And Firefox falls under 10% for the first time since 2006 Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) last month lost the No. 1 spot to Google’s Chrome, marking a major milestone not only in IE’s 21-year lifespan, but a dramatic changing of the desktop browser guard. According to U.S. analytics vendor Net Applications, IE and Edge — which the firm tossed into a single bucket labeled “IE” — fell 2 percentage points in April, the fifth straight month of a loss greater than a point, and the 16th of any size — to end at 41.4% of the total global browser user share. Meanwhile, Chrome climbed 2.6 percentage points to take a narrow lead with 41.7%. Previously, Computerworld had forecast — using long-term trends portrayed by Net Applications’ data — that Chrome would wrestle the No. 1 position from IE by the end of May. Mozilla’s Firefox also beat Computerworld‘s projection by dropping eight-tenths of a percentage point to fall below 10% — 9.8%, to be exact — earlier than anticipated. Apple’s Safari and Opera Software’s Opera were flat or up slightly last month, ending April at 4.9% and 1.9%, respectively. But the news was definitely the continued decline of IE and the concurrent rise of Chrome. By forcing customers to upgrade to a newer version of IE — a move Microsoft made in August 2014, when it told most customers to migrate to IE11 if they wanted to continue receiving security patches — the Redmond, Wash. company triggered a disastrous decline in IE’s user share. Staring at a requirement to change browsers, people instead rethought their choice, and then abandoned Microsoft’s browsers for Chrome. Since the mandate’s announcement, IE has lost 17.1 percentage points of user share, representing a 29% decline from its August 2014 position. A contraction of that size in that short a period was unprecedented in browsers. Net Applications was not the first to claim that Chrome is the dominant browser. As far back as May 2012, Irish metrics company StatCounter — which measures activity through tallies of web pages displayed by each browser, a number described as usage share — contended that Chrome had surpassed IE to be the world’s most-used browser. For April 2016, StatCounter pegged Chrome’s share at 60.5%, IE + Edge at 15.5%. Four years ago, Microsoft executive Roger Capriotti — then the director of IE marketing, now the leader of Edge marketing — took exception to StatCounter’s data and methodology, and argued that Net Applications’ was far superior. Capriotti’s argument has been made moot by Net Applications’ April data. Firefox’s problems have been different: The Mozilla flagship’s five-year slide was not linked to a specific action. Instead, the browser that once shook up the market — it was the first to take on IE, and prompted a resumption of browser development by Microsoft — has simply slipped into irrelevance. Firefox’s April user share was almost identical to what it enjoyed in February 2006, just 16 months after its introduction, when IE controlled 85% of the browser market. Although Mozilla has not addressed Firefox’s decline directly, it clearly knows of the problem: The open-source developer, which has been diverted by unsuccessful efforts to create a mobile operating system and an also-aborted in-browser advertising strategy, has more recently been talking about building a radically-different Firefox. Related content news analysis Apple earnings: About that iPhone 'slump' in China Based on information from Thursday's earnings report, it seems that data pointing to an iPhone slump in China were over-baked. By Jonny Evans May 03, 2024 9 mins iMac iPhone Apple news Microsoft begins to phase out ‘classic’ Teams Microsoft is encouraging Teams customers to move to the new, faster version of the collaboration app; the older version will be switched off next year. By Matthew Finnegan May 03, 2024 3 mins Microsoft Teams Collaboration Software Productivity Software news analysis Apple confirms it will open up the iPad in Europe this fall The latest efforts to comply with Europe’s Digital Markets Act mean developers can offer to side load apps to both iPhones and iPads in the EU. Apple has also taken steps to improve what it offers to smaller and non-commercial developers in the By Jonny Evans May 02, 2024 6 mins iPad Apple Mobile Apps news Udacity offers laid-off US workers free access to its courses for 30 days Sign-ups will be available over the next 30 days By Lucas Mearian May 02, 2024 4 mins Technology Industry IT Jobs IT Skills Podcasts Videos Resources Events SUBSCRIBE TO OUR NEWSLETTER From our editors straight to your inbox Get started by entering your email address below. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe