Chrome closes in on 10% share (and new version 8 launched)

December 2, 2010, 8:40 PM UTC

Chrome almost doubled its market share this year taking percentage points from both Internet Explorer and Firefox

Google’s Chrome browser continues its steady upward climb in browser market share, according to a report published today by NetApplications.



A big part of that share acceleration was Chrome 7, which registered strong growth since its launch a few months ago.

Google Chrome 7.0 gained 5.64% global usage share in November, which is the second highest monthly gain in our tracking history.  The record is still held by Firefox 3.6, which gained 6.09% from February to March, 2010.

The version upgrade is also indicative that Chrome’s audience is made up of a significant portion of early adopters…

Leading the charge are users who appreciate Chrome’s speed, Linux compatibility, bookmark syncing and HTML5 compatibility.

Techie website TechCrunch today reported that Chrome had edged out Firefox in its browser usage analytics for the first time since they began following those stats.

In related news, Google also quietly updated Chrome to version 8 today, adding some significant improvements.

In addition to the over 800 bug fixes and stability improvements, Chrome 8 now contains a built in PDF viewer that is secured in Chrome’s sandbox.  As always, it also contains our latest security fixes, listed below.  This release will also be posted to the Beta Channel.

Early adopters, time to upgrade again!