for business exactly a year ago and IT administrators appear to have embraced it in a remarkably short time,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Looking at the daily stats, Chrome 14 and 15 have been overtaking IE8 at weekends since the beginning of October. However, Chrome 15 overtook IE8 for the first time during the five day working week, in week commencing 5th December. It looks as if people favour Chrome on weekends at home but office commercial use has now caught up.”

In the US Internet Explorer 8 continues to be the most popular browser version with 27.0% for week commencing 5th December compared to 18.1% for Chrome 15. However, in the UK Chrome 15 overtook IE8 in the week commencing November 7th. Last week (commencing 5th December) Chrome 15 had 24.7% in the UK compared to IE8 on 21.1%.

StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US) from the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.

As well as free web research, StatCounter (http://statcounter.com/) provides free web analytics. This allows website owners, developers and bloggers to capture valuable intelligence on their site in real time including number of visitors, visitors by country/region, search terms, popular pages, download stats, exit links and other data.

In September StatCounter announced its new website with added features.