Firefox's Browser Share Drops While Google Chrome's Rises

After many months of consecutive market share gains, Mozilla's Firefox browser has just seen its third straight market share loss, according to new data from NetApplications.  The share losses for Firefox aren't huge, but they do mark a reversal from remarkable growth for the browser over the past several years. Most notably of all, though, Google's open source Chrome browser appears to be taking market share from Firefox and other browsers.

For the month of February, NetApplications' data shows that Firefox lost about 0.2 of one percentage point of market share, finishing with 24.2 percent of the overall market. February marked the first time that Firefox has had three consecutive months of declining market share in NetApplications' reports. Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) lost one half of one percentage point in February to arrive at 61.58 percent market share, a new low.

Google Chrome finished February with 5.6 percent browser market share, which is up 0.4 of a percentage point. While its overall share may not seem huge at this point, Chrome has more than doubled its share in the past six months. Also, Chrome is now available in Windows, Mac and Linux versions, with extensions available on all platforms.

Google continues to upgrade Chrome at a very rapid pace, reminiscent of the pace that Mozilla updated Firefox at for years. Mozilla has said that it won't continue to deliver Firefox upgrades at that pace, which could be an opportunity for Google and Chrome. One thing's for sure: Firefox and Chrome are both open source browsers, and they're setting the pace of browser innovation.