It's official: Internet Explorer (IE) is no longer the top browser, as all measurement sites now place Google Chrome on top.
Microsoft's infamous IE became the most popular Internet browser back in late '98 or early '99, and continued to enjoy wide popularity ever since, despite its drawbacks. Although rival browsers later offered more features and faster performance, IE still owned the market for many years. The fact that Microsoft bundled IE with Windows likely played a major role in its dominance.
By 2002, IE ruled the browser market with a whopping 96 percent, but other browsers gained more ground in recent times. Google Chrome, in particular, seems to be the most popular choice for most netizens, and it comes as no big surprise that it holds the top spot on the browser market.
It's been coming for a while now, and most browser measurement sites already crowned Chrome as the top web browser instead of IE years ago. StatCounter, for instance, made the change back in 2012. NetMarketShare was the only one that still listed IE on top, but that's changed now as well.
The last of the major browser measurement groups is now in line with the others, finally dethroning IE and listing Chrome as the No. 1 browser. The difference is rather small, however, when it comes to numbers.
NetMarketShare shows Google Chrome with a 41.66 percent share, while IE grabs the second spot with 41.35 percent. Compared to the previous figures from the measuring site, Chrome climbed 2.6 percent, while IE slipped by 2 percentage points.
At the same time, the figures show a gloomy scene for Mozilla Firefox. Despite the fact that it was the first browser to pose a real threat to IE's dominance, Firefox now has just 9.76 percent of the browser market share by NetMarketShare's stats.
On the other hand, Firefox ranks second in StatCounter's stats, trailing Chrome, but outperforming IE. As ZDNet reports, StatCounter lists Chrome on top with 56.4 percent, Firefox comes in second with 14.3 percent, while IE trails with 12.5 percent. These figures from StatCounter are from March 2016.
It's worth pointing out, however, that StatCounter and NetMarketShare use different methodologies to come up with their results. Even so, both list Chrome as the top browser, as do all other measurement sites of the sort.
Even the U.S. government's Digital Analytics Program (DAP), which keeps tabs on the last 90 days of accessed government website, shows Chrome as the most popular browser. DAP's latest figures for mobile and desktop browsers list Google Chrome with 43.3 percent, Safari with 22.5 percent, IE with 19.4 percent, and Firefox with a meager 8.2 percent.
In other words, although the exact figures vary depending on the measurement site, one thing is obvious by all counts: IE is steadily declining, while Google Chrome reigns supreme.
