StatCounter has been tracking Chrome’s immense growth in 2011 and predicts Chrome will reach second place, above Firefox, in December of this year. Meanwhile, Chrome faces challenges thanks to a Microsoft glitch that’s deleting Chrome on users’ systems.
Chrome’s 2011 Warpath
Google Chrome started 2011 at an impressive 15.6 percent in global share, according to Ireland-based StatCounter. In the last nine months, the share has grown to 23.6 percent – an 8 percent growth that cannibalized Firefox and IE, each of which lost 4 percent of global share, leaving Firefox at 26.8 percent and IE at 41.7 percent.
StatCounter predicts that, assuming trends continue, Chrome will be the second most popular browser by the end of December of this year.
As noted by Computer World, however, there are some alternate stats that put Chrome at a much lower position. Net Applications, for example, puts more weight on the Chinese market (according to some groups, much closer to the appropriate amount of weight) and shows IE retaining 55.3 percent compared to Firefox’s 22.6 percent and Chrome’s 15.5 percent.
Even in the case of Net Applications’ review, however, Chrome is growing while Firefox and IE are declining. Using the Net Applications forecast, Chrome can expect to pass Firefox by mid-2012.
Microsoft Deletes Chrome Without User Permission
Microsoft Security Essentials (MSE) and Microsoft Forefront Endpoint Security (MFES) have had a strange glitch: they both deleted Google Chrome from users’ computers without getting permission, the Los Angeles Times and ZDNet reported. Hundreds of users have reported Chrome’s deletion, but it’s expected that the issue happened on a larger scale than is yet visible.
These deletions happened, claims Microsoft, because of an “incorrect detection.” The company vehemently denies any attempt at sabotage and neither Google nor other official groups have yet to levy such accusations.
Microsoft has released a fix for the issue, but that fix requires users to manually update to the latest version of MSE or MFES and then re-install Google Chrome. Google, meanwhile, released manual resolution directions and worked on a fix of their own that will counter the Microsoft bug.