Chrome Browser Nearing 30 Percent Market Share

It's no secret that Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox--both open source browsers--were locked in a neck-and-neck market share battle for a long time. The two browsers have remained on rapid release cycles, and for years they tended to leapfrog each other for market share in small increments each month.

Times have changed, though. In August, Google's browser came very close to 30 percent market share, a prominent Web analytics company said. Meanwhile, Firefox and Internet Explorer have been experiencing share declines.

As August ended, Net Applications, which uses metrics to track the percentage of users who run a specific browser each month, pegged Chrome's share at 29.5 percent. Chrome increased its share 1.7 percentage points in August, its largest boost since December 2014.

Chrome's market share has grown by 9.9 percentage points over 12 months, while Interent Explorer and Firefox have seen their share decline 6.3 and 3.6 points, respectively, over the same time frame.

Firefox's share dipped to 11.7 percent in August, according to NetApplications. Internet Explorer still has share above 50 percent, but is seeing declines.