Chrome to surpass Firefox in market share by December

Google Chrome is well on its way to surpassing Mozilla Firefox’s No. 2 market share position and should overtake the fox no later than December, according to Irish analytics company StatCounter.

We reported at the beginning of August that Chrome had overtaken Firefox in the UK, but now that trend appears to be intensifying on a worldwide scale. Chrome has gained an incredible eight percentage points in worldwide market share since January, which is a 50 percent increase in total share growth, and it is expected to keep growing at a quick pace.

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The data from StatCounter, as first noted by Computerworld, says both Microsoft’s No. 1 Internet Explorer and Firefox have been losing market share since January, with most of those lost customers being picked up by Google.

As of Wednesday, Chrome’s global share for September was 23.6% with Firefox at 26.8% and Internet Explorer at 41.7%. For Chrome to surpass Firefox by the end of the year, StatCounter makes the assumption that Chrome’s rapid growth will continue at the same pace. At the end of the year, Chrome should have approximately 26.6% share and Firefox should have 25.3%.

A rival report by U.S. web metrics company Net Applications shows a much wider current gap between Chrome and Firefox. In August, Net Apps said Chrome had 15.5% of market share and Firefox had 22.6%. But if Chrome keeps up its growth pace, Net Applications’ data points to Chrome surpassing Firefox by the middle of 2012, which would still be an impressive feat.

What’s your favorite web browser?